Strange how things get inside your mind when you least expect it and stay there, carving a niche for itself. Slowly engorging until it is all that fills the waking mind. Something of this sort happened the other day. There was nothing remarkable about the day, not even noteworthy; but there it was and there he was. They stared at each other in contemplation and, in that moment, where each held the other’s gaze – his consciousness was usurped.
In all its duotone glory, it had taken over his mind. For the space of an evening, that’s all he thought, dreamt and thought a little more about. Black fading to silvery grey on a white that seemed to be a veteran amongst whites, the little quadrilateral imprisoned his thoughts and transported them in time (never mind that scientists deride the concept of time-travel) to the time when they used to stay in that crumbly, cheesy-walled, first-floor apartment. The oily stench from the vendor at the street corner was a regular uninvited guest along with a multitude of other smells and sounds. The butcher across the street chasing pariah dogs away. The newspaper boy early in the morning. The familiar sound of paper slamming into the paint-peeling door. The new neighbours with the golden pup. The staircase with it’s shaky banisters. The sepia-tinted corridors along which much time had been spent learning the finer nuances of friendship. The thought that he was going to move out someday. The thought that he would grow on to do well.
That was the day they moved out. They were shifting across the state. It was all so new and exciting and wonderful. In that moment he felt again the familiar tingling of suspense and apprehension. Would he like the place? Would the people be different? Would he find friends? Or would he be alone?
Such is the power of the mind that he could almost smell the kitchen being packed, the clothes being dusted. Long-forgotten sounds and scents from his childhood returned like phantoms to haunt his today. The bells of the ice-cream man with whom the bargaining was free and frequent. The neighbourhood girl who would smile everyday at him in that way in which only she could. The flower-laden boughs just outside the bedroom windows. Stretch your arm and pluck memories off twigs that snapped easily. And it did — the twig snapped.
The bicycle still stood though, in it’s corner; a corner it had always had. Well-worn and trustworthy. The companion of many a day, and idle evening, when the world was an interminable road — one that only required a pair of wheels to traverse. So long ago did it all seem. Years had gone by and only this window into the past and the indistinct images branded into his mind remained.
The aging light reflected from those twinkling eyes, standing astride his new bicycle as dad captured the moment on film. Oh the excitement of being seen, of being photographed, of being young!
Slumber overtakes — the years playing like a surreal motion-picture through his dreams. The photograph escapes his grasp and floats gently onto the table.