Timelines

“Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held.” - Welcome to Night Vale (EP 21)

The topic of time is what I consider a ~creepy~ topic; looking back at it, there is nothing that can be done to change what has already happened. The quote I put above is from a popular podcast I love to listen to called Welcome to Night Vale, which is a mixture of NPR meets the twilight zone. Time doesn’t 100% work normally in Night Vale (“Clocks and calendars don’t work in Night Vale. Time itself doesn’t work.”), which leads to some interesting analyses of the function of time and what time represents to society. Days are literally canceled and just don’t happen (“Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error.”) Some people grow old, while others just stay the same age for, what we would consider, years.

Now to tie this to this weeks reading. Imagine if we our perception and understanding of time was like that in Nigh Vale. While we would be used to it, it would still be super confusing. Timelines, while occasionally may be lacking details like the one on page 12 of the reading, are useful for allowing society to percieve our past. If you look at someone’s personal planner, the way they organize their time may be different from yours, but eventually they will all be able to fit into a consistent representation of how time was/plans to be utilized on a time line.