I watched an old Star Trek voyager last night; Captain Janeway and Tom got caught in a subspace time fracture. I’ll spare the details but suffice it to say the universe is full of parallel possibilities.
I think a lot about time. I think about its malleability, the thin lines between what was and what is, how quickly the future turns into the past. The way loss that took place years ago generates longing today.
Writers see space and time as permeable, not as fixed lines or defined space, well at least I do. Nothing seems to roll out straight forward or even backwards for that matter. Things unfurl, spiral, stagnate and then burst, form and reform. Beginnings and endings circle in on each other.
At one point in that Voyager episode they stood inside the time fracture seeing two distinct scenes; one of a busy town square, the other of ruins. Only at the vey end did they realize their own presence resulted in the destruction. In other words, they were the force that shifted events.
Sometimes I feel I live in the fracture between times, that almost indiscernible line from where I can perceive possibilities. There are so many that I end up watching them instead of moving into one. Claiming a line, a path, a turn of events, even if it is just for today.