This chapter of Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman describes time as a circle or a loop. The idea is that everything happening now has already happened over a million times before and will happen over a million times again. There are only a few people in each town who know the world is repeating. Everyone else thinks it is the first time their kid has learned to tie their shoes, among other things. That is why in my collage, I used a shoelace to create a loop to represent time and the repetition of firsts. I used two quotes from the chapter in my collage. The first is, “time is a circle,” I wanted to include this quote because it summarizes the main idea. It also presents the topic of my collage so I centered it in the middle of the circle to create a focal point. The other quote is, “just as all things will be repeated in the future, all things now happening happened a million times before.” I thought this was a great explanation of this concept of time and it helped me understand his dream. I added this quote to the circle to connect back to the fact that everything is repeating like a loop. In the background of the images panel I included photos of circular watches and colored circles. In the background of the images and text panel I also used various circles. I wanted to use circles throughout my collage because they are always repeating and never end, just like this theory of time. I arranged all three panels side by side horizontally. I did this because I wanted the shoelaces to match up with the words in order to create one circular image. I arranged the image panel on the left because if you look at the piece from left to right you first would see the few watches and the beginning of a circle. Then, you would see the continuation of that circle using words with a phrase in the centre. Finally, both elements of images and text come together in the third panel to complete the phrase that explains the concept.
