Do you not sense sometimes that life is all fiction? A cat on the windowsill. A rug under your feet. An open window. An empty box. A filled box. Look at all the props in life. Certainly you are in a play. What else could it be that you are in?
Real Life is something else. It is stillness, sort of like life not yet born. It is life on the verge. Real Life is not drama, not whatsoever.
Real Life is far from hardship. In Real Life, there is no tragedy. The play has not yet risen above the horizon.
Real Life is not made of action and drama. Real Life is long before duels and melodrama and live action and cameras. Real Life is long before.
Real Life does not change. Real Life is a foundation that never wears out. Real Life is certainly not flimflam. Real Life is not the flip of a switch. There is no switch to Real Life. Real life is on, and that’s it.
If Real Life were a stew, the flame would not yet have been turned on. Yet the flame is ready. Real life would be all the ingredients of the stew before it starts cooking. Real Life is fullness. In Real Life, there are no runs in stockings. There is no news relayed. There are no newspapers, and there is no one to read them. Real Life is incipient. Photos cannot be taken of it. Nothing has happened yet. It is about to happen. Real Life is the dawn just before the sun rises. It cannot be seen, yet all is in readiness. It is aliveness.
In Real Life, there are no somersaults, yet Real Life is the precursor of somersaults.
In Real Life, everything is incipient. It is the moment – rather non-moment – when the cab driver is in readiness. He is in position to drive, and yet the meter has not started running.
Hail to the real Real Life. It is ever in readiness. It is a rich pool. The swimmers have not yet started to swim. All is in the hush and readiness of a free fall.
Real Life never wavers.
That which you have called real life is fiction. Fiction is evident, yet real life is just below the surface. Real Real Life is not made up. It does not form itself as it goes along. It is all the power of motion before motion takes its first step. It is the baby before birth. All the components are there, yet the page is not yet written.
I won’t say that Real Life is the silence before the storm, for active life is not always a storm, although it is often turned into a storm. This is how active life becomes a soap opera of note.
You take your place on the stage of fictional life. The curtain goes up to great applause. A great to-do is made about the curtain’s going up. Only in imagination is anything happening. Nothing ever happens. It seems to be happening. It feels more real than the Real, yet it is only a movie reel. There is a beginning and an end to the story.
Real Life, on the other hand, exists always and yet has no beginning and no ending. A story is not yet told. It has not yet been made up. You have to be on stage for the story to start. Despite all your protests, you love the story. You love every twist and turn of it. You are the hero of the story. You are the tragedian, and you are the comedian. You love both, or you would not have them. You play the fool. You play the long-suffering hero. You assign yourself parts, and you act them well. You open the book, and then you close it, yet in real Real Life nothing happens, nothing happens but love, that is.