Concrete Over Emphasis
Taxi! These Wings are a Mixture of Concrete and Make Believe
The air in the quiet study was thick with the scent of old paper and ozone, the late-afternoon sun casting long, golden shadows across a worn velvet armchair. Sophia, seated with perfect posture, looked from one newly arrived figure to the other—both men seeming to regard their surroundings with a mixture of curiosity and deep contemplation.
Sophia: Welcome, Geoffrey and Edgar. Our theme today is the strange flight between the seen and the unseen, the things we can touch and the things that touch us back from the void. I call it: Taxi! These Wings are a Mixture of Concrete and Make Believe.
People can die of mere imagination.
— Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
Geoffrey: A fine title, Sophia. It speaks to the burden and the lift of our own thoughts. I’ve observed that people often suffer, truly and physically, not from any actual disease, but purely from what they conjure in their minds. The dread of a thing can be heavier than the thing itself. The power of a dark thought, a simple mental imagining, can be lethal.
Edgar: Indeed, Geoffrey. And what is dread but the mind pushing against the ultimate boundary? I find myself consumed by the way that line—the one between being and oblivion—is so terribly faint. It’s not a solid wall, but a shifting mist. Who among us can stand on one side and definitively declare, “Here ends life, and there begins its antithesis?” The final transition is subtle, an ambiguous moment.
Sophia: You both speak to the fundamental nature of our reality: that the mind's creations are as real as the stones in the street, perhaps more potent. Geoffrey, you highlight the danger of the imaginary, how our internal fears manifest in tangible suffering, making the 'make believe' into 'concrete' pain. Edgar, you focus on the ambiguity of the ultimate boundary, suggesting the 'concrete' state of life is itself shadowed by the 'make believe' of what lies beyond.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
— Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Edgar: The dread, Geoffrey mentions, is the soul sensing the lack of a true division. We yearn for sharp definitions, but existence offers only shades and blurs, particularly at the edge of comprehension.
Geoffrey: Perhaps the flight itself is the key, Sophia. The very act of soaring—of dreaming, imagining, fearing, or hoping—is what gives the mind its power. Our wings, these thoughts, are anchored by the earthly 'concrete' of our bodies, but they only lift us through the sheer 'make believe' of possibility.
Sophia: Exactly. And in that, there is both peril and profound potential. The trick, then, is not to clip the wings, but to guide the flight. To recognize that your taxi can take you to your doom or to your destiny, and the fare is paid in the currency of your own belief.
Sophia: So, what new destination does this realization suggest to each of you?
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