Although I have written two pieces already called – Time, and The Machine, this one is in reference to a couple of films and of the general concept of time. How we are bound by it and beholden to it, marching forward and we are powerless to stop it.

Chronesthesia – the name for mental Time travel, which is you have seen the Butterfly Effect film, think of it like that. But personally, I had already thought of it in relation to thoughts, when considering nostalgia and future worries as thought processes we have. Which intrinsically require us to mentality ‘time travel’ to do either.

Back To The Future – (1984) – another classic, and shows the folly of going backwards. But also the paradox that gets created by meddling with time as they call it.

The Time Machine (1960) – a great film, and story from H.G. Wells. But unlike the above film, showed how you couldn’t actually go back any further than your current time. As he was away in the future for a week, and when he returned, a week had passed.

Harry Potter 3 – A timepiece for travel was used, but allowing for an overlay of going backwards before it ‘wore off’. But as you are already there, two now exist. Almost more as interdimensional time beings who evaporate when the time is up. Slightly different way of portraying it, I guess.

Dr Who episode (Weeping Angels) – staring at a statue transports a woman back in time on a one-way ticket. Removing the physical self from that time entirely with no way to come back, so disrupting the future and the past simultaneously.

If we didn’t have the sun up and sun down each day, and we didn’t show visible signs of aging, how would we keep tabs on it? And if we didn’t have calendars, clocks and records, how would we know when we are? This is why perhaps it is so easy to see how things can be written and rearranged within history to paint a picture of a placement in time. To think of before, or of how people were and society was, giving reason for how things are now. Or so it would appear. But it is always now, and technically you are always travelling through time, not alongside it, or over it, but through it. Which is why it seems we cannot sidestep it, or avoid it, or change its speed or trajectory, only hold for dear life as they say, and see if we can make it to what they might say was ‘your time’…

(c) K Wicks