The Time Traveler’s Lament | 10

I'd be lying to you if I said I'd only just returned. In fact it's been over six months since I last voyaged anywhere, but the fatigue of the ‘traveling’ combined with the illogical nature of the places I've been has left me at a loss for words.

Give me a moment to breathe, and then I will explain…

Okay.

…It started with a simple hypothesis, a question about the nature of true reality. Have I truly been traveling to the past? Have I truly been witnessing visions of the future? Or is it the case that I have been experiencing some sort of parallel reality, in the same way that a dream parallels waking life. Insofar as my experiences in the past, the stories that I have returned with are too useful and too easily applied to my life to discount them as mere fiction.

Still though, there is something about them that makes me uneasy, as though they are too beautiful or too visceral to be taken as fact upon my return. So I'm sure you can understand, a resolute scholar of the unbelievable like myself wouldn't be able to resist the allure of a new experiment.

This, as always, is where I began to lose myself.

I may have taken it too far. And now... I'm not sure who I've become, or if I've returned as some parallel of myself. I don't know if I lost something of myself this time that I will never retrieve.

This voyage was a new kind of direction in that I wasn't trying to go into the past or to see any potential futures. Rather, I was trying to see the truth of the present and in doing so I realized truth itself is flexible and creative. There is always something negative happening; there is always something positive happening; and there is always a nothingness that exists in between those two possibilities. This fact is simply immutable.

But let me begin with what I saw… what I experienced.

It started with a simple walk outside: I heard birdsong, the sound of engines being revved for the first time that day, lawn mowers humming in the distance, and the rustling of leaves in the trees nearest me. I closed my eyes as I walked out into the harsh glow of the sun, suddenly struck with fear at this new venture, at the multiplicity of the present.

Such a simple thing to go for a walk and yet because of this experiment I was immediately aware of every single living focal point that exist symbiotically with the others.

Every bird, every insect, every pet and every person existed as a unique personal point of reference for the universe. The fact that the plants and even the food that we eat may contain this point of reference as well was not lost on me. The fact that what once was alive may still provide some experiential understanding was staggering.

I was overwhelmed with this immersion in what felt like a living light ocean, in which my unique spark of life existed in chaotic waves with every other life form in the near vicinity. For the moment, I couldn't comprehend the world beyond my simple path so I simply chose to ignore it and take my first step.

What followed I can only describe as cosmically tyrannical.

Just before I left, I could hear in the aether that one must step into to time travel a command not to go, a warning that the day would not be hospitable to me. Flustered by the ephemeral command, and woefully stubborn, I put another foot in front of the first step, then another after that and then another after that. But after only a few steps I felt as though the sky had draped itself on my shoulders. Like a weighted blanket I hadn't asked for, everything around me pushed down as though to reinforce the warning that I had received. As though to say the outside world was not for me today.

Still, being the stubborn woman that I am I kept walking. The sky remained draped over my shoulders and pushed down on the bones in my arms. I tried to focus on the birds flying around me, how idyllic the scene looked, and how happy I should be to be in such warm sunlight.

It shouldn't be surprising, that this caused a massive panic attack. I returned home, and immediately began hyperventilating. It felt as though the world had entered my house with me and was swirling violently around my body. So many possibilities in a single present. so many choices that a single individual could make while surrounded by a plethora of individual life forms not only human but so many inhuman creatures as well that could also make so many different choices small and large and I — dangerously curious woman that I am — immersed myself in all of it.

Strangely enough, this produced a spontaneous time travel event. Lasting no more than a few minutes, this panic attack took me to a time and space where brightly colored curtains, floor cushions, and jingling lingerie were the norm, and I lay trapped in a room where harem girls were placed to be punished.

In retrospect I suppose, being spanked for disobedience to the universe itself was a rather light punishment, however it was still terrifying in the moment. To be whisked away like that. I had never before pictured the universe as an attractive and angry man, but after feeling the weight of the sky on my shoulders that morning I was quite certain he could do anything to me at all. Perhaps that was the form of the universe that I would understand best. I'm sure there's something to say about loneliness there but I'll leave it for another entry.

This was a few months ago, and I had been hesitant to write about it since. Feeling the present moment as a truly living creature that I am both a part of and isolated from has given me a new understanding of what it means to be a time traveler. But it has also made me hesitant to document my experiences. I'd prefer to be respectful to such a higher being as ‘the living present’, but I'm still not entirely sure how to do that.

In all honesty though, time traveling in the present day, as opposed to living in the past or trying to see the many futures that lie in wait, was much more powerful and persuasive. The warning, the offense, and the punishment was so tangibly lived. It was immediate and then it was done, as though the present can summon the past. Or even mold the future.

I am confused about where my next adventure lies, but this time I am certain that I won't have to leave my own time to find it. It is quite strange to say, but I think I left the immersive present with a gift.