Time Warp

For a truly surreal experience: return to your hometown, see a bunch of people you haven't seen for a lot of years, and then sort through all the crap you left in your parents' house and forgot existed.

Even better, do this just at the moment when you're preparing to ship yourself far from home to have a second try at something you swore, after the first time, you'd never do again. Just as you're beginning (again) that Last Summer Before Everything Changes.

Even just the beginning of summer is always, for me, the trigger of flashbacks to summers past. There's something about the feel of the air, the quality of the light, that makes me feel a little bit lost in my own historical timeline. Maybe it's that magical summer sense that anything could happen - even waking up ten years ago. Maybe it's the extra hours of daylight that give the illusion of free time like you haven't known since high school vacation. Maybe this year it does seem more that way than ever before, and I'm just letting it all jumble in my brain.

Maybe it's the smells in my parents' house. Maybe it's the lack of obligations for three whole days (which feels like an enormous stretch of time).

Maybe it's an overwhelming desire to twist time into an endless loop, so what's so good right now never gets lost, that makes it so easy to forget what day it is, what year it is.