(On the Geometry of the Invisible and the Strange Case of Temporal Volume)
It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?
Whenever we try to explain time, we reach instinctively for metaphors of space. A line. A path. A loop. A tunnel. A spiral. A sphere. A goddamn labyrinth. As if the only way to understand how we move through time is to imagine ourselves somewhere.
Why?
Because time, in its raw form, unfolds. And unfolding requires dimension. Requires volume. Requires space.
Time as a Line (1D) — The Industrial Myth of Forward
If time were truly linear, it would be a string stretched tight between past and future.
A → B → C.
Cause → Effect.
Morning → Noon → Night.
Birth → Decision → Death.
This is the time of clocks. Inevitable. Irreversible. Boring. It’s the illusion we need to catch a train, or pay our taxes on time, or pretend we’re not terrified of what we left behind. Linear time is a prosthetic — built so we don’t drown in contingency. But let’s not kid ourselves: real life doesn’t happen in a straight line. It coils. It loops. It repeats. It forgets.
Time as a Page (2D) — The Garden of Bifurcations
Now imagine a page. On the horizontal: your basic timeline. On the vertical: every choice you didn’t make. Every version of you that might’ve been. Each moment a crossroads. Each fork a ghost. This is the time of Borges, of sliding doors and doppelgängers and déjà vus. It’s the time of alternative timelines and multiversal regrets. Here, you don’t just move forward — you branch. You fracture. You multiply.
It’s better than the line. But still… too flat.
Time as a Body (3D) — The Architecture of Echo
Now close your eyes. Picture not a line. Not a sheet. But a chamber. Time, in three dimensions, is not something you move through. It’s something that moves through you. In this model:
- The X-axis is chronology — your string of memories, labeled by date.
- The Y-axis is possibility — each divergent choice, each shattered mirror.
- The Z-axis is resonance — depth, intensity, recursion, meaning.
You don’t just remember the past. You re-enter it. You don’t just await the future. You negotiate with it. The present isn’t a moment. It’s a node. A tension point. A breathing membrane. Time doesn’t flow — it vibrates. And like all vibrations, it has amplitude, frequency, and tone.
So How Does It Feel, This Tridimensional Time?
It feels like returning to a memory only to realize it’s been watching you.
It feels like déjà vu laced with grief.
It feels like living a moment twice — once in real life, once in thought — and not knowing which was more real.
It feels like your future depends on which direction you feel toward, not which direction you walk.
Examples? Fiction’s Been Trying to Tell Us for Years.
- Interstellar, where love has gravitational mass.
- Arrival, where language collapses time into comprehension.
- Slaughterhouse-Five, where Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck and simply… drifts.
- Proust, who chews a madeleine and is launched across time not by plot, but by texture.
- Saint Augustine, who realized that the past and future are fictions held inside the present — a distension of the soul.
What Does This Mean?
That memory isn’t recollection. It’s navigation.
That history isn’t fixed. It’s interpreted.
That death isn’t a wall. It’s a door, with poor signage.
That the self isn’t an arrow in time. It’s an echo chamber for what time sounds like when it tries to mean something.
So no — time doesn’t flow. It breathes. It bends. It breaks. It builds itself around us like a cathedral made of heartbeat and dust. And maybe we’re not travelers in time at all. Maybe we’re just the rooms it keeps passing through.
But then again — do we need time to explain space?
What do you think?
(I think that’s the question that turns the universe inside out. Because if space helps us measure time, maybe time helps us mean space. Maybe we need time to explain space the way we need memory to explain place. A room is just a room — until something happens in it. Then it becomes a scene, a story, a scar. And that’s what time does to space: it etches it. It gives it texture, direction, consequence. It makes it matter. So perhaps the real answer is this: Time and space don’t explain each other — they haunt each other. Like two mirrors facing inward. Or two lovers, endlessly circling the same silence.)
Andrei Jebeleanu 