Unabashed

I’m a very good sleeper. My wife has observed that I can lie down in bed, squirm a bit while I wriggle into the Optimum Comfort Position, and then I can say, “Watch this,” and fall directly to sleep. And she’s right, for the most part. When I get tired I can go to sleep. It’s a blessing I count, because I’ve known people who can’t sleep or who sleep fitfully, and I value the experience every day. But as a mechanism, a lot of things have to line up for it to work just right. I’ve spent a lot of time developing the process’s fundamentals. All the basics apply: I have to have the right temperature, the right pillow (or combination thereof, because I use two pillows. One my wife jokingly calls “Nurse Nancy,” because I hug up close and tight to it. But it’s really just a way to keep my shoulders from slouching, because I sleep on my side), and I need of course a good blanket over me. After that, things get really serious, but if I succeed at two key functions, then sleep is just a moment or two away.

The first requirement is some level of white noise. A small fan works well enough in this department. The reason I need the noise is pretty simple: I have an active imagination, and when I hear a noise I try to identify it. I try to figure out why that pipe might have rattled, I imagine the water flowing through it, down and down, the clogs along the way: is there a faucet running somewhere? Is it the dishwasher? And the level of noise at nighttime never ceases to amaze me. Minutiae of every sort, encroaching upon my imagination’s wildest forthcomings. What kind of bird was that? What is that growling noise in the closet? Did I just hear that noise the night-vision goggles made in Silence of the Lambs? And it gets worse, of course. But a certain level of white noise efficiently eradicates those mental wanderings, to the point where I am able to concentrate on only those things that increase my chances of drifting off to sleep.

The concentration is paramount in the process. I can’t think about things that are happening, and things that have happened in the past are a death knell for the sandman’s visit. Oddly enough, what I find most settling for my mind is something that I find very exciting, too, and it’s a result of that same imagination that would otherwise keep me from sleep if I didn’t have the white-noise generator. I think about my projects. The stories I’m writing, the ideas I’m nurturing, any and everything that keeps my mind active during the day somehow allows me to unplug when I turn out the light. Maybe it’s just a result of positive thinking, because with my projects I am always positive. Anything negative–bad memories or past failures–spells doom for sleep. I’ve turned over many an idea in my head in those final moments of consciousness and come up with a gripping new twist or a sensational, settling ending. Some of my best thinking happens in those few moments right before I fall asleep, and when I awaken, I find that I can expound and even improve the idea.

Saturday night I decided to sleep outside. I made a pallet on the back porch and let my dog know she was on guard duty, and then I settled in for a night of reconnecting with Mother Earth. She did not disappoint. There’s something satisfying in sleeping under the stars, waking up with a trace of dew across your forehead and pillow, and it’s always a bit startling to experience the world waking up, something I can’t do in my cocoon of comfort and white noise in the bedroom. Sunday morning I awakened with the rest of the world around me, those parts of it that are mostly only seen flitting in the periphery when you live in an industrialized society. The cool gray dawn met me with songbirds by the seeming multitudes, including one particularly throaty mocking bird who I think was about two feet from my head. I lay there soaking it all in for about thirty minutes, and then I staggered into the cocoon and got another hour’s restful sleep.

The experience was worth it. It reminded me of camping trips when I was a kid, when I used to throw down a sleeping bag anywhere and sleep with perfect comfort. I didn’t worry then about ticks or ants or mosquitoes, I just plopped down and didn’t care. But most importantly it reminded me of the life that lives on the periphery, of Earth herself, struggling to be a good home to us all, despite our virulent ways.

And now I’ve got another project in mind: a permanent dwelling, that I want to build somewhere on my six acres, fashioned after the example of the native Americans once of this area, the Creek Indians. A wigwam, if you will. A retreat, yes, but also a hub, a place to recharge and reconnect with primitive, fundamental elements.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: dwelling, Earth, indigenous, Nature, reconnect, rest, sandman, sleep, wigwam

NASA pic culled from Brent_Zupp:

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Earth, Mars, moon

Earth has a low-frequency hum that is inaudible to human ears. Although some residents of Taos, New Mexico have reported hearing a low hum for years. Earth is mum on the cause of the hum. But this story’s brought something else to mind for me:

Following the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004, reports surfaced of a remote island indigenous people who survived the event by leaving their coastal homes and hiking up into the hills and mountains of the area. The entire tribe survived. No one else had any warning of the monster tsunami, but somehow these remote people presaged what was happening and ran for higher ground. According the the AP:

[the Jarawas of South Andaman Island] used their observations of wind movement, the changing sea and the birds flying inland as a prompt for their relocation to the mountains, which saved every member of the tribe according to government officials in India.

So they followed the animals, but how did the animals know to leave? It’s been speculated on broadly. Some say they have a sixth sense, providing them with barometric sensitivity. But maybe it’s more easily explained than that: suppose the Earth’s hum changes in the event of environmental distress? We already know animals have sharper senses than us, that their hearing is more acute. Suppose that Earth hum is something they can tune to, or hear constantly. If that hum intensifies or changes fundamentally then it would be simple to assume the animals who detect it might instinctively know how to react.

