For Real

There is a large empty lot behind my apartment barracaded by temporary chain-link fences. I assume someone started building there and then ran out of money. It's grown over with weeds and were it not for the carefully planned and fairly well-kept apartment complexes around it, it could be taken as a set of an end-of-the world film.

Anyway, as I was walking home tonight, I saw what I thought was a bird flying above it. As I got closer, it turned out to be a radio controlled toy airplane. The scene seemed very dramatic--the sun setting on what could be a war zone infiltrated by the buzz of this toy whose real-life counterpart would belong in a real-life war.

The situation and this way I happened to percieve it made me think about the contexts in which real and fake overlap. As children, we play to practice for real events later in life. Even as adults, we sometimes give life to inanimate objects for sentimental or other reasons. Then of course there are movies, books, and websites that give us virtual access to real things that we may or may not actually encounter later.

When I first arrived in the Caribbean and we went to the beach, I remarked that it was so unreal I couldn't appreciate it. If I had never seen pictures or movies depicting a tropical lanscape, perhaps my reaction would have been different. But I don't know, because we live in a world where virtual versions of nearly every experience exist.

Is there value in both the actual and artificial? Of course. So I think the question is where is the line? What things are okay to experience virtually and which ones do we need to live through for real? As a note to the universe, I'm fine continuing to appreciate the buzz of toy airplanes in a pretend war zone.