Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson

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    Chapter Two: "Images and Metaphysics of Time."
    Moving water, Priestley writes, has always been our favorite image of time. "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away."
    Intellectually, this is unsatisfying because streams have banks. Therefore, we are forced to consider what it is that stands still while time is flowing. And where are we? On the banks or in the water?
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    Chapter Three: "Time among the Scientists."
    "Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it." So said Einstein.
    In this "mysterious realm," as Priestley puts it, there is no place in which to discover any final meaning of space and time.
    Gustav Stromberg claims the existence of a five-dimensional universe which would include the four-dimensional space-time world of physics. He calls it the "Eternity Domain." It lies beyond both space and time in their physical sense. In this domain, present, past, and future are without meaning.
    There is only a oneness of existence.
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    Chapter Four: "Time in Fiction and Drama."
    Say a man was born in 1900, Priestley writes. If 1890 still exists somewhere, he might be able to pay it a visit. But he could only do it as an observer because 1890 plus his physical intervention would no longer be 1890 as it was.
    If he wanted to do more than stare at 1890, if he wanted to experience 1890 as somebody alive, he would have to make use of the nontemporal part of his mind to enter the mind of somebody living in 1890.
    What enforces this limitation, Priestley claims, is not the traveling itself but the destination. A man born in 1900 who dies in 1970 is a prisoner of those seventy years of chronological time. Therefore, physically, he could not be part of any other chronological time whether it was 1890 or 2190.
    That disturbs me. Let me think about it.
    No; that can't apply to me.
    Because I've already been there.
    1896, without my physical intervention, would no longer be 1896 as it was.
    Therefore, I must go back.
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    Part Two: "The Ideas of Time."
    I've been reading and taking notes for hours. My wrist aches, my eyes are tired, I feel a rising hint of headache underneath.
    I can't stop, though. I have to learn all I can so I can discover the way to get back to her. Desire is an obvious key. But there must be some technique, some method. I have yet to find that.
    But I will, Elise.
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    The world of ancient man, writes Priestley, was sustained, not by chronology but by the Great Time, the Eternal Dream Time-past, present, and future all part of an Eternal Instant.
    Sounds like Stromberg's Eternity Domain. Sounds, too, like Newton's theory of absolute time, which "flows equably without relation to anything external." Science has discarded this theory, but maybe he was right.
    This idea of the Great Time haunts us in many ways, Priestley continues, moving our minds and our actions. Man thinks constantly of "going back," away from all worldly pressures; to neighborhoods which never change, where boy-men play forever.
    Perhaps our true selves-our essential selves-exist in this Eternity Domain, our awareness of it restricted by our physical senses.
    Death would be the ultimate escape from these restrictions-but escape before death is conceivable too. The secret has to be withdrawal from the restrictions of environment. We can't do this physically, therefore we must do it mentally, with what Priestley calls the "nontemporal" portion of our mind.
    In brief: It is my consciousness of now which keeps me rooted here.
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    Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point "in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us."
    I have only to lift myself to a vantage point from which I can catch sight of and then reach the point in this procession I want to reach.
    The final chapter. After this, I'm on