Memories for me elicit deep feelings and for a moment I transcend time and find myself in the past experiencing you. The deeper the feeling the more time dilates and smears out so thinly it seems to disappear. Even moments when they happen are this way for me when I am with you. The intensity of my soul moves me about in time.
In the movie Interstellar an explanation is given concerning the 5th dimension in the black hole. Someone (humanity in the future perhaps) has built an all-of-time repository of memory and Matthew McConaughey's character has entered it in entering the black hole near Saturn. Suddenly he is able to move about in time.
He explains that in the current 4 dimensions or space-time of our current understanding of the universe that time is rigid but we are able to move about in the lower 3 dimensions of space. The 5th dimension of gravity that is experienced in the black hole allows him to move about in the lower 4 dimensions of space (3 dimensions) and time.
My theory is this - that the fifth dimension of gravity indicated in the movie includes the aspect of intensity. Gravity waves as a measure of intensity would be similar to the intensity waves of feeling encoded in memory. The deeper I experience the depth or intensity of feeling the more I am able to move about in time and to access the context or space of memory.
The most heart wrenching scene in Interstellar is when Matthew cries out for his daughter Murph to not let him go on the journey to the black hole. He weeps deeply with regret and tries so desperately to communicate to Murph and is only able to give a few physical signs, like knocking books off the shelf or using Morse Code and gravity to spell out a message.
In the 5th dimension inside the black hole is a multidimensional library of memory that Matthew is able to move about in and he goes here and there in his past trying to communicate to Murph. While Matthew is away in the 5th dimension Murph grows up and feels resentment for her absent father. One day she deciphers her father's message and there is some resolution, but it is couched in the pain of lost encounter.
When my friend Richard Twiss passed from this life on February 8, 2013 I felt such deep loss as I had just beautifully reconnected with him after a few years of little contact. At the same time as this loss I was experiencing the loss of an intimate relationship that upon reflection was and remains the best 6 months of my life. These deep feelings are encoded in the memories of my encounters. They are the intensity of the 5th dimension, the gravity of my emotions.
When I go to that 5th dimension of deep feeling and memory I time travel...I am there with you again, I see your smile, I feel your love, I hear your voice, I see your gaze, I hear your laugh, I see you sitting there as you always do, I smell the coffee, I savour all, I am smiling, and surprised all over again. I am moving about in time and space and I can even see hints of the future but that is still too mysterious and wonderful for me. I hear words I cannot say. I see things I do not understand but I weep and am comforted and laughing all at once.
