No Particular Night or Morning (2015)

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite writers, and The Illustrated Man is among my favorite books. One chapter, No Particular Night or Morning, inspired this series. I've included excerpts from it on this page.

Set aboard a spaceship, the story follows astronaut Joseph Hitchcock as he questions the reality of everything beyond his direct experience. It explores object impermanence—the idea that things and people exist even when they can't be perceived.

I've always been fascinated by this concept. As a child, I often asked my mum if we could follow a random stranger in our car, just for a few minutes. I struggled to believe that people and places continued to exist beyond my awareness—that millions lived entire lives without intersecting mine. She always obliged.

Now, as an adult, I think about time and reality in the same way. Just because we aren’t experiencing the past or future doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.

This idea became even more vivid in the early days of my relationship with my (now) husband. It was a strange period of getting to know someone who felt so real in front of me but seemed to vanish the moment I said goodbye. I would go home and wonder—was he still out there, continuing his life beyond my sight? Was this really happening, or was it all in my head? The feelings were so new and unexpected that they hardly felt real. This series is my attempt to capture that moment in time.

“Now, just now, this instant, while you're here with me, you’re alive.
A moment ago you weren't anything.”

“You see? You have no mental evidence. That’s what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don’t want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in.”

“I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there’s no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you’ve got to carry it with you. You can’t carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them.”

“How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in them.”