I’ve always been fascinated by dreams—their veiled layers of significance, certainly, but also their innate ability to remove all concept of time.
Before films like Inception made such musings and their pseudo-scientific explanations public fodder, we were simply left to contemplate on our own the fantastical notion that we could somehow be transported into another world devoid of structure... one in which anything could happen.
Characters fade in and out, some living, some deceased—still others are composites of vaguely familiar personalities we may have encountered in passing. Settings are at once known and foreign, and scenarios play out in succession, often making it difficult to discern where one dream ends and another begins.
But all that pales in comparison to this fixed element of time, the ticking clock that provides the backdrop to all reveries.
How often have you dozed for just a moment, only to wake up and find that hours have elapsed? Perhaps still more fascinating to me is the opposite phenomenon, when an elaborate imaginary play of sorts seems to meander on endlessly; but upon drifting back into consciousness, the timepiece tells a very different tale of mere minutes.
Time is the one constant, so we’ve been taught the entirety of our lives; the standard upon which nearly every other element is based.
And yet... dare to close your eyes for an instant, and an eternity may pass by.
Published: October 4, 2019