If time is understood as analogous to a spatial dimension then it ought to be seen as going upwards. The present can then be seen as located at the top of the heap of our past days, and rising, carrying us with it as more lived time is folded up and collapsed beneath. The illusion of freedom goes only in one direction, there is a striking asymmetry, we can only breathe if we keep going higher.  We find ourselves growing dizzy with being raised, not by our own power but by a heedless engine, like going up in an elevator that won't stop. But then you emerge at one floor and it's another day, and then you are drawn back into that dark narrow chamber, everything grows dark for a while but for the phosphorescent numbers, and the motion makes you queasy, and then the door opens on another day, resembling, but actually perched on top of, the previous one, and revealed as more hastily built if you take a close look, incomplete and fragile. You pick your way to a window and look out and you can see how far there is to fall. The base of the building is unseen, blocked by your angle of vision. The fall is inevitable, the structure sways in the wind. In dreams, in the dark, the closed door could open anywhere, the entire past is at your disposal, all your errors, your bêtises ready to be joyfully repeated.