Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe - Blackouts and Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows - Measure all things together - Spaces in time: Contentedness and Cataclysmic Changes - Rivers of life flowing behind the scenes: Faucets, Eternities, and Probabilities Undefined - Outtakes, Golden Paragraphs, Degrees of Relevance, Each a Marvel> - Until Yesterday: Experience, Existence, Whose Universe, Co-Existence - A different way of seeing: Connected beneath surfaces, the Introduction at the end, short bits - Alternate Timeline(s): Principles, Perspective and Potential, Before Early Notes
Who and what you are evolves over time according to who and what is around you. Going into business vs. teaching, marrying this person instead of that person, you grow into a different person over the course of years according to the choices you have made to what to surround yourself with and who to define yourself by. The median, the center that is always the same, your sense of identity or constant in all of these different (potential) realities or timelines is more of a myth than anything else, unless your definition of it can vary even more than how you vary from other people, for even if all the potential "yous", the you in all of the roads not taken all look like you, other people can have more in common with you now than you with your other "selves" along some of those different paths, and in the end, the relationships between both kinds of others (literally different people or different ways you might have grown differently to have become different person than you did) to yourself is the same.
Now is the only time you as you exist now, will ever really have. Even if you live another 50 or 100 years, who you would become over time to be then, or the many ways you might grow differently to become based on different paths and different choices, only technically have much to do with who you are now and how you see things and life at this point in time. You are changing, evolving, or growing if you are doing life right or (are) noticing it, and what you might become is only a small part of you now, more than or equal to the sense that what you are now will only seem a part of you then in how you once were, might have been, or how you (only) used to see things (at one given point in the past).
Even if one takes that as a given, why bother to try to speed up or enhance people's abilities to perceive and understand (multidimensional) spacial (or multi-spacial, for short) relationships? Every species always has two choices, evolve or die. Unfortunately humanity has done far more courting of the latter than the former, and is or may be on the verge of making a serious commitment. Anything anyone can do to reverse that trend, one must ask oneself, if not now, when?
No species or social structures will or even optimally should last forever, nor worse, act like they will or should. However, rather than to try to keep what ever exists now locked in and continuous from one day or age to the next, the emphasis ought to be on improving its adaptability and its means to evolve (more quickly) into seemingly something else entirely, but only from the perspective of the present. Anything which grows into something else entirely is not only an extension of that originating existence or principle, it is (over the long run) its only means to continue at all. The longer we can keep true to our best aspirations for the future, and actualize them in however best we can adapt them to present circumstances, they are like a bigger signal fire to those in the future to emulate, because of how they exist through adaptations in more than one time or (in) more than one structure, than in any one actualization at only one point in time, however much larger it may be in scope at that time.
Notes 2 - Spring 2004
Rate of evolution- how quickly something grows into something which its previous states, which it is a direct continuation of, seem foreign or far removed. Conceptually, I am evolving far faster now. The quicker you make your furthest reach the new norm and regroup and solidify that (new) position, the more you gain greater abilities to expand into new areas. A conceptual battlefield type of advancement of conquering, not places as in the land example, but of times and others potential realizations of ideas, making theirs your own (before they can ever have the chance to).
The question "what are you" and the answer, "growing", I understand now far more fully than a year ago. "What" needs to be open ended and undefined. "More" is sufficient, and all that can ever be (accurately) anticipated.
Past evolving, moving away from fast, seems like a different person, most people 20 years ago, some fast changing lives, 2 year ago, me faster. Past is but a perspective on the present.
On one hand I can seem wise and mature while on another at the same time simplistic, very immature with an outlook that is constantly new and different, always changing and evolving. Taoists and Buddhists would understand this (seeming contrast in polar notions of maturity) as the same thing and do not see a contradiction in it. Western thinking has no map or guidebook for such notions. Their thinking is more one dimensional, thinking wisdom is found in a line of gaining knowledge and giving up what makes life fun and worth living to gain it, a straightjacket of behaving according to well defined patterns in tandem with others is how to grow up. That is how to grow old, not up. Age is not wisdom. Holding to beliefs of any type is not wisdom. Spinning them always on their head or viewing the world upside down, not because you will see it from a new perspective and thus further your goals and accumulate knowledge, but simply because doing so is more fun, makes life more interesting, unpredictable, and that is where wisdom lives. Those who hold to knowledge gain a ground or a "how to be" and "where" to view life from, but stand too long there and that ground or spot will grab you like vines, turn you into a tree unable or unwilling (same thing) to move from that spot for the rest of what will pass for the remainder of your "life".
Just like it would be wrong to think of everyone at the same age or level or point of experience in their lives even if the same age as you, it is also wrong to think of everyone dealing with or understanding life on the same level of reality. Just as their are many possible philosophies, there are many ways and levels of perceiving reality, and most peoples' levels of perception are as mixed and as mixable as philosophical ideas and concepts.
Learning to deal with rapid changes, finding new threads in faster currents in larger rivers.
Created by nature for the purpose of going beyond it. If not constantly increasing the limits of what is possible, surprising and surpassing the rest of the Universe, you are ultimately uninteresting, predictable, and a victim or pawn of those who will take the initiative to do so if you don't first. Anything that is not adapting faster is merely standing still in time like a tennis ball suspended in midair just waiting to be slammed by those whose speed is faster and thoughts are quicker. Senses such as sight and hearing were like new inventions, and nature is not as intent upon controlling and limiting improvements as humanity is. Greed has turned patents and copyrights into an excuse to hold back innovation among poorer people indefinitely because they are lengthened at will whenever profitable to do so, and new laws to control information benefits the richer countries which make the rules the rest must live by, or be starved economically and lose more control over their economy and property because of sanctions or less fair trade deals to sell their goods at world prices. When humanity seeks to control adaptation to benefit one group at the expense of others, it is becoming a retard of nature bound to fall behind a race the entire universe runs everyday. (If a minor researcher in a poor country came up with an almost free energy source which could put all the oil companies out of existence overnight, would he/she be able to market it? Would his creation and rights to it be accepted by richer countries? Could he give it away to benefit all humanity and turn the world economy upside down? If you think it would not be stolen, forced to sell it, or being killed and charged with theft of his own ideas from someone who did not invent it, and have it come under the control of the most powerful groups now to limit it as much as possible and profit from it as much as possible, you have no idea of how the world works today.) Limit the knowledge of others to see and they will simply grow eyes in new ways others will pick up generations later as leftovers like other species picking up new tricks of ways of perceiving ones environment.
