Tag Archives: Harry Potter

Reality Shifting (Manual or Automatic)

I never turn down a good pun. I imagine most reality travelers wish shifting were this easy. There’s been a lot of talk about reality shifting going around these days. For me, it’s hard to seperate from lucid dreaming, but maybe it’s just my lack of expertise.

In terms of the locations for this comic, I tried to pick the ones that popped up the most on search engines (listing the place rather than the “world”). Hogwarts of course represents Harry Potter. Hawkins is for Hawkins, Indiana (home of the Stranger Things crew). Wonderland, I think, needs no introduction and I’m happy to see such a classic is still a fav amongst the modern crowd. Finally, the Pink Place Apartments refers to Coraline, the world created by Neil Gaiman.

Tim Kane

Reading is a Visceral Experience

Memories constantly hijack my brain. It’s great except the timing. Like cooking, or driving, or even teaching. What’s interesting is that the memories that reappear are almost always from exciting times in my life (like vacation or pretty much all my teen years). The only other “memories” that make an appearance are those I get from reading.

Joel Robinson’s whimsical visual abstractions of the reading experience

Often, months or years later, I can recall the exact experience of reading a particular book. I know exactly where I was sitting (the bathroom floor) as I zoomed through the final pages of Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children. It’s visceral. I recall how my arm and shoulder ached from reading so long.

Is it that reading affects my imagination? Is that why? I know that the other memories (those from my real life) I recall so strongly because of the intense emotions involved. But reading? Are those same intense emotions triggered?

How about you? How many of you have had flashbacks to reading books? I just had another now. Reading the final Harry Potter book in the hallway outside my daughter’s room (this being when she was only an infant). I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

I wonder if this is a personal insanity or one that’s shared.

Tim Kane