Everywhere I look I see well-worn tracks. Tracks in the air, tracks in people’s faces. Tracks in their eyes. Tracks everywhere… I’m the tracker, I thought – I’m tracking the tracks. Because there is nothing else but the tracks. This world is made of tracks. There’s nothing ‘off-road’ anymore, no way to get off the grid…

I was rich in time but poor in space – it’s always one either one way or the other isn’t it? It’s always a trade-off, like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Relation. When you get one thing you always want the other. Isn’t that it? We’re never satisfied, I suppose. That’s just the human condition – we are always looking for something we can’t have. We want to have our cake and eat it.

When the Space-Like Universe collapses you are left with nothing but time. You got time on your hands, then. You’ve got time and plenty of it. We always say that we want more time, but do we really know what we are asking for? Time is not what we think it is, you see – it’s not what we think it is at all! Time is thought like Krishnamurti says, and we can’t see thought but only what thought tells us…

Time races onwards like an express train; it goes faster and faster and faster but never gets anywhere. There’s nowhere left to go, you see. In the Time-Like Universe there is nothing else but time and time is like water running out of a bath – emptying out into nowhere. ‘Yes but have we got time?’ you ask. The truth is that we have got plenty of it but it won’t get us anywhere. The truth is that time is all we have. It’s like pulling on a long, long length of string – when you get to the end of it there’s nothing there. There’s never anything there.

You’re fishing away in the creek and you think you’ve got a big one but then the line goes slack and there’s nothing there. You must have got your hook snagged on a rock, or on a clump of seaweed. All the mangrove crabs are looking at you, their little eyes swivelling to one side in unison. They’re wondering what you’re doing. Or maybe they’re not wondering. Maybe they know. Maybe the crabs know. Maybe they know what you’re doing and they’re feeling sorry for you…

The sun is very low in the sky – it’s a big red swollen disk, slowly softening as it merges with the horizon. You can hear seabirds calling out in the distance. You can hear the lap of the waves. It’s a timeless moment – a little bit of eternity is peeking out at you. You know that the Space-Like Universe is out there somewhere. It’s out there somewhere behind the veil, but you never see it. You are always in your head. You are always too busy chasing shadows; you are always too busy dreaming of better things. Only there aren’t any better things. Not in the Time-Like Universe there aren’t! Time unfolds with agonizing slowness, and then – in the ‘Grand Gesture’ – proceeds to reveal nothing, as Jean Paul says…

I can see the tracks as clear as day. Tracks in the air. Tracks in people’s faces, tracks in their eyes. Tracks everywhere. Well-worn tracks – the type of tracks you can never get out of! The type of tracks you can never leave. These are the type of tracks you don’t even know to be there – you are always too busy to notice them! You’re always too busy scanning for escape routes. You are always too busy trying to escape from the Time-Like Universe. You’re in your head and your head is full of tracks…