Shelter In Your Love (Beatles Fan Fiction)

90. Window, Window

As time turned my head and my mind
The pleasure seemed harder to find
By then it was such that I knew far too much
So I stay home and slowly unwind

'Do you ever wonder if... perhaps all that really exists is your mind, your consciousness, and everything else is just a figment of your own imagination?'

'Nothing is real.'

'Yeah, that's what I mean. I knew you would understand. All that really exists is you - whatever you is, your soul or your mind or whatever - and to save yourself from going insane from boredom, you have created this world, this universe and everything in it, but really, nothing else exists. No other people, no objects or places or land or sky or...'

'You've been reading George's books.'

'George's..? Well, yes, I have and yeah, that's all about how this world's an illusion and the only real thing is God and the Spiritual Sky and beyond that. But I mean more than that. What if even that doesn't exist? What if literally, all that exists is you.'

'Me?'

'Well, yes, you. Or me. I think me really, because I can hear myself, inside my head. I can't hear you.'

'So when you say you, you don't mean me, you mean you. Yourself.'

'Perhaps. But it could be you.'

'So I've invented all this. Everything. All the people I know, all the places I've been, and everything that's ever happened.'

'Yes, exactly.'

'All the things that ever happened, before I was born. Before I even existed?'

'You've always existed.'

'But I know that I haven't. Things happened, years before I was born, so I didn't invent them.'

'You did. You just think you didn't, because you've decided to think that.'

'How can I have decided if I can't remember?'

'You can't remember being born, can you? You don't remember being a baby, so how do you know you ever were?'

'I've seen the photos.'

'That your mind invented.'

'People have told me.'

'You invented them too. Maybe you were born, or maybe you just think you were. Maybe you're just an entity, floating, in the middle of nothing, a void, and everything you think you are, you're not.'

He thinks about it for a moment. We sway gently, side to side, then John laughs. 'You should get stoned more often, Spanner.'

'It's not because I'm stoned,' I reply, because I'm not. I don't think. I don't really have any frame of reference for how 'stoned' is supposed to feel. 'I think about these things.'

'So...' John pauses to take another deep drag on the joint. 'If all of this is just a figment of your imagination, why have you imagined bad things?'

'What bad things?'

'Like war, famine, poverty, illness, death...' He stops abruptly when he says death, but we both choose to ignore it. 'How is any of that entertaining?'

'Entertaining?'

'You said you'd invented everything to save yourself from going insane with boredom.'

'Well, maybe it's not boredom. Maybe I'm already insane.'

John passes me the joint again and I put it between my lips but I don't take a drag on it. I've only inhaled twice and I've had enough. One lungful made me feel nauseated and dizzy, like seasickness, but both of those things could be down to the rocking motion.