Friday, 23 November 2018

Nanowrimo 2018 - day 22


Daily word count:  612
Total word count:  41,842
I wandered off and wrote words in another project. Goddammit brain, get back here and finish this thing that you started!
I am also listening to the audiobook - Time Travel: A History by James Gleick. It’s fascinating.
Some really huge concepts and it seems to be sucking up my brain power. Leaving me with a very long list of things I clearly need to find and read.
I once tried to write a work of my own that ended up wrestling with time travel issues… and you’ll be unsurprised to hear it’s one of my trunked novels.
I do remember running a scrapbooking workshop years ago when we lived in Jakarta. Kid 1 wandered in and asked, “Mum, what’s the fourth dimension?”
He was six.
“It’s time, honey.”*
“Huh?”
“You know there are three dimensions or axes. Let’s say this coffee cup is an object - we can note its place within space by how high it is off the ground and by how far away it is from that wall, and also how far away it is from that wall. Height, breadth, depth. Three axes. But we also need to note how it moves over time… if I drink and then put it down over here… then it has changed its position over time.”
I demonstrated.
“Oh.” There was a pause. “Is there a fifth dimension?”
“Probably, but I don’t know what it is.”**
A longer pause. “So, if we could go to the fifth dimension, then we could travel through time?”***
“Theoretically, yes.”
“Huh.” He took several exaggerated steps towards the kitchen door. “I am moving into another dimension!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“Okay, honey. Make sure you close the door behind you.”
I looked up to see a room full of women staring at me; mouths agape.
Life with an Asperger’s kid, I tell you…

*His year one teacher told me that it was my fault that he was the way he was. Excuse me? He asks you a question, and you tell him the answer. I honestly had no answer to that. Wtf?
** I asked a friend about this, and he said the fifth dimension was basically the fourth dimension crumpled up upon itself. Naturally, I told kid 1 that later.
***years later I asked Kid 1 where he got this idea from and he said The Powerpuff Girls cartoon. Idk… maybe??? He, of all people, never forgets anything [that he cares about - tidying up after himself? Not so much…].
In Gleick’s novel he talks about how our first exposure to the theories of time travel is often via children’s cartoons. Donald Duck invents the wheel, or whatever.

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