I Travel Through Time

Early Sunday morning - and I mean early early, two in the morning early - I found myself hurtling through time. No joke. I was lying in bed, when I felt a rumbling in the Venetian hotel room. I immediately sat up and looked about me and noticed a great big black hole in the room, right where the door to the bathroom used to be. I got out of bed entered the black hole, and was temporaly displaced.

Traveling through time is a lot like falling asleep. Images and perceptions from reality slowly blend with the thoughts of the mind, to create the sort of experience that no one can ever seem to remember clearly. In this case, though, instead of the memories of the day melting with my consciousness, it was the memories of the future.

However, I only traveled an hour ahead in time, so the visions that flashed before my eyes were pretty bland. I just saw myself sleeping. Plus, there were some monsters and aliens, Anna Friel, a dragon, postal workers, Viking beserkers, boxes, foxes, bagels with loxes - but the vision was mostly of myself, sleeping.

Traveling through time would be very exciting, if it didn't happen only at night. Can you imagine, going through twenty years of time? You'd see twenty years of your life, played in fast forward, or maybe cut up like a newsreel or the "Previously On" segments of television shows. You'd see the most significant portions, combined with the dream imagery that that flows in and out of your imagination without you knowing it (I believe they call it the subconscious).

Sadly, time travel only happens at night, and only at intervals of one hour. In the spring, we travel one hour into the future, and in the fall, we go one hour back in time.

When America set its own clocks back several weeks ago, the Italians did nothing. "Imperialist Swine," they said, "we will not follow their lead, no, no matter how practical." So in Italy we bided our time, waited until the Americans were not looking, and quickly set our clocks forward. Because, you know, it's a good idea, we just don't want to give credit where credit is due.