I quote Roger Critchlow: "I guess I find sloppiness to be an indicator of sloppiness. If you can script the sun and moon to do something they've never done, who's to say what other photogenic impossibilities have slipped into your story? Clearly, if the laws of physics do not constrain your storytelling why should the facts of history, prehistory, or archaeology give you any pause? "
In defense of storytelling that ventures into the impossible as we know it, I believe that using the edges of complexity and emergence theory, along with spiritual/energy/daoist laws, one can present concepts that skirt reality, but remain in the mind's ability to envision. In my unpublished novel, Of Coins, Toadplates and Pestles, I present the future existence of a meteroroid fallout here on earth due to an actual over-a-billion year old Pluto encounter with other universe matter. It took that long for the spewed material from Pluto to enter our atmosphere and small amounts fall onto earth (not completely out of reality so far) -- I then present that material, I call xarium, to have energetic qualities that help redirect our energy meridians positively and negatively. (various gems and stones have impacts on our energy -- already known, so not out of reality) Certain parts of the xarium, when held, can take some humans -- those with ability to allow energy into their being, thus transporting on it more easily -- to other worlds/dimensions. This ties into discussions provoked by "vision quests", spiritwalking, and other concepts of spiritual worlds and existence of other simultaneous worlds. A story? yes. But still posing concepts worth thinking about, and trying to make links between known, current physical laws, matter, energy and where those links, connected to the spiritual world, could/might take us. I find this worthy of discussion. Some don't. That is fine. But pushing the envelope between physics, matter, spiritual, energy and dimensional discussion is worthwhile, I think. Peggy Miller
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
