I am starting to see things for what they're not.

I’ve been focusing a lot on connectedness, illusion, and recapitulation.  I had the pleasure of spending a Friday evening in East San Jose at a quaint little restaurant.  The exposed brick, low hanging lights, semi-sophisticated clientele, Belgian beer selection, et al set a tone that was a great bookend to a week of thoughtful observations.  As I waited for my date to arrive, I was seated at a small table in the middle of the room facing the entrance.  From there I could see all the little cafes and restaurants on the block and the train tracks that ran right outside the door and relish in the sights and sounds of couples, friends, family enjoying their food, drinks and much deserved nights out.  Every 20 minutes or so the rumble of the train coming shook the ground gently as the metal behemoth lurched past.  It reminded me of a disjunctive illusion that occasionally appears when I’ve finished a long daytime run.  When I’m jogging up my mountain road there are times when the mountains in the background shift slightly, but rapidly as if someone wiggled them back and forth but once.  I know this is just the adrenaline pumping through me, perhaps the sweat stinging my eyes and blurring my vision, or simply my eyeballs going back into their rightful place.  But a brief yet intense sensation does come across me that though I’m connected to my surroundings, none of it is real.  I had the same feeling each time the train passed the doorway of the restaurant.  Like I was in a movie and the CG wasn’t quite perfect.  Things were almost idyllic, synchronistic, and staged.  By no stretch of the imagination have I drifted into an “it’s all an illusion, man”, matrix-esque, hippy trip.  But as I further take laymen’s study of quantum mechanics and try to wrap my feeble mind around the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as a platform for observation, I’m beginning to appreciate that all that we are is indeed an infinite soul in a finite reality.  The possibilities to manipulate our surroundings may start with appreciating them not for what they are, but for what they’re not.