Double Exposures

There is a world behind the world we experience, behind the world science considers. This back-stage reality is responsible for much of what we encounter and for all of the meaning we discover. Perhaps Plato was right. Perhaps this world is more real than material reality. The truths there persist while the truths of the material world are fleeting. The elements there remain what they are while the material world is a seething, churning, cauldron of short-lived things doing what they do for a short time.
I’m fascinated with how similar are the processes of painting pictures and writing stories. Both look into the world behind the scenes, the reality where meaning is rooted. Both attempt to reflect something there with what is ultimately an imitation of an imitation. Storytelling uses words and sentences for this purpose; painting uses colors and two-dimensional shapes. Plato would judge the result a reflection of a reflection, the shadow of an imitation projected onto the cave wall. Yet, if the story or illustration succeeds in revealing something of the world behind, if it taps the meaning there and draws its blood onto the page, we circumvent the everyday world and kiss the eternal. This is the storyteller or artist’s aspiration.
Versions of some of these stories have appeared before, in magazines or as parts of novels (hence the title, Double Exposures) but most are published here for the first time.