Back in the twentieth century it occurred to me that some people seem to encounter forthcoming events as though they are wading through mud or even hitting a brick wall while others glide effortlessly through such troubling events or even avoid them entirely. While these differences may partly arise from the opportunities afforded in their earlier lives other factors, such as attitude to risk, expectations, ambitions, common sense, dumb luck and random misfortune, are also no doubt involved. I called this phenomenon “temporal streamlining” because it appeared to resemble streamlining in physical fluid dynamics. Since writing my novel and perceiving the unusual coincidences that have followed it in the twenty-first century I have reviewed my use of this term.
The phenomenon that I have been exploring on this website appears to involve the flow of information from a future version of myself back to me and equally from me back to past versions of myself. If this is actually a factor in my previously perceived “temporal streamlining” then it is not so much individual streamlining as slipstreaming across a progression of versions of myself. As the Olympic Games took place a short while ago I am reminded of the image of the team pursuit cycling event where apparently identical cyclists follow each other in a close formation along a track. It isn’t too difficult to imagine our personal lives as being similar with almost identical versions of ourselves following each other through time, each benefiting from the slipstream of thoughts pushed out by the ones ahead. Another term for this slipstreaming in the physical world is “drafting” or maybe “draughting”, such spelling tending to differ in American and British English. A variation on this effect is demonstrated by a skein of wild geese flying in a diagonal or vee formation to take advantage of vortices in the air around the wingtips of the birds ahead. These vortices are actually caused by the lack of streamlining at the birds’ wingtips and are a disadvantage for a solitary bird. Although it is impossible to demonstrate I assume that, apart from the beneficial effect of good experiences being relayed from one’s future self back to oneself, there could also be deterrent feelings relayed by bad experiences that cause one to take a slightly different path in life, just as each goose flies along a slightly different path from its predecessor although they all take much the same course to their destination. It is thought-provoking but possibly misleading to take such analogies too far though.
Also, given my predilection for wordplay and the distinct ways that the different spellings “draught” and “draft” are used in my native British English, I considered the fact that slipstreaming is a feature of draughts of air whereas drafting is more commonly the preparation of an early version of a written document, such as my draft novel incorporating so many of those strange coincidences. That might appear to be the entire coincidental use of these words in this context but I recently read something which took the coincidence much deeper. I was searching for information on streamlining and slipstreaming in order to write this purely speculative item when I was surprised to see the following reference to fiction writing that I had neither anticipated nor solicited.
I could never determine what genre of fiction, if any, my novel fell into as it contained a strange mixture of cross-genre elements. My American literary expert friend told me after he read it that it would have a very select readership because of this and its general disturbingly strange but also intriguing and thought-provoking impact. However, I have now read that this particular type of fictional literature is currently categorised as being in the “slipstream genre” to distinguish it from mainstream fiction! Given that my novel itself appears to have been inspired by thoughts and feelings substantially from my future via a temporal slipstream rather than by past memories and feelings via mainstream conventional thought, this categorisation is strangely apt. Any suspicious reader might think that I first found out about this genre in the context of fiction writing and then subsequently concocted my theory about the supposed phenomenon using the same word for dramatic effect in my explanation above, but that view would not take into account the fact that this website is primarily a personal record of my experiences for my own reference although others are welcome to read it and make what they will of it. This is why I encourage my readers not to deliberate too much over the veracity of my writings here but to look out for similar evidence in their own experiences.