Wednesday 17 February 2010

Napping 4D

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It's big, the Eiffel Tower. Terribly big. It's easy to forget but it's an honest-to-goodness skyscraper, like nothing that had come before. And at its apex there's a genteely furnished living room diagonally bisected by a gigantic girder where two wax likenesses of Eiffel and Edison sip tea and listen to cylinders: time captured and the sky scraped, both for the very first time, they must have felt like gods. And I thought when are we going to see anything that exciting again? We'll have to wait until Time Travel.

And then about a month ago it hit me that would never happen. Time Travel. I was watching old videos of life in the year 2000 and there we were in our twenties pissing around in the garden that's now next door and it was suddenly clear to me that the past was just gone. It's there in our heads, and in what we own, but there's no reaching it. And I know we talk about four dimensions but this is a dimension we can only move forward in and it takes no energy to do so and it requires no force, so it's really not the same. Which is fine. Everything's closed and cosy in this finite Universe, fine. Except... well I had been planning to get back into harness on the Doctor Whoey vehicle I used to go on about before the fire and now I suddenly find I don't believe in the central concept. It's only pretend I know, but there's nothing to explore in an idea I've dismissed unless, UNLESS I could somehow work out a practicable method for our hero to travel anywhere in time without cheating. So that was sort of it. 
Right, 80's break.


Brilliant! The only thing they got right was the hand dryer.

And on Sunday evening after the Dungeons, Transboundy Gal (hmm... maybe another name) and I went to the pictures at West India Quays, a location that has totally kept faith with what a place should look like in 2010. We watched A Single Man, and THERE was the past... I mean they must have gone to 1962 to film it, it was extraordinary and all the sadder for it. Outside and the water was still, a thousand lights were on and nobody home, and I realised coming here on a school night was more exciting than the Tate, so much more exciting, we risked a cigarette and I once more pondered: future, future, but how do you get back?

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Monday was a write-off of course. In a good way. Mondays are normally a write-off these days. But, but, but... hanging out the washing I had a moment that merited if not the full "Eureka" then at least a little "Eurekeeny", when it suddenly occurred to me how you might be able to visit the past without having to travel backwards through time after all. All it would require is infinite patience, for time to be cyclical, and a big-bounce-proof container. But that's MY idea, Science, you're not allowed to nick it. Still, great! Right time to get out of bed... although meh*, anything I miss I know now I'll be able to catch next time around. Ah yes, legs this has.

* And it's surely a sign of this country's increasing civility that we finally have our an English word for "bof".

(originally posted on myspace here)

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