“Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life." 

--W.G. Sebald; from 'The Rings of Saturn' (1995)

[via Wait-What?]

A few evenings ago while on a walk, an open bedroom window for a child’s room reminded me of my own when growing up.  And I was momentarily swept up in a surge of memories, but not lasting much more than three or five seconds. It had its effect though because afterward, made me think that when a child, time in the parents’ home appears to be without time, as a perpetual state understood to be what life simply seems to be at that age- a constancy of basic, day to day set conditions with little in the past, without enough experience for there to be a future, so without any real depth to the present. In contrast, a parent has that period of their life prior to the child and can also envision a later time of life when the child is no longer within the home. But a child has no such reference and their framework limited to what has been laid out by the parent. 

Similarly, a memory.  The memory also without existence beyond the time of its birth, as done through the act of recollection, and can be nothing but a descendant of ourselves, dependent and requiring personal attention for there to be any chance of its survival. And it cannot grow into more than what it is- a remembered state of set conditions incapably altered. If so, an act of the imagination replaces the memory. When I saw this window while on my walk, there was the sudden rise of memory but then, almost in contrast, a returning to the collective moments which composed the pleasant evening- lowering sunlight, lawn sprinklers, distant traffic, a timid cat, squirrels, the rhythm of my steps, verdant scents, a warm wind out of the west and, equally material to the composition, emotions that were in acknowledgement of the past.