Imagination

I type this while in a roomette car (tiny sleeper car) on the Lake Shore Limited barreling -- no, creeping -- toward Chicago. The train will arrive two hours late because last night we had a train robbery -- NO, we did not have a train robbery, Marcie. We got delayed because of middle-of-the-night track repair...

I like Marcie's version better. Marcie has a lot of imagination -- and energy. A lot of you liked Marcie's guest post yesterday. Someone from Portugal viewed it -- what, four times?

I pull Marcie out of my imagination every time I need a boost -- like the time she guest-lectured in my Resource Management class: "Aunt Laurie said I could talk to you about what she calls 'satisfaction' -- or what I call happy. There are lots of types of happy..."

After twenty minutes or so, my class asked Marcie to step down and let me teach again. Why? Because as much as we desire imagination, we need it to be grounded by reality. Even high concept fantasy needs to have an internally consistent world. Otherwise, as Marcie will tell you, the bad guy could change the rules again and again and always win. None of us want the bad guy to win, much less win with a stacked deck.

But at the same time, we need our inner Marcie so we feel free to use our own imaginations. Marcie would like you to know she looks like this:

... what? You don't think Marcie can be a big-eyed shape-shifting cat? It's all about imagination.