Thursday 24 September 2009

Keeping the World Alive


"If, by accident, a moment were to occur when everyone was asleep, the world would disappear." writes Anne Michaels in her beautifully haunting novel Fugitive Pieces. I found in this statement a profound resonance and somehow I find that I want believe it more than science, astronomy and any other theory about the world and time and space. I find myself wondering if that is why the earth turns, why only half of the planet, at any given time, is in the light. Is it so that when we are sleeping, dreaming our dreams of the dead, the past and the not yet real - somewhere, on the other side of the world people are going about their daily business and, although they may not know it, keeping the planet alive?