Abstract
This work includes two texts on the themes of gardens and slow time presented in a reading with David Mitchell at the University of St Andrews 2017 conference on Mitchell. These works of ‘truthful fiction’ extend from an ongoing project, The Petriverse of Pierre Jardin. Written in dialogue with The Bone Clocks and featuring a collaboration with Mitchell, they explore the Cretan labyrinth as a cultural and topological motif and recount Jardin’s designing a garden with a meditative labyrinth. The afterword situates the texts in a broader context of bringing the ‘slow’ movement to academic institutions and teaching Mitchell’s work in connection with contemplative pedagogies.
Highlights
The following texts were presented in a reading at the David Mitchell Conference 2017 at the University of St Andrews, loosely organized around the theme of ‘slow time.’ My readings of the creative pieces “A Perturbation in the Deep Stream” and “A Perambulation in the Deep Stream” were sandwiched between three stories read by David Mitchell.1 This collaborative presentation reprised a joint reading that we had given the year before at “Time’s Urgency,” a conference convened by the InternationalHarris: In the Labyrinth of Slow TimeSociety for the Study of Time.2 When David said that he would present three stories, I proposed that we do a tandem reading, specifying only that my texts would center on The Petriverse of Pierre Jardin, a rock garden in Long Beach, California
I wrote these tales of the “Deep Stream” in collaboration with and response to David’s work, especially The Bone Clocks, for reasons that will become apparent in the Afterword
“Why”, the Society anticipates your objection, “does the Cretan labyrinth perturb the Deep Stream?” Because, we conclude, Ariadne’s Palindromic Thread suspends Time in a Reversible Course in which, to deploy a line by a Nameless Poet whose grasp on sanity is as dubious as his grasp of the English Tongue, “The Future looks a lot like the Past” (Mitchell 2014: 493)
Summary
The following texts were presented in a reading at the David Mitchell Conference 2017 at the University of St Andrews, loosely organized around the theme of ‘slow time.’ My readings of the creative pieces “A Perturbation in the Deep Stream” and “A Perambulation in the Deep Stream” were sandwiched between three stories read by David Mitchell. This collaborative presentation reprised a joint reading that we had given the year before at “Time’s Urgency,” a conference convened by the International. We were delighted to discover serendipitous resonances between our work, especially around gardens and slow time: David’s short story “The Gardener” paired perfectly with my text about a rock gardener, and our texts featured characters and observers experiencing time dilation in different but comparable ways. Building on these themes, I wrote these tales of the “Deep Stream” in collaboration with and response to David’s work, especially The Bone Clocks, for reasons that will become apparent in the Afterword. The interactive spirit of our reading was enhanced by David reading the Horologist’s letter that he wrote at my invitation, and which is embedded in “A Perturbation in the Deep Stream.”
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