One’s understanding of time is crucial.

Time is not created equal. Time is not the same for you as it is for me. Time is the not the same for the black rat who breathes at 85 breaths per minute as it is for the adult who breaths 15 breaths per minute.

We measure time in money and then buy things with that money; but the reality is, skip the dollar bill, and you’re buying things with time. Your time. Time that is limited and always running out. We barter and trade in time every day, whether by the alarm clock or the stock exchange.

When you write, you’re bending time. You’ve distilled a time, or an experience, into a volume others can open up and read. And when you finish, you can begin all over again. The book is the time machine itself and you, dear reader, are the time traveler. 

“Summerville’s Timeline Theory

This theory states that there is only one universe that would bend like a straightened paper clip by the events of time travel. When time travel occurs a chemical change occurs in the universe allowing the law of conservation of mass to be followed—e.g., a time traveler materializes in the intended time out of the elements currently present in that time, or if a current version of him/herself exists they will transfer to the future consciousness—and the universe is forever changed. Any change or deviation from the original flow of events would not negate the existence of the traveler. The time traveler is real to that time and place as reinforced by the chemical change to the universe^{[clarification needed]} that landed him at that point in the time line. Therefore if by time traveling into the past “the past self” is killed, “the future self” would live on because the past self is not him or her. It is another person from the point they entered that time. If the past self goes on to time travel, they create a cascade of time travel at the point they entered the past. Each journey into the past, no matter how similar, creates a different flow of events. Though it may mirror the events each time, this will continue until the flow of events affects the past self to the point they are no longer capable of or desire to follow that flow of events.”

From time to time you read a book that leaves you shaking and breathless. You close the pages and sit back and reality is bendable and flexible. You could start the story over again, but you choose not to because you’re exhausted and that exhaustion is difficult to express. Minute changes map out the landscape of your brain as seratonin, adrenaline and hormonal levels shift and change. A chemical change in your private universe.

All over the world, long gone authors turning to bones and dust in the ground are reborn into the universe as binder’s glue and onion skin pages and ink or a flat screen electronic device, and you hold them in the intimate space between your hands. Returning to a point in time, an experience long gone, to a memory lost, opportunities missed, to pluck lovers and heroes out of the maelstrom and take them back to their second chances — resurrecting ourselves alongside them.

When we tire, we close the book, grant ourselves rest before we open the cover, and we do it — all over again. Until we are no longer capable of or desire to follow that flow of events.

The existence of my work alone is damning proof of my failure to halt time and change the course of events, over and over again. You see, I can only write about it. I can never go there, the same way the reader can. One can never return to the past.