Apophenia at Dusk and Dawn

 ~I~

I have always heard that dreams are the brain's way of making sense of the waking world. Many people study the landscape of dreams in an attempt to decipher deeper meaning within them. What happens when you can no longer distinguish the dream world from reality?

Right before both sunset and sunrise, there is a phenomenon that I have come to know as the 'blue world' where the opacity of reality stutters slightly and the shapes and colors of this world lean toward a question. Looking at dawn and dusk photographs, it is usually difficult to decipher which one is represented in the picture, but they feel different in reality. Perhaps it is a characteristic of how the light hits the human eye or a change in the spectrum that does not exist on a screen emitting a mere representation of nature. 

If dawn is a doorway, then dusk is its mirror, and doorways are something humans of all ages have celebrated with ritual and superstition. Every day the sun is born as the night dies, and the night is born when the sun dies again. Over and over, this happens. Our ancient ancestors had daily rituals for the coming of the Sun and the Moon, but now we celebrate the years' end and a few other births and deaths of our world. 

We try to find significance in the everyday, ordinary occurrences that surround us. Biologically, we are wired to look for patterns in our environment, a vestige of evolution that kept us alive as a species by a seemingly unconscious 'knowing' about things like snakes and red mushrooms. Apophenia happens when this pattern recognition becomes pattern-seeking, making ominous connections from benign occurrences or item placement. 

Apophenia can be a sign of schizophrenia, but it can also be seen as a gift if it does not take over completely.