Time trumps Space

So, I am right now finishing listening to Prisoner of Azkaban read by Jim Dale, having listened to the majority of it while driving back to PA this past weekend (for the baptisms of our friends Nathan and Julie's newest child and also of another couple friends' newborn ... and a relaxing time hanging out with Paul and Lissa and my nephews, who were also at the baptism) ... and I noticed something that fits into my own thinking on the Harry Potter works, particularly in the area of my definition of narrative (as a kairotic chronology) Basically this relates to that good ole term you hear a million times in every Sci-Fi movie or book: the "space-time continuum." Once Harry and Hermione have saved Buckbeak and Sirius and made it back to the hospital wing and Fudge and Snape et al have discovered the escapes and Snape vehemently insists that Harry and Hermione must have been involved, Dumbledore patiently but emphatically and thoroughly rehearses the facts (the locked door etc) that dictate that they could not have been in involved ... unless they have found a way to be in two places at the same time. Of course we know that they have indeed been provided with a way to do just that, with the time-turner. My interest lies in the fact that the "rules" of physical space can be "bent" by manipulating chronos, "clock time" - which in this case is done for the sake of kairos, the mystery laden time of special meaning (that "moment" when "time stands still" for something weighty, or to quote Marty McFly in Back to the Future, something "heavy" or in the translation used in Galations, the "fullness of time" - or to quote Paul Simon from the Rhythm of the Saints album: "you're born at the 'right time'") - in this case that of deliverance of the innocent and good. (side note): I know that that phrase "heavy" is in no way unique or original to BttF movies ... I use that instance because, aside from my obsession with throwing in movie lines every chance I get, Doc Brown here responds with the typical scientific question of whether something has gone wrong with the earth's gravitational pull in the future - which points up the contrast between scientific "factual" discourse and poetic language, which is pretty much the same differance as that between chronos and kairos) SO, this leads me to a sort of hierarchy of elements: Kairos highest, Chronos second and space last. There are two steps/point I want to emphasize 1. Chronos is maleable: That is basically just what the time turner is for, to mess with Chronos. Of course, there is a certain respect due to Chronos, lest one go accidentally committing suicide (killing one's past or future self, as Hermione says). Of course there are a myriad of possible "symbolic" nuances in that whole thing, of how the past and the future are at war, or at least in tension etc. But my main point in bringing it up is to say that I am not saying that chronos sucks altogether and should be utterly bagged ... it has its place and messing with it is VERY dangerous - although sometimes the rewards of that risk are very wonderful - especially for Sirius and Bukcbeak. The point is, though, that chronos can be meddled with. And here is is meddled with in such a way that the "hard rules" of the physical space half of the whole "space-time continuum" thinga-ma-bobby are superceded ... trumped, so to speak. 2. Time Trumps Space: Descartes Debunked The whole thing I have just said about "trumping" has a specific historical referent. Renes Descartes is known as the father of modern philosophy. He developed a very particular definition of what I will call (well, following the standard lingo in all the people whom I have had to read on the matter, all much smarter than me) - "physicality." Descartes' term is Res Extensia - or "extended reality/thing/matter." This means basically that physicality is defined primarily by the extension through the 3 dimensions (not meaning here any "other" dimensions that academics etc might talk about - simply meaning the three that we speak of in something like a 3D movie ... btw, U2-3D rocked). This is very different than the way that physicality had been thought of before, and (in Rowling I think) since. The Jewish concept of the "body" was as a mode of relation: one relates to others through the body in speech, touch, smiles and the like; one relates to God through liturgical observance or keeping the commandments through the body; one relates to God's creation in bodily ways (tilling the ground etc) . On the Rowling side, Steve Vander Ark (and I really hope they got all their differences sorted out) had some really good comments at Lumos in 2006 in Vegas. He talked about "wizarding logic" - the fact that by apparition and other magical means everything is about only 40 seconds away. I forget exactly how far he took that in the direction I am going here, so he might have said everything I am about to say (in which case I REALLY need to mention him, so as not to plaigerize), but the whole thing remains the same either way in how it fits into what I am saying here. Time is not ruled by space in the wizarding world: it does not take longer to get from Seamus' house in Scottland to London than it does to get to Hogwarts from Chez Finnigan (that's the specific example used by Vander Ark ... although I came up with the witty use of French :) ). Seamus takes the Hogwarts Express like everyone else because that is a part of what it means to be a student at the school. Through "wizarding logic" (magic) life on earth is freed up, in the physical side, to show so many more things, like aspects of relations etc. Not even Chronos, clock time, is ruled by "space"; and Kairos time is ruled by neither ... it rules them. The meaning of living life, including even simply being physical, it not ruled by "scientifically verifiable extension." Kairos must also respect Chronos and scientific space, but in the end it rules them and not vice versa, and the whole thing begins by pointing up, in the instance of the time turner (as perhaps the most apt representative of Vander Ark's "wizarding logic"), that even Chronos is not ruled by space. By it's link with Kairos, both being types of time, it trumps space even though it is ruled by "special time." PS: I should make a note here on the "debunking" of Descartes. I'm not saying "scrap the bugger and give him up as a bad job." The thing is that you can't ... to quote Riley in the first National Treasure movie: it's not just that it shouldn't be done ... it simply can't be done. We can't get back there no matter how hard we try ... our way of thinking (what Foucault would call an "episteme") is simply what it is. We may think we should "turn back the clock" but in our case, unlike Hermione and Harry's, we simply can't ... no matter how arduously we try to get back there we always approach that material as who we are where we are ... and that is as people whose thinking has been formed in a post-Cartesian world. Our better hope is to understand where we are, take the good and see if there is a way to transform the not-so-good (I think Descartes system works somewhat in so far as it goes, but to define what it means to be "in the body" or "in the flesh" solely, or even primarily, by the whole 3D extension thing is a MAJOR gype).