Notes Part 3 - June 2005
Sunday August 21st, 2005- Super Bonus Day number 800 counting leap year day. 800 days of living as if possibly no tomorrow, no fear, no planning for a future which may never come, but trying to do the most possible if today is all I get, and enjoy and appreciate it as if it is all I may get. Racked up a string of accomplishments in writing down the ideas, conceived and finished 2D 3D 4D 5D over the 2 years, graduated, tried my best to wake a few people up, though if they are asleep, they probably are happier that way. Reality which few have chosen to face has become grim and only getting darker at the moment until people start paying attention more. Tomorrow I head toward another country, beginning a new chapter on day number 801, still taking it, or trying to take it, one day at a time, taking nothing for granted and having as little expectations as possible to keep from knowing what is there to be seen beyond what I may prefer to see, yet wish to know anyway, and on many levels, need to.
The most important thing for you to be today is to be not what you were yesterday. The most important thing for you to do or to realize today is what you could not do or realize yesterday. Remembering here is not there, now is not then, never you are what you were (or remember being), and what you remember can never be again. Going against that, holding the past, that is death. Working with it and using constant change is to live and accept being constantly a new person in a new place in new circumstances.
Notes Part 5 - January 2006
Seeing your own life, all thoughts and experiences, as eternal to yourself, as a component of your environment, triggered by other events within that environment, that whole, is more difficult than seeing everything you interact with within your environment as just another component in your own life. This is the opposite of “that it is easier to see your environment as a reflection or necessary component to enable your physical self. The time definition (first sentence) vs. physical forms, a thing called a “life” vs. a thing called a “body” is probably the most integral (to a better understanding. How the 4 mentioned dual opposite points are reversed as different ones being easier to understand, with life (time) vs. physical reality.) To have a sense of self, you need time to look back on what you experience to remember it and (you) alter the experience by building up a newer revised identity out of what you remember and (by) the new act of remembering (it) (connecting them to new events you did not know at the time you were experiencing them which came later.) Without these new times stringing together multiple times, there can be no “reflective” self to be aware of beyond current perception. In regards to other people in your environment, it is inverted. There is only the current perceptions of them and experiences of them without directly accessing their memories (or their own sense of identity built up through their past memories of events), or sense of self they tell you, or you learn of them to attempt to gain predictability to their future potential events based upon your own remembered experiences of their supposed pasts. Ultimately without gleaming insight into their pasts via your own (building) past memories of them or of other similar people and events to associate them to, others in your environment exist only in the now, in relation to you, as you would exist only in the now if you had no memories of your own. By not having recollection of something’s past states, it becomes more externalized. The more memories and knowledge of the past (of it) shared and in common, the less distinctions between the “otherness” between you and others in your environment, or of the objects and the environment (as a whole) itself.
Notes Part 6 - June 2006
Oh the games people play now
every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
never saying what they mean ...
Look around tell me what you see
what's happening to you and me
God grant me the serenity
to remember who I am
Cause you've given up your sanity
for your pride and your vanity
Turns you sad on humanity
and you don't give a da da da da da
excerpt from "The Games People Play" by Joe South
Someone that I once knew
suffered a terrible plight
She was becoming blind
and would soon lose her sight
She wanted so much to see
as many things as she could
for she knew that soon
what she didn't see, she never would
She awoke early every morning
and spent it gazing at the skies
She did not want to miss
the chance to see one more sunrise
She spend all of her days
absorbing whatever was there
All the people and all things,
nothing escaped her stare
Of the beauty and the ugliness,
she searched for all she could find
When at last the darkness came
she did not seem to mind
This I could not understand
and I asked how it could be
She said in those final few days
she saw more than most will ever see
When I was in my late teens or early twenties, one day had I walked into a van’s bumper. I had borrowed tools at a garage to repair my bicycle and the van was up on the lift, just above my eyesight, but unfortunately not above my forehead. I walked right into it at full speed.
After sitting for awhile with a fairly pounding new headache, I rode my bike for about two miles and walked into a pharmacy. While looking for something, possibly pain relievers one might think, the lights went out, at least for me. I stood there completely unable to see anything. For several minutes, some of the most disconcerting minutes of my life, I was completely blind.
At first, I did not even think of panicking, and even if I did, thought what good would it have done? So I decided the best thing to do was to just act normal. There was a shelf in front of me I remembered, so I attempted to continue to act like I was looking across it trying to find something while my mind raced thinking of what my alternatives were. How could I get help if my sight did not come back? Who could I turn to for help, where was the checkout counter, and how could I get to a hospital? And it all seemed so, well embarrassing.
There was also a heightened level of perceived threat I felt when I thought that others might discover that I could not see. Fortunately neither pick-pockets nor a more overt robbery was likely inside a pharmacy in a good neighborhood, but a dawning realization occurred to me that I all-of-a-sudden would never see it coming. I was more vulnerable and suddenly completely lost, needing strangers help just to find the door or keep me safe.
Flashing forward to when I got hit by a car on June 1st, 2003, my initial reaction and circumstances were similar. As I later put it, I was suddenly time blind. I had huge gaps in my memories of the recent past. On the other hand, I could remember many things from my earliest childhood, when I was 5 and 6, 10 and 11, etc. as if they had literally just happened yesterday. Given my circumstances, I knew it to be a two-edged sword, but the side to be worried about is the side which can harm you.
Though like in the pharmacy, I had no immediate threats, but running through the list of potential threats, how can one defend oneself of any accusation if they cannot remember what they did last week, last month, etc. One could be at risk in any number of ways and be completely blindsided by potentially anything which a person without such a memory loss or blindness would never even consider possible or think about. And it carried over into future expectations as well. If one could not remember the recent past, on what could one base ones expectations of what the future might bring?
The logic of my reaction was the same. Try to continue on as normally as possible and not reveal any potentially catastrophic weakness or blindness and wait for it to go away and normal abilities to come back. With the blindness of the eyes, it was terrifying in a way, but it was relatively easy to keep it together for a few minutes, simply because I was in no danger of having to do anything other than what I was seeming to already be doing.
With the memory gaps, it is hard to say when it exactly ended or began. Major gaps and holes in remembering came back quickly and at fast rates within a matter of a few weeks. Other things took much longer with 6 months or even a year for many things. It is misleading to say I could completely not remember things because from the start I was functional in most respects, barely. Things were not gone completely but the time it took to remember something simple, something as simple as my middle name, could take a half a minute or more. More than “blinded,” I prefer the term “blurred” as being more appropriate when thinking back on it.
