time travel memories
Sense-memory. I am utterly fascinated by how a combination of sights, smells and sounds can immediately transport you to another place, complete with the emotions of that place. Sometimes I'll smell this certain combination of woody paneled basement and laundry sheets and I am back in my grandparents house. I feel warm and safe and a bit small.
Other memories that have come back involve a peculiar musty smell that reminds me of having a basement bedroom when I was eleven and I spent a good part of the summer lying on my bed and reading Stephen King's It. I feel a shadow of the insecurities of a seventh-grader mixed in with the unsettling creepiness of the book.
The most recent one was when we were watching the documentary version of Guns, Germs and Steel. I was half asleep and the picture on the screen was of an old sailing ship drawn on a yellowing map. Suddenly, I had this image of being very small and seeing pale blue wallpaper with similar pictures of ships. It was a long time ago, but at that time I had the feeling that those ships had depth and stories in them. Ten o'clock on a weeknight I called and woke my mother to ask her if I ever had wallpaper like that in my bedroom. She confirmed that, yes, when we lived in Tennessee when I was three my bedroom was decorated with pale blue wallpaper with sailing ships and sea monsters.
And I'm sitting here at the kitchen table drinking smoky tea and listening to Kate upstairs learning to play Regina Spektor songs and singing along and I think to myself: this is one of those moments. I'll be sixty years old someday, sitting in a sunny window drinking smoky tea and I'll have these echoes of music in my head and be immediately transported back to this moment, or at least the feeling of this moment. And I think it'll be one of those bittersweet feelings: sentimental and beautiful but a little sad.
Other memories that have come back involve a peculiar musty smell that reminds me of having a basement bedroom when I was eleven and I spent a good part of the summer lying on my bed and reading Stephen King's It. I feel a shadow of the insecurities of a seventh-grader mixed in with the unsettling creepiness of the book.
The most recent one was when we were watching the documentary version of Guns, Germs and Steel. I was half asleep and the picture on the screen was of an old sailing ship drawn on a yellowing map. Suddenly, I had this image of being very small and seeing pale blue wallpaper with similar pictures of ships. It was a long time ago, but at that time I had the feeling that those ships had depth and stories in them. Ten o'clock on a weeknight I called and woke my mother to ask her if I ever had wallpaper like that in my bedroom. She confirmed that, yes, when we lived in Tennessee when I was three my bedroom was decorated with pale blue wallpaper with sailing ships and sea monsters.
And I'm sitting here at the kitchen table drinking smoky tea and listening to Kate upstairs learning to play Regina Spektor songs and singing along and I think to myself: this is one of those moments. I'll be sixty years old someday, sitting in a sunny window drinking smoky tea and I'll have these echoes of music in my head and be immediately transported back to this moment, or at least the feeling of this moment. And I think it'll be one of those bittersweet feelings: sentimental and beautiful but a little sad.
random bits cobbled together by j-dub
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