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reality attack
Feb. 5th, 2006 05:16 pmI’m currently reading River of Gods; no comments yet, as I’m only just into chapter 3, but something struck me on page 10:
I spent quite some time trying to remember where else I had read of people doing that - a book somewhere, but where? - before I finally realised, remembered, that my memory was of Real Life™. Yes, some years ago, I once went out at lunchtime with my workmates at Virgin Mobile (or v.omit, as it was fondly known to us) in Trowbridge to put coins on the railway line in front of trains and, later, peel the squished remnants off.
What struck me is that I assumed that my memory was of fiction, of something I’d read, not of your actual, personally experienced, meatspace reality.
So it goes.
After the train has passed, they scramble up on to the track and look for paisa coins they have wedged into the rail joints. The fast trains smear them flat into the rail.
I spent quite some time trying to remember where else I had read of people doing that - a book somewhere, but where? - before I finally realised, remembered, that my memory was of Real Life™. Yes, some years ago, I once went out at lunchtime with my workmates at Virgin Mobile (or v.omit, as it was fondly known to us) in Trowbridge to put coins on the railway line in front of trains and, later, peel the squished remnants off.
What struck me is that I assumed that my memory was of fiction, of something I’d read, not of your actual, personally experienced, meatspace reality.
So it goes.
