Dimension Podcast

A Return To Home

Home has always felt like a distraction. A place that I needed to get away from in order to be productive or to achieve accomplishments. Home in this instance can mean many things; my childhood home, the people closest to me like family or hometown friends, the town I lived in. Or even simpler, just getting out of the house. The dishes and laundry are distracting as well as the loved ones around wanting your attention and time. I need to get out and be a person!

Someone in the world, moving around and shaking things up. Meeting people, being influenced and being influential. Causing a stir and raising questions. Proving that I have an affect on things and that people see me and my efforts. Sharing ideas with personalities that don’t know your history, that don’t know that time you cried because your dad went to the video store without you and he had to go again just to make you happy. People who don’t know that you talked to yourself constantly as a child (but what they didn’t know is that I had simply created a made-up world I lived in with characters that had roles and in which I would have conversations with). The difference is that now I write down the things the characters say and enlist others to talk my own words back to me and we call it screenwriting and acting. How lovely that there’s a named profession for the heady games I’ve been playing since I can remember!

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice’s older sister “pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after time, be herself a grown woman; how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of childhood..”
Lewis Carroll

That’s just it. No matter how much I’d like to depart from the things that grew me to be the person I am, the truth is, I can’t look in the mirror without seeing all of this. And in kind, I must pay it it’s due respect. More than that. I now cherish the comfort that comes with knowing there are other humans on this planet that know my truth and accept it. They know where I came from. They dry my eye when my heart breaks over simple things and they’ve stopped asking me to do something else with my life. Now, more than ever I’ve felt grateful and more at peace with where I came from. I’m comfortable at home. I want more home. I’ve better learned how to achieve moments in life when simple and complex are able to coexist. It is like a return to ones origin. Something that takes many trials and errors to accomplish. To fly and then to return, knowing that you can fly again is quite the achievement.

We can say the same for the recent victory SpaceX experienced. With many trials and errors, they had a successful launch and more importantly…return. Described fully on arstechnica.com in the article by Eric Berger entitled “With a historic landing, SpaceX launches new age of spaceflight” he states: “…the Falcon 9’s first stage had rocketed nearly 200 kilometers (120 miles) into space far off the Florida coast, used nitrogen attitude thrusters to make an abrupt U-turn, fired its engines to create a reversed ballistic arc, and finally reoriented itself for re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere with the engines pointed toward the ground for a final landing burn.” Something that’s never been done before and that promises a future of space exploration that is more frequent and more affordable. This spacecraft not only came back to earth upright but created a return to U.S-only materials. SpaceX is the only space exploration company that does not rely on Russia in any way to provide any of its parts or technology for the flight. All the more reason for more flights like this one to take place.

A curious motive divulged, however, by SpaceX creator Elon Musk. He says that the goal of this mission was to ensure a feasible creation of a colony on Mars if there ever were to be a threat to the human race. It almost feels ironic that in this effort for Falcon 9 to return to Earth, in fact the real return will be more of a departure. To preserve something so primitive and precious such as life, we must consider an existence so far from home we must actually leave the planet. The ultimate departure from home to preserve existence, yet such a primitive motive, one that reeks of survival. With the possibility of the right technology to build a world away from our own in order to exist, I must wonder if we would actually thrive. Something about being that far from home leaves me wondering if depression could lead us to our demise.

In Episode 10 of DIMENSION Des prepares a nice dinner for Henrietta as he divulges stories of his childhood. A practice that is endearing but one that Henrietta can’t participate in since she has no idea of where she came from. Her memories begin when she entered this world only a couple of years ago. Her curiosity and yearning to get back to wherever she came from is a strong driving force in her actions and no matter how comfortable Des makes it here for her, no matter how much he loves her, it will never be enough to curb her appetite of discovering the truth. Of finding her home. Because it is the feeling of home, of satisfaction and rest when one finally discovers the truth. When one is able to feel whole.

I wonder if the human race is capable of ever feeling whole existing so far from our origin. So far from the trees, mountains, oceans and air that can only exist on the planet Earth. Our bodies will survive but will our hearts thrive in such an unfulfilling environment so different than ours. Will our future generations on Mars feel the invisible piece missing even though they have no memories of their home…their planet Earth that the previous generations threw away. Will their hearts be empty, with no possibility of ever returning…home.

Cause & Effect

What if our lives were different. What if we took the bus one day or picked a different restaurant to have lunch than wherever we did go. What if our parents chose a different neighborhood to live or your mom rejected your dad, or dad never mustered the courage to ask your mom out on that first date. Would you still exist? Maybe you would just be the puppy the other kids of your mom or dad would one day own. Or maybe you’d simply miss the boat on this generation of existence. Meaning, better luck next time in getting to be born.

But what if you never cease to exist? What if you are always in some form of existence, it’s just a matter of the how and the what, the only determents are the choices made by those…well, those making the choices. Sometimes they’re made by you and sometimes they’re made by those things around you. If I examined one day in my life from my past, and tweaked each decision I made that day, I could outline an infinite amount of different versions of where I could be now. For example, if I didn’t move to a certain city at a certain time, I would have never carpooled with a certain girl from class and if she wasn’t fired from her job during this time she would have never gotten hired at the new place that she told me to check out. If it wasn’t for her, I would have never thought I could get that job and then I would have never met the man I’m now in love with and I wouldn’t be living with him or have a myriad of other experiences. There would be an infinite amount of differences in my life if this one chain of events were changed.