The things people can remember with no effort, instantaneously, define them in many ways. They do not need to be thought about and such memories, preferences, and personality traits, though each person often chooses to adopt such preferences or ways of thinking at one time or another, they become second nature, a persons core operating system so to speak.
While it may make good song lines such as “And you’re hangin’ out in the local bar, and you’re wondering, who the hell you are,” (“Keep on Smilin’” by Wet Willie) it is not in any way a good thing in real life. It is one thing to be philosophical about the question, “who am I”, when it does not really affect your literal sense of the core of who you are or what you should be doing, right now.
Like the bump on the head via the van, the only real option was to simply wait it out, and hope eventually it would all come back to me, which it did. But as I mentioned, that was over a disconcertingly long period of time, so long that I had to get used to the idea that it all, my memories and abilities, might never come back.
As I mentioned in other writings, for the first two weeks after the accident, I had ups and downs, most of which I do not really remember that much about. Things previous to the accident became clear eventually, and when things started improving, it was a new fresh take on life for me that is hard to describe. But in those first two weeks after the accident, I cannot remember how much I could remember nor not remember at that point. I was dizzy almost constantly so I stayed at home and did not go out, as it was very difficult for me to even walk or drive.
Two weeks later I had what was incomparably by far the worst day of that time and probably of my life. For that entire day I could not stand up. I could not get to a phone to call for help. Every time I tried to get up, I had to immediately sit down or fell back down on my bed. More than 24 hours of a room constantly spinning around and around and around. It is easy to understand I got used to the idea then that there seriously might not be any more days for me after that.
The next day was, relative to the previous day, like a fever breaking. Things seemed clearer. Though things did seem to spin off and on for another month or so, and that did not stop completely until I was in Europe in October, I began to be able to assess my current state, remember such assessments, and begin to build up again.
Though there was much I could not remember at that time, much else could be remembered with much effort and a lot of time. Other things were frustratingly just out of reach, yet seemingly simple. I remember not knowing what I liked of foods. Going to a grocery store, I would look at vegetables, brands of cereal, know their names, know I must have had them before but still have no idea whether I liked them or not. I actually had to look through my cupboard for clues as to what kinds of food I liked.
The longer one has to deal with that, the more likely one is to move away from such preferences. A person begins to build new preferences since ones memories are always being added to as long as one is awake and aware, and is able to create new memories. Even once getting back such previous opinions, tastes, attitudes, etc. by remembering them, the longer one operates without them, the more it seems like it was not you, but a different person.
I was lucky that I never completely forgot who I was, never lost all my memories and even at my most problematic period, was mostly functional. I could drive a car, count my change at a store, and so on. Phone numbers, log in passwords, and other things once second nature became a constant and frustrating struggle. And the higher math that my income relied upon, well the term I used, “basket case,” pretty well sums it up. Anyone else would have fired me but since I was self-employed, that was not likely to happen.
The good thing about writing software for your own company, like any type of royalties is that you are, when you are getting paid, you are getting paid in the present for work you did in the past. It takes awhile, if you are lucky, before not working completely wipes you out financially. That was inevitably coming, but there was little in the state I was in, that I could do about it. I could look at my source code for hours and still have almost no clue about where to start, so much of any one part meant remembering countless other interrelated parts, concepts, and procedures. I could follow a few lines of code at a time, but functions, sub-routines, complex algebra (and programming is mostly algebraic), and then I was like, “um, check please.”
After a few months I could write simple things again, and after several months I could work somewhat again. But as I have written before, the upside was like getting a clean desk to start over with or on. With a lessened past and less perception of the future, I was living more in the “now” than ever in my life, and more than most get a taste of. My brain was literally having to relearn how to think, how to make new memories, what to categorize as important or worth remembering.
In the beginning I was simply taking in everything possible with little to no discernment of what was important to remember. Taking in constantly too much superfluous information meant having to come up with new ways of categorizing things to remember them. Everything around me seemed so wondrous and amazing, and for most people it can always be so because you simply “get used” to everything, and I wanted to remember it all, absolutely everything. The early Notes I am coming to soon reflect that enthusiasm and complete and continuous state of constant wonder.
It is not that I was not open to thinking such things before, and not having contemplated in abstract way such philosophical concepts before. But to have many expectations and perceptions of the future, and memories of the past, subdued for awhile and forced to relearn how to deal with life all over again robbed of many of the so-called “certainties” most people no longer even think about how they came to think that way anymore, having to live again without them and rebuild them anew all over again, it was immersive so to speak. That and actually being able to remember for a short while how I thought and saw things at younger ages with a clarity extremely rare because it was spotty and not the smooth segueing that happens continually as our thinking process change slowly over time with little notice.
The first day after the continuous spinning stopped I called “Day One.” Later I referred to them as Super Bonus Days. The quote at the top was written on Super Bonus Day 800. “800 days of living as if possibly no tomorrow, no fear, no planning for a future which may never come, but trying to do the most possible if today is all I get, and enjoy and appreciate it as if it is all I may get. … Tomorrow I head toward another country, beginning a new chapter on day number 801, still taking it, or trying to take it, one day at a time, taking nothing for granted and having as little expectations as possible to keep from knowing what is there to be seen beyond what I may prefer to see, yet wish to know anyway, and on many levels, need to.”
Writing this now, by that measure today would be Super Bonus Day 3000. The first 1000 days though were very much extreme petal-to-the metal adaptation. It was exhausting and probably in the scheme of things, somewhat necessary. Much of the Notes to follow after this post reflect that. That it may not make sense to you, or to me now for some of them, they were written as I mentioned in the start of retrospection, in a type of shorthand simply so that I could remember what I was thinking at those times. Some of that is lost to me now. Other things I remember would take way too long to explain if I even could.
Where I stand today is lucky that I am able to remember much of that time, before getting locked down again into preset ways of thinking, and more so through these Notes. As I mentioned, the first 1000 days had the most extreme changes in how I thought about things, and I could adapt and change literally how I thought about things and problems with a great deal of flexibility simply because I still had a good mixture of previous knowledge, and understood completely the overarching pressing need to be constantly adapting, and also I had a decent biological underpinning for that to happen.
Though I have a greater perspective now, and am fortunate that I can somewhat recapture some of those different ways of thinking because of keeping the Notes, (I though far from stupid and by more common measures of intelligence am considered more “typically” intelligent now,) I know the raw firepower I had to bring to bear on things I thought about was far greater back then. As I put it then, I could think faster than at any time since I was 16 or 17 but with greater control and focus. I could “multi-track” my thinking so-to-speak in ways that cannot be described. A weak analogy would be as my memories were returning, seeing something could trigger a cascading set of memories, remembering many interrelated things at once, suddenly and with no control. Remembering many times all overlapping at the same time. When I was 16 or 17 I could think faster than I could keep up trying to verbalize those thoughts and about many different topics at once. But during those days of 2003 to 2005 I had that, plus a greater degree of focus and a “throttle” so to speak to dial it back when necessary.
