Some excerpts from Jorge Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths from his book "Labyrinths"
Thus I proceeded as my eyes of a man already dead registered the elapsing of that day, which was perhaps the last and diffusion of the night.
I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some ways involve the stars.
A high-pitched, almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance.
The damp path zigzagged like those of my childhood.
From that moment on, I felt about me and within my dark body an invisible, intangible swarming. Not the swarming of divergent, parallel and finally coalescent armies, but a more inaccessible, more intimate agitation that they in some manner prefigured.
In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, (your ancestor) did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or we’re unaware of one another for centuries, embraces ALL possibilities of time. We do not exist in majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, bot of us. In the present one, which is a favourable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost.
In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, (your ancestor) did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or we’re unaware of one another for centuries, embraces ALL possibilities of time. We do not exist in majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, bot of us. In the present one, which is a favourable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost.
Time forks, perpetually towards innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy.
I love these parts!
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Two names, almost instantaneously, came into my mind. Ayn Rand and the Time Traveller of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine.
The way I have read Ayn Rand, I think she will reject the existence of parallel time. The future and past and present with all their infinite possibilities happening somewhere at the same time. What she accepts is the “today”, the time we live and exist. She does not want to focus beyond the parameters of what the senses cannot verify or understand. Only the vicinity of what the body and mind can produce and achieve is important.
On the other hand, the Time Traveller offers a different picture. Here, we see the man of infinite possibilities. A man who has gone to future and past and back. Unlike Ayn Rand, he could accept the “forking paths”, having defied the so-called limits of the fourth dimension—time. Time, like matter, is traversable. One can move back and forth. Time here becomes spatial. Although, the Time Traveller did not exist both at the past, present and future at the same time, I believe he would agree with Borges that time is not merely lateral but a “dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel” time.
The only problem he has to solve is how he will verify the existence of another version of self walking at the park or, for that matter, fighting for his life.
I love these parts!
===================================
Two names, almost instantaneously, came into my mind. Ayn Rand and the Time Traveller of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine.
The way I have read Ayn Rand, I think she will reject the existence of parallel time. The future and past and present with all their infinite possibilities happening somewhere at the same time. What she accepts is the “today”, the time we live and exist. She does not want to focus beyond the parameters of what the senses cannot verify or understand. Only the vicinity of what the body and mind can produce and achieve is important.
On the other hand, the Time Traveller offers a different picture. Here, we see the man of infinite possibilities. A man who has gone to future and past and back. Unlike Ayn Rand, he could accept the “forking paths”, having defied the so-called limits of the fourth dimension—time. Time, like matter, is traversable. One can move back and forth. Time here becomes spatial. Although, the Time Traveller did not exist both at the past, present and future at the same time, I believe he would agree with Borges that time is not merely lateral but a “dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel” time.
The only problem he has to solve is how he will verify the existence of another version of self walking at the park or, for that matter, fighting for his life.
