Time travel.

I believe in the possibility of time travel. I'm not talking about crazy, complex machines built in Surrey, or Deloreans with 1.21 gigowatts. I mean our senses, which can trigger a very specific memory, and shoot us to the past.

I'm working on my rewrite of JUST A LITTLE RAIN tonight, and listening to my Jeremy Enigk playlist because it's Eliza's music. The song "Carry You" by The Fire Theft came on. At the end, there's the sound of wind chimes in the background. I've noticed it before, but it never struck me until tonight, when I realized they sounded exactly like the wind chimes hanging outside the front door of my dad's house. Suddenly I was in my dad's house, standing in the hall between the bathroom and the kitchen, feeling the revolting avocado green/harvest gold, once shag carpeting beneath my feet, looking out the three glass cut-outs on the door, at the magnolia tree in the front yard and the red house across the street.

I love how specific sensory memories are. When I smell sweetgrass (my most favorite smell in all the world- I'm sure I've said that before) I'm on the high school bus. I'm wearing a pair of too big jeans, a black leotard, my scratchy blue Express cardigan with the black zig zags, and one of my many pair of Converse low tops. I'm listening to Nirvana "Nevermind" on my walkman and looking out the window. There's a field on the north side of Butterfield Rd, just past Orchard and before Arrowhead that's filled with the weed, and, if my window's open, I can get a lung full. I imagine getting off the bus and running through that field, or a field like it, and going... somewhere. Anywhere but school. (Yeah, I read THE TALISMAN quite a few times, and the idea of traveling across the country on my own was super appealing.)

Our minds are attached to our past. It's such a part of us- we can't help it. My dad would tell me the same story from his childhood every time he ate ravioli, my friend can't do yard work without recounting the times he had to cut his grandfather's grass, I hear this tiny part in an Appleseed Cast song and think of my mom's best friend Penny, who had an instrument in her house that played a similar tune. I sometimes wonder how it works, which things our brains choose to flag as keepsakes and why. Because, certainly, I never would have imagined randomly remembering wind chimes.

Listening to: duh, I already told you.

xo. kb.