From a geocentric view, the cosmos is spinning east to west, though the larger situation is that the earth is spinning west to east.

We are these mobile organisms, so we have to be able to navigate our environment. Consequently our sentience manifests as a sequence of perceptions. So our experience of time is as the present moving from past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration.

The reality is that change is turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events coalesce and dissolve. Potential>actual>residual.

There isn't a literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't refer to them as dimensions of space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is to thought.

Different clocks can run at different rates because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

Time is asymmetric, because it is a measure of action and action is inertial. The earth only turns one direction. Even quantum fluctuations are energetic actions.

Energy is "conserved," because it is the present. So it goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information. So there tends to be an intellectual focus on the patterns, rather than the processes generating them.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.

If a plant modeled time, it would be as cycles of expansion and consolidation, like rings of a tree.

Energy out, structure in.