BUMMER-FREE ZONE

I think that songs and smells are the closest we’ll ever come to experiencing time travel. They can really transport sometimes, can’t they? I wonder why we are so designed. Occasionally a smell will waft to my nose or I’ll catch a song on the radio and I find myself removed to a nearly forgotten moment or season. It’s more than a memory though- it’s like my whole person is shifted. Yet it’s also spectral in that, while vivid, it ultimately lacks substance. It fails to satisfy whatever it has aroused. Try as I might to regain the fullness of the conjured moment, person or place- try as I might to drag the past into the present with all of its imagery and emotion- I usually end up just feeling titillated. The veil of time never parts.