Here is another idea;

We are mobile organisms, so this sentient interface between our body and its environment operates as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no actual dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

The energy is "conserved," because it manifests this state of presence. Creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

So the energy 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 is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from he noise. Thus the tendency to focus on the patterns, rather than the processes generating them.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. Thus the space measured in terms of energy curves out, while that measured in terms of structure curves in....