But what about storms, wildfires? Animals are also amazingly adept at evading both, but those are surface or atmospheric events, could they affect the Earth hum like an earthquake or tsunami? Possibly, since scientists have speculated that the hum could be an effect caused by atmospheric waves (gravity waves?). But they’ve also speculated that the hum could be caused by the oceans, atmospheric pressure, or even the sun. Perhaps it’s caused in part by all of these, and perhaps it responds in varying degrees according to which phenomena is impacting it. If so, an animal could react in accordance to the nature of the hum, heading to higher ground in a flood, lower ground in a storm, etc.

It also occurs to me that Jupiter makes a sound as well. Science explains that it is caused by the gas giant’s massive magnetic field. But I haven’t read anywhere that Earth’s magnetic field might be causing its own hum. Maybe that’s an oversight, or maybe the magnetic field is just one more contributor to the hum, which would just increase its potential for predicting events. Perhaps the hum can somehow respond to any event on Earth. That would explain a lot.

For further information on infrasound.

And more, on Earth’s hum and how animals might respond to it.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: animals, atmosphere, Earth, gravity wave, hum, infrasound, Jupiter, magnetic, sixth sense, subsonic, tsunami

This, my friends, is pretty cool.

(Click for full-size image.) Notes from NASA.gov:

STS123-E-008018 (21 March 2008) — While docked and onboard the International Space Station, a STS-123 Endeavour crewmember captured the glowing green beauty of the Aurora Borealis. Looking northward across the Gulf of Alaska, over a low pressure area (cloud vortex), the aurora brightens the night sky. This image was taken on March 21, 2008 at 09:08:46 (GMT) with a 28 mm lens from the nadir point of 47.9 degrees north latitude and 146.8 degreees west longitude.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , Aurora, Borealis, Earth, Horizon, NASA

Photo by shesnuckinfuts. The pic comes with a quote from Sir Arthur that I’m in total agreement with:

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.”
~ Arthur C. Clarke 

My wife once observed that if there were Martians, and if we ever were to meet them, that they would call our planet “Water.”

Also, Arthur C. Clarke formulated the three laws of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

On a side note you may find interesting, do a Flickr search for “Arthur Clarke” and you’ll see some amazing images (including the one at the top of this post). None of the man himself, but a lot of phenomenal photography using A.C.C. quotes in their descriptions.

Goodbye, Arthur, you brilliant man. Tell Carl Sagan I said hello.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Earth, Mars, Sir Arthur, three laws of prediction

Suspension of disbelief is a useful tool for writers, especially to writers of speculative fiction. But how much artistic license are readers willing to allow a writer? Like most authors, I read quite a bit about the craft of writing, and I read an article sometime last year concerning the suspension of disbelief. I don’t remember where the article was from, one of the writer’s magazines, I’m sure, but in it the author stated specifically that it would be ludicrous to imagine people accepting a piece of fiction that involved humans and dinosaurs cohabitating the planet. Now, the novel I was writing at that time, Modern-Day Mythica, does not take place in the past, but some of the principles that are described in the book, things that make the amazing part feasible, depend a little bit upon the reader’s willingness to accept that humans and dinosaurs might have cohabitated the planet. So it should come as no surprise that since I read that article I’ve basically worried myself sick over it. Will the reader be able to forgive me this transgression? Ah, but there is a caveat, one which I hope will explain the how in a way that will be completely believable.

One thing to keep in mind here is the difference between fantasy and science fiction. For fantasy, especially when written in the Real World, the one in which we live, there’s usually a doorway into Another World, and that doorway is magical, it doesn’t require any exposition as to how it works, it simply is what it is, whether it just appeared, or it was created by a magician, whatever. The difference (to me) is that in SciFi, we want to know how the door works, explained as scientifically as possible.

For Mythica, as with most of my writing, my writing borrows from both genres: I like the fantasy to be explained by science, that’s why I prefer the tag “Speculative” when referring to my work. Also: when I’m writing something I want it to ring true, or possible, much as SciFi might read. For that reason I like to use modern-day (or near future) Earth for most of my settings. There are some more successful authors than me of fantasy who use modern-day settings. Authors like Stephen King, who, along with Peter Straub, wrote The Talisman, a story about a boy who travels to the “Territories,” a reality connected with ours somehow, but separate enough to be invisible unless you are among the duly initiated. But the vast majority of fantasy fiction writers write more like Tolkien, who shucked it all and created his own world to set his fantastic epic in. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just saying. Of course, those are just two examples from the many, but they are two of the most notable works of fantasy in the world. Either method, obviously, works well enough to sell piles of books. But at what point is the suspension of disbelief overpowered by the impossibility of an idea? And is it harder to write fantasy fiction based in the real world than in a fictional world? Well, uh, yeah, probably, that is, if you want it to ring true or even possible.

In my story Mythica I utilize a similar concept as King/Straub used for the Territories in The Talisman. But in Mythica, the reason for the alternate reality–the science of it–is explained. But it’s the exposition of that theme that’s got me concerned.

As science has given, modern humanity evolved into its current state about 200k years ago and didn’t populate North America until about 10k to 20k years ago. Dinosaurs, of course, were long gone by millions of years by then (unless you count the turtle and the alligator and the shark and the many other holdovers who lived through the supposed meteor strike that spelled doom for dino-nation). But me, I grew up a fan of Conan of Cimmeria and Hyboria and one of the elements I loved most was that, if you looked at the map of Hyboria that Robert E. Howard drew up for the character’s homeland, it bears a striking resemblance to our own world before the continents drifted apart, when the world’s oceans framed a single super continent we now call Pangaea:

“between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas” ~Robert E. Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (2003)

That little map made the stories ring true for me, even though science tells me it was impossible, that humans didn’t arrive for millions of years after Pangaea split into separate land masses. It made me see possibility that civilization was older than we believe, and filled with magic and monsters and even swords and steel.

One of my challenges while writing Mythica was to make its unbelievable part somewhat believable, much the same as Howard did with Hyboria. I wanted you to be able to read it and believe that it might have been possible, and I believe I have, except for that one small point: dinosaurs. People can’t live alongside something that died out 65 million years ago. Can they? Can intelligent people–and people who read speculative fiction are, generally–suspend their disbelief long enough to accept that it’s possible?

My only defense for this is to say that, in my story, real-world science is inexact because of a number influential events that science doesn’t account for. For instance, the storyline in Mythica involves a once and second moon orbiting Earth. The second moon is smaller than the first moon, but it’s half as distant, so it appears to be larger in the sky. This single entity justifies so many things in the story:

1. There is no scientific proof that the moon ever existed, since it disappeared over 200,000 years ago.
2. While the second moon was in orbit, Earth was not a very happy place to live. Two satellites tugging at the Earth’s surface would have caused Earth’s plates to shift much faster than is currently believed. Mountains would have formed much more quickly, continental drift would have happened much more quickly. Volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, tidal waves, etc, would have ravaged the planet’s surface. Not to mention the fact that the planet might have been slower in its own orbit; days might have been longer, years, longer.

It is conceivable, in my mind, to believe that the second moon could have accounted for a sort of speeding up of time, even though its orbit was slower. If a geologist looks at the rate of continental drift today, she might say that it took millions of years for Pangaea to split apart. But if there was a second moon, it could have happened in thousands. Hundreds? I’m no geologist, but in my very basic understanding of geology, a second moon would have had a monumental impact on Earth’s surface. So, if our history involves an unaccounted-for outside influence, isn’t it conceivable that the dates we’ve assigned to certain events are erroneous? That billions of years of history, based on one single missing moon, could now be thought of as millions instead? It might not affect how we view the 15 billion-year history of the universe, but it might change the history of planet Earth considerably.

Furthermore, by allowing for this shortening of time (periods, epochs, eras), it would mean that that the age of dinosaurs and the age of man were a lot closer than we now believe. And it would allow that those ages might even overlap. We have no proof that a giant meteor struck the Earth to end the age of dinosaurs, all we have are theories and hypotheses. And I (of course) have no proof that a second moon ever orbited Earth. But, in theory, is that any less possible? As for the disappearance of the dinosaurs, my hypothesis on this is forthcoming…

So what happened to the second moon? Well, for my story, which is a work of fantasy, a magician banished the moon because he believed it to be the source of a specific scourge upon the planet. But there are other, scientific, explanations that we could consider. Perhaps the would-be meteor that supposedly hit the Earth struck the second moon instead and sent it hurtling out of orbit. There are other theories of a second moon, one with a distant, 770-year orbit, perhaps this moon was once in a much closer orbit. But while science has accepted the possibility, if not the probability or downright fact, of the presence of a second moon, as far as I can tell no one has investigated any possible ramifications it.

So, for my story, the ramifications (and the science world can feel free to adopt this theory :-) of the disappearance of the second moon is this: Time sped up. Yes, time, real time. Without two moons dragging it down, Earth’s orbit sped up allowing it to encircle the sun in the 24-hour timeframe we’re used to. At the same time, Earth’s tectonic plates slowed their constant grinding, causing the planet’s surface to change much more slowly. While the moon was in orbit it’s possible that a person could watch the formation of a mountain range in their lifetime.

1. Time sped up.
2. Planetary changes slowed down.

With those two factors in mind, it is conceivable that our comprehension of the passing of ages prior to the disappearance of the second moon might be very, very wrong, and that the ages of dinosaurs and people may have overlapped.

Now, have the history books been rewritten yet? Can you suspend your disbelief long enough to swallow that load of garbage? I’d be interested to know.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Earth, Fiction, moon, second, Slate, story, suspension of disbelief, writing