The Wordsmith's Forge

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by a prompt from siliconshaman. It also fills the "Spirals" square in my 3-1-21 card for the Celtic Bingo Fest.


"Only What It Considers to Be Shackles"


Salvador Dalí began
his career as an artist, with
an interest in surrealism.

He had always been
fascinated by the past, and
he turned to the Celtiberians
for inspiration in the twists
and turns of their art.

Their mysterious spirals,
so evocative of the sun
and ethereal energies,
appeared all over his work.

Dalí believed that reality
was little more than an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one.

So he painted landscapes
populated by improbable beasts
and strange attenuated shapes.

He believed that time was fluid,
not linear like everyone else.

So he painted clocks melting
and dripping over edges,
a mockery of causality.

People said it was destructive.

Dalí insisted that surrealism could
be destructive, but it destroys
only what it considers to be
shackles limiting our vision.

Frustrated by the criticism, he
found art insufficient and started
exploring quantum mechanics.

There he found his true calling.

Dalí discovered spacetime coiled
like the spring inside a clock.

He delved into the secrets
of the universe, following
the hidden spirals around
and up and eventually out of
his dimension altogether.

While fiddling around in
his workshop, he invented
an interdimensional portal.

Too busy celebrating
his discovery and drawing
all the weird things that
suddenly appeared,

he did not notice
that he had connected
two incompatible realities

or that reality was decrystalizing
and perhaps he really ought to pull the plug.

It turned out that surrealism considered
reality too much of a shackle to tolerate.

Salvador Dali broke the world by accident.

* * *

Notes:
"Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."
― Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí was a famous surrealist.

Surrealism is a style of art that breaks down preconceptions of reality.

Quantum mechanics is a description of deep physics. Its history entails a chain of various discoveries and theories about how the world works on tiny and subtle scales.

Dalí considered the spiral to be the most perfect form, and often used it in his work.

The Celts, including the Celtiberians in what is now Spain, made wide use of spirals in their art, such as this pin. Among other things, spirals symbolize the sun and ethereal energies. If disturbed somehow, it might destabilize and collapse prematurely (from the perspective of currently extant minds).

Spirals also appear in quantum mechanics. One theory posits that the universe expands and contracts in rhythm, like a clock spring unwinding and winding.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
― Albert Einstein