Matthew Simmons
In One Note, Gabriel Blackwell asks writers to talk about the book they are currently reading and why. One Note 017: Matthew Simmons, Eileen J. Garrett, Telepathy.
In One Note, I ask writers for just that: one note, a single paragraph, on what they’re reading right now.
Today’s note comes courtesy of Matthew Simmons:
Someone just opened a little thrift store near my house, and they gave it a Pynchon novel name. So I went in. FACT: Humankind in pre-history communicated by telepathy, and the ability to communicate with, first, spoken words and, second, written communication has atrophied that part of our brains.
As I was walking to the door, an older woman in an unlogo-ed baseball cap was walking in, too, and she remarked—seeing that they were featuring near the door a very big hand-painted ice cream and burger stand sign that priced much of the menu in such a way that one might look at it, cluck one’s tongue, shake one’s head, breath out through one’s nose, and remark to oneself that, used to be, you could get a side of fries for fifty cents—that Boy, [our mutual admiration of this sign] really dates us. She appeared to be a retiree. I’m not quite forty. FACT: Telepathy is present in all children up to the age of ten, when the ability to make oneself understood verbally makes it redundant.
Instead of losing an afternoon to the record crates, I tackled the paperback book spinners. There I found Telepathy: The Full Story of a Phenomenon that has Haunted the Mind of Man Since the Beginning of Time by Eileen J. Garrett (Berkeley Medallion Editions, 1968). The inside of the book said one dollar, but the clerk, who was trying to help the woman find a white cup for her nearly-blind, twenty-year-old cat—he can see brighter colors and a white cup would contrast her carpeting very nicely—charged me four dollars and for some reason I didn’t argue. FACT: Telepathy is, primarily, an emotional means of communication, and if one is pre-disposed to doubt the existence of telepathy, one is likely to set up an emotional block which will make discovering one’s telepathic potential impossible, and this makes the scientific method both a boon and a hindrance to the study of telepathy as most scientist are predisposed to doubt.
I paid and on my way out, the clerk wished me luck with my telepathy. I thanked him. The woman turned and told me that her cat is constantly using telepathy to ask to go out. FACT: Animals, far more in touch with their emotions, engage in intra-species telepathic communication all the time.
So far, no dice.
Matthew Simmons is the author of, among other things, a very small book of stories called The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge. Find other things at his blog, themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com.
