A post here last month explored the philosophical connection between Richard Hughes, author of the 1929 best seller "A High Wind in Jamaica," and Hugh Everett III, born in 1930 and famous for his 1957 Princeton University doctoral dissertation, "'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics,'" now referred to as "Many Worlds."
It was this sentence in Hughes' novel that stopped me in my tracks:
"Philosophically speaking, a ship in its port of departure is just as much in its port of arrival: two point-events differing in time and place, but not in degree of reality."
This morning I decided to try to use Hughes' view of "reality" while I was out running.
As I was chugging along somewhere in the course of mile 1 of my projected 4-mile outing, I tried to "throw" my consciousness to what it would be like at the 2-mile turn-around point near Albemarle High School, right at the stoplight.
I visualized the intersection, where I've been many times before while out running, and tried to forget how tired and hot I was at the moment in the midst of mile 1 in favor of "being" at the end of mile 2, ready to turn around and head for home.
My goal was to bypass the rest of the fatigue of mile 1 and that upcoming during mile 2.
FAIL.
Nothing happened, not even a flicker in my sense of where I was and how I felt at the time.
I do believe it's possible, and so I'm going to repeat this experiment until something positive happens or I get frustrated with repeated failures.
I'm reminded of "jaunting," described in Alfred Bester's great 1956 novel "The Stars My Destination," in which individuals are able to learn to controllably teleport themselves at will.
The thing is, in Bester's masterwork jaunting didn't become a documented reality until the turn of the 24th century in a laboratory on Jupiter's moon Callisto.
I can't wait that long.
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