The Surrealist Manifesto
"Surrealism will lead you to death. Which is a secret society." Andre Breton
Those who posit that we can "confirm" the reality of our physical, workaday, conscious existences would do well to remember that logic is no facilitator of truth in this regard, as a dream narrative operates on its own internal logic as well. In the midst of the Dream, we find ourselves living as if dropped into the midst of a world we completely accept as the "Real World," at least in the context of the dream. I was the other night holding a coconut over the edge of the top story of what I took to be a car park (one that might have obsessed the late, great J.G. Ballard, a student of subconscious mechanisms). I let it drop, watching as it descended to the pavement below, expecting it to disintegrate. Instead, like a rubber ball, it bounced upward, just out of my grasp. What is to be implied here? Obviously a metaphor for thinking from the subconscious mind. My coconut didn't bust on the ground after a hard fall but is projected, like the little ball belonging to the princess in the story of the "Frog Prince" upward, returning from the recesses below--but just out of my grasp. Is my mind then, as a developed entity, just beyond the reach of my fingers? (Of course the "nut," and the fact that it didn't "bust," brings to mind the act of copulation, marred by impotence, and out of the masturbatory "prying fingers" of the Dreamer, calling to mind a common vulgarity popularly used which I won't repeat here.) [1]