“And now for something completely different.” Monty Python
As we pass on from these last days of what has been a remarkable time warped year 2020, we have seriously run out of new words to describe it. So as if to shake this off, I woke from a dream last week, in wonder of the theory that forgotten, filed away images you thought were created originally by you some forty odd years ago can transport through time and be materialized again, squiggled onto paper from a mind of another born after you, unknown to you. I recall the curious quirk of truth to you now.
My twenty-first year was a high water mark of exploration and travel, both in body, person and mind. That summer the body drove through the narrow weaving hedge lined lanes of Devon, England, the person spent time getting to know his grandfather and the mind went interplanetary. Waking on those warm, still August mornings in my grandfather’s home, my bedside reading included The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1959). That novel influenced my creative writing and thinking long thereafter, as shortly you will see.
If you read this literally out there story by Vonnegut, you will immediately discover as I did, chrono-synclastic infundibulum – the funnel of time curved towards the same side in all directions, those multiple places in the universe “where all the different kinds of truths fit together.” Though we are cautioned in the tale, that it could be dangerous to find, “all the different ways to be absolutely right”, we must go anyway, as fiction will have it.
Later in October of my twenty-first, year, returning from England after a two-month mind delay and upon receiving the news that my grandfather had suddenly passed away, I dashed off eleven quick musings, from some chrono-synclastic place.
Digging these out of the vault now, I read one of these writings titled Cartoons, in which I wrote about having “an imagination of what is unknown.” This dream piece featured some cartoon figures (one shown here to the left) drawn while listening repeatedly to some spacy music.
For some forty odd years, I passed those cartoon sketches through some infundibulum and forgot about them until one day in London on a walk through the Wellcome Collection I suddenly and inexplicably found what I thought was one of my lost squiggled cartoon figures. How could this be? There, on a Feedback Wall where visitors could post any message they wanted – I found my work newly materialized by the hand of a young William Waples.
The Wellcome is a phenomenal place to visit, (one day worth a hundred days in any classroom), but this! This was a special Vonnegut moment. Maybe in my twenty-first year I met young William on that interplanetary journey.
How crazy wonderful. He knew I was coming to the Wellcome that day, or maybe I sent him the message. When I saw this work by Waples (featured here to the left) I felt the thrill of letting go, with a wistful sense of humour, knowing I didn’t ever own, or never needed to own any of my ideas.
While in this week before Christmas 2020 closing out this time-warped year, we are suspended. With yesterday’s great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the northern winter solstice, I am now reading Sirens of Titan once again, while my unknown William Waples finds his way.
On another quirky note, as I began the first chapter I rediscovered that the marbled mansion of character Winston Niles Rumfoord featured in the book was modeled after the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London, also unknown to me in my twenty-first year. And where do you think I found myself standing all alone one cool grey morning some forty years later – looking up at the Rubens ceiling painting in the spacy Banqueting House in London.
Diversionary thoughts such as this flow artfully in time travels, so I think maybe in the year ahead, though dangerous as warned, we could learn more from having an imagination of what is unknown – and with some hope, different kinds of truths can all fit together. Meanwhile in that pursuit, I expect my young Mr. Waples will pass on our cartoon and materialize it through a new character in another chrono-synclastic infundibulum.
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