Plus, in addition to that, I had a greater remembering of the most recent days, the Super Bonus Days, because I could remember each of them far far clearer than any other times previous to them in my life. Partially because I was trying to remember them so completely and taking in literally everything, or as much as possible of everything. There was no hurdle to get over to remember them for me as there was to remember things previous to that time, and the Notes, all of the Notes, I had pretty much instant access to remembering them the way some people, and me most times, can remember their own middle name. Even though many of the types of thinking in the Notes were completely different, I was constantly mixing and matching them, building upon them in my head, much of that not written down, and constantly coming up with completely new approaches sometimes daily, weekly, and later monthly.
But in the times closest to the accident, it was literally hard to think, period. It was not until July that I attempted any serious writing and then quickly learned by doing so that I was not up to it. Rather than having something to look back upon to show how I was progressing, it simply showed me how much I had lost. I could still write well but I would get lost in ways I never had to worry about before. I would usually simply think about what I wanted to write about, how I would approach it, and how I would start out, and from there everything previously usually worked itself out.
With that in mind, I often compare how I wrote before the accident and after the accident and try to see the differences. “Perspective” written about just previously to this post here, I am very proud of, yet it shows the wandering focus somewhat clearly. It came out well, but was unfocused. Yet I still wanted to write, needed to write, and in July found myself a much bigger canvas than the Universe to write about.
I decided my next project would be about time and called it “Time Roads”. I knew at the time it was a bit too much to write about and I often got lost while writing it. Everything just coming together without me having to do much work gave way to stumbling in the dark, only with a poor word trail to show for it. In my defense, time is a much bigger and broader topic than the physical Universe and even at my best, just a few months previous to that before the accident, I possibly might not had done much better. “Biting off more than I could chew” I later called it.
But “Time Roads” was in the same vein that the later parts of “Deconstructing the Universe” had been moving in. And if not to attempt something beyond your reach or ability, what better use is having more time really worth? It was the most ambitious potentially achievable or realizable thing my somewhat misfiring brain could think of attempting. That it was pointless or a misguided effort did not occur to me, or mean much, for a few weeks at least.
After the first few sections, I saw that I really had no idea what I was doing, but they were not completely worthless either. As I see it now, I was not so much as trying to go in the wrong direction, I was just traveling the wrong path to get there. Before the month was out, by accident or by not thinking about it much, I found what I thought was a much better path. Or a least one so long and so complicated that I could not see the end of it clearly, and knew it could be twisted in many different ways and directions and yet still be worth traveling and still be the same path. And it was fiction, so how could I possibly screw it up or get it wrong?
Like my Notes were in the beginning, written almost unconsciously without really thinking about them in October 2003, the short stories in July 2003 were simply putting math or logic problems into words and forms so I could try to sort them out. Not for others to read or even for myself to read, simply like using scratch paper to work out a problem I was thinking about at the time. I will cover those stories next, but this post is to set up or introduce “Time Roads”.
With “Time Roads” I tried to simply keep on writing in an essay form similar to how I had been writing before that, to keep doing what I remembered that I had done before and hopefully by doing so, that I could get back to thinking again how I did before, and so on. But the accident left me with a slightly different set of abilities, as well as a hodge podge mixed stew of memories.
Short things, such as many parts the Notes, could come off extremely well. The fictional form best evidenced in “2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple” and the other shorter “math” based stories that July provided me a different type of structure to work through when I was lacking a proper structure to sort through the ideas that I wanted to write about.
But before I could get to that stage, I sorted through much of the same territory in a different, and less effective and less coherent way in “Time Roads.” The path may have been wrong, but the direction soon to me led me to Inventor, Creator, Researcher, Assistwo, and not the least of which, the majority of the Notes that all of these introductions are meant to set up and explain. Without the fiction stories, the Notes would not have been, and without “Time Roads” having been written, the stories would not have been thought up.
From early July 2003…
Part One - Time Roads and Existential Roads: An Overview
Out from a multitude of paths
it surges forth leaving all else past
At the end of Rel3- People and Magic, I stipulated that the future exists in shades, that we like to think that the roads we travel continue forward in line from the past through the present and into the future in a continuous contiguous fashion, that the past is in sense a template for order in the future and has some effect on or will leave some imprint upon it, and by believing this, or the belief that one has in this, effects future realities to be in effect continuations of the past. I also said that the opposite is to view the future as completely changeable, completely unfettered by what was true or real in the past. The shades between these two views, that the future is determined or built up as a logical progression from its past, or that the future or the universe is completely open to reinvention or revision and can in a sense turn on a dime so to speak, and that the past is only as much of an influence as it is somehow someway chosen to be or allowed to be, we like to see each argument and view each as valuable, and most choose something somewhere in-between that we are locked into only writing a new minor chapter to a very old and infinitely more volumus greater-than-us story of the universe, between that and having the future completely open and not at all contingent upon what may or may not have existed, or what it itself may or may not have existed as in the past.
It is wrong to think that anything can happen at any time. We settle the potential experiences to ourselves down to fewer more manageable tracks like roads we can learn to navigate upon. By this limiting of near limitless potential to fewer more well-worn paths frequented more often than others, it is not unlike how a road forms over time. Some ways to go seem more logical than others, some decisions more apparent, and gradually pathways form. The more we tread these pathways, the more imprinted and the more obvious they become as a byway or a way to go, or a way to be. While on these byways, experience becomes predictable like traveling a road you know well. You have expectations of where you will be and what you will experience at times nearer to where you are, and the more frequently traveled the time road, the further you can extend that expectation forward into the future from where you are currently at or what you are currently experiencing.
We are not locked onto these roads any more than we are locked into any one future. We can exit at any junction or even dare to go off-road so to speak at any moment we wish. To go onto another road is to reenlist into another preset list of expectations of varying degrees of paving, how well they are developed and therefore how known or predictable based upon how often we have traveled them in the past.
