Short Thought on Time Travel

I'm reading Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. I don't really need to say that I'm loving it, but I am. The language he uses to describe the science fictional science that is predominant in Universe 31 is bold and clear to me. I find myself thinking of Dr. Who and wondering if Yu is a fan. This would be because the main character(also named Charles Yu ... no relation I think) describes his condition of living inside his time machine(a box not much bigger than a telephone booth …) in a state of timelessness. He refuses to live inside his chronological time line, choosing to exist in a static space, not moving towards anything, and claiming to feel little of the impact of the past.

I am a fan of the obnoxious comment that you can time travel with nothing more than your mind, a pen, and a piece of paper. Forget the pen and paper. I spend most of my mental time in a traveling state, so I found it a bit suspicious that Charles says he spends most of his time(as a time machine technician) fixing the broken down machines of people who have gone back to the most terrible time in their life. I am baffled by this. Maybe it is because I lack a moment or a memory that I wish to change, maybe it's because I haven't felt the sting of true and deep human regret, but I would not go back. I would go forward. What could be more exciting and more terrifying than getting to see what we cannot in our short fragile lives? What could be more perfect that seeing what will become of our friends, family, state, country, world, universe? So I would choose forward, not back, not cozy static unawares. Show me what will become of us, no matter if it's good or bad.

Though of course, I need no time machine – I intend to live forever, if only to experience the rise and flow, collapse and abandon that this world will be subjected to.

Reading Vonnegut and Thinking About Religion - What a not-Surprise

I started my second Vonnegut last night - Cat's Cradle. It's just as fantastically formed as Sirens was, and I'm having trouble putting it down so I can work on grad school applications. The combination of this with the fact that I just finished reading a randomly chosen Anne Rice novel - Pandora (which included quite a bit of talk about religions and their foundation or purpose ) had me talking about religion as I wrote another personal statement for a school. I'm not really convinced that I should include this part in the final draft, and most likely I will edit it out, but this seemed like a good enough outlet for what I was thinking.

The texts of the religion in Cat's Cradle starts with one of my new favorite quotes - "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." What we humans call truth, when broken down, is always still questionable. A character in Cat's Cradle is challenged to state something completely true, she says, "God is love," and the response from her challenger "What is God? What is love?" OH, big questions, the one's we're aware of early, though not so much for me. I was more focused on "what is death?" before I ever thought about "what is God?" I was raised by parents who had no use for religion in their child-rearing process, but then again I've never really talked with them about it so maybe this is another lie I've told you. But either way, I wasn't aware of religion or 'God' until about the age of seven, and finding out that others believed in 'Him' didn't give me any kind of freedom or superstition to stop asking the big questions.

I like to think in some form, that I understand religion. I can understand the need for it. It gives answers to the questions we humans ask, the questions that make us fear our existence, and so we can then ignore those questions and go about the rest of our lives. My personal use for religions is in their power to create thought. They give me so much material to think of, write about, and mostly criticize. They seem more trouble than good in most cases, but then again a trouble-less world would be a boring world. I can claim I have no use for a god of any kind, that I am fairly convinced there is no way to prove anything with a consciousness larger than us exists, or that when I die I will die and all consciousness will end and that will be that; no matter how much I wish I could be eternal( if for no other reason than to watch with wonder the way the human mass will live in years to come) – but! Empty claims! I have use for these things here, to ramble and ponder and be another useless agnostic who's true love lies with the stories, with lies, and amazement over those who believe in them so solidly as to commit their life to something that may or may not be.

I still cling to the idea that the closest thing I get to a religious experience is when I'm reading a really good book. A book that makes me feel more human than I thought possible, or that makes me confront my humanity and thus my mortality and so on and so forth. Like Cat's Cradle, where I can shake my head and smile and know that we're all somehow the same, being fed and feeding others truthful lies of all sizes.

A finishing thought that could be a fact : I am a godless being! And yet I live and I am good. I am faithless in others' faith because it makes me angry, it makes others hate. I love it if only so that I may break its outdated rules and laugh in the face of words that hold no power over me. I give power only to words that make me feel more human, so I do not forget that I am mortal, so I do not forget to live.

Did you fall for it?

Back to reading …

Thank you Stephen Hawking

I started reading A Brief History of Time about 3 week ago. I was a little intimidated, knowing that since I have never taken a physics class I might struggle to get past the first chapter. But, I'm happy to say that didn't happen. Though I read it slower than I read fiction, I make it through a chapter ever time I pick up the book. I pick it up infrequently if only because I know I have to have a good hour ready to take in everything and then more to let it sink in and effect me. 

There's so much I took for granted about space and time and the universe that I'm learning wasn't really correct. For example, Hawking is now anti big bang, even though he was a key person involved in pushing its acceptance. Here I was going around thinking that it was a fact, along with the 'fact' that the universe will someday finish expanding and begin to collapse back in upon itself. Again! Wrong! This is only one of the possibilities. I understand that theory really means nothing more than that. These are theories, based on scientific and mathematic formulas so far used to explain the forces large and small in our universe.  Shocking again to learn that these formulas could be wrong. If Newton's formula works sometimes, but not all the times, doesn't that make it wrong? Or incomplete? Could Einstein be wrong too? I think its admirable that there are people out there capable of thinking concretely about the universe, and I sit on the edge of my chair ready to read what they are discovering. In the meantime, I try not to hope too hard that they'll figure out time travel during my lifetime.

I'm not done yet with the book, and maybe I'll post again once I've finished. But for now, I just want to say thank you Stephen Hawking. For giving me a mission to discover all I can about life before I'm done with it, or it's done with me, or done with all of us. When I think about the description of the distance in space between stars and galaxies and clusters of galaxies and how that space is still growing, and in doing so every second we become smaller and smaller and more insignificant than ever, I am grateful for this thought, no matter how it causes fear in me, and I hope to continue being scared and completely enthralled.

Introduction

In April 2010 I went to the LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA. It was my second year there, I had been counting down the days like a child coked up on the approach of Christmas. I went this time with a more precise agenda. I had missed Dave Eggers due to work, but  found a very worthwhile replacement. Mark Danielewski was speaking on a panel titled Fiction Outside the Margins. 
At the time I read his book, House of Leaves, it was the closest thing to a spiritual experience I had ever had. So, I was beyond thrilled with anticipation of the wisdom he might share. All three panelists had a lot to say about writing fiction that pushed outside the boundaries of format and style etc. There was much they said that had me feeling inspired and ready to keep writing. There was one thing though, that Danielewki and a fellow panelist disagreed upon. Someone had questioned what they as writers would read while working on a particular piece. The other panelist had said he tended to stay away from anything that resembled his style, out of fear of it influencing his own work. Danielewski took this and flipped it around. He said that you need to read what you fear will influence you, to make you better. 
It was this statement that made me realize that it was important to my writing that I read as much as I can. To challenge my fear of being influenced, I finally got around to reading Kurt Vonnegut, and bought more flash fiction and short story compilations. Now I see every book I read as a reminder to myself. Can I write this well? Can I write better?


So here is me reading.