Telepathy, Time Travel & Trout Fishing

“Telepathy, of course,” writes Stephen King in the chapter “What Writing Is” from his book On Writing.

King then goes on to exhibit his point, describing — in writing — a tablecloth-covered table, on top of which sits a rabbit eating a carrot in a cage; the numeral 8 is written in blue ink on the back of the rabbit.

“Do we see the same thing?” King asks. “We’d have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do.”

So what’s the point? He goes on.

“The most interesting thing here isn’t even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back… It’s an eight. This is what we’re looking at, and we all see it. I didn’t tell you. You didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room… except we are together.

“We’re having a meeting of the minds.”

With me? Stay with me.

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“We must accept that time is not completely separate from and independent of space, but is combined with it to form an object called space-time,” Stephen Hawking (not King) writes in A Brief History of Time. Thus, “an event is something that happens at a particular point in space and at a particular time.”

Further, whatever happens in that specific event is influenced by and unique to, a set of prior events. So, us visualizing the number 8 on that rabbit is a result of King describing it in writing which is, of course, the result of a number of other factors we don’t know specifically, but do know exist.

Again, what’s the point?

The result of this writing (which I have paraphrased to an extremely high degree), is Hawking setting the stage for an understanding of the theory of relativity: “there is no unique absolute time, but instead each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving.”

Still with me? Stay with me.

--

I read On Writing years ago but that passage about the rabbit stuck with me. I’m reading A Brief History of Time now and in thinking about the chapter, “Space and Time,” from which I pulled the above quotes, I am inclined to find a bridge between the two books. Naturally, I am also inclined to include a connection to fly fishing; for trout, let’s say.

Where am I going? To illustrate that fly fishing for trout is telepathy and time travel, all in one.

Consider a fly that someone you know tied, perhaps recently, perhaps many years ago. It was tied for a reason; specific events occurred which inspired the tyer to create that fly. They tied it to convince a trout somewhere (in a specific river perhaps or maybe just a general region) to take it, for some reason: because it imitated a specific aquatic insect well enough, or looked attractive enough to pique a trout’s interest to inspire it to take it. Or maybe they just attached some random feathers and fur to a hook. Regardless, all of that occurred at some point in space-time.

Now imagine you are trout fishing, in a completely separate point in space-time. You look into your fly box and find the fly that your friend tied. Another set of events (a hatch, a premonition, a prior refusal from a fish, a memory of the friend, etc.) cause you to tie it on to the end of your tippet. You are now in telepathic conversation with that friend, similar to our ‘conversation’ with King about his 8’d rabbit. You commence fishing with the fly and continue the conversation with your friend who tied it.

You cast the fly beautifully and it alights on the river, just upstream of an eager trout. The trout rises, takes the fly, and you instinctively set the hook. A connection is made.

This connection now spans space-time in several ways: you, the angler, to the trout and your separate space-times; you, the angler and your friend, the fly tyer in your separate space-times; and, your friend, the fly tyer and the trout in their separate space-times.

Still with me, even now? Stay with me!

What’s the point? Go fishing, fish the fly from your friends, catch a fish, and connect all three. Go fishing and converse across space-time.

See? Fly fishing is telepathy and time travel.

[Disclaimer: neither Stephen King nor Stephen Hawking were consulted in the drafting of this theory.]