It is hard to get lost, really lost. With so many roads everywhere one can only go so long before there is again an order to things and things again become recognizable and begin to make sense again. One can be distracted and when venturing off onto side roads momentarily lose ones bearing as to where one is, in relation to location as with actual roads, or in relation to future events with time roads so to speak, or expectations for or on that new timeline or new road one has inadvertently or absent-mindedly stumbled upon by not paying much mind to where one was going or by not having a great predication to go in one way over any other. Once diverted on to a somewhat new road or new pathway, it is not long before that too becomes recognizable and eventually predictable as you fall into the flow or pick up the scheme of things of what that road is, or was, as if you have literally traveled them all at least once before and just need some time occasionally to reacquaint yourself with what they actually are, and by doing so, remembering where they lead or which major thoroughfares or junctions they cross up ahead.
Existence and experience itself follows this example as well as individual existences over varying timelines. One needs not to remember oneself actually having traveled the road in the past but how others stood at the same relative moments in their times. The roads you choose or how you live or choose in different, successive, and ultimately in a sense predictable or memorable versions of your own multiple futures, alternate presents, and alternative pasts, these are the easiest and clearest known paths to you the longer you have been you. Alternatively, the less locked you are into your own definition or idea of your own existence while you are still sorting that out, the less defined the roads are, but roads are still there. The roads the more others took in the past are defined as well, they too exist as temporal templates of what to expect and how to define ways to go.
In a sense to enter into existence is merely or similar to losing ones bearings on which timeline, or which road, one is currently traveling. The further you travel down upon it, the more recognizable it becomes again, and the more clear the roads, choices, or options for what lies ahead or potentially lies ahead of oneself, the more clear this becomes. One has or will eventually exist as any other existence and traveled any other of their roads as well, if not in the past then in the future, but if the future and the past are merely constructs or different aspects of the same thing indistinguishable from another point of view as being different from each other, all roads are equally our own, and ultimately open to everyone. All roads have a purpose. They prevent people from wandering around aimlessly and provide an expectation or order to experience and give a discernible, recognizable, and re-locatable location in space, in actual physical roads, and in time and experience in more figurative sense of time roads or existential roads. By creating and defining these roads we build up expectations of repeatable experience and give them a “location” so to speak. One again can go off-road to what is lesser defined by lesser numbers of others lesser traveled but one eventually again stumbles across some more well defined road, some more commonly defined “life”, and some degree of civilization, like stumbling across a highway after getting lost in the woods. Eventually walking down that highway, one becomes aware again who one is (defined by that motion down that road), or who or what one thinks one is now, and eventually figures out what that means and where that road leads, what paths or options cross it ahead, and how one can get lost or explore within the context of that existence or upon that system of roads.
As a road system provides for greater numbers to travel in a more orderly fashion and provides a mappable location in what otherwise would be chaos of a near infinite ways to go (and in the sense of other types of roads mentioned here, a near infinite ways to get lost in when, where, and what to be) it provides endless ways to experience the same things. It is a grid, a framework, but only for and by those who commonly choose to follow it. While you follow it you gain predictability, a what, a when, and a where. Going off-road at any time is like trying to get lost in a land you know very well. Sooner or later you will stumble back upon another road providing another what, when, and where, another set of expectations for where they might lead you and where or what others before who held to one or more of those three tenants of what that means, how they might have interpreted those roads, and where or how they took or shaped them to suit themselves. The paths you or others might have taken only define the roads more clearly. Any path or shortcut anyone might invent or stumble across might one day become a new road should it become taken repeatedly by oneself or others. The roads only exist because they are the ways we would choose to go more often than other ways. Existence, experience, and time are or have roads in ways or things to be in which we would choose to experience more often than others.
Realities can grow organically like civilizations or cities, small groups, or popular restaurants or clubs. Some people get together and define a way or place to be and the more popular it becomes, the more want to be there and the more likely it is to be imitated by others. Suddenly it reaches a critical mass and it is something everyone just has to try. The more ways to define something, the more perspectives there are upon it, the more real it becomes to more others. Likewise, the more real it becomes to more others, the more perspectives there are upon it, the more defined and rigid it has to become. It no longer is a small thing where anyone can influence it fully. One becomes just a small part of its larger plan, and the larger it becomes, the more each must conform or give up to be part of its whole.
Yet again it too is just another road, another way to be. More highly defined realities are merely more well traveled roads. Each may seem a destination, yet each is merely another way to go, another how to be. Just as no when is ever absolute from any where, no when or where exists apart from any what. Space is merely a road to provide a “where” defined by those who travel that road more than any other way to define a where. Time is merely a road to provide a way to be “where” more than once. With time, one can have more wheres over time or else one would always be just “here”. Over time one can be sometimes over there, or here, or somewhere else. One is always “here”, but here just seems to change with the added definition of time to have been somewhere other than where one is now. And finally and the hardest to believe, the “what” is merely another road, another way defined to combine or multiply the what. As time can give one multiple wheres, “what” provides multiple ways or things to be at multiple times creating multiple wheres. None of these necessarily is the focal point or predominates over any other. All three define and sustain each other. As here seems to change with the added definition of time giving it a past where here seemed to be somewhere else not here now, what seems to change by viewing it through the perspective of time seeming to have been or to become something other than what it is now. Take away time and the concept of a past but leave a what and a where and there is no “there” for everywhere one has ever gone or could go always was and will be “here”. There would be no “what else” for all that one was physically ever was or could be would be or would become what it “is” as only time separates what it seems to have been from what it is or could be, and it would always be the same thing. Going back far enough in science, religion, or philosophy, that is for most, once all part of the same big “what” at one point.
Keep the what and time and lose the “where” definition and reality as you know it collapses too. Though the what can change over time, if it is always “here” and never “there”, it is always whole and never separate or anything else. Though one could see it that way, or believe it could see itself as separate even though without possessing another where, it could never actually exist as separate. One could also conceive of the previous example of a what without a where, also far different from how we perceive it now, as one. For all three of these definitions to exist as we perceive them, it requires multiple versions or instances of both others. To be a what you need multiple wheres and multiple whens. Where also requires multiple times, and neither space nor time can exist without something, a what to be acted upon or changed. Each of these definitions are roads we enter upon and ascribe to ourselves to define our existences. None are absolute and each is both relative to and contingent upon each of the others to define its own means of existence. Without each having a what, where, and when to keep them separate, take out any of the three aspects, and everything collapses into everything, everywhere, all the time. Pick any what and it needs a when and where. Pick any where and you need a what and when. They are all aspects of the same thing.
