the trailhead #03
The latest
I’ve been dusting off my Photoshop skills over the past several months, creating original conceptual imagery that ties in with the story of THE TOWPATH. Check out THE TOWPATH Image Gallery page, or follow The Towpath Novel Facebook group (I’d love to have your follow) to view it there. So, how am I doing with the visuals? Am I putting my Visual Communication Design degree to good use, or should I just stick with writing?
Wait... Do You Get the Feeling You’ve Read This Before?
Have you ever experienced déjà vu, or sensed something is about to happen, and then it actually does? Maybe a song just randomly popped into your head, and later, you hear it on your music app or the radio. I’ve often had this happen, even if subtly, and my wife Becky thinks I have some bizarre connection with the Akashic Records or some astral plane of existence, and then jokes about how useless this “ability” is.
Great Jon, the song, “White Wedding,” by Billy Idol pops into your head and then you later hear it that same day—very useful, well done. Now, get back to your day job. Oh, and the trash needs to be taken out. Let me know when you can prevent a crime or someone’s death… you know, something useful.
But what if there was more to it and we’re simply not as tapped into it as we could be—or perhaps not quite yet? Does time operate linearly, even though we perceive it to? I believe it does NOT, and we are only scratching the surface of how time works. Stick with me for just a moment…
Highways and Bumper Cars
If I were to somehow overlay a physical construct for how events happen in our lives, I don’t believe it would look how many of us imagine it would. We’ve been conditioned to perceive time and our movement through it as we might perceive moving along a highway. We travel in one direction, with our past diminishing in our rearview mirror and our future stretching before us, even if the way ahead is densely fogged, with our life events scrolling past like sequential mile markers; our present is the one we just so happen to be at in the moment.
But in reality, I believe we’re all in a big bumper-car rink, like the kind you went to as a kid, randomly and jerkily colliding into other bumper cars (aka, “Dodgems”)—which are our life events. However, as with the events in our lives, each of these bumper cars might exert its own gravitational pull. As you approach another bumper car, aka event, you might sense that gentle tug. You feel an impact is about to happen, but maybe you don’t know when, or how forceful, that impact may be. Or, as that car (event) draws near, you sense you’ve encountered it before. If time were just some obstinate, linear path on which you could only move in one direction, I doubt that many of us would share this intuition that seems to lurk beneath the surface of the world we live in—assuming we’re attuned to it, which is increasingly difficult in our noisy, hyper-media-connected world.
In short, déjà vu and precognition—even if very subtle—are present because our relationship with time (in its truest, primal form) has made them so. Furthermore, gravity is an oft-forgotten factor that influences space and time, which I believe aids that feeling that something is about to happen, or has happened before. Just watch Interstellar for some indelible reminders of gravity’s influence on space and time.
Getting back to THE TOWPATH, I think you’ll find that this very question is nethermost to the intuition some of the characters experience. It also informs the force that powers the bumper cars. In a bumper car rink, that energy is channeled from the floor or ceiling—someplace else, that’s remotely connected to the cars. The energy that we might feel but do not see as it pertains to time has to come from somewhere right? But who makes it and how? God? Or someone, something else? Hmmm…
Some Must-reads on Time Travel
When setting out to take on the dicey topic of time travel—which I know, is a bit nutso for a debut novelist—I devoured all I could on the topic. Here are a couple of inspirations in case you feel like chasing the rabbit down the hole with me:
TIME TRAVEL: A HISTORY, by James Gleick
I referred to Gleick’s informative book multiple times as I considered my own fresh takes on time travel and the mechanics that would govern it. In TIME TRAVEL: A HISTORY, Gleick breaks down the history of time travel in literature and its evolution throughout popular culture. He also covers dicey subjects such as the paradoxes of time travel (if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, would you die too?). Needless to say, if you’re interested in this topic and looking to see what’s been done and perhaps get ideas on what hasn’t, I highly recommend Gleick’s book.
THE ORDER OF TIME, by CARLO ROVELLI
If you’re ready for something really heady, I invite you to check out THE ORDER OF TIME, by Carlo Rovelli. And when I say heady, I mean it—you’ve been warned. In this tight, densely filled book, Rovelli will have you join him in answering questions such as, “What happens when nothing happens?,” and, my favorite, “Where does the eternal current come from?” You’ll go down that rabbit hole my friend, pondering singularity, quantum superpositions, and spin networks. These topics also made me think about bumper cars instead of highways. But, we’re all different, and no two people have the same takeaway even if they read the same book.
what’s up next
While you can go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Collective Ink website and view or pre-order THE TOWPATH now, thus seeing the cover anyway, I plan to at least indulge some pomp and circumstance. So, keep an eye on your inbox or The Towpath Novel Facebook Group for the “official” reveal announcement soon! In the mean time, let’s stay connected. Here’s where else to connect with THE TOWPATH and its author (yours truly):
Well, that’s all for this post. Until next time! Sapere Verdere.
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