Looking back. They tell you not to. It's sage advice, but, if we never looked back, the best novels, music and paintings would never have happened, nor, would we ever recognize them to have happened without benefit of hindsight. If we don't look back, we know not where we are. It is only by looking back that we truly see ourselves. What we are now is merely the sum total of all we once were. Where we now are, is only where we have been before.
Until only very recently, it was an inexorable, established fact that time travels only forward, in a straight line from past, to present, to future. Modern experiments in psychology and quantum mechanics, however, suggest that time may flow in alternating currents - forward, backwards, sideways. Knowledge always has its limits, though they are endlessly expansive.
No, my 1956 Chevy Bel-Air is not a time machine. I'm no Dr. Emmett Brown, though, I did once meet Michael J. Fox once in the distant past. There's no flux capacitor under the rakish hood. In it's current condition, I'm not sure it would safely reach 88mph without mechanical calamity. Driving it around town, however, is distinctly surreal, and vaguely disquieting, metaphysically speaking. Something peculiar occurs within the spacious, panoramic cabin.
It occurs to me that the car is, in fact, something of a time machine after all. It has, quite literally journeyed through time, transporting its previous occupants from the heyday of Elvis Presley, through The Space Race, Camelot, Beatlemania, man on the moon, the Bicentennial, MTV. Now, out there roving the contemporary asphalt of Saint Petersburg, it's a wild anachronism so conspicuous that it may as well have exploded forth onto the road from the smoking, electromagnetic pother of one of Doc Brown's impromptu wormholes. It's a 'head-turner', as they call it.
After the first few weeks of ownership, the wise-guy novelty finally begins to wear off, and the behind-the-wheel permagrin gives way to a more subtle smirk. A cozy familiarity sets in . I began to feel strange in other automobiles, reaching for levers and stepping on pedals that weren't there, like some 600 Block rum-dumb with double vision. I think of stupid excuses to drive it, like - it's down to seven-tenths of a tank. Time to refuel. You never know when the call may come in for an all-night clam bake, and, non-ethanol can be tricky to find. No sense taking chances with a thirsty V8 and a capricious fuel gauge.
There is an unmistakable mystic aura about it. Perhaps it's the raw carbon monoxide. After a few whiffs, maybe you're just buzzing like the Oracle of Delphi, able to glean the future, the past, the sideways. Whatever the case, the experience of traveling in it is somehow, slightly otherworldly. There's a luxurious, je ne sais quoi which lithely surrounds you like bubbles in a bath, and, yes, time seems somehow distorted. Driving it, I find myself looking back, wondering where it was while I was learning to ride a bike, having my first kiss, moving away to college, getting married, turning 40. All the while, it was out there, somewhere; being built in Baltimore while father was 10 years old, while my grandfather was building his life again after WWII.
It's like suddenly, unexpectedly finding something very important to you which you had lost a long time ago and had given up all hope of ever finding again. It's like finding, all at once, everything you have ever lost. There it all is, in one, great big box. In the end, it's just a material thing. And yet, it's so much more. A relic of the pinnacle of American industry, manufacturing and design. An iconic artifact. Yes - a time machine.
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