Since what you are seems less arbitrary and more defined than simply where you are or when you are, one must remember that without a where you are relative to, anything else that is not you, everything and you would simply be here and one thing. Without time, there would never have been any time you were different than what you are nor could you be anything you are not now. Your entire existence (apart from possibly an unchanging soul, though basically unchanging is not relative to the world we experience which is only defined by change) depends upon your when and where and is completely defined by such. Without those being different than anything else you would not exist as anything separate. Your existence is dependent upon a history which created you and a future of possible realities to exist within from this “now” onward (or you would be dead). As much as your existence requires a place in time relative to a not “now”, you need a “you” relative to a “not-you”, and by that a here where you occupy, and a there for everything else. What, when, and where you are are all the same thing, and they are inherently defined by perception or by being currently perceived. They are the road of perception and anticipated experience you are currently traveling. The road you travel provides a channel or stream of predictable perceptions into you, but you control which roads lead to which others, which you feel like changing it to, and when to turn down roads you only seem to never remember traveling before, yet by traveling them, will again become familiar to you or make sense to you again.
If you can believe that you can be you yet be in another time (yesterday, tomorrow, etc.) or be you yet be in another place (London, Paris, etc.) yet understand the what-when-where are the same thing, then one can begin to see the what is just as changeable. To believe you can be you and be something else as easily as sometime else or somewhere else, though like being somewhere else or sometime else must be worked out within a particular structure, is conceivable with some effort. And as I said before, as roads through space are ways to sort out the wheres, where one can go or be anywhere but generally falls to specifically commonly defined routes, and timelines are roads through experience where multiple time versions of others or oneself tend to pick more predictable routes over others, so too can the “what” of the equation be thought of as roads through organizing what seems to be the source of perceptions into known recognizable routes of ways to be or exist more defined the more they are traveled by more others. They are routes to come in on, travel down for awhile, and leave or turn off where junctions occur ahead. Like known roads or known timelines, the more you travel them, the more sense and the more familiar they become, but you have traveled, will travel, and in some way are traveling all those roads, just as one can more easily conceive of once having been down all roads through a place around oneself at one time or another, or even having been down multiple timelines at one point as well. The more certain roads of existence are traveled, the more others or oneself tend to travel them again, and the more expansions or additions will be added to them.
Part Two - What and What Else: The Same Thing
What was was to me
what it was
because I could be
what I was but now I see
what was was
what was me
Before getting into details on how a “what” can become something else it is not and still essentially be the same thing, which is far more complicated to common understanding than simply having a “what” go somewhere else or exist in another time, it is first important to understand what a “what” is. Existence as I said previously requires a what, a when, and a where, and removing any one of these aspects and everything else no longer becomes discernible as being separate in any fashion. The reason it is harder to envision changing the “what” is because what the “what” is is much more complicated than the when or the where.
Though modern theorists routinely regard space and time (the where and when) as a single continuum, though in my opinion missing completely the third leg necessary to make it stand so to speak, because of this lacking of space-time’s inclusion of the what I will continue speaking of space and time for the time being as if they were separate concepts or states. The where of the equation is the simplest to understand. Before you have a handle on what you are, and hopefully most will be mulling that question over in one sense or another for as long as they live, you can grasp the concept of space or place. You are here. Everything and everywhere else is there. Things there can come here, and one day you can go there, or more accurately bring all of there here to you at once by seeming to be going there because your “here”, though always here, is also capable of being there as well. Here becomes something that occupies no set point in space, here becomes relative to wherever you happen to be at any point, and this begins to make sense somehow.
Time is also something relative to where one is so to speak, always “here” though in time we call it “now”, and though it is always now like wherever we are is always “here”, now can be somewhere else further down the road as well. Because we cannot visualize time like we can space, it takes longer to get a handle on that one, conceptually speaking. We can see there from here. We know there exists there while we exist here. We can in a sense experience here and there simultaneously almost by seeing them concurrently within the same frame, or both at once. Time we do not commonly experience concurrently nor can we see time’s “there”, other times, from time’s “here”, now. Without the aid of representations such as portraits or film, we cannot get time’s here and there together side by side to compare them or experience them simultaneously. Even trying to merge two divergent time streams or two states of the same existence side by side at different points in the time of that existence is difficult and dangerous. Times need to be kept apart, at least for a single object in time. Time’s here and there need to always be kept apart.
Though we can never actually get time’s version of here and there together for a group photograph or, in the ordinary sense, for simultaneous perception, we do have ways to cheat. As was mentioned previously we can record aspects of another time, object’s where and how they appeared at that time and carry forth that record to another new now. We can also record aspects of that time not visible, such as writing down the temperature at that moment, or the barometric pressure, and compare that with other times or days observations and perceptions. And we possess that less accurate but intrinsic ability of collecting memories which are also needed to recognize such records externally recorded such as portraits or films as being ourselves at other times. Without the ability to remember the moments within our own minds, external records even of our own past becomes just people who looked as we did doing something.
It is the act of remembering, a wholly new event requiring more time to experience that wholly new event, the moment or moments you are reflecting back on that other time which seems to bring the two different times into the same focus or frame. Carrying a mental representation of then into now, and letting how they both compare or seem to match up create a whole new experience, existing now remembering then. Then instead of carrying just what you are now forward into the future when you look back on that moment of remembrance, you instead are carrying both moments, or a composite layer of both moments into the future. Looking back upon that moment you were looking back to another moment is to bring them together and in a sense experience them together as one. You are in a sense remembering remembering something, and that compounds itself into something new yet is founded or made up of both previous time periods, the time you remembered and the time you were remembering that time.
It is this constant remembering of remembering that provides us with our sense of where we exist in time, and in that representation of the passage of time most crucial or critical to us at the moment, the concept or context of our own lives. What is today, what was yesterday, what was the day before that. This record is only kept or recorded by compounding remembering remembering. To know what today is requires knowing what yesterday was. If you forget what today is or where you stand at the moment, you tend to turn back a page to yesterday, what was yesterday or what did I do yesterday, to remember. Or if lost in space momentarily, one automatically thinks back to the last point they remembered they knew or remembered where they were at that moment. It is kind of like each moment is a new guest on a talk show where all the previous guests scoot down the couch in the order they appeared. Each one takes its turn being the now, then the just before now, then the just before that, each moving down one seat further down the couch. We see, watch, and record this new order or imaginary comparison with each new moment or memory we add and visualize them side by side against the most recent ones. The mind, consciousness, by the act of creating ever more new memories or new records of each and every new now, is assigning and recognizing this order or organizing factor to each new moment it experiences, pushing the others slightly further down the line in importance. Eventually they all just kind of fade together the further back from the now you go if they were similar, simply because room must always be made to record ever and ever more increasing, and increasingly compounded, new nows often superimposed or coexisting with remembered thens to compare them with. Not just remembering remembering, but remembering remembering remembering, and as long and inclusive as you want to or are capable of making it, or stringing it together.
