Billygean.co.uk

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

I wasted time and now doth time waste me

"I'm lost in The Time Traveler's Wife," I said to Mike who was equally absorbed in Lost. An no, he did not understand the ending for all those who watched it.

"These characters are so real," I said. "I keep wondering what they're up to."

Mike smiled. "Good. I'm surprised you understand it."

"Pardon?"

"Well, come on. It's about time travel. You thought if you travelled for less time than time zones you covered you could call yourself."

I tutted. "When I said our flight needed to be half an hour shorter for that to happen in Rome my Dad just agreed."

"Right."

"Anyway I don't actually understand the time travelling," I said. "There was this bit with a painting -"

"Hold on, we need paper and pen for this," Mike said.

"Mike, it's half twelve and I have a nine."

He turned and stared at me as he walked out of the room. "You started this."

He sat down next to me on my bed, pen and paper in hand. "So, the painting."

"Yes, he sees a painting in his future with no date on it. When he goes to his past he finds her painting it. She goes to add a date on and he stops her, saying it doesn't in the present. She write it on anyway, because she wanted to test causality. Eventually, in the future, she rips it off because she gets frightened." I pause. "So what I don't get is whether the painting had no date on it anyway, or whether it never had a date on because of what he said."

Mike paused. "Time isn't necessarily linear like that you know," he said, drawing a timeline. "If you do something in the past here," he said, indicating an X, "it doesn't necessarily transcribe to this future," he said. "It can transcribe to another future. The future is just a piece of time. It's like what that Buddhist guy said about turning the boat around."

I started rocking. "So there is no definite future?"

"Nope. We have no future."

"Is this a warped, mathematician's way of dumping me?"

by billygean.co.uk at 7:53 AM |