A blog reader questioned me about the gift of the protagonist of Last of the Annamese for foreseeing the future. How could that be? How did it work?
In Last of the Annamese, I tell of the ability of Chuck Griffin to foretell coming events. I describe how “he’d let his consciousness rove over patterns and trends and the flow of events until he knew what was going to happen next.” That depiction is derived from my own experience.
How does it work? I have no idea. My experience during the Vietnam war was that I discovered how to let my mind blur while I studied events. I’d let it wander over the data. Then, sometimes suddenly, I’d know what would happen next. I don’t know how I did it. Others with the same gift were equally puzzled.
One result was that we developed over the years a series of indicators. When the North Vietnamese did x, y followed. The system was too vague to be called scientific; it was intuition at work. I’ve always thought that the best analogy was the sense of smell: it was almost as if when a certain combination of scents appeared, I’d foresee the next event. My guess is that the gift springs from an ability to be in touch with one’s unconscious. That ability dominates my writing.
