“Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.” ~ Alan Watts[1]
Image by AJ Alfieri-Crispin
Welcome to my blog! It’s nice to have you here and I hope you enjoy your stay. Among other things, I’m an aspiring author and so while I intend to blog about all kinds of things, there will often be some aspect of writing involved in my musings.
I thought I would kick off with an explanation of the name I’ve chosen for my blog; “Web of Liz”. Apart from the obvious “world wide web” connection (although it may be a bit grandiose to imply that it belongs to me), there is another, more esoteric inspiration.
As explained in the quote at the top of this post, Indra’s Net (or Indra’s Web as it has come to be known in my brain), is a concept from Buddhist philosophy; a jewelled net where each jewel reflects every other jewel. I first came across this idea as a metaphor for metaphor and it really struck a chord with me. If, in some way, everything in existence is connected to and contains some essence of everything else, maybe that is why a well-placed metaphor can be so effective in a story.
Noting the similarity between, say, a strong gust of wind and someone hurrying on their way across the city, brings the reader temporarily out of the detail of the story and taps into these Universal connections, helping to give your story greater real-life resonance.
Maybe this all sounds a bit unlikely. After all, how could every single thing in the Universe possibly be connected? Well, it just so happens that science backs me up on this one.
Over Christmas I watched the delightful Professor Brian Cox explaining quantum physics to the masses on “A Night with the Stars”.
Image by The University of Manchester Schools and Colleges
Among the mind-blowing concepts he attempted to explain was the Pauli exclusion principle. As far as I understand it, this principle basically holds that no two electrons anywhere in the Universe may exist in the same state. This means that whenever an electron shifts into a different energy state, for example by becoming hotter, it must communicate with every other electron in the Universe in order to ensure that it remains slightly different to all of them.
All around us, all the time, the atoms of the Universe are communicating with each other. Fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, don’t you think?
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[1] ^ Alan Watts Podcast – Following the Middle Way #3 alanwattspodcast.com.
Web of Liz 