Memento and the direction of time

    In "Memento" we are able to experience time in a way similar to the main character Leonard, apart from a few key differences. As Leonard goes throughout his day, he learns more and more about his past through the notes he leaves himself, effectively paddling backwards through "The Great River" of time. The future is elusive to us, just as the past is elusive to leonard. With his system of note writing, he is able to manipulate his future state of mind from the past. With the past continuing to disappear in the vast expanse of time, he then goes on to experience the future in a way he has already decided, using his condition to forget any manipulations he created for himself. According to Richard Taylor, there are many things that are reversible, with one of the examples being a person walking to the store and walking home (and that a person could even walk home backwards if they wished). On the other hand there are also many processes that are irreversible, such as the frying of an egg. According to Taylor, if everything were reversible, "there would be nothing to suggest the inherent direction of time".

    *spoilers* Almost all of Leonard's life is reversible which is demonstrated clearly in his decisions to provide himself with false information in his notes of the past. Taking Taylor's philosophy on the direction of time into consideration, There does not exist any immutable direction of time in Leonard's life. Further more, it could even be said  that Leonard is time-traveling in a non-traditional sense of the idea, by simply and literally rewriting his past. If we view the mind's relationship to reality in a cartesian since, then it is easy to see how making these changes actually does change the past (at least to Leonard.) Ironically enough these changes to his past also change the future, giving him a different set of experiences to base each subsequent decision on.