Surreal Shift

A mouse with a vertical tail scurrying behind all the baseboards, bunches of ripe henbane for supper and a flat spider outside the window. A car with a plasticine steering wheel and an ant on small skis, hordes of dots and commas in a text message, gathering into a cloud and then into a treble clef – each has its own, medium, large, or small surreal shift. It occurs suddenly, but it seems that you have been waiting for such a thing for several years, passing through the inevitable routine mazes every day. It turns out that you have been ready for it for a long time and even waited for it, so you meet it as an old acquaintance. It came, a surreal shift, and everything fell into place. The page is turned over, and there are no traces left. Again, everything is the same as before, but now everything is for real. Everything that was before is now, and all the future is now present, at least for a while. This is not a "phase shift", this is normal, yes, fundamentally normal, if you want…