Recently

SOMETIMES IT IS LIKE THIS: I walk into my bathroom and peer into the mirror and am reminded of my old bathroom, the one with the brass medicine cabinet and flowered shower curtain. The tub had so many scratches and chips that no matter how hard you scrubbed it, it inevitably looked dirty. I shared that bathroom with my sister, and I would sit on the edge of the tub while she built sudsy towers and we would talk about Mom and school. The bathroom rugs were shaggy, and the wall had genuine wallpaper on it, the old kind that yellowed around the edges. With only one small window, and one dodgy lightbulb, it was always dark.
THE THING IS: This memory feels so real and I get so lost in it, that it takes a few minutes of reminiscing before I realize that we never had a bathroom that looked like that. It feels like a trick, except there is only one trickster that could pull something this ornate off.
OTHER TIMES IT CAN BE LIKE THIS: I wake up, but I do not get up, and my vision goes in and out. And then I am remembering an event so vividly it's as if it is a scene from a favorite movie I have seen dozens of times. The people are my friends, my family, but there are subtle differences. Clothing styles will be fifteen years off, and not in a retro way. We will all be interacting like normal, but I will realize that my second grade friend is talking to my college roommate. And I do not mean my friend from second grade is all grown up and in college, too. I literally mean my 8 year old buddy is conversing with someone I met ten years later. No one else appears to notice the discrepancies.
WHAT'S REALLY STRANGE: Sometimes I will be walking down the hill from my bus stop and will notice the setting dissolving into black and white, or even sepia. More often, though, the colors and shadings will grow brighter, and the sidewalk uneven, and I feel shifted off the normal route