Rooms and houses have 4 walls with doors and windows, but on the stage the number
of walls depends on the actions of actors.
If actors see them and/or use them, they are there. The audience will believe the actors and
accept the fiction/reality they give us. If actors talk to and interact with the audience, they have "broken the fourth wall" of their fictional world.
Rooms and houses have 4 walls with doors and windows, but in the world of the spirit, four walls never exist, whether
or not any human wants them to or believes them to. By definition, spirit is not contained in a way that cuts it off from its source, IE, no one needs to break a fourth wall to communicate in realms of the spirit. It is as if walls that appear to exist are porous or imaginary.
Rooms and houses have 4 walls with doors and windows, but--in the realm of spirit--four walls are only solid through magic or neglect. It must surely be a kind of hell—even nihilistic—to admit no way of
breaking them. When I think of settings like Sartre’s No Exit or Becket’s End Game, I shiver. Although I am
a confirmed hermit and in perfect puddles of solitude most of the time, such spiritual isolation terrifies me. I am spiritual and in relationship with God. This faith is not blind. I believe because I know—experience of the supernatural has given me faith. In me, the fourth wall can not be broken, because it never naturally
existed.
Rooms and houses have 4 walls with doors and windows, but in labs of contemporary psychology internal human walls are often insubstantial structures strengthened by phobia and experience. These walls may be broken if a person chooses to break out of them, but the task is not easy. It is as if we are all actors on the stage of the subconscious and the number of walls depends on what we see and use. If we find barriers to be useful, we build them into the many-chambered nautilus that we present to the world as if self. Psychology and religion assist in cementing or breaking these walls at their pleasure, but the walls themselves are emotional and barely touch
on the spirit.
I speak of The Fourth Wall today because I am a member of Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads where yesterday, Kerry issued the challenge "Breaking the Fourth Wall" which asks us to see if we could do this in a poem. Her explanation on the site is invaluable, and I know I have done and will do this type of poem again. But instead of taking me to poetry this time, it took me here, to whatever this is. It may be merely the ruminations I go through en route to a poem.
The poem arrived on 11/19/2012! Find it HERE.
