The Things That Don’t Exist

“The things that don’t exist are the most difficult to get rid of.”
F. M. Alexander

***

Not much exists as we think it does.

Not our mother, or lover or even the city we live in.

Mostly these are fabrications we make up in our minds, then project on to the person, place or situation around us. And our problems don’t arise from the person, place or situation as we believe they do - our problems arise from our fabrications.

I still projected so much longing onto Diane, my french fiancé who dumped me.

I had a little scooter in London, and would don my leather jacket, boots and helmet and scurry through the damp streets on my way to the various workshops and gigs I had going. But London wasn’t enough. I needed more, so I thought. Fabrications.

One day I decided to go and live in Paris.

Since my return to London, I had lost all connection with Diane, but I decided I loved French and wanted to speak it. Fabrications. I enrolled in the Alliance Française and took a little chambre de bonne in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, the student-infested Quartier Latin.

It was like self-torture.

Every smell, the unique “Pardon” sound of a French apology from a man on a bicycle, the baguettes and street cafes reminded me of Diane. After language class I wandered the streets, wondering what I had done wrong. Late one afternoon I was walking alongside the Comédie-Française theatre. The theatre has a line of roman pillars that create a walkway around its circumference. For no particular reason, I decided to walk around to the back of the building.

As I was passing in front of the pillars, I turned and looked towards the theatre.

And there was Diane. 

Just standing there – looking at me.

This was not a fabrication, this was real. 

But what happens when reality and fabrication meet each other?

This is exactly what you discover when exploring Alexander’s work – your fabrications meet reality, just as I had met Diane. However, instead of hugely charged tsunamis of love, you explore simpler concepts like: what is an arm? what is a head?

Yes, even simple objects are fabricated by our minds.

And fabrications cause sore arms and sore hearts. And yet, these fabrications don’t exist as real things, making them difficult to get rid of.

I was about to discover a lot more about that…