Sixteenth lecture for my students in English 140, UC Santa Barbara, Summer 2012. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/su12/index.html

1. Lecture 16: The Mechanics of Time Travel
English 140
UC Santa Barbara
Summer 2012
30 August 2012
“[M]ay the Sea of Life stretch before you like glass, and
may you always have the wind at your backs.”
—Gomez’s wedding toast, p. 278

2. The color blue
Henry: “I would hold it close to my face, so close I
couldn’t see anything but that blue. It would fill me
with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with
alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling
of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of
the word.” (22)
“I sat on the back porch in my pajamas with Mom
and Dad and Mrs. and Mr. Kim, drinking lemonade
and watching the blueness of the evening sky.” (25)
“The streetlights tint the sky orange above me; it’s a
deep cerulean blue over the lake.” (117)

3. Henry’s various theories
At 35: “things happen the way they happened,
once and only once. I’m not a proponent of
splitting universes.” (46; ch. 3)
At 15: “a self from 1992 […] 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.” (57; ch. 4)
“everything has already happened.” (57)

4. At 35: “The choices we’re working with here are a
block universe, where past, present and future all
coexist simultaneously and everything has already
happened; chaos, where anything can happen and
nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all
the variables; and a Christian universe in which God
made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we
have free will anyway.” (76; ch. 4)
At 40: “My mother dying … it’s the pivotal thing …
everything else goes around and around it … I dream
about it, and I also – time travel to it. Over and over.”
(114; ch. 6)
To Gomez, at 36: “There’s something wrong with me.
I get dislocated in time, for no reason. I can’t control
it, I never know when it’s going to happen, or where
and when I’ll end up.” (143; ch. 8)

5. To Gomez, at 40: “Causation only runs forward.
Things happen once, only once. If you know
things … I feel trapped, most of the time. If you
are in time, not knowing … you’re free. Trust
me.” (145; ch. 8)
At 28, to Clare: “It’s a brain thing […] things like
running, and sex, and meditation tend to help
me stay put in the present.” (166; ch. 9)
“So far, my range is about fifty years in each
direction. But I very rarely go to the future, and I
don’t think I’ve ever seen much of anything
there that I found useful. It’s the past that exerts
a lot of pull. In the past I feel much more solid.
Maybe the future itself is less substantial?”
(167; ch. 9)

6. Clare’s feelings
At 13: “sometimes you tell me something and I feel
like the future is already there, you know?” (75; ch. 4)
At 20, to Gomez: “I can see everything laid out, like a
map, past and future, everything at once, like an
angel. […] It’s happened already. All at once. […] I’ve
seen my future; I can’t change it, and I wouldn’t if I
could.” (149; ch. 8)
“nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead,
or far away, right now we are here, and nothing can
mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect
moment.” (241; ch. 11)
“He is back in the present, my younger Henry, the one
who belongs here.” (276; ch. 14)

7. The fantasy of compensation
“I roll over and look at him and realize that his
mouth is bleeding profusely. I jump up to get a
washcloth and Henry is still smiling when I get
back and start daubing at his lip.” (42; ch. 3)
“One of the best and most painful things about
time traveling has been the opportunity to see
my mother alive.” (109; ch. 6)
“I wish for a moment that Time would lift me out
of this day [Christmas Eve], and into some more
benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to
avoid the sadness; dead people need us to
remember them, even if it eats us.” (118; ch. 7)