Just a tilt can do it. Some of my favorite times are the glimpsed patchwork memories that overlay a moment and suddenly have me living in two places at once.

Yesterday, as we drove through a rush hour intersection and I glanced up at the hanging green streetlight, was it the raised slope of my gaze that fired distinct synapses? Because then I found myself concurrently in a live memory of sitting by a lake house window almost three decades ago, gazing at the creamy sunlight shining past the green trees. Flash! I was there, drinking in the land and quiet. Just as I was when I was fourteen, there I was in Virginia again. And I’ve always been the same me whether fourteen or forty-two.

We drove on through the Albuquerque intersection, and was it that as soon as my gaze lowered the live memory was gone? Or did it escape along with my awareness of where my relaxation and visions were originating. In any case, I was more fulfilled for the memory, as we drove on past the drivers and orange construction cones, that I can go so many other places, and that I’ll always be me.

Our brains seem like such electrical operations, with currents and tiny connections that produce 3D miracles, and respond, just like a faulty radio, to a little tilting or even a good shake.