Time Doesn’t Sleep, But Maybe You Do, in Another Life
A Look That Seems to Know Something
There’s something strange in the gaze of an old dog.
As if they’ve known you before. Not yesterday but long before you were born. As if they’re saying:
"Oh child, you think this is now?"
For my new card and poster collection, The Antiques, I portrayed elderly dogs and cats as if they’ve lived a hundred quiet lives. With little glasses, caps, scarves. Not to be funny, but to honour something in their expression: calm, deep, and timeless. As if they remember something we forget the moment we wake up.
My older getting pets got me thinking about time, about memories and about why they live in the moment and why we should, too. Because maybe those moments aren't in the timeline that we think we are experiencing.
Sleep Might Not Be a Pause, But a Jump
We’re taught to see time as a straight line: birth, aging, death.
But what if that’s an illusion?
In dreams, I suddenly find myself back in a house that no longer exists. I speak with someone who’s no longer here.
It doesn’t feel like memory, it just is. No past, no future. Only now.
Maybe sleep is the only time we drop the illusion of a timeline.
Maybe, for a moment, we slip outside of time into something whole. Not a road, but a room where all moments exist at once.
We just happen to visit them one by one.
Time as Space, Not as Flow
In certain physics theories (like the block universe by Einstein and Minkowski) time doesn’t “flow.” All moments already exist. Past, present, and future lie side by side like places on a map.
We don’t travel through time. We experience it, piece by piece.
And sleep might be that rare moment where we shift direction.
Old Dogs Seem to Already Know
The dogs in The Antiques look at you differently.
Their eyes are slower. Less hungry for “what’s next.”
More rooted in what is. They seem unbothered by tomorrow.
As if they’ve stopped pretending that time is real.
I imagine them not dreaming of their youth but returning to it.
Not remembering it, but actually being there. Or maybe they’re visiting a moment where you are older, and they recognize you from there.
Our Brains Don’t Really Understand Time
Neuroscientists like David Eagleman have shown that the brain doesn’t measure time objectively, it constructs it. Especially in dreams, time can stretch or collapse. It becomes fluid. Or vanishes altogether.
The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote that a moment isn’t just a point on a timeline, but a whole little world in itself. That fits how dreams feel: whole, but unlinked from order.
Maybe Time Is a House
What if time isn’t a path, but a house? A place with rooms.
And sleep is when we quietly switch rooms.
Sometimes, when we wake up, there’s still a scent from that other room in the air. A feeling, a glimpse, a face.
And sometimes, if you look closely, you’ll see it in the eyes of an old dog.
Books for Dreamers, Thinkers & Timewalkers
Want to dive deeper into this idea of timelessness?
Here are some books that inspired me:
-
The Order of Time – Carlo Rovelli
→ A poetic journey through the idea that time might not “flow,” but that we do -
The Brain: The Story of You – David Eagleman
→ A fascinating take on how the brain shapes time -
Intuition of the Instant – Gaston Bachelard
→ A philosophical look at time as pure moment, not measurement.
Meet The Antiques
The old dogs and cats from The Antiques are waiting for you.
Not as a joke, but as tiny timekeepers in hats, bowties and glasses, full of memory.
Maybe you’ll recognize something in them.
Maybe they’ll look at you like someone they’ve known… somewhere else, in another time.
→ Explore The Antiques
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🥰So poignant and thoughtful! I love this. 😊