A flexible approach to the impossible coincidence.
Find a quiet, secluded space... get comfortable, close your eyes, and imagine: the postman rings. A package trapped for 60+ years in the USPS's Dead Letter Office has finally arrived. The sender: Some odd Canadian named Lyons. Contents: The long-lost issue of an obscure mag dedicated entirely to a flexible, multi-layered framework for one solitary routine. Hidden math of some kind may be involved.
Enough to jolt some from their magical slumber in frantic search of freshly-baked eye cookies? Sure. But for those still reveling comfortably in this fantasy, the Gnominal Gnomes proudly present...
Concordance ... or "Turn of a Friendly Word" ... a flexible approach to the impossible coincidence
No, this is not a lost issue of Ibidem. But after an ale or two, with a bit of squinting, perhaps you'll fool yourself.
A volunteer is invited to mix eight small envelopes featuring ornately-designed graphics (in this case large question marks). She then chooses four for herself and four for the performer. Despite a myriad of genuinely free choices leading to this point, the volunteer's decisions are shown to have been subliminally influenced by text hidden in each envelope's design. She has in fact selected envelopes subliminally labeled "one" through "four" for herself, and (likewise) "one" through "four" for the performer.
The performer's envelopes are opened. Each contains a single word forming - quite surprisingly - a logical, grammatically correct sentence. For example, "You [or Gretchen] picked eight words." The volunteer follows suit - her mystically-constructed sentence relating in some way to the performer's. For example: "I [or John] made the magic!"
Concordance provides a flexible, multi-layered framework for the "impossible coincidence" - merely scratching the surface of a new angle on miraculous wordplay.
1st edition 2024, PDF 34 pages.
word count: 5280 which is equivalent to 21 standard pages of text
