raison d'etre

[E R Swanson <ers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Finally found the quote from Time and Again by Jack Finney. I
think it explains why we're hooked.  

--E

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>From Time and Again by Jack Finney, c 1970

"The wonder is even stronger with old stereoscopic views-- the almost, but
not quite, identical pair of photographs mounted side by side on stiff
cardboard, that, looked at through the viewer, give a miraculous effect of
depth. It's never been a mystery to me why the whole country was once
crazy about them. Because the good ones, the really clear sharp
photographs, are so real: Insert a view, slide it into focus, and the old
scene leaps out at you, astonishingly three-dimensional. And then, for me,
the awe becomes intense. Because now you really see the arrested movement,
so actual it seems that if you watch intently, the life caught here must
continue. that the raised horse's hoof so startlingly distinct in the
foreground must move down to the solidness of pavement below it again;
those carriage wheels revolve, the girl walk closer, the man move on out
of the scene. The feeling that the tantalizing reality of the vanished
moment might somehow be seized-- that if you watch long enough you might
detect that first nearly imperceptible movement-- is the answer to the
question Kate has asked me more than once: "How can you sit there so
long-- you hardly move!-- staring endlessly at the very same picture?" So
I liked the shop; it had things like stereoscopic views to stare at..."

(from chapter 2)