Time Is Not Fundamental

By Salvatore Difalco

--

Time Is Not Fundamental

I don’t think walking backwards would change anything. I don’t wear a watch. I mean, I stopped wearing one long before smartphones made watches unnecessary. My friend Ira, who inherited some money from a rich uncle, collects watches—Rolex, Patek Philipe, Omega, and then rarer watch brands like Urwerk, Enicar and Sinn. My father wore an old Omega his father had given to him back in Sicily. My father died of lung cancer when I was twelve and he didn’t exactly leave the watch to me, but it came into my possession. Too busy losing her mind with grief at the time, my mother didn’t care much about the watch. What did I do with it? I have to think about that. I never wore it. The leather band was distressed and smelled like sweat. That was a few decades ago. My memory is cloudy. Misremembered details, timelines, emotions. I mean, that’s why I was thinking about walking backwards and somehow turning back the clock, not as an actual thing I believe is possible, but more as a thought experiment. Imagine if you could turn back the clock merely by walking backwards—I mean like backtracking in the block universe, if such a conception is true. I guess there are a few things I’d like to remember more clearly, or change, that I would change given a chance. But maybe it’s stupid of me to torture myself by thinking about what could have been. We can all wallow in the foggy bogland of what could have been, but it accomplishes nothing. I’m late for my poker game. Lost track of time doom-scrolling. Scientists are concerned. The James Webb Telescope has revealed the universe may be older and bigger than we ever imagined. Also, dark energy seems to be losing its spunk. In which case the universe will suffer the big crunch in roughly thirty three billion years. At the poker game Ira is wearing a cool watch. He extends his wrist and tells me it’s the Ludovic Ballouard Upside Down, very rare. It re-conceptualizes the way the dial displays time. I don’t quite know what to make of it. I tell him I had an Omega once. What happened to it? he wants to know. I tell him I can’t remember, but right at that moment I have a sudden recollection of being as jammed up as I had ever been and pawning the Omega, along with everything else I owned of value. I recall feeling no shame about it. I wonder if the shame I’m feeling now, in the present moment, with the other poker players squeezing their cards, smoking, chatting, and laughing—I wonder if the shame currently burning my ears makes up for it.

---

Author Bio:

Salvatore Difalco writes from Toronto Canada.