Thursday, July 17, 2008

The Time Machine Project

Sam Beckett likened our lives to a ball of string, all balled up so all the points are touching, and a person could Leap from any point on the string to any other. Before that, Kurt Vonnegut introduced the Tralfamadorean concept of time, a life that can be lived in any order -- and moments, therefore, that are to be experienced in and of themselves, without the burden of impending loss.

In Time and Again, Jack Finney brought to life the idea of Time Travel through focusing on artifacts of a certain era, and excluding anything of the modern day that would interfere with the illusion. This same concept drives the film Somewhere in Time. Not that I have made a lifelong study of such things or anything.

I have started building a time machine in my home. It's a sensory time machine, filled with things that transport me through sight and sound to earlier times in my life. It works remarkably well. I can't affect my own past -- nor would I want to! -- but I can come surprisingly close to re-experiencing it.

Some of the things I've been revisiting recently, which form the building blocks of my personal Time Machine:



Hey Deanie, won't you come out tonight?


To Boldly Go...


What's in your Time Machine?

2 comments:

M. C. Valada said...

The portraits that I took for the Washington Post and for the Worldcon Portrait Project would line my Time Machine. The boxed Lord of the Rings set that my college boyfriend bought me around 1970 and the audio l.p.s of Franco Zifferelli's Romeo and Juliet he gave me the year before. The letter from Leonard Whiting I got in 1967. My Nikon F2s. "Meet the Beatles." The cards Len sent me in July, 1989. That's a good start.

GH said...

Thanks for contributing your list, Christine. I hope others will do the same! And fellow bloggers, feel free to port the concept to your own blogs, as well.