The (mostly) true story of a time traveler
Got home from work last night, and after a celebratory dinner with the family went into my home office to find this:
I will tell you two things without doubt:
1. It IS my handwriting, on a pad I keep on my desk, written apparently with a blue Sharpie that was lying by my mouse.
2. I did receive a completely unexpected bonus today, for a project I’d worked on over a year ago.
And yes, I DO think I know what THIS is all about…More later.
Journeyman
NBC’s new weekly series, Journeyman, is the story of Dan Vasser, journalist, husband and father who begins to travel in time, much to the frustration and disbelief of his wife, boss and police detective brother. Similar in situation to Audrey Niffenegger’s "The Time Travleler’s Wife," the main character doesn’t seem to have any control over when he travels, nor can he seem to control to when he journeys. Much like the show Quantum Leap, Vasser seems to travel to a time and situation that needs his influence.
In the pilot episode, during an early "dislocation," Dan saves a man from committing suicide, only to discover later that something terrible may well happen because of his intervention. In addition to this, his wife, boss and brother are convinced he’s got (take your pick) gambling, drinking or drug problems. They even stage an intervention of their own. Oh, and his brother arrests him. It’s an action-packed hour of television!
All in all, Journeyman makes a good start and explores a concept that many of us think about (some of us more than others, believe me), whether if we had the opportunity to change something in the past, could we do so for the better? Launching a television show has to be difficult. You must lay the foundation that all subsequent stories build from, but you have to get right to the point and have the pilot interesting enough to stand on its own while opening the audience’s minds to the possibilities. That’s a tough job.
On the Journeyman website at NBC.com, creator Kevin Falls talks about the process of writing the early episodes and the obvious comparisons to "The Time Traveler’s Wife." I understand those, but critics should take a break. Audrey Niffenegger didn’t invent the concept of time travel, and Journeyman would be far poorer a drama if Falls tried to avoid any comparison at all. It was eerie enough watching Journeyman and seeing a couple familiar issues, things and feelings I’m dealing with right now, but I don’t believe for a second that the producers of the show pulled anything from this blog and used it. That didn’t happen. I think it would be just as impossible to write a story about a married time traveler that didn’t in some ways resemble Niffenegger’s wonderful story.
The casting of Journeyman is excellent. Kevin McKidd (of HBO’s Rome) is excellent as a family man thrust into a strange and unsettling situation. He’s unflappable as he fights to save his marriage and family while in the middle of such a bizarre phenomenon.
Most new shows fail. I certainly hope Journeyman doesn’t. Though it casts a strange shadow on my story and this website, I think it has the potential to be a really good show. Best of luck to the producers, cast and crew. I’ll be watching.
Continued the "Living in the Past" chapter a little. I know the going is slow, and it’s tough because as interesting experiences happen, the early part of this adventure gets further and further away. I’m hoping for another flurry of production to get somewhat caught up very soon. Maybe even this weekend.
I’m noticing a lot of attention to time travel recently, both in the media and in popular entertainment. My family and I took a relaxing vacation, going to Newport, a couple hours north of here. Fun on the beach, and relaxing evenings took some of the edge off daily life. At night, we watched movies with our daughter. Two of the three we watched ended up being time travel stories. I didn’t pick them out, and as the first story, "Meet the Robinsons" unfolded, I caught a look and a sigh from my wife. I shrugged and shook my head in apology that although I hadn’t picked the movies, my "adventure" was again intruding into our life. She smiled a weary "apology accepted" and we watched the movie. Which turned out to be really good.
The next night, watching "The Last Mimzy," it became apparent close to the end that time travel was involved, and again my wife shook her head, this time without looking at me. In the morning, sitting on our balcony, looking out over the beach and ocean, she asked me, "is it just me, or is the whole world going time travel crazy?"
"Maybe it’s just like when you start looking at a certain make and model of car to buy, you start seeing them everywhere," I ventured.
"Could be," she said.
"If I were really self-centered, I’d say the universe was trying to tell me something."
"Who says you’re not self-centered?" she asked, laughing. The vacation was doing it’s job, and we were both relaxing back to a state of normalcy.
Then, last night, the first episode of "Journeyman." A review and more thoughts on the "time-travel crazy" world to follow.
Getting around to some more writing this weekend, and events over the past couple of months have further refined/confused what the TT experience is all about. I’ve received emails from 3 other possible TTers, as we’ve come to know ourselves, and our experiences are remarkably the same:
)The third is what’s on my mind right now, since I’ve really noticed these lately. But I don’t think it’s what you’re thinking.
In many TT stories, the protagonist goes back in time, does some things, and when he returns to the present, finds that the current situation has changed, but in ways noticeable only to him. The Butterfly Effect and Back to the Future
Three examples: My weight, physical condition and overall disposition (how’s THAT for minor changes?). Without going into detail that would get ahead of my telling the larger story, let’s just say that certain elements in my life today have been affected by what’s been going on before.
Here’s a theory that’s in development in my mind:
I’m starting to think that traveling in time may be more of a crossing of quantum boundaries than true timeline skipping. Some TT theorists believe that reality is continuously branching, based on every decision and/or action at the quantum level (smaller than the molecular or even atomic level), and that new universes are created at every branching. One "timeline" is merely a different branch and completely distinct from all the others. The Grandfather Paradox (you can’t go back in time and kill Grandpa because then you’d never be born and wouldn’t be able to travel back in time to kill your grandpa, which would mean you could be born…) is thereby handled and everybody’s happy.