Not too unusual, but does it mean anything? Is there a right or wrong to these paths we take or is it simpler than that. Can we really chock up all existence and experiences to timing? There would have been no way for me to know that these little choices would have led to such bigger turns later. If I thought about it in this way at all, I would surely drive myself mad. Much like Alice did before her departure to Wonderland:

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would.”

Alice in Wonderland

This can go in either direction. What if I never sought out that acting class that was so far away? Would I have ever met the friend I carpooled with? If not, would I be living and working somewhere different and be madly in love with a person I never got to meet in this alternate version of my life? Would life somehow be better if I made that one little decision differently…Or would it be all wrong and I’d be living in misery. This may be the reason so many of us are afraid to make choices. What if we’re wrong? What if we’re left with no one to blame but ourselves for our place in life. Or even worse, what if it all means nothing and everything would be exactly the same with only the names and locations changed. Like I said…I could drive myself mad asking these questions.

In Episode 9 of Dimension Samag Kim is manipulated into believing that his second meeting with “Ondra” is a chance one. Shondra and her partner Jerry devise a plan in compliance with the CIA to get close to Samag Kim by planting a seed in Episode 8 and then watering it in Episode 9. Shondra not only places herself in Samag’s path twice but she interferes with one of his assignments from Lou and changes his outcome. This puts him in a different emotional state after his mission and they play on his creature comforts by assuming he’ll hit his favorite dive bar in the desert, which he does like clockwork. Shondra has perfectly manipulated the sequence of events in Samag’s life, but to him, it feels coincidental and maybe even meant to be. But not right away. Being the analytical trained criminal he is, Samag is at first very suspicious. Though his curiosity level is weighed fairly evenly with his suspicions. Like most humans, Samag is hopeful. He dreams of a better day when life isn’t so dangerous and he has someone to love. The ultimate goal for Samag is to do just the opposite of what the choices he’s made thus far have determined. He wants to get out of the life of crime and fall in love. When he runs into “Ondra” again at the Los Angeles Farmer’s Market Downtown, he can’t help but hope she’s the girl he’s been waiting for, the one worth risking it all for. Time will tell what Samag determines.

These things that are on the outside of us and our decision making have a huge impact on our lives and the paths we take. Whether it be the other people in our lives or our environments. Some, if not the majority of these influences go unseen. What about the universe? There are a million things that we don’t get to examine on this huge scale that influences our lives down to the minutia. Although we try. Daniel Irwin, a NASA researcher developed a program of satellites that observes the Earth “to identify impacts from climate or environmental conditions such as flooding, deforestation, wildfires, drought and other long-term hazards” (nasa.gov).

It’s called Servir and the project is giving us even more incite as to how to manage our disasters-to-come but the truth is that many of these disasters were brought on by our carelessness as humans. We mistreated our planet and now we’re paying the longterm consequences. We’re now in a position to deal reactively to these longterm disastrous effects with projects such as Servir. What if we were able to funnel all that money into something more exploratory rather than preventative? How much more would we know about ourselves and the universe if we weren’t busy running in place trying to catch up as we spend an enormous amount of money on technology designed to predict the terrible outcomes of our carelessness. We could have chosen differently. We could be living a parallel version of existence that knows more about health and space exploration on a planet that is thriving. Instead, we are here, in all it’s glorious tragedy and remaining beauty.

Better luck next dimension.

‘Tis Love

Some things look much different up close than they do from a far and safe distance. This change in perspective is what makes examining the world worth it’s while. It is also what makes life exciting and at the same time scary. This opportunity for the unknown. It is either what keeps us from exploration or what draws us in. It seems to me that many of the evils in our world come from a deep rooted fear and some will do everything in their power to not have to face it. Others will make their fears the reason to forge forward and defy them. The argument could be made that this is what divides us as people. Those that face their fears and those that succumb to them. But how does one make the distinction whether to go forth or hang back? I guess you could say it’s a matter of perspective.

A few days ago I had the opportunity to fly in a helicopter for the first time. It was a magnificent experience mostly because I was able to see parts of the California coast that I would not have been able to see any other way. Flying over the Pacific Coast Highway towards the Malibu Hills we had a front seat to the Pacific Ocean, the misty mountains, celebrity mansions and a lake I had not know existed. I gained a different sense of the geography along with a new take on the beauty of our beaches. What seemed average to having grown up in Southern California really looked majestic from that height. It undoubtedly provided me with a new outlook. What if I had been afraid to fly? It would have been a tragically missed opportunity.

Thankfully, scientists are not afraid to forge forward and put themselves in situations that could either be dangerous or risky to their reputation. What if Thomas Edison hadn’t been curious about electricity and therefore hadn’t invented the light bulb? Our progress in Western society might have been much different. In fact, the light bulb has also evolved a bit in that we now have many varieties in type, one of them being the LED light. Obviously, we use light to illuminate but what if it had hidden talents such as transporting sound? According to nasa.gov , “Light communication is not new. Its history goes back as far as the 1880s when Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, developed the photophone. In a demonstration in Washington, D.C. he transmitted speech using modulated sunlight over a distance of several hundred yards. This experiment even pre-dates the first transmission of speech by radio.” The idea behind revising this development is to try and create something called “LIFI”. Similar to WIFI, it would allow us to have a wireless internet connection by using LED lights. It is this kind of forward thinking that has to be fearless. You have to believe in an idea strongly enough to make a life’s work out of it, hoping that it’ll reap some results, ignoring the fear of failure and lost time. There must be a point in which you decide the work will be worth it.

