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Everyone dreams. Everyone has probably had every sort of dream, each dream holding a different meaning for everbody else.

Mine was a terrible dream. It was the sort of dream I did not wish to wake up from, the sort that almost broke me down and made me cry when I finally had to wake since I had to work. Luckily, I wrote most of it down.

I believe it started with a story--a biography, of someone. A woman, whose name was never mentioned in my dream, but a name my dreamself swore he knew to heart. The original biography spoke of this woman's hard times, and a nameless male character who appears briefly. It was at this point that I found my dreamself transported back in time, to a place both unfamiliar and familiar all at once.

I ended up living in what amounts to be the village she lives in. Overtime I made friends, and found possible loves. Eventually I was able to solve a dilemma, more political than epic, and more mundane than grand, but solved it I did. During a myriad of other events I regretfully have now forgotten, She and I became close and fell in love.

Time, however, would not stand still, and I was drawn back to the present. And yet, there was a calm in me; I knew she yet still lived, for she did in the original timeline. I visited the author of her biography, and other scholars who know her story well, and I realize the story was now different. The nameless character who appeared briefly in the original now had a name, and a much larger role; his name was mine, and the story now spoke of the love we shared and the all-too-short time we spent together as I disappeared into the timestream.

With some effort I found her again. She was, of course, now elderly, and yet she waited for me. she knew I would come back, and she never took another man to bed or marriage. Once we were reunited a magical thing took place; somehow, someway, the ravages of time turned back just for her. She became young again, the way I met her in the past. Soon afterwards we married. We attended many events together, and we gained fame for our story of love defeating time.

I found out that I have a daughter by her from our time in the past. My daughter now is much aged, now older than me and my wife both. She was content the way she was, though; she had her own fairy tale life.

As my wife and I continued to live in bliss and contentment, and through an unexplained means, a son of ours (possibly from another timeline, or from the future, or through other means) captured us both. He was lured by more devious desires.

The thought of spending two lifetimes without her, my wife, tore at me in such a way that I found new strenght to free myself from my bonds, to escape with her.

That is when I awoke, saddened. I wanted to sleep again, but I couldn't for I had duties in the real world.

True story, or at least, true in that I had this dream. Of course the events were clearer when I dreamed them, and disjointed when I awoke, but I have managed to piece most of it back together. Of course there were some parts I have now forgotten, or parts that made no sense that contributed nothing (so far as I can remember).

It was a horrible dream because I felt contentment and love on a level I have never experienced before. Being a young man, usually a dream would have either a completely meaningless and confusing experience, or perhaps a thing of lust and desire. But this...it was very vivid, the feeling of love. And in my dream I said things like, "I chose you" over returning to the present, or living alone. Heartwrenchingly cheesy stuff. In my dream I would have done anything for her to see her smile and to have her close to me. And, I still sort of feel that ache even now.

haha, thanks, umar. I'm thinking of making it a story at some point...

Well, there would be, yes. I don't know. Time is tricky. I hate time-travel story devices, honestly, lol. The only exceptions are cases like these when time travel IS the story.

My views on time really vary depending on the story and situation, but my immediate idea of it is linear. And, in all likelihood, set in stone.

Sure in my dream it had the 'original' book, and then 'revised' book wherein I am mentioned by name and have a larger role.

If I was to write it and would use my current view of time as a hard-restriction, the journey to the past would already have been recorded in history. I don't know, it's hard to explain...

Essentially, if I travel back to the past, it's because I was writing history as it was meant to be written, not undoing history. Because, anything I do in the past happened in the past so it has already been recorded and already is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle probably rightly represents what I'm getting at.

I don't think time is always linear, that is just my gut feeling about it. I don't see any particular reason for it to be constrained to a complete linear progression. I guess I see it as something heavy, hard to push off course and tending to go back to its course once swayed off the path since it probably flows down the path of least resistance just like everything else does.

I will have to ruminate on all that. *starts ruminating*

"If someone were to go back into the past and affect something in history, it is because that someone was meant to go back and do what he/she does and that all of it has already been recorded in history."

See, I am not agreeing with this. The word "meant" implies fate or some kind of immutable progression of events. I think time is more fluid then that in the sense that it would be preferable to have a split in time than to have there be a concept called "fate" in existence. Fate to me means that everything has already happened and we are just going along for the ride to experience it. So in my schema one could go back in time and do something that affects the timeline. Instead of a paradox you get a time split. The original timeline is not affected or is only to the extent that someone disappears (to go back in time). That person might find it hard to get back to the original time line, however.