So, if my experience is happening in a different series of branches, how are the changes manifesting here? Well, maybe it’s psychological – My experience is changing my outlook and the way I look at my life. Very possible.
Then again, there’s a nagging thought that maybe the barriers between the quantum realities aren’t that solid. My consciousness seems to be breaking through, after all. Maybe what happens in other realities echoes in this one, and very subtle forces can be in play across the boundaries.
That’s my current thinking, anyway. And I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s why I’m working to get the story told.
Again, sorry for the delay in getting back to the story. I’m really working to push it forward, because I’ve been traveling again the past week or so. The more time that passes before I write the narrative from my notes (right after I realize I’ve been traveling, I write long-hand notes to get the basics down), the more it reads like fiction, and that’s not what I want. It may well all be fiction, but when it sounds like it to me, some of the feeling is gone. It’s just not what I’m trying to communicate.
I’ve added a bit to Living In the Past, and will get a big portion of the rest of my first trip back done by the end of the week.
Thanks for reading.
One thing you can count on when spending your entertainment dollars on a movie with Denzel Washington in it, is that things will be tense. Denzel has a knack for picking stories that live on that edge from start to finish without resorting to silliness. Deja Vu, his latest release, just out on video, does flirt with the outskirts of unbelievability, but does offer some interesting angles on Time Travel. Nothing new theoretically, and there’s even a logical problem, but a good, sophisticated look at it.
Denzel Washington plays an agent of the ATF (Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) called in to investigate the terrorist bombing of a ferry in New Orleans that killed over 500 men, women and children. When he discovers that the body of a woman, who was thought to be a victim of the bombing, but was actually killed prior to the event, he gets interested in her case. Then, when he realizes that she had left him a voicemail just before dying, he understands that if he finds her killer, he finds the bomber. Denzel’s character is drafted onto an FBI team that’s investigating the bombing with some new technology that seemingly allows them to look 4 days into the past, before the event, to find clues. Little does he know that the technology is even more fantastic than it at first appears.
Those with an interest in Time Travel will recognize the common theme of trying to change the past and finding that cause and effect don’t always have a linear relationship. This theme is mixed with the multiple/branching timeline theories for a less than profound brew, but the end is a nice example of the theory that the universe may create temporary paradoxes, but ultimately things are set right and life goes on. I enjoyed the optimism of the ending, if not its original thinking. There’s not a LOT of that. Some, but not a lot.
All in all, if you’re a fan of TT genre, Deja Vu is a good watch.
I was all set to get writing again a few days ago, since the furor of my being AWOL is pretty much over, but I had a little episode that almost made me chuck the whole project. I’d just dropped my daughter off at school, and was walking back to my car, thinking of getting back to the computer and looking forward to continuing the story. I rounded a corner, and just as I was pulling the keys out of my pocket, I saw the car parked next to me, a shiny black Hummer with exactly the front grill appendages the one that hit me had. The sight stopped me in my tracks and put one of those feelings in my gut that’s kind of like the biggest, baddest roller coaster you’ve ever ridden.
Apparently, I hadn’t seen a Hummer up close since the one in Cincinnati plowed into me, and I guess it kind of threw me for a loop.
That was a week ago tomorrow. Tonight, I pulled myself together, had a beer and worked on "Living In the Past" a little. Onward. Hopefully next time, when a big black Hummer inserts itself into my life, I’ll handle it better!
CNN’s Fast Forward to the Past: The Great Time Travel Debate is a nice little package that summarizes current leading TT ideas. Naturally mentioning the movies Back to the Future , Star Trek and yes, even the The Terminator , it nonetheless provides a brief, if not particularly deep, roundup of string theory, black holes, worm holes, quantum foam and Deloreans for use in TT.
Okay, just kidding about the Deloreans.
Ever since HG Wells wrote The Time Machine
If we’re going to use movies to iconicize our directions of thought when it comes to time travel, we need to also look at Somewhere in Time
One of the reasons I changed the format and design of this blog is the apparent interest I found in relating the story I’m telling in the sidebar (see "The Story So Far"). As I explore what’s going on with regard to that story (because of reasons obvious when you read it – there’s a milestone out there I will apparently reach next year) I’ll post what I find and hopefully get the input of readers of the blog.
It’s my hope that the extra writing will make the narration of my story better and clearer. I also promise not to let the blogging get in the way of telling the story.
Here’s the Time Traveler’s Blog’s new home. Thanks to my friends at HereThereBeBlogs for this blog’s start.
The site will grow from here.
<Updated 1:05pm, April 22, 2007>
I’m going to be very frank here.
I don’t know WHAT the hell happened. I’m sorry for the break in publishing, but something unusual and quite frightening happened, which I’ll describe in greater detail as soon as it makes sense (to me, at least). Suffice it to say the past month has been pretty crazy, with no small amount of drama, and even a little "official" involvement, if you know what I mean.
In short, I went to bed on March 8, 2007, had a pretty good night’s sleep (thanks to a nighttime cold medicine – I had come down with the crap that’s making its rounds) and woke up on what I thought was March 9, 2007.
I was wrong. It was March 25, and my being there, in bed in the same pajama bottoms I had retired in, was quite a surprise, since I hadn’t been seen in 16 days.
<Update – April 22, 2007>
Well, as Ricky Ricardo might say, I had lots of ‘splain’ to do.
My wife has been really, really patient with all of this stuff, alternately thinking I’m pulling a fast one, and then blaming it on the car crash and subsequent medical issues, from which I’m happy to say I’m now completely recovered. Again, I don’t know what the hell happened, but here’s what we know:
I have a couple ideas, but I’m not willing to share them yet. More when I am.
