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May 1, 2007

A spoken word performance by

Becky Farber

Hayley Reed

Jasmine Shafagh

Followed by an interactive group activity

Reality

Realidad

Realite

Somewhere out there we have

the truth:

An untouchable entity

we will never fully grasp.

That which happens

really does happen.

The sandwich has been eaten. The crumbs have fallen.

Yet if the details are emitted from our story,

are they emitted

from our reality?

You see what I see and know what I don’t know but what I know isn’t what you know and do we know what we know at all?

 But who’s to decide which version of the story is the most complete

 Most accurate

 Most appealing?

 All those details go lost

 all these vantage points combined will never fully add up

Add up.

 Truth is an unreachable landmark,

 a destination not even Columbus could broach.

 Here we all are,

 sharing the same experience

 Yet forming different stories of our different realities

 Infinite

 Multiple

 Boundless

 Options for interpretation of reality

 No limits.

 Science’s goal is observing reality

 Reality is unattainable.

 Science is an account that gets it less wrong.

 Less wrong.

 Less wrong.

 Less wrong.

Less wrong.

 The observations of science

 are based on the crack of subjectivity:

 Seeing what we choose to see,

 interpreting it how we choose to interpret,

 and then calling it fact.

 So will we ever understand

 Ever know?

 We are all just sound vibrations

 in an orchestra we can’t fully hear.

 Just pieces of the story.

I am reality.

I am truth.

I am the complete story.

And I am the story teller, getting closer and closer yet never quite touching.

 So why do we bother constructing reality?

 Why we do recount

 Narrate

 Unfold

 stories that may not ever mirror what actually happened

 It’s the pragmatic way of life

 The only way to accept knowing you go through life

 not fully knowing

A flower. Before us.

 I see growth.

 I see life.

 I see the

We agree to disagree.

 Our different interpretations of reality are uniting forces

 in our quest for truth.

 If we realize that every individual truth has merit

 we will accept each other’s ideas.

 Only connect over variations of what can be seen.

 Reality.

 Beyond us.

 Yet we come closer.

With our stories.