I adore this story. I didn't mean to read it, but once I started, I couldn't stop. 'Reality' seems very subjective, unreal and absurd to me at times, so why shouldn't it be shifting? Our personal narratives change with our interpretation of past events, and objective 'truth' is hard to come by.
I’m curious what you all think happened to Mary. The narrator says that “poor Mary is not crazy,” and “Mary doesn’t have sudden onset Alzheimer’s.” How is it that her reality has seemingly shifted overnight? Have any of you experienced a similar feeling of ‘everything has changed; I don’t belong here?’
I agree with Tina, I think that's the interesting question of the story. It could all be a metaphor, but it might not be, and the genius of the writer is they never tip their hand. It's very much an "everything is the same but one thing" kind of story. You have to accept the first fiction (the sink change), but then that opens up the important questions about everything that follows from accepting that first fiction as true.
Good question. I'm not sure whether we're meant to take this as a literal shift in reality or a sort of liminal space in between reality and imagination.
God insists that reality generally be consistent, otherwise chaos reigns. That's why the very few who can perform miracles, which are inconsistencies in reality, really prefer not to perform them.
Your point is well taken, but writing is fiction. Magic isn't real, but we still enjoy reading Harry Potter. The thing that makes stories like this so interesting, at least for us, is the idea that you must simply accept as true one piece of fiction, then you are forced to explore everything that would change or come out of that first fiction.
No magic is real? Really? Have a look at Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment. If there's no magic, perhaps you can explain what's going on there. Just one example.
I adore this story. I didn't mean to read it, but once I started, I couldn't stop. 'Reality' seems very subjective, unreal and absurd to me at times, so why shouldn't it be shifting? Our personal narratives change with our interpretation of past events, and objective 'truth' is hard to come by.
I’m curious what you all think happened to Mary. The narrator says that “poor Mary is not crazy,” and “Mary doesn’t have sudden onset Alzheimer’s.” How is it that her reality has seemingly shifted overnight? Have any of you experienced a similar feeling of ‘everything has changed; I don’t belong here?’
I agree with Tina, I think that's the interesting question of the story. It could all be a metaphor, but it might not be, and the genius of the writer is they never tip their hand. It's very much an "everything is the same but one thing" kind of story. You have to accept the first fiction (the sink change), but then that opens up the important questions about everything that follows from accepting that first fiction as true.
Good question. I'm not sure whether we're meant to take this as a literal shift in reality or a sort of liminal space in between reality and imagination.
God insists that reality generally be consistent, otherwise chaos reigns. That's why the very few who can perform miracles, which are inconsistencies in reality, really prefer not to perform them.
Your point is well taken, but writing is fiction. Magic isn't real, but we still enjoy reading Harry Potter. The thing that makes stories like this so interesting, at least for us, is the idea that you must simply accept as true one piece of fiction, then you are forced to explore everything that would change or come out of that first fiction.
Some writing is fiction. Not all.
No magic is real? Really? Have a look at Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment. If there's no magic, perhaps you can explain what's going on there. Just one example.
Why not both? They can balance out.