In Episode 8 of DIMENSION Shondra goes undercover to get close to Samag Kim, Lou’s right-hand man. Shondra’s entire mission will revolve around changing Samag’s speculative perspective. He must let his guard down and trust her in order for Shondra to develop a relationship with him and carry out her mission. There will come a point when Samag will have to decide if he will face his fear of falling in love and it will be up to Shondra to alter his stance just enough that he will make this choice. What’s interesting is that love is what Samag wants most in life but in order to preserve his current lifestyle love comes as a threat.

Scientists must forge a strong love for what they do in order to go out there and do it. Deeper than the love for the science though, I believe it is our love for human kind that motivates us. Even the Duchess says it to Alice in the topsy turvy world of Wonderland:

“Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!”
Alice in Wonderland

The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of fear is “An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”. There are many things in life that pose this possibility but if no one ever faced this uncomfortable emotion then where would we be? Is this uncomfortable feeling so powerful that it overcomes the strongest emotion of them all, love? It might have kept us from having a space exploration program, or a free country in the United States or evolutions in music and art. Those people that choose to face their fears are the ones leading us towards something bigger. By their example we might choose to also face our own uncomfortable feelings so as not to sacrifice our happiness, or dare I say, the betterment of mankind.

Perhaps the victory would not be as sweet without the difficulty of fear standing in our way.

Nothing But The Truth

If I had to choose a premise for my life, it might be this: to search for truth. I am always looking for the right answer, weighing the odds and evaluating all angles of the debate. I don’t know if I have a maniacal need to be correct or if I just want to get answers so I can essentially, well, get on with it.

I also value time to a fault. I find myself being blunt so everyone can just move forward. Forget wasting time fumbling around while polite people with answers just watch. In the name of being polite of course. I’d rather know the truth. I believe it saves time. If it goes unappreciated or is misunderstood, I’m kind of okay with that. Not to say that I’m always right. In fact, it’s best when I might not be because out of this uncertainty is born a debate and with a debate we then have choices. Isn’t this the point? Through a well crafted and structured debate we can better explore and seek out truths. Sometimes they are individual truths and sometimes they are more universal but what we have at the end of this exploration is an informed choice that we can get behind.

Or maybe it’s all much simpler. Some things we do just know. We discover them and then we accept them as truths. There are many foundations that we can rely on such as gravity on Earth, water being wet, fire being hot. Though I invite you to question even these things. I say this because if no one ever became curious as to why fire is hot, we might not have learned that there are different degrees of hot and that there are different parts to a flame that also vary in temperature. Someone had to make a choice to seek more, to learn more, to find a more whole truth.

On July 23, 2015 (coincidentally my birthday), Nasa put out a press release stating that the Kepler 452b, a planet that is about 1,400 light years away and it’s sun, is the closest replica to our own planet Earth and Sun. It orbits in what they are calling “The Goldilocks Zone” because the planet must orbit at just the right distance from it’s sun in order for it to potentially be warm enough to have flowing water and support life (nasa.gov). Turns out they have discovered about a dozen of these Exoplanets but Kepler 452b is only slightly bigger than Earth, making it also the closest in size thus far. It’s not possible for us to travel 1,400 lightyears to possibly walk on this Earth 2.0 but we’re hoping to learn more about it’s surface from satellites. It will help us paint a better picture of the truth behind our own solar system. This other earth is also much older than ours, giving it ample time to have developed life if it were ever capable of doing so. Perhaps this Earth 2.0 will give us a glimpse into what future our own Earth is fated. Or perhaps Kepler 452b is long gone and we are looking at an image of light that finally traveled far enough for our measly satellites to detect. Rather than looking into the future, we are in fact looking into the past.

In other words, things are not always as they seem. Best demonstrated by Lewis Carroll in his depiction of the Cheshire Cat in Alice and Wonderland. He appears when and where he wants and not always as a whole cat. Sometimes just a smile or a head. He seems to exist because Alice and other characters are able to interact with him, but his ability to fade from our senses makes his whole existence somewhat questionable. Science is often built on such shaky ground, lending more reason to continue the mad search for truth. Any evidence of it, even a grin will be enough.

In Episode 7 of DIMENSION Shondra is undercover as a diner waitress only to be briefed of her next mission later that night at CIA headquarters. Learning that she must devise yet another disguise to get close to the infamous Lou’s right-hand man, Samag Kim. A disguise, within a disguise, within a disguise all to search for a criminal that no one has ever seen, not even Samag Kim. Lou exists only by her actions. Much like a far off star still exists light-years away long after it’s death or the Cheshire Cat’s grin catches our eye, a criminal named Lou wreaks havoc. Shondra became a CIA agent in order to search for truths and hoping that she might find clues about her own mysterious past. What Shondra doesn’t know is that she might not be so different than Lou. Their goals might not be so separate in nature. They are each trying to come closer to something real, something definitive.

Or could it be that we already know the answers and are unsatisfied with them, so the search continues. Unable to accept our fate, we look for other worlds. Other versions of ourselves. Something to compare our own truth with. An Earth 2.0. So how do we know when to stop searching? Is there ever a point of certainty? Perhaps the answer to this question is in the decision-making itself. Meaning, it’s a choice. I mean, isn’t this the point?

Heart of the Heart

Scientists are true romantics. They have to invent hope when there is none, imagine a better outcome when faced with tragedy, and see a light on the path when all else is shrouded in darkness. They live and die on the belief of a better day. If that’s not faith, I don’t know what is. They are true futurists who believe being wrong is simply part of the journey, and the goal is always worth the wait. Some of the best artists I know. I had the pleasure of visiting the decommissioned space shuttle Endeavour. It was massive and majestic. Something about being in a room with an object that traveled past the Earth’s atmosphere twenty-five times, tried and true, just has an affect on a person. The impulse to touch it was pretty strong, but then again I have the impulse to touch everything I’m near: flowers, buildings, leaves, cacti…that last one is usually a mistake. The streaks from bursting through the Earth’s atmosphere were painted up and down it’s underbelly, and the black paneling had a light fade. Something about it felt alive. As if we were in a room with some sort of entity or a large and wise aging animal. To say the least, it was beautiful.

A creation conceived by many collaborators. Many artists with science oriented degrees who believed in something more than the rest of us. Creating new limitations. One of these hopefuls was my father. I remember growing up surrounded by photographs of space shuttles, submarines and jet planes on the wall, all projects that my dad had contributed to. We even had special clearance once to visit another space craft that was being held at Boeing when I was young. I remember being able to actually go inside it, unaware of the rare opportunity I was gifted with. We bought space food as a novelty and were bored quicker than we should have been. But I don’t feel guilty about that. It’s the nature of children to want to move forward. On to the next!

It’s the spirit of the future and scientist understand this. Just like a true romantic, they meet eyes with the girl across the room, and sparked with a glimmer of hope, cross the floor to try and build a future on a mere glance. Children and creative thinkers have quite a lot in common actually. They take the parameters that are given them and then jump at the opportunity to bend them. I came across this passage in Through the Looking Glass at the bottom of page 221:

[Alice] said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as far many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

This insistence to conjure and question is how we get to space. It’s how we get to explore Pluto and further examine our findings. The understanding that there will always be more to discover and that the unknown shines with opportunity is the stuff scientists are made of. In order to do their jobs effectively they must imagine a world that doesn’t exist yet. For example, the terrain of Pluto isn’t too different than that of Earth’s. Sure, it’s a more hostile atmosphere than ours and it’s land is made up of exotic ices, but they found water ice too. Nasa.gov also stated in a segment called “Pluto In a Minute: What’s Inside Pluto?” that it’s not “completely impossible that a sub-surface ocean could exist on Pluto”. They found mountains, rocks, craters, glaciers and a nice big heart. Right on the side of Pluto there is a lighter area in the shape of a big heart. It is this area that they found Sputnik Planum (the icy plains region) or the “Heart of the Heart”. It’s very romantic actually, the idea of there being a heart within a heart.

In DIMENSION we were introduced to the character Lou in Episode 5. Now in Episode 6 we witness Lou masterminding a huge robbery heist while she flees the scene by jumping from rooftops and hiding right under society’s nose at a café in visible proximity of the crime site. She enjoys an espresso while watching the inferno she created gain momentum. Her interest in crime has more to do with creation and control than it does with hurting others. I often refer to Lou as the “id” of the three characters (Shondra and Henrietta being the other two) that once made up a single person in a previously lived dimension. Lou has animalistic tendencies and is reactive. Her search is fueled by fury and revenge. She believes that once she finds the source for her vendetta, she can retract and hide away, perhaps even lead a quiet, normal life. Scientists have heart but so does Lou. Scientists imagine our futures through their infinite dedication to create and control and sometimes the outcomes are fatal and sometimes they’re brilliant. Lou may not be a scientist like Henrietta, but she feels the same pain and confusion and is pursuing her mystery in the best way she knows how. The massive plan she is manifesting, the long game, she believes is worth all the pain and loss it will bring, so long as it also brings justice and revelation. A way to move forward. You could say that Lou is searching for her “heart of the heart”. The core of herself and of which she came. They all are. We all are.
But we must search deeper than the icy plains of our surface to discover warmth at our core. To connect worlds, future, past and present. To faithfully envision hope…and to have heart.

Stuck

Life has a funny way of making you feel stuck. A maze of twists and turns that force you to make decisions, only to find yourself dead-ended, with no one to blame but yourself. It was you who chose to swing left instead of right and it was you who entered this maze in the first place. While staring at the tall, unclimbable wall, smooth, cold and unmoving, we shout explicatives and names of those who might have steered us wrong. Their fault, not ours. Someone else must have caused this detour. Someone else must have it out for us, wanting nothing more but our deep and incessant failure. This ridiculous pause only forces more choices out of us, choices we feel we have already made. Choices that we don’t wish to make again. That curvature in the maze was several twists back, and now you expect me to consider this direction once more? Then again…I guess there are many angles in this path that are quite similar if not exact replicas of those we previously encountered. I guess it’s not so far fetched that this turn produced a similar result as some of the others I’ve taken and I guess it’s not so strange after all that I couldn’t predict what would lie ahead. Although, sometimes this realization takes much longer. A lifetime even.

When Lou arrives in this Dimension, she also feels stuck. Besides the obvious, Lou is about to learn just how stuck she really is. Her memory loss could be a large contributor to these feelings, in that whatever choice she might have made to end up here…is now gone. Wiped from her memory. All she has left is a notion of a past life and a feeling of heartache and for Lou that pain immediately gets translated into vengeance. Not only does she wake up in the desert like both Shondra and Henrietta but she is also buried in the sand in what she feels was some sort of shallow grave. You have to admit, her birth into this dimension was much more traumatic than the other two. Shrouded in darkness and unable to breath from the encroaching earth. It’s no surprise that she felt wronged. Though Lou’s choices appear reactive and hasty in this predicament, in truth her mind is racing with calculation.

