- May I advise you, sir, that you will do well to find another community which allows such latitude in behaviour and belief as this one. If your mind is pregnant with great schemes of thought, if you have a new science to research, a new religion or philosophy to bear into the world, here and now is the time and space for it. If you have none as yet, perhaps you will allow me to elaborate on our own science, which I have been practicing with some like minds in a small way here.

- I am always interested in the original thinking of any man.

- That does you credit, Mr. Collins, great credit indeed. Physically speaking, Mr. Collins, our body is the home of many organs: the heart is a muscular organ which pumps oxygenated blood around the body; the lungs are muscular organs which absorb into our body the aforementioned oxygen into the bloodstream. You will agree, at least, that these organs benefit not a little from vigorous and regular exercise: a brisk walk, a sharp game of tennis, a pleasant bathing excursion or a dance night. Similarly, our brain is a muscular organ, which through the medium of electrical activity controls the conscious and unconscious workings of the body, and supports the incomparable miracle that is the human mind. We believe that the brain, too, benefits by regular exercise: learning, some artistic pursuits – painting or the composition of poetry, musical appreciation, puzzles, problem solving. Can I take it we agree thus far?

- You can.

- And I think we will agree on the next point also which has become one of the commonalties of modern discourse: that the average human being utilizes in their lifetime only some eight per cent of the potential of the brain given him or her. You concur?

- I have no blind faith in this truism, but I will not disagree that the human mind is the great undiscovered country, and that our mental abilities show the potential for extraordinary growth.

- Bravo sirrah! We are of a like disposition. It is this disposition towards the development of the mental potential of the human experience that has led me to the formulation and practice of a Science and Philosophy of Flexistentialism.

- Flex-istentialism, flexi-stentialism.. I like that

- Flexistentialism. The ring of familiarity will, I hope, enable me to introduce the subject to every mind in the world eventually. Ours is a philosophy of possibility, sir, and our guiding principle is very simple: we believe that if one is to hold in the mind a collection of thoughts or ideas, fact, fiction or the bastard sons thereof, uploaded, so to speak, into the brain in such a manner as to potentiate the creation of connecting threads between these ideas, even though the brain strains under the weight of these improbable theses, even if credibility is stretched even to the very limit and beyond, even if the person fails to hold the extremities of all these ideas in their own mind at once, given time the mind will stretch, the mind will become flexible, and then regardless of the ultimate validity of the ideas that were the subject of the exercise, the mind will have increased its capacity to hold unrelated notions at once, and its ability to balance ideas in the brain and judge their relations. As I have said, it is not necessary that these ideas are scientific truths, but that they exist as possibilities. Through my own practice I have come to believe there is only fiction, and that it is all true. We must cut the association lines of Word and Image (that’s uncle bill william burroughs) to destabilise common sense and rescue meaing for our own actions, our own speeches, our own lives. We must create and project newly imagineered realities onto the surface of our own experience, to dislodge the rigid structures of programmed thought. Remember, the mind is a muscle – flexercise it. It is only by expanding the realm of the possible that the actual will take shape.

- It is in our imagination, then, that revolution will take place.

- Not revolution, mate. Evolution. You will join one of our meetings? We will make you very welcome. Do you like entertainments?

- Yes very much.

- We have entertainments at all our meetings.. stimulating, provocative. We are inspired by art to shift laterally in our mental cogitation. It adds another shift of gear … I think a hundred times more clearly, frame of reference flexible, laterally connecting ideas, i even internally.. I arrange them on a structure like to a topography in space-time, fold the landscape at will, making creases to to make ..

from Quadrade by Jeffrey Gormly