RSS Feed
The Garden of Forking Paths
Short story writers are creative, but rarely innovative, given the limitations of the literary form. One exception is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine author of the endless short story.
In 1941, Borges published The Garden of Forking Paths, revealing a cyclical plot of infinite variations. This somewhat dark story (at least in this manifestation), entwines espionage, a mysterious book, and a mythical garden labyrinth. All combine to present an endless range of convoluted possibilities that extend far beyond the story’s finite 10-page length.
Borges describes a web of multiple concurrent realities. “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.” In this world, reality spits with each choice made. The path not taken continues to exist concurrently.
Dr. Stephen Albert, the focus of the story’s narrator, describes at once, a book, a labyrinth and Borges’ philosophy in a single insightful paragraph: “The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe…an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. The network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you: in others, both of us.”
The total of all possibilities is an intricate fabric where anything is possible, given the right combination of choices.
“What if?” That is the most important question you can ask. How far forward can you project your imagination to envision the possibilities of your next choice? “What if?” is the beginning of the creative quest.
The challenge is to follow that thought journey to the next intersection, and beyond.
The realm of possibilities is infinite. The path we create is only one combination of potential choices. Imagine that!
Sunday, January 29, 2006 | 3 Comments 
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (3)
We exist in more than one reality, more and less aware of the many coinciding if not colliding intersections of paths arriving to the perpetual fork of now. How many of those realities do we actually perceive? What constitutes the karins in such intersections? What formulates the koans by which we weigh which way to our future? What are the forces to which we gravitate?
How many realities can you juggle now? How vivid is your imagination?
The force that matters most is your will to create, or to realize what your imagination sees. More on that in future posts.
It seems to me that whatever Yu Tsun decides to do with the information he has got, any action he undertakes will occure in the present, its the only aspect of time humans can use to manipulate their past and their future.