Fortunately now we can write things down, if by fortunate one means one actually wants to make greater and greater composites of past events for potentially better understanding and more inclusive and more far reaching comparisons. Sometimes it is just nicer and easier to forget. Unfortunately even writing things down has its limitations as an extension of the process of remembering, and by extension of that the reasoning process, because then one must develop ever greater archiving schemes to remember where one put the information one might need or wish to retrieve later for further comparison.
Such comparisons of any past events, times, states, existences requires new time, fresh time, to build those new comparisons or new structures of supposed relationships in. Before extensive and fast retrieving of voluminous material on computers, intelligence was related to how much one could squeeze between the ears, or remember at one time. That still is the most important aspect of intelligence, though fading in importance to the processing of such information. The more data is stored in ones own mind at one moment in time, the greater the means and chance one can relate it to other data and form unique contrast and comparisons machines never could because all of the data, all of the memories, ideas, suppositions are in a sense within ones mind all potentially linkable and cross-referencable with any others, occasionally intentionally or unintentionally coming up with unexpected or intended matches or insights.
The older we get, the more we are required to remember and the more we wish to remember of our ever growing pasts, the more clever we must become in organizing all of this information. The more capable we are of remembering all of our past moments, the more complex comparisons we can make between them. Most moments slip into the fog being considered unmemorable, yet each moment can shed insight into any other. The ability to compare every today with every yesterday is relatively insignificant the greater numbers you can add to that. Imagine being able to remember every day for years as clearly and as completely and as quickly as you remember yesterday. Imagine the greater insights and comparisons you could make you might not notice from one day or week to the next. We do possess the means to compare far away yesterdays with today but they are often faded copies of a copy of a copy, and far more limiting than that, they are selective. Since we cannot looking back years remember every day what we did or were doing, we pick and choose days which stood out from the rest as being different, and single days can be made or used as representational of other similar days and be confused one for the other.
I am not using this analogy to recommend people merely increasing their memory storage, especially not through bio-implants, but the ability to remember more and more past times, especially within the context of our own lives, relates to our notions of what we perceive to be intelligence, especially when we can make, create, use, or make more uncommon representations of relationships between all those divergent memories. The greater the reservoir of things to compare, the more relationships we will discover or, more accurately, invent. Though this data seems divergent, they all share a common component, time. What the temperature was the day before, what we had for lunch, all of this requires a time component ascribed to it. All the data we record in our minds, books, or computers exists as trying to capture a moment of time. Even ideas, complex abstractions, to be remembered means to remember a time when we were thinking of or about them, and use that as a template to remember it again. Every insignificant piece of data about whatever we remember is to remember time. Memories are putting time side by side against time. The more times we can string together is like seeing further into the distance in the here-versus-there analogy, and the more details we have about each other when is like having a telescope or binoculars to see the details more clearly of each other where.
There is another limitation to the time definition in that it only seems to provide clear definition or absolute solidity in one direction, looking backwards. With space one can turn 360 degrees and pick any direction to travel. Though one is always here, here can seem to be almost anywhere. Though now is always now, it has to or seeming has to be in a predictable spot a moment from now, two moments from now, as well as a moment ago, two moments ago, etc. Where traveling through space can be likened to driving a recreational vehicle across a flat desert, traveling through time seems more like riding a train at a set speed on a definite track. You have an idea of where it will go and what you will see when it gets there, or at least you think you do. That is where time gets its other footing so to speak. Though all of our perception of time lies in perceiving a past, something which was which is no longer the same now, or where something was relative to where it is now, we extend that perception into expectations of where and how it will be in the future. This is to fill in the blank spaces or draw what we think to be the missing pieces within our minds so that the whole picture will make sense to us. The more we think that we are doing that correctly, the more confident we become. The future no longer becomes scary but controllable, rulable, predictable. The more accurately it matches what we think it will be, this tells us we are reading it right. The more often we are wrong, when it does not match up with our expectations, and we choose not to become delusional or deny what we are experiencing, the more likely we are to revise how we interpret what we think the future events or states of things will be. This knowing one half, the past, or more accurately thinking we know the past because we have some memories or records of it we assume to be more or less accurate, and guessing or speculating about the other half we don’t even have invisible clues (memories) about gives us perspective or added depth to what we are currently experiencing just as another where gives added perspective or location to place our current here within the context of, or how having other beings provides us with definition, comparisons, and contrasts to measure against or define a perspective in relation to them, for knowing what it is or means to be ourselves.
It seems “where” is fairly easy to grasp as I said before because we literally can see and do place different places side by side concurrently. And it does seem that time is harder to grasp than space or place because it is invisible, cannot put it side by side, can only speculate about its more mysterious and changeable other half (the future), we can only see its effects or the effects it has on the “whats” like one can only see the wind when it is blowing leaves, flags, sand, or other objects. Since time seems fairly difficult to grasp, why then do I state that the “what” of the what, where, and when triad is by far the most difficult of all to understand? The “whats” of existence are literally easy to grasp but like understanding what it means to be oneself, “what” is far more complicated to understand on anything other than the most superficial of levels without looking at it from other angles or perspectives of other existences or other ways to be. “What” seems of paramount importance. It is far easier to understand that neither time nor space could exist without first having a “what” to occupy them, than for time or space to be thought occupy that pivotal lead role. Yet “what” like space relying forever on a “where else” to place its “here” into context, and time always needing two opposing “thens” to bookend its “now”, “what” is nothing without a “what else”.
One could go the easy route of disputing this, that one can have a “what” without being defined by a “what else”. Surely one might say one could have one thing in the universe and space and time could still exist. So you have one thing in space and nothing else. Without another thing in space, there is no other there. The entire width of the universe would be the width of that one thing. If one were to make the thing hollow to create space within it, one is in a sense dividing it into separate things. If you have some parts of the thing different shapes, you have in a sense different things and not one thing. Though you can still call it one thing, it still can be seen or called a collection of different things since it is not uniform throughout. Now go against that and speculate that it can be a perfect sphere, therefore though the universe would end at its borders, it can create space inside itself by expanding. Though a perfect sphere can seem to be uniform throughout and create a sense of space within itself, it would create two distinct states , perspectives, or aspects of its own existence. It must have an interior edge and an exterior edge, one curving inward and one curving outward, two sides. So a coin can still be a coin though it possesses two sides, one might say. I am not disputing that a coin cannot have two sides, nor a sphere, but that you cannot have a what without creating a what else to define it, or to have space and time. Once you enlarge the sphere to create space, you create two polar opposites, an inside curving inward and an outside curving opposite. Two aspects, two ways to define what exists, two opposite aspects of existence, a what and a what else.
