Friday, December 12, 2008

two in one morning promotion

a promotion of flashbacks, what else? you know, the ones i usually get on my morning walks home from work. i s'ppose neurologists or something like that could better explain the why's of these things happening. for me it's just like some kind of enhanced perception thingie that sometimes throws me out of my tracks but that i usually rather enjoy. because of some illusion of control over time.

remembering insignificant bits that stuck in my memory against hope makes me feel like... like i am saving bits of fabric that come undone behind me. it's like i'm walking on a tapestry suspended in mid-air, weaving it as i go while behind me it just comes undone and vanishes forever, like it never really was there in the first place. recollecting such little things, so forgotten yet so part of me is like i'm reaching back and making sure that some strings still remain tied together... that i indeed passed at a certain moment through a certain place and it was not all a grand illusion of colours and smoke.

the first bit hit me as i passed a huge puddle that is usually always there. what it triggered was a memory from when i was a little kid and some water pipes had broken in my street, leading to the street being flooded. several square meters of puddle. and while our parents were angry because of household utility and cost reasons, us kids were in paradise. mud had formed and we were playing in it, "building" structures, following the patterns that the flowing water made from where it sprung out of the asphalt down to the manhole it flowed in, watching the plants that growed, splashing... that sort of thing. it was heaven... until the people from the utility company came and repaired it and ruined all fun... and for days when passing the spot where the water had come out we would look there filled with the hope that by some unknown (and uncared for) miracle, the water would come back.

i walked on smiling to myself at the memory when the second flashback struck. honestly, the feeling when this happens is just so weird... i can't properly describe it. so two in a row is a bit much. but i saw the cranes on the construction site nearby and i remember this one time in kindergarden...

we were sitting in a semi-circle and there was this big drawing of a city, a typical 'communist' one. a building site with huge cranes and construction workers, blocks of flats, a park with small children playing, some pupils in school uniforms crossing the street... cars, buses... well, the usual, it just had this little 'communist' 'everyone happy working for the fatherland' touch to it.

we were to name the objects we saw in the drawing, then go and point them out to the other kids. one by one. and after that, we had to name the different colours we saw on some little drawings of the objects in there, put separately on a board. like "that crane is yellow" and "that girl's uniform is blue". when it was my turn, there was a picture of a car left and i had to name the colour. so i looked at the car a bit puzzled. of course i had seen the colour before, i had just never given it a name in my had. nor did i know what to call it. so i said the next best thing that seemed similar, though i knew it was not precisely that. i said "yellow". and then the teacher explained that it was not yellow, though it was close... it was "orange". and that's how i learned the word orange.

and i recalled the entire scene just because i had looked at those darn cranes... leaving my head swirling with sensations up to the time i finally got to bed to rest my brains... and induce some consciousness blockage to bursts of streams of consciousness like these.