CHRONOVISOR
Notes Regarding Time,
Time Travel, & The Viewing of
Past and Future Events
Los Angeles, CA
2011
THE
CHRONOVISOR
Notes Regarding Time,
Time Travel, & The Viewing of
Past and Future Events
Notes Compiled
By
Janice Lee & Laura Vena
Los Angeles, CA
2011
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In the town of ___ a few kilometers away, two sisters claim to have
clearly heard a crying baby in the reeds near the river. When they
approached the broken reeds, they could find nothing there, but
found that the cries became increasingly quieter as they approached,
and louder as they walked away. The younger sister begged the
older sister to turn back for fear of evil spirits or ghosts. When they
returned to the site later that evening with their father and brother,
they found and heard nothing. The younger sister thought she saw
a bright flash in the sky, similar to the one witnessed in ___, but
none of the other family members saw anything.
On June 8th 1971, ___ ____, a scientist working at the Institute
For Paranormal Theories of Mind in ___, Italy, claimed to have
built a working time machine, an ingenious device that fit in the
palm of ones hand and could transport the operator to any era
of the past. A colleague, __ __, mockingly asked, What will you
call your invention? __ __ answered, Chronovisor. To which
the colleague responded by furrowing his eyebrows and solemnly
replying, Thats not your invention. No present records indicate
that either men ever worked at the Institute. No records exist for
them anywhere.
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The chronovisor is the keeper of memories, voices spilling and dissolving into
the air, recollecting shadows as it is passed from hand to hand.
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lost memories, lost loves, and no library could hold the horrors that
are hidden in these corners. Whatever ordinary-seeming place the
chronovisor seems to take you, beware of the dim suggestions that the
shadows of time leave behind, blink often, and recall your worst nights
of sleep. The details you remember from your worst and most horrific
nightmares, they will aid you here.
While on the path only dictated by the element of time and the
machines discourse, the mind does not realize that ghosts are real
and that the groans in his dreams were of a different world, rather, he
comes to feel that he has known these things all along, like running
ones fingers along some curious carvings and instantly remembering
the emotional state in which they were etched so passionately.
There are technical details, like opening up apertures, and focusing in
on little details, but mostly the driver need only allow its ears and eyes
to accustom themselves to the purposeful influence of the machine, and
the chronovisor has already navigated these grooves before, continuing
to form itself in the ever-arriving future, the ever-arriving past, the
ever-arriving present.
Know that the chronovisor is a sacred object, but not for the reasons
you may think. Time itself is full of those sweeping visions that wind
through dark corridors, the gods themselves often chasing their
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concurrent obsession with what the witness would do herself with the
machinethe places she would go, the events she could changemay
leave her in a perpetual state of enchantment.
Traveler:
A traveler should always hug her knees while in flight, or she may
become nauseous and foul up the machine. If ones trajectory should
alter unexpectedly mid-passage, press the blue button and proceed with
extreme caution upon landing. If your travels are dictated by remorse,
you are doomed. Accustom yourself to a state of flux by wearing a
different hat each day, or by frequently changing your hairdo. And
while travelers can resume regular breathing during flight, they should
avoid pandicultion while on board.
Witness:
You must first close your eyes to all vision, block out all possible light,
and abandon from yourself the sense of sight. Then listen. Then
taste the air. Then move your fingers across the spine. Then smell the
perfumes of other times / other skins. A witness must never cast her
gaze upon a traveler, but only find them in the traces that they choose
to leave behind (they may, though, signal to them with a flashlight
through a complex arrangement of mirrors). There is a way to see
without watching. One can bear witness to time travel by being in a
room that served as the point of embarkment for the machine. Even as
the dust still settles, one may be present to hear the departing whirs and
clicks, or a final exhalation. Most importantly, the witness must protect
anonymity at all cost. The witness bears the mortal burden of so many
bodies in locomotion and the potential fate of becoming suspended
in time, as if hypnotized. Knowledge of the travels and the often
The chronovisor is a window whose view changes as you shuffle your feet
ever so imperceptibly this way or that and shift your perspective in measured
degrees.
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It is possible to see and hear what lies in the memory of inert particles.
The asymmetry of the moment is due to two inertial frames: one on the
way up and the other on the way down. Switching frames is the cause of
the difference, not acceleration. Every change of velocity brings with it
a change of gesture, vertigo, a sharp drop in the stomach.
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A time machine is not so different from a flesh machine, the rumbling of the senses,
a pain in the trigger finger, by what criteria do we locate these sensations, correlated
with lapses in time and mind.
I have searched and researched, but never found out what becomes of you if you fall
from the chronovisor in the midst of its flight.
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Darkness alone fills a universal mind, I cant seem to grasp the ideas, the causes of
misery that circle around like newly greased wheels or vultures in the sky. I wanted
to say more to her, but she wouldnt understand. And yet, in the back of my mind, I
know she would understand completely. This is, in a way, not unlike the pilgrimage
she once intended for herself. Its easy to get ensnared in work like this work that
is so close because it is of the mind and the heart and of time and of reality, yet
too distant, precisely because they entangle those things together. Time was not,
and then it was. Or, is it the other way around, is it sleeping in the eternal bosom
of duration, the chronovisor only tapping at its door. What then is the difference
between time and duration? Who is the eternal parent of time and what does he
wear on his wrist to keep time? Where were we when we werent here? How can
I be sure that all this that surrounds me is real? And then again, even if it isnt,
even if it is a veiled tangle of artificial patterns, will it not still reveal something
about the Father who seemingly controls it all? I am drawn to the chronovisor, and
have been since I learned of its existence, yet am still not completely sure of the void
I am trying to fill.
or,
a failure of imagination
or,
so hard to believe in tomorrow
or,
weve waited so long.
A spinning wheel to contain it, to produce it. Father, mother, and son were once
more than one, and the son had not awakened yet, but will be awake soon.
I have a darker darker side. It only shows in one of these worlds, I cant recall
which, as the darkness covers my face and exposed the cracks of time on my bedroom
wall. It is impossible to tell if I am in the dream of if the dream is in me. And if
I take my eyes off it, just for a second, it will lunge into me at a ferocious speed. I
cant stop it. I can never stop it.
My memory lapses are growing. the last thing i recall is this morning, was it this
morning? As I sat drinking my coffee a man walked up, gait unsure, and sat at a
table across from me, he inside and me out. I saw him in profile through the glass.
He set a can of Tecate down. He was young, lost and fearful in the eyes, as if
nothing was familiar to him but the dulled chill of the can. And the can brought
me to another memory, of another young man, laughing, lost, squatting on his hind
legs near an old oak, digging a hole to search for the Tecate he buried near the roots
four hundred years later and his eyes, too, seemed lost I cant account for huge
chunks of time.
There really are those worlds reflected in an infinite pinpoint of light, between the
first and final moments, or, between the final and first moments, depending on your
point of view. The past is always easier to believe in, one of us has been there once
before. I am not a religious person, but time is a religious process. It reveals and
hides, like the God who is exposed only at the points of trauma.
Failed exposures, underexposed, over mulled. These are the tears and flashes of
light. In dreams I can see Him clearly, but I repeat: I am not a religious person,
but dreaming is a religious experience.
Father Milazzo / Ernetti (at different times) are watching a group of doves or
pigeons pecking at the cobblestones in the same plaza.
The chronovisor is taking its toll on me. I know I live too much in the past.
For it alone I know that I suffer.
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I was in the (mind of the ) machine for days before I realized it...
The god does not hear you; there is no mercy for your prayers at hand!
These voices out loud make the past scatter. There is something about an empty
church, like a solitary forest, that has more religion than a thousand worshippers.
Save me.
It was believed that man, totally in touch with the etheric substance within
himself, once flew like a bird through the ether of the universe. It was believed that
he had once known how to pull energies of the conscious, thinking stars and planets
down through the ether to the earth, to use for his own purpose.
with seeing comes the nausea, and if my skin doesnt age, still these visions weigh
on me.
how heavy are they?
always the odor of sulphur persists.
or only a murmur, if you resist.
I have this sinking feeling.
we tell ourselves whatever we have to.
All the accounts have become one, and I am the single traveler. I know this is
impossible. I even can faintly recall a time when I could separate one from the other,
and all from me. But in keeping the records, in interpreting them beyond the call of
duty, in possessing them and being possessed by them, I find this paradox a fable I
can embrace. I have seamed together a puzzle of moments and circumstances, and
recast myself in each. There is no contradiction because there is no symmetryonly
continual acceleration and deceleration. I keep in my pocket my fathers watch,
which he left behind, probably because its timekeeping is unreliable. Its weight on
my hip grounds me to the Earth enough to remind me of my name and of the daily
tasks I do to maintain myself.
The chronovisor is available today only, from 4-6 pm behind the rue de
Chartres, adjacent to the cathedral beyond the red-orange gypsy curtain.
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Note:
The human brain (unbounded) is designed to take our bodies (trapped)
beyond their boundaries and casings limited by spatial restrictions. Our
very chemistry encourages inner oscillation from point to point, while
our geography rejects it.
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Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall
say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the
sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things
which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you. What things soever he saith. Therefore I say
unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye
receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:22-24)
And in a way then, the freedom we so seek at the bottom of each of our
souls, is a creative one. We must create to be freed, we must destroy to
create, we must create to destroy, and begin again. Ours is a religion
of the fallen, and the fallen are often doomed to cycles of repetition,
forever contemporary with they myths they recall once every other
autumn when the winds stretch across the city and a silver fork reflects
the light from the window at just the right angle to illuminate the red
apples in basket on the floor. It is the mythology we must hold on to,
not the future, that is what ensures the possibility of creating a new one.
We must sit with our eyes and windows wide open, sit in contemplation
of our own skeletons, and know that though nothing is ours to keep, it
is our to create.
time. God has a number of memories, too, and when our thoughts turn
to him, delightful encounters dont seem so anymore and the memories
seem to negate themselves, push away, like opposite magnetic poles,
and the holes that get left behind, the absences, are what we feel, so
that memories become voids and must be recreated and that our psychic
mechanisms only tune themselves to the frequency of time when the
light is right, and certain metamorphoses may occur during dream-time
but the familiar proportions tie us down to this plane and this plane
only but we can continue to search because all these things are there,
right there, right under our noses.
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There are a pair of special spectacles one must wear while in the
machine. If the glasses should fall off or one foolishly chooses to
remove them in motion, she will gaze upon an ominous terrain strewn
with corpses, and bear witness to suffering too vast for the human
heart to endure.
The machine can resurrect a view to the dead, but the machine
can not return to you a lost loved one. But to do so, even to catch a
glimpse, would leave one undone.
[Even though I have never traveled myself (or, have I?), I know
through the memories of others, and I imagine the burden. Inside,
I imagine you fall into an abyss, death-like. I imagine a hum, not a
bleeding rhythm or a poetic rhythm, but a vortex. I imagine some
inescapable sunset. I imagine a spherical window opening, a scream
heard as a whisper. I imagine falling.
I imagine your courage may abandon you.]
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Not at all, Melquiades corrected her. It has been proven that the devil has
sulphuric properties and this is just a little corrosive sublimate.
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2011