Lecture 4:
AMONG THE DIMENSIONS
Adam Blatner
This is the fourth in a series given to the Senior
University Georgetown in the Fall of 2014.
Let me fend off
critics who may accuse me of being wacky, crazy, mad, etc. This
is fiction, people! I'm using a literary trope to stretch
people's imaginations! Okay? Lay off.
Having made the requisite disclaimers, here we go. As a few of
you know and some have guessed, I'm not altogether human. Mainly
I'm just this guy, ordinary, professional, earned degrees, very
reality based. Indeed, to quote the comedian Mel Brooks who in
the late 1960s played a psychiatrist on a record he made with
Carl Reiner, Mel said, in character, "Yep, I'm the guy who says
who's crazy and who's just (wink) foolin' around." So I'm both.
I'm a reputable both feet on the ground reality-bound
psychiatrist AND I'm a bit of an elf myself, playing with this
funny category of "reality," as have done many a comedian and
cartoonist.
Today I will take you on a trip upon my magic flying ship (to
coin a phrase from Bob Dylan's song, "Tambourine Man" in the
late 1960s). We will travel not into space---so
three-dimensional! Height, width, depth, measurable
quantities!---but between dimensions, where human notions of
size and time are not basic principles. Very psychedelic,
surrealistic, mind-stretching, as I said I'd do. The main thing
here is to use your imaginations.
I'll try to make the transitions plausible, so you don't become
too disoriented. Just pretend that we could have a spaceship of
sorts that traveled not to other planets, but to other
dimensions. Not up or down, in or out, but in an imaginative
sense, just... over... there! Ah! (Sort of like over the
rainbow.)
The Transdimensional "Vehicle."
I can't just say use your imagination. We have to go in a
vehicle which I have had help in building---well, my friends the
elves and extraterrestrials do the engineering---I just suggest
some specifications: Not to disorienting to tiny human minds,
now....
.. .
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For comments, suggestions for revision or additions, email
me: adam@blatner.com
L