On the other aspect of the premise that you cannot have a what without a what else to define its existence or it cannot exist in space and in time, that one can still have one thing inseparable in all the universe and still have time for it to exist within, I will now address. If one said you could have one thing and still have time, the moment that one thing becomes something else or changes in any way you still would have a what and a what else, what it was before and what it became after. My original point is that every what requires a what else to define its existence by, and that just as you can have no now without a then, and no here without a there, you can not have a what without a what else to define it by.
For some, they may not even need convincing. Surely what we are now requires many what elses. We require air to breathe, food to eat, others to reproduce and sustain a population. Surely we require lots and lots of what elses. That no one would dispute, yet our concrete view of the “whats” in our environment can seem to make it seem illogical to think that every single “what” we perceive requires a “what else” or it does not exist, yet that is exactly the case. Every single thing in the universe requires some other thing, or some differing aspect of itself in the case of a hollow uniform sphere, or some post/previous state, something else to give it any existence whatsoever. We can readily understand we need other things or beings to give ourselves relevance, but again I going beyond us and purpose and living things. That is that nothing exists in the universe without a what else, and that what else is at that moment everything else it is not, or appears not to be, or to be different than. The what/what else is as necessary as the here versus there and the now versus then. Each only exists as a contrast to the other. Each requires the existence of the other. The three concepts, what, where, and when, and their six halves, here/there, now/then, what/what else, combined sustain all of existence, or more definitively, the perception of existence.
So if every single “what” in existence has no existence without some or every other “what else” to not only confirm its existence in the relational sense, but to actually create its physical existence as bound and integral to each others existences as the “now” is to requiring other times to place itself within or between, and “here” is to requiring other “theres” to place itself within, what does this mean to perception or interpretation? It means for those who consider it a truth or an axiom whatever they wish for it to mean. It does mean that in the simplest sense you cannot have one without the other, or that they are each two sides of the same coin, or two inseparable aspects of the same aspect of existence.
Again I will point out that not many really have cause to to dispute this. As living beings we cannot exist independently of other living and non-living things to help sustain our existences. Why keep stressing the interconnectedness of all things one might think? The reason is because this point is easily lost. I am not talking about all “whats” being related to or in relationship to each other or being dependent upon each other. Each “what” is quite literally defined and created by the “what else”. What is is what it is to you. You are defining it and creating it as much as it is defining and creating itself.
The best analogy I can think of is a very old one. What anything is is like a spoke in a wagon wheel, or for anyone who never saw a wagon but have seen bicycles, a bicycle wheel. The spoke is what it is, but what that is requires the presence of the other spokes and the wheel in which to turn within. Nothing in the universe is a whole wheel, nor a wagon, nor a bicycle by itself. Everything is a spoke in the same wheel, or each is a spoke in everything else’s wheels depending on how you wish to view it.
This is why what something is can be viewed as far more complicated than either where it is or when it is. Changing what something is or changing the “what” of something is only possible by really understanding how what something is is defined by everything else. Changing it happens in conjunction or in agreement with everything else that is. These agreements seem to follow rules, preset limitations or methods for things to gradually become something else they are not, or seem not, now. Some would call them Laws of Nature. However like time seeming to stretch predictably in some fashion into the future by the way or direction it seems to be heading from the past to the present, how something becomes something else or what it is not follows expectations in accordance and in line with its presumed past direction and heading, and those seemingly involutable Laws of Nature are similar roads of expectation we impose upon the world or our perceptions of it for it to make sense to us, or at least to make more sense to us, as much as it does or might.
Part Three - Threading Infinity Loops
Infinity is finite and randomness predictable,
for just as the mind finds the unknowable irresistible
we break the facade of the indefinitive world
merely by using the means of our memories
to eventually come to see that spacious duplication
is the key masking the underlying yet undeniable uniformity
The way to understand how something can be something it is not simultaneously with what it is, or become anything else, it is best explained by understanding infinity loops. Time and space again are easier to explain than objects, or that everything is really a part or subset of every other thing. The previous section did attempt to explain how anything in existence requires something else to create its existence against, literally, not relationally or in purpose, and that for what it is to be different requires changing its existence in conjunction or agreement with that everything else’s agreement or perception of what it is, the potential for its existence within everything else. This is done every moment we perceive as time passing and this mutually defined change determines what each thing is, was, and will or could become. These follow roads of expectations but are not limited to them.
An infinity loop is a term I apply to anything large enough to cast a shadow back upon itself or become a paradox. The three aspects I hold to require or sustain or describe existence each have their own similar infinity loops matching their descriptions or representations of reality.
A spacial infinity loop is simply curved space. Imagine sailing west so long that you sail completely around the World and end up right where you started. By believing that three dimensional space can be curved through one or more additional dimensions we cannot visualize or easily comprehend, like the two dimensional ocean plane through a third dimension of height tilting slightly downward until it goes all the way back around itself, by thinking that three dimensional space can be similarly curved back upon itself one can imagine a similar occurrence. That occurrence being that one might be able to head off in a rocket ship in any direction, leave the solar system, the galaxy, and so on always traveling in the same direction and return from the opposite direction to where one began. Since I have not mentioned space/time, this is fairly easy to comprehend. If one imagines one could travel through such a curved spacial infinity loop without taking into account how time would be affected, and if there were time enough lying forward into the future to complete the circuit, one could fairly easily conceive of such a journey.
The paradox of infinity loops is best understood by the idea of threading them. Since they are at least by my definition also infinite, one cannot actually thread them but the ideas are best understood and explained by the concept. Imagine the old story of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind you so you don’t get lost in the woods, or a thread. If one had enough breadcrumbs or a long enough thread, as one completes a trip around the world or through curved space one would eventually not need anymore because one would eventually come back to where one began and the previous breadcrumb trail or thread would still exist and could be tied or joined together. Though a tread could conceivably exist tens of thousands of miles long, long enough to reach around the Earth, no thread could be made to reach through curved space from one end of the Universe reaching back around itself through curved space so as to be able to be tied together, not solely because the thread would have to be astronomically long, but because time would be affected. Curved three dimensional space is not the same as curved two dimensional space where each end of the thread can exist simultaneously in the same time-frame. To travel from one end of the universe back to where one began requires a curve through time as well as any other dimension needed to bridge the gap to complete the circuit and the first end of the string could not exist within the time-frame or reality of the other end as a string around the Earth could.
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