Traveller in the arts
Posts: 15
(1/17/02 4:31 pm) Reply
Re: If time travel were possible
I think I would love to see this country (USA) at the turn of the century. I have always had a thing for Victorian Architecture........like it feels and seems familiar..a kind of deja vu feeling. I would like to check out why.
Re: If time travel were possible
I was thinking recently I'd like to go back to San Francisco 67-69, hang out with the flower children and listen to some cool music. But I just finished reading a book on Janis Joplin and it's kinda turned me off the period. Yeah, some great music, but also a bunch of drugs and lost and wasted lives.
So I'll go with my favourite choice.
Paris 1920s, hanging out with the crowd around Silvia Beach's famous bookshop and changing the face of 20th century fiction; Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, John dos Passos. The 'Lost Generation' meets the 'Jazz Age.' Uber-cool.
(I'll skip the pilgrimages to the bullfights though - an abomination.)
Traumaddict Traveller in the arts
Posts: 54
(1/19/02 7:07 am) Reply
Re: If time travel were possible
Ok, you guys will think I'm very weird (as if you don't already) but I would definately go back to the late 60s early 70s and work in Vietnam as an Army Nurse. I cried when I saw the monument in DC up close of the nurse holding the dying soldier - something about that era pulls me beyond explination. I would have been honored to have served in that place in time in that capacity.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. - Helen Keller
Re: If time travel were possible
Being something of a pragmatist, I would need to know what station in life I would occupy before being shot off into the past. We think there is a huge gap between rich and poor now, boy, back a few generations, the 'rich-gap' was of grand canyon proportions. Or perhaps it is that the poor were poorer in those days, the proportions being similar. Anyway.
I'm reminded of that great scene in the Monty Python movie, "The Holy Grail." The king and his entourage were riding through the countryside. Either side of the road were peasants gathering animal droppings. One turned to the other and said, "Look, there's a king!"
The other replied, "How d'you know he's a king then?"
The first peasant sneered, "He's not covered in sh_t."
I would need to think very carefully. I guess one should take account of the fact that prior to the turn of the 20th century, we had virtually none of the life-saving drugs we have today. Nor did we have analgaesics of any real potency.
Death usually came to people slowly and painfully. Can we imagine what it must have been like to die of cancer without painkillers? Or to regard every cut finger as a potential death-sentence through infection? To expect 3 of our 5 children to die before the age of seven? To die ourselves before age forty?
So I really don't want to go back to the past. No. I just want to be a rich, idle bastard, skiiing in Switzerland in the the winter, and lying about on cushions in the South of France in the summer. I would make my own environment.
HRH Queen of Valimar
Posts: 63
(1/21/02 3:58 am) Reply
Re: If time travel were possible
Pete:
" So I really don't want to go back to the past. No."
Well, if you were able to utilize a time machine and choose a period in which to visit, you would not have to stay that long as to die young, or encounter any mishaps.
" I just want to be a rich, idle bastard, skiiing in Switzerland in the the winter, and lying about on cushions in the South of France in the summer. "
If I could go back in time. . .
I would visit the Middle Ages and try to determine whether or not the King Arthur legend is based in truth. Also, this is such a beautiful time; the days of chivalry are gone forever . . . I wish we could bring some of that into the present. . . the world desperately needs it!
Re: If time travel were possible
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