Last night, I read a post I’d written not so long ago, on September 19, 2013. The post was a recitation of items I’d written down on 3×5 notepads some time earlier; I wrote the post as a reminder to myself to dredge up the memories that caused me to jot the notes.
Sometimes, I like to go back to old notes and try to remember what possessed me to write them. Occasionally, my memory serves me well, calling up old thoughts well enough to recreate the experiences that prompted them. Yesterday’s review of old notes corresponded well enough to history that I remembered many of the realities that caused them to spill from my brain to my fingers, leaving their fingerprints on the screen for me to read.
It wasn’t the notes, though, that triggered my memory of riding in a Triumph TR-7 in the late 1970s. The car was yellow and black, as I recall. There was nothing in my September post that prompted the memory. The post itself, a list from hand-written notes I’d jotted to myself, prompted my memory to go into overdrive, dredging up recollections worth bringing forward. The experiences surrounding that ride, and all the things associated with it, came flooding back.
For me, it’s a memory unfolding. It’s an old wish, which once was young, scrambling to find its footing.