This is much like Alice’s struggle with her memory and identity when challenged by her strange surroundings in Wonderland. Feeling stranded and changed when she meets the Caterpillar, he asks who she is and her response is as such:

“I—I hardly know sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”
Alice in Wonderland

Shortly after this conversation with the caterpillar, she grows hugely and unproportionately. Her neck stretching so far past her shoulders that a nearby pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. Could it be that Lou’s true nature is merely misunderstood in this world she has arrived in? Or is it Lou that misunderstands the world. Most likely a combination of the two, it is these types of conundrums that contribute to the complexities of decision-making. Turning the corner in the maze just got more difficult. What is truly the difficult phase, however, is not the choice making itself, but rather the repercussions of the choice made. When it doesn’t seem to amount to a desired result…this is when we experience “stuck”.

But what if the problem lies in what we desire? Lou desires vengeance and will pursue this plan through out the series but many terrible things come of it, with no promise of bringing her closer to her real goal: to solve her mystery and become whole again. Lewis Carroll’s Alice desires to be taller in order to feel more normal but grew past a height she was hoping for and is treated as a villain. Are we the perpetrators of our own conundrums? Perhaps if we accepted our changes and growth, mistakes, influences and all, we would find ourselves less stuck.

It was this morning (that I’m writing this) that the NASA spacecraft “New Horizons” finally made it to Pluto, or should I say the “Dwarf Planet” Pluto. Enabling us to discover things about Pluto’s surface that we were unable to determine before. Things that might force the controversial demotion of Pluto being called a “planet” to be revisited. Science’s choice to create parameters around what defines a planet was a good idea in theory but the determination of which “planets” qualified is proving to have been hasty. Especially since it was widely known that information about Pluto was very limited. Having made these discoveries, it causes me to wonder what the gain of demoting Pluto might have been. Perhaps the science community felt stuck and was simply manifesting solutions in order to superficially move on from the problem. Much like Lou does through her decision in blaming an unseen individual for her predicament. It’s the missing information that should be sought after in order to proceed towards a well-informed choice. It’s the illusion of moving forward that is so much more enticing than being patient in your search.

But when is it too long to wait for an answer? When do you stop searching and start moving? When do we make the choice to call it a “dwarf planet”. The space program lives by hope and small moves towards a larger goal. The “New Horizons” spacecraft will now continue to drift into interstellar space…an undetermined journey, an unmapped future of communication and travel. Much like “New Horizons”, Lou is setting out into an unknown world and hoping to find what she is looking for. Also like the spacecraft, there will be some things discovered that she didn’t know she was looking for. As long as we keep looking, as long as we keep taking those turns in the maze, we will eventually find something…even if it’s not exactly what we were looking for.

The Chicken or the Egg

Anyone whose ever flown or driven across country through time zones has experienced a form of time travel. Sort of. It might not be a different epoch or a different plane of existence but our bodies and minds are put in a position to experience our surroundings differently. We are adjusted to whichever time zone we spend most of our days existing in, so when we leave that zone it feels like an altered reality. Especially if you travel far enough to jump calendar days.

Recently I traveled to Chicago from my hometown Los Angeles (in fact, I’m on the plane now) and came across an interesting series of articles in the airline magazine. You know the one that sits in front of the safety card in the back-of-the-seat pocket. In this case it was Southwest-The Magazine. The article I was interested in was entitled “Perfect Timing” by JK Nickell. It featured a piece about the resurgence of swiss movement stating that the “demand for expert watchmakers returned”. It was “the higher-ups at the thriving young Swatch brand [who] decided to use their success to revive the mechanical industry. Prompting a resurgence of Swiss watches”. Reading this piece made me think of man’s evolution in the necessity of time-telling, which is essentially a way to measure our lives. The more we need to coordinate with each other the more we need precise forms of measurement. Therefore, this resurgence of swiss movement seems to be a mere delicacy. A frivolous yet expensive luxury. But is it? The absence of various exposures of time-telling is both an indicator of how we experience life, as it is also a dictator of such.

Time has a sense of concealment these days. Of being invisible. There are no visible gears, no audible sounds, no winding necessary. We glance at our respective computers, whether it be our smart phones, tablets, laptops or desktops for the time of day. All perfectly synchronized. All perfectly silent. All perfectly…invisible. No child will ask themselves ‘how does this timepiece work’, inspired by its visible moving gears, and try to take it apart. Time has become dissociated and lifeless. Although, to call it lifeless is ironic since this easy and precise way of telling time comes from the invention of the atomic clock. The atom is at the core of each living thing and is now at the core of each atomic clock. Subatomic particles called electrons, when exposed to certain frequencies of radiation, or radio waves, “will jump back and forth between energy states” and the atomic clock measures the exact vibration of an energized atom (livescience.com). So is the atomic clock the truest telling of time? If there are no atoms, does time cease to exist? What is time exactly? “Bound up in this question is an investigation that gets to the core of our humanity: Where did we come from? Where are we going? And really: Who are we?” (“Perfect Timing”, Southwest The Magazine). How does time relate to each of us and how does it relate to the vastness of eternity or infinity? In short, can time telling really be applied to the whole universe.

