When I wax nostalgic for what was, I sometimes shuffle through the files in my head to see what might present itself. These, of course, are arranged in a completely non-linear, disorganized sort of fashion which can make retrieval a little tricky. The code for what I may be searching for, in that deep dark place, often gets scrambled and I pull out a completely unrelated scene than the one I went in there for in the first place. It’s not all that uncommon. But the thing is, my card catalogue is also probably not as organized as it could be. It seems as though childhood memories are sometimes partnered with business ideas; or thoughts about music and dance may be overshadowed by math problems, conflicting images of happy and sad, or some trip I took in the sixties (No, not that kind of trip). So, sometimes the pairing of concepts can take on new twists and allow me to look at things in a fresh way, which I probably would never have come up with had I set out to do this originally. The mind is a fascinating thing.

As a young adult, and even as a child, I often pondered about the notion of time itself. But the way we’re taught to think about things is by organizing them onto a timeline. When we are very young, we’re able to perceive events in a way that isn’t always confined in such a linear mode, but that somehow gets lost in our growing up. At some point in our training, this more holistic way of seeing the world around us gets re-shaped in a fashion to more easily categorize or evaluate in a logical manner. There are pros and cons to this – like everything else. It’s all relative. But language is like that, I guess. Anytime we talk, the idea has to be boiled down to something much simpler than it actually is, in order to get our message across. I feel like it’s a very limiting way to communicate, but what’s the alternative? We’re just not there yet. And instead of our species moving in that direction, our blabbering keeps increasing, and in my opinion, it’s about mundane things or endless and repetitive details about things that completely miss the point. I know, ranting.

Getting back to where I began, searching through the cobwebs of my semi-organized brain, I time travel in an ever present now to my childhood bedroom. One of my absolute favorite places to be on a chilly winter late afternoon is in my box, on a shelf, in the closet – which happens to be my little narrow bed. If I make sure to close the large square window before the air outside gets colder than the inside then I can experience complete luxury, like most people will never know. Glen Campbell’s smiling face is lit by the sinking sun’s spotlight as I lay back, soaking in the warm glow like a lizard, wiggling my toes to the rhythm beating from the record player on the rickety table next to my head. The amber marbles of the paper mâché raccoon I made stare down at me from his perch on top of the thin-shelled, make-shift wardrobe where my clothes hang behind the tattered green curtain.

I roll over onto my stomach to face west as the yellow orb continues its descent behind the bluish mountains in the distance, highlighting the growing eucalyptus that I’ve been measuring time against since I got my own room ten years ago. I have everything I need in this sanctuary: clothes folded in the large wooden box below me, the insulation provided by the bright orange shag carpet which covers the floor, the narrow set of drawers that Mom and I painted sunlight yellow – along with my particle board walls that Dad did. My space feels comfortable and cozy until the walls start closing in on me and I have to flee. Outside! My ultimate refuge is the canyon where I’ve called home for the last sixty years.

I drift out of the reverie and back into the present. Was that actually only then and this really now? Or is it all the same? Can past and present somehow be interchangeable? Is all time omnipresent? It’s all just perspective.

Chi Varnado is working on a new MG/YA series about a dance studio. Her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire and her children’s book, The Tale of Broken Tail are available on www.amazon.com. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, can be found on www.chivarnado.com. You can follow us on www.Facebook.com/gnomewoodcanyon.