Memories are strange things.

You may secretly encounter them day after day and not give them a second thought.

They don’t become suddenly dislodged from your brain, and take your breath away and they don’t melt you into a pool of mute and grateful and shocked tears.

Most of the time they just play hooky, or pocket pool, perhaps.

They stay out of the way and live somewhere, tucked inside deep. Maybe they live somewhere left of the amygdala. Or stuck in a tiny crevice close to a small blood vessel.

Then suddenly you hear a name or a song. Or you walk by and a certain thick and oily and delicious smell oozes its way into your bloodstream.

It takes a few minutes: I suppose if you stimulated memories by freebasing you’d get to them a lot faster and far more vividly.

You’d also die of a heart attack– too much feeling hitting you far too quickly.

But suddenly it’s all there: the shapes, the colors. The map-like familiarity and feel is like a well-worn shoe you thought you’d lost. Or one you didn’t even remember you had.

Suddenly it’s not just the humble Sloppy Joes you made for dinner, but a rush of being fourteen and being in a friend’s house and tasting the best thing you ever have a memory of tasting.

Suddenly it’s less a grainy Google sattelite image, but it’s the walk you would take with your grandmother when you were little and the world seemed so big.

And suddenly, you don’t want that little memory to ever, ever leave.

29 Jun This entry was published on June 29, 2006 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Inner Lotus Blooms. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.