What is "Real"?

 For the past some months I've been working on two books at a time. I'm having fun going back and forth, but I've discovered it's not the most efficient way to get either book finished in a reasonable amount of time.

The two books are very different from one another. One is a contemporary mystery, the other is historical with mystery elements. But both have touches of magical realism – the contemporary one, not so much. The historical one, quite a bit. Both have to do with the way the main character sees the world. The historical character believes wholeheartedly in unseen worlds and forces. Today she would be seen as superstitious. But I believe her.

Many, many years ago I wrote a book set in Australia. It was while I was researching Aboriginal religions for the book that I first learned about "pointing the bone."

Pointing the bone is a ritual curse that Aborigine shamans perform that causes the "pointee", as it were, to die. The shaman does nothing whatsoever to the pointee other than point the bone at him. And he dies. This is not a rumor or superstition. Over many decades, British observers, including research scientists, were unable to find a single example whereby the person so cursed did not die. However, when the curse was laid upon a European, the European invariably went about his business in good health. The obvious conclusion to be gained from this example is that human beings create their own reality.

I don't intent to imply in the least that our misfortunes are our own fault. It's way more complicated than that.

Once upon a time, Don and I were having breakfast in a restaurant and being royally entertained by watching a three-year-old girl in the next booth making people and buildings out of condiments and napkins and narrating their lives and histories aloud to herself.

"She's in another world," Don said.

I wondered then, as I often have, if the world a little child inhabits in actually less real than mine. When a little guy plays with a companion we can't see, is his friend really imaginary? When a kid says she remembers when she was a cowboy before she was born, does she really?

Nobody would dispute that we shape our children's attitudes, but do we also shape the way they perceive existence? We dismiss their perceptions as unreal if they don't fit in with how we see things. They believe us when we say they didn't really see that woman in the corner of their bedroom. Eventually they fall in line and their vision adjusts itself to fit with the rest of the world they live in.

A Native American parent confirms her child's vision of a spirit helper, so the spirit helper actually helps him. We 21st century Westerners teach our children that money has power, so in our world, it does.

This niggling feeling that reality is fluid influences my writing quite a bit. I try very hard to put aside my own beliefs about the way the world works and perceive things as my characters would without judging them. It's hard!

Whether my character truly sees a ghost isn't as important to the story as is the fact that no-one in her world tries to tell her that ghosts don't exist. Because in her time and place, everyone knew that the dead walk.

Maybe because everyone knew it, the dead did walk. Who am I to say otherwise?