Reality Assembly
In a profound passage from Marcel Proust's work, he describes the curious moment of waking in darkness, disoriented and uncertain. The mind, Proust observes, imposes immobility on objects through our certainty that they are fixed and unchangeable. Yet upon waking, everything "revolves around me in the darkness" as consciousness returns. The body becomes the first navigator, using the "memory of its ribs, its knees, its shoulders" to deduce its position and reconstruct the unfamiliar room. Before the mind can fully identify where it is, the body recalls "the kind of bed in each one, the location of doors, the angle at which light came in." It's a reminder that our perception of reality is constantly being assembled, piece by piece, from the collaborative work of both body and mind.