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To recall, to go back in time, to ferret out memories caught in the crevasses, to unwind the past on a new spool, to revise, to read the scroll backwards, to parse life into eras forces a conversation with the present.

Travel back in time. Hollywood loved the idea. Who wouldn't be enticed by spending an afternoon listening to Socrates? Were women in attendance? Good historians make me forget my immediate present. I relinquish the verity of the calendar. I've wandered in Mesopotamia, sat in a trench, drawn up a chair at the Yalta Conference, watched too many wars, and stood on a line waiting for food.

"Scientists have speculative theories in place, but technology hasn’t caught up yet to the point that they can be tested. Creating wormholes is one such theory. If space can be curved enough, and there is no theoretical reason why it can’t, then maybe a wormhole could be constructed to shortcut from one side of the universe to the other. If one of the mouths of the wormhole was made to travel very fast compared to the other one, then there would be a time difference between the two. Passing through the hole one way would allow you to move forwards in time and passing back the other way would allow you to move backwards in time. The main limitation with this method is that you would never be able to travel back to any date prior to the construction of the wormhole." Guy Micklethwait


Have I mentioned that my back hurts? I probably pulled a muscle when I turned too far playing golf. And I turned too far because I wanted to hit a longer drive. I wanted to watch that high arc moving down the fairway.

What would you change if you could go back? I'll not get caught with that useless conjecture. Change one thing and watch the other cards tumble. You can't return. You can only alter something in real time.

Annie suggested walking backwards. "Let's see who can walk the furthest."

Three of us started down the hill, taking care to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk. I watched the curb and counted my steps. How many steps to Minnie and Bernie's Grocery Store where my mother bought Farmer's Cheese? How many steps to the corner drugstore where the pharmacist reminded everyone that he had attended two years of medical school?

We stopped walking backwards when the street stopped for a roadway.

Last night my back and the mattress fought against one another. Nothing felt right and I thought I never slept, but my dream of riding an antelope negates that thought. But it was a fitful sleep.

We rode back and forth on the elevated train one entire summer afternoon.

Once I didn't backup a short story and it disappeared. It's hiding somewhere in my computer. Now I'll never know the end.

My characters took off relishing their release.
Independence is such a heady affair.