In Episode 4 of Dimension, Henrietta is composing an equation to define our existence and it’s relation to time. She becomes intuitively privy to her peculiar situation, which is that she might reside from another timeline. If this is possible, then she must scientifically prove it. In order to do that, Henrietta will need to challenge some very fundamental existing physical laws. To begin, we can agree that it is widely believed that time is linear. Therefore, our immediate assumption or thought process towards time travel is that we can either go forward, into the future, or backward, into the past. Henrietta, however, is making the statement that perhaps that is not it at all. Could it be that time is simply moving through space, maybe in all directions and maybe all at the same time. In other words, there is a simultaneousness and a cyclical quality to time. The remaining part of Henrietta’s equation that Des sees on the chalkboard before he erases it is the statement “Constants equals Existence”. The diagram she was working on would look something like this:

Action and inertia become one in the same. Both resulting in motion; either reactively or perpetually.
Time is defined by existence. i.e relativity.
As Action & Inertia manifest, they create constants in the universe. Suggesting the notion of infinitum, an unmeasurable quantity of time that does not exist linerally but in all directions simultanelously.
Thus making Existence cyclical, if time is measured relative to space & matter. If existence is cyclical then a “beginning” never occurred. It simply has always been.

We are left with a sort of chicken and egg question. If we refer to Hoyle’s theory on collective consciousness he states, “All times exist with equal reality” (About Time by Paul Davies). He goes on to consider that “by extension, all conscious beings in the universe, human, animal and alien, could actually be the same consciousness, but activated in different contexts at different times”. In other words, the answer to the chicken and egg question is: neither. They existed simultaneoulsy. If time exists in all directions at infinitum, then one did not come before the other, the egg and chicken existed together.

Lewis Carroll also explores this idea of a single or connected consciousness in Through the Looking Glass, “ ‘So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,’ she said to herself, ‘unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream’ ”. This idea of existing as one being would suggest that we all exist all the time. Whether this helps define the formerly proposed questions of : Where did we come from? Where are we going? And who are we? It at least connects us.

“I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream…”

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Though we might all be consciously connected, I’d have to agree with Alice. I’d prefer to be the one doing the dreaming.

With or without an egg…or a chicken, for that matter.

Oh How Time Flies…

The sand was hot. Increasingly so, as consciousness permeated my brain, convoluting my dream-state. I could feel areas of my skin growing unbearably hot as the sun inched towards it’s zenith. The shade diminishing as time went on. My eyes fluttered open and the sounds of water rushing and crashing filled my ears. Then I remembered. I was in Maui. With my eyes closed, I could have been anywhere. Experiencing time passing just the same, with nothing to hint at my location except for the increasing warmth of the day and the occasional breeze.

Luckily I wasn’t just anywhere but on a tropical island surrounded by the sandy beach, distant mountains and high trees. It’s each of these things which surrounded me however, that hinted at my place in space and time. How tall the trees were, how high the sun was, how high or low the tide became, the color in the sky. All relative to the passing of time and indicative to where I lay. It seems impossible to experience space without experiencing time and vice versa. Space would need to be inert in order for it to exist without time, but could this be possible? Are there areas in space where time might not exist at all? Meaning nothing is growing, changing or moving. It seems that time is perception considering we can see a star from earth that has long passed trillions of light years away but to us, it still shines bright. In a weird way, this observation is like a form of time traveling. Lewis Carroll explores this idea as well:

Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Through the Looking Glass

There are many times in my life when I feel like I am spending all my time and energy running in place. Making the same effort towards the same goal with not much change occurring but somehow, time still whooshes by. One thing to address about Episode 3 and Henrietta’s arrival is that she and Shondra are cut from the same cloth, their arrival happened simultaneously, and the world they are in now exists in a separate time and place from their original lives from which they came.

We do not yet know what the laws are of this dimension or how it might connect to other dimensions, if at all, but one thing we do know, is that time had to behave out-of-character in order for these two women to exist, and in this new place nonetheless. Whatever happened to them caused space and time to interact in a way that, at this juncture, cannot be explained. If we took Alice’s experience with the Queen and turned it inside out, (just to make it that much more confusing) we would have Shondra’s and Henrietta’s experience. They have traveled far but have not aged or grown. As though Shondra and Henrietta were running in place on the timeline of their lives and somehow still arriving somewhere different. Though, to say that they have not changed is not completely accurate. They were once one individual. Another point to explore in terms of how time and space needed to interact to produce this phenomena.

According to Einstein we can measure time based on it’s relativity to other things. Relativity is the key word. I’m assuming you’ve heard the saying “It’s all relative”, and well,…it is. By all, I mean all. As human beings we measure ourselves and the world around us against comparable or complimentary themes. We are all looking for a sense of relevance. Within us along with around us. If the world within which we live doesn’t seem relative then we are uneasy and will make large efforts to try and alter our experience of it. We take huge endeavor in qualifying ourselves as relevant. It is how we know what is what and often how we decide who we are in society. Henrietta’s first interaction with this concept is Des. He observes her and questions who she is right away. She also asks for help from Des, deciding that he is trustworthy enough to provide her with some safety and perhaps navigation towards her own truth. Her own relevance.

As I looked at the clearest of blue oceans crashing violently into the sand a few feet from me, I felt a sense of relief. I was able to step away from these expectations of relevance we put on ourselves when we’re functioning normally in our lives. It was okay to just sit there and think, or sleep or look at things. It didn’t matter who I was, or who I was trying to be. My expectation of how I spent my time was very different in Maui than it is in Los Angeles. It’s as if I was trying to isolate my experience of life from the usual way I chose to live it and become more relevant to the isolated island I was on. There’s even a guide of conduct on vacation that feels more relevant than another. It’s a constant play at adjusting our measurements of ourselves and our time with our surroundings. But one day the vacation is over. One day…you’re ready to go home.

Mirror Images + Eleven

11 blog2

Have you ever glanced at a clock and the digital numbers quickly change to 11:11? Some call it a phenomena and others call it, well…a clock. I have talked about this occurrence many times over because I happen to be one of those people that swears this number pops up any chance it gets and I am always acutely aware of it. It hasn’t always been this way or at least I hadn’t noticed. I do remember when it began happening, quite vividly actually but more on that detail later. Numbers have had a significance in society on many levels for centuries and across cultures. Some of these significances are tied to language and sounds, some are tied to luck, while others are hugely spiritual. We now rely on numbers in Western society in which to base our systems. We rely on the binary system for our computers, we use math to solve almost all problems and when we can’t, we’re pretty uncomfortable with the idea. Numbers provide structure.“Numbers never lie”, a common enough phrase but after researching numerology it seems like there is plenty room for uncertainty. First of all, there are so many varying meanings attributed to each number across belief systems. If you want to dig deeper (which I always do) you can even find scientific margins of error in what an individual number’s value really represents. For example, there is an infinite value to the number two. The number two can be fractioned down into infinity. Most of us have heard of the Pythagoras Theorem back in algebra class, which was originated by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras who “believed that because mathematical concepts were more ‘practical’ (easier to regulate and classify) than physical ones, they had greater actuality” (Numerology wikipedia.com). He was one of the first mathematicians and a founder of Western numerology. It was sort of the birth of looking to number systems for defining our world.

Beyond mathematical definition, numbers took on a spiritual significance during Pythagoras’ time. Though we now widely depend on numbers for practical use, the impulse to link them spiritually is still strong in many individuals and in some cultures as a whole. In Chinese culture the decision of whether a number has negative or positive connotations in relation to luck is based on sound. If the pronunciation of a number in Chinese sounds closely to a word in the language that represents an unlucky thing or idea, then the number is considered bad luck and vice versa for a positive connotation. Numerology.com states that “As the world becomes more computerized and dependent on numerical systems, the fascination with this ancient spiritual science only grows”.

As I was researching numerology I came across this website: dimension1111.com. Ironic that this website is “eleven” focused and not only about numerology? Coincidence that my podcast series is called “Dimension” and this blog revolves around seeing repetitive “ones”? Of course, I have to click on this website. Fate wants me to, right? Once I did, I discovered that it was mostly about the phenomena of seeing 11:11. The website states that it “is a master number and represents inspiration, illumination and spiritual enlightenment”. For me this makes wonderful sense. It was back in 2011 (notice the year?) that I experienced the biggest heartbreak of my life. In trying to find the positive in the negative, I had begun to make a lot of spiritual connections. It was as if the ground beneath me was crumbling and I would have to re-pave my path. Lots of self reflection. In Episode Two of Dimension we see that two years have past since Shondra’s arrival in the desert. She also has to pave a new path for herself in order to reinvent who she is and create a new destiny. In one scene we catch her deeply reflecting while symbolically looking back at herself in a mirror. As in Alice and Through the Looking Glass, there is the wonderment of another world that might lie just beyond the mirror. Shondra feels like there is a world she came from that is forgotten and Alice longs to experience the other perspective. What Shondra doesn’t yet realize is that she is now part of the other perspective. She is already on the other side. Shondra can’t quite recognize herself in the mirror because she is now experiencing life ( in a new dimension) as a fraction of her previous self. In order to recognize herself again, Shondra will have to continue paving the path and walking on it in search for her identity.

Recently I was rummaging through some old boxes of things I have packed away and I found a couple of notebooks I kept during the afore mentioned difficult period of my life. One was just for short reflections. On opening this one I flipped to the last quote I had written. The date was marked 1-11-11. It read, “The key to happiness might very well be intention. Live each day with intention”. Standing in the closet I felt an over-whelming sensation of synchronicity, self-reflection and meaning in my life. The timeliness of discovering this notebook contributed to feeling as though I was looking at the past me and the future me in the eye all at the same time. If somehow I could be watching over myself as some sort of angel, I suspect this is what it would feel like. An acute experience of past, present and future in a single moment. Maybe best described visually in the movie Interstellar when Mathew McConahey’s character is floating around in the fifth dimension. The movie I happened to watch the evening I experienced this phenomena, ignorantly not knowing the details of the film (a phenomena in itself, my being a science fiction writer). People often fantasize what it would be like to give a younger version of yourself a bit of the grace and wisdom you acquire only by growing older. In my case, reading my past words was a younger version of myself giving an older me advice but I ended up with similar results. It allowed me to see time as a whole and not broken into linear compartments. A moment in which all things past, present and future existed simultaneously. Could it be possible that Shondra has found herself in a dimension where she exists as many parts of herself at the same time? Could she be experiencing all of time?

The website dimension1111.com had many explanations for the 11:11 sightings, one of the most extraordinary being this: “the 11:11 synchronicity often appears in lives of starseeds when during times of transition or when they are about to awaken spiritually to their purpose and mission on earth. A starseed is a human with a soul that did not originate on earth”. Could many of us be of a different galaxy all together? Is Shondra just a starseed that was reborn mid-life? Maybe we all have many versions of ourselves living and existing during many times in many places. Or maybe it’s all just a dead end search for more, when really all we have…is the present.

Shondra’s Rabbit Hole

Tick tick tick tick tick. I heard it. Unsure of where this unidentified sound was coming from, I listened for the pattern. Persistent and yes, definitely a ticking. I finally eased towards the guest bedroom where my boyfriend has a large black jewelry box on one end of the dresser filled with time pieces. Many of them antique pocket watches. He must have wound one before he left for work and decided against donning the vintage pendant, packing it back into its shallow drawer for me to find. Loosely keeping time with or without a witness. I say “loosely” because these old watches weren’t the most precise versions of time technology and actually lose time as they tick. Some really old models even lose so much as a full twenty-four hours. This collection of pocket watches ironically sits on the opposite end of my Alice in Wonderland collection. On the back corner of the large, dark dresser I have displayed a ceramic tea-set shaped in the form of each Wonderland character. There are pocket watch saucers with Chesire Cat tea cups atop them, a Queen of hearts tea pot, a White Rabbit milk container and an Alice sugar pot. I also have a decorative card deck that is specially rigged to build an excellent house of cards, two postcard sized framed milieus of the the Mad Hatter’s tea party (one vintage and one Disney), and last but definitely not least, I have a yellowing book entitled The Magic of Lewis Carroll.

Outside of having written one of the most inventive, timeless, and valuable children stories of our time, Lewis Carroll was also a mathematician obsessed with riddles and puzzles. One question that troubled him for much of his life was this: where does the day begin? He would write letters to newspapers and government offices posing this question. He was curious about time and how it behaved. He was constantly questioning the relevance of fundamental math and science, which would explain the many conundrums Alice came across in Wonderland. The rules she had been taught in her few years of schooling were being very challenged by this strange collection of characters.

“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,’ said the Hatter, ‘when the Queen bawled out “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!” ‘
‘How dreadfully savage!’ exclaimed Alice.
‘And ever since that,’ the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’ clock now.’
A bright idea came into Alice’s head. ‘Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the Hatter with a sigh: ‘it’s always tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.’
Alice ’s Adventures in Wonderland

There was the issue of time. During the mid nineteenth century, when Mr. Carroll was thriving, there were still many inconsistencies of time-telling methods. It was still mostly based on the sun, which varied from place to place and the idea of time zones was still just an idea. This became a large problem for train schedules and a push towards a more consistent and agreed upon telling of time was finally applied around 1884 once the industrial revolution was in full effect. In other words, the idea of time was not precise at all. As afore mentioned, even the timepieces that were carried around were far from accurate or reliable. Carroll’s irony of using the anxious White Rabbit to lead Alice towards a world that has fluctuating rules is very fitting. The White Rabbit repeatedly looks at his pocket watch, which we have just learned is far from reliable, and exclaims how late he is over and over again. Time seems to just pass and pass as the White Rabbit doesn’t get much closer to his destination. Lewis Carroll’s life and his stories about Alice are riddled with applicable themes.

The Magic of Lewis Carroll points out, “that Arthur Stanley Eddington, in his book Space, Time and Gravitation, as well as lesser writers on relativity theory, have compared the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party where time stands still with the portion of De Sitter’s model of the cosmos where this is the case forever “(pg.26). My inclination to use Lewis Carroll as a reference for my exploration of themes and concepts in Dimension is no different. Especially when it comes to time.

In the case of Episode One of Dimension we have a girl named Shondra who has arrived in a time and place unbeknownst to her. How can this happen? Due to Shondra’s lack of memory we can deduce that she was either in a bad accident or has somehow passed through time. Based on her appearance and the painfulness of her injuries we can point towards accident. Her sense of self is very convoluted however, and there are no signs of anyone else having been to the site in which she arrived. We can assume there were no foot prints in the sand from either herself or another person, no road in view, no disturbances to the surroundings at all. It’s as if she simply…appeared. Could it be that both of these things are true? That she underwent some sort of accident and she time traveled? Perhaps it’s the accident itself that has caused her to push through to another dimension. So what are the ways in which this could have happened? Shondra would need to find a way to travel faster than the speed of light in order to create a “tear in the fabric of the space-time continuum of the universe” (cyberboris.wordpress.com). Much like Alice’s fall into the rabbit hole, Shondra went through a passage of her own and ended up in a different world.

“Down down down. Would the fall never come to an end?…I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth”.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Though Carroll was toying with the idea of falling through the center of the earth, nowadays scientists wonder what would happen if we just fell forever in space or if it’s possible to fall through a hole that will take us to an alternate universe. One of the theories for this is called wormhole transportation. A folding of space and time causing two blackholes (from two different times) on either end to come together and touch. Now you have formed a wormhole. The worm hole spins, or should I say twists, from the two black holes on either end that are spinning in opposite directions at light speeds. The wormhole itself, or the “passage” results in traveling at faster speeds than that of light. This is what introduces the possibility of time travel or entering other dimensions. The speed. Of course, matter cannot travel this fast without being torn apart or stretched like spaghetti.

This could be one explanation for Shondra’s feeling of “something missing”. She was torn apart but some of her cells and consciousness have managed to make it through the wormhole and come together to form a new body. She became a fraction of her original self once she arrived to the new dimension, being the reason behind her having no viable memory or identity. “Shondra” is basically a fragment of her former self. The accident or tragic occurrence she underwent is still a mystery and is a big part of what Shondra’s objective will be. What happened to her, how it happened and why? The same question man has been asking since the beginning of time (whenever that was). The questions that drive us towards invention, towards spirituality, towards war, towards science and towards philosophy. It’s what keeps us journeying towards a more meaningful existence. Towards answers.

And for me…towards fiction.