Marcel,
Since Tom insists on questioning every term I use, I keep have to respond by further focusing my argument. I'll post this latest itineration and see if you think it makes sense, as a description of time:
There is only that thermal medium/particle cloud/quantum state.
As the energy/mass/plasma/waves/particles moves around, it changes configuration.
Since it is in a constant state of flux, these configurations are constantly being replaced.
Some areas in which there is greater activity naturally change shape faster than those with slower levels of activity.
Now since we are mobile points of reference, we are also one of those particles moving about. We are moving forward from our individual perspective and the larger situation is changing, so it is quite easy to conflate our sense of motion with this larger change, thus we seem to move from one configuration to the next, in much the same way we move along a path.
The larger reality though, is that our actions are balanced in this larger context, so there is that non-linear reaction to our motion, which compensates for our motion, to maintain the larger equilibrium.
Because there is just this sea of energy and energy is conserved, it is impossible to have sequential configurations co-existing, because they are constituted from the same energy.
So the old configuration fades into what we colloquially refer to as the "past." As all this energy bounces around, the new configurations emerge from this action. Those ranges of probabilities of what might happen as this energy interacts, are what we colloquially refer to as the "future."
So this current configuration emerges out of this action and is replaced by it.
What we colloquially refer to as the "present" doesn't move along some fourth dimension, because it is all that energy/mass particles/waves/thermal medium/cloud of motion that is all that exists.
Thus these moments of configuration emerge from that "future" and recede into that "past."
It is only because we can only exist in that present state, that we sense it as going from past configurations to future ones, but it is not the present which moves, only that it changes shape.
So while we have this subjective sense of "moving" from "past" to "future," the objective reality is that potential becomes actual and is replaced, ie. the future becomes past.