"The Time Traveler's Wife"

[fiefoe]

The ability to time-travel is definitely a boon for the philosophically inclined. Audrey Niffenegger likens it to 'living on a metaphysical trapeze'.

• (A second meeting of selves): A translucent moment. I didn't understand, and then I did, just like that. I watch it happen. I want to be both of us at once, feel again the feeling of losing the edges of my self, of seeing the admixture of future and present for the first time. But I'm too accustomed, too comfortable with it, and so I am left on the outside, remembering the wonder of being nine and suddenly seeing, knowing, that my friend, guide, brother was me. Me, only me. The loneliness of it.
  
• (a self from 1992): he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.
  
• "I can only do things that work toward what has already happened."
• This older self seems leaner and more weary, more solid and secure. But with me he can afford to show off: he's got my number so completely that I can only acquiesce to him, in my own best interests.
• "Maybe future itself is less substantial? I don't know. I always feel like I'm breathing thin air, out there in the future."
  

I am reminded of a quote from "The Art of Looking Sideways": As St Augustine pointed out, the world is made of time - not in time.

immer wieder: again and again