Having a Moment...

There I am, sitting on my porch recliner-breezes blowing a rather autumnal coolness all around me. It's late-afternoon-going-into-evening. The sky is BLUE and the clouds are marching quickly overhead. I hear a chickadee, rare here this month, and think, Man, I have to do those damn dishes!

I can't do a big kitchen full of dishes without music, so I turn on the local heavy rock station. Sh** Yeah! It's 1983--Red Rocks with Paul and Jeannie--Santana playing on the stage, early evening breezes scenting the air with sage and Denver spread out below us....

Google images

I fiddle with the equalizer and turn it up LOUD. I'm there! 30 years gone in an instant! Could that Kahlua Sombrero have done this to me?* Not quite the toot I had that night, but fine, nevertheless!

Dirty dishes disappear around me, that kitchen is nothing! I'm humming along, when I think to look out in the driveway. Jim's car is there, which means he's next door watching the Simpsons quietly, so as not to disturb me.

The Simpsons watching Jim watching The Simpsons

By now Van Halen is annoying me, and the spell is over. I grab the remote, turn the volume way down, switch the equalizer to soft. Do the rest of the dishes, listening to car ads, commercials for drag racing, etc., say why bother and switch it off.

Yes, I had A MOMENT. The Moody Blues urge me on--Thinking is the Best Way to Travel.  I can do it every so often.

I remember another late afternoon-going-into-evening maybe 15 years back, on the porch across the street where I lived before. I was playing Otmar Liebert's, Nuevo Flamenco. The wind chimes were tinkling, my pinon pine incense was smoking, and BAM, I'm in Taos, NM! The desert breezes are stirring the wind chimes, the music on the plaza is mesmerizing! As the sun goes down, the stucco buildings glow a bronzy gold, stained glass windows sparkle in jewelled delight! And pinon smoke perfumes the air. I'm so THERE!

Doesn't do it justice!

I'm so There!

Pinon pine tree

I haven't lived out west since 1994, but I have these sensory memories now and then. I can place myself there for a moment. Bow Valley Parkway, a beautiful pine-forested road between Lake Louise and Banff-same time, late-afternoon-into-evening. I was there for a few seconds just last week. A particular part of the Mohawk trail can place me in Clear Creek Canyon, going toward Central City. Route 9 in West Cummington sends me somewhere west of Vail, Colorado, late '70s, where we camped by a river right next to I-70 the weekend that the Big Thompson River flooded. We had been swimming in the Big Thompson the weekend before at a bluegrass festival...

Bow Valley Parkway

Somewhere near Banff

*(Need I mention the Sombrero was made with almond milk? This is the 21st century after all.)

I say to heck with short term memory. If I can still zoom backward in time like this, maybe getting old won't be so bad! After all, who really cares what I had for breakfast?

Dream on, Y'all!