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On the Plethora of Visions You've had a vision, you say? A great wave stopped in time, fingers of sea spray pointing their bones at you as you wigged out on the promontory? A levitating apple? A troika of grumpy warriors in the sky? Calm yourself. Such things are commonplace— visitations by neither demons nor angels but merely amusements cooked up by a bored mind. The mechanic sees gremlins among the pistons, the nun lights a candle and the statues dance. She believes she is touched by God, he by temporary madness, but they are merely dreaming. Something there is that loves hallucinations, that sets them off at the slightest of instigations: a dry mouth, an empty gut, a drop of bitter chemical on a sugar cube. Oh please stop quaking! Statistics tell us that right this minute visions are entertaining millions. I visited a hermit once, a naked old man covered in fantastic tattoos and living under a railroad bridge. Day after day, he sees a blue orb tipping and spinning in a zonule of nowhere and myriad creatures inhabit it, playing games of love and war and sometimes seeing things just like he does. It's vivid, that unlikely figment. So far he hasn't tired of it. Kate Bernadette Benedict is the author of the full-length poetry collection Here from Away and the editor of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose.
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