An Imaginary Life...

This is just a few sections (and a few bits added by me) from the book An Imaginary Life by David Malouf. I am studying this book in English at school and I am enjoying it because it steps past the boundaries of normal thinking about the world and the way other people see it.
It’s a good book to read so far if you like a book where you have to see past the words on the page and find the hidden meaning within them. If you like that sort of thing, go out and read it sometime :)
As I keep reading the book I will put more writings on here…


We as humans only know landscapes that have been shaped for centuries to the idea we all carry in our souls of that ideal scene against which our lives should be played out.
Do you all think of your place in the world as a place given to you by a god or gods, ready made in all its placid beauty? It is not. It is a created place. If a god/gods is with you in your place it is because you have discovered them their, drawn them up out of your souls need for them and dreamed them into the landscape that they shine. We have dreamed sprits, angels, gods, devils into our lives. They are ourselves. The Bible is ancient myths and stories dreamed up by humans of our world.


The spirits and gods of the world have to be recognised to become real. They are not outside us, nor even entirely within, but flow back and forth between us and the objects we have made and the landscape we have shaped. We have dreamed all these things in our deepest lives and they are ourselves. It is our self that we are making out there, and when the landscape is complete we shall have become the gods who are intended to fill it…