Epiphanies of horror

It’s amazing how we settle in to a perception of life, only to have the lid torn away with some crisis or unexpected epiphany, then to once again lose the clarity of that moment and slip back into the former perception. The clarity itself becomes a memory, almost an article of faith that yes, we did understand that once, or even experience it. Once. But not now. Not until something else happens that pares back our layers of constructed understanding again.

Sometimes it’s reality itself that comes under fire; it can be a niggling suspicion that there’s more than meets the eye, an acknowledgement that as we cruise down the street in a thin steel box with four rubber rings separating us from the blue metal and tar, there’s something unreal about what we’re calling reality. In times of crisis, or in shock, the colour can literally drain away from the observed world… trees and sky in grayscale as our minds desperately clamber for a foothold in the new terrain in which the familiar and trusted has been ripped away like a tablecloth exposing the raw grain.

Or it may be an acceptance that our built environments are also a monument to the many ideologies of eternal convenience, carrying with them an artifice that renders them far more sinister than just artificial; and the knowledge that this can’t carry on for ever – that there is a less-than-paper-thin veneer separating us from the daily struggle for our very survival.

Today was one of those days; when the hidden facts came to the fore, the unseen things were seen, reality took on another dimension, and I doubt I’ll ever be the same again.

Yes folks, today I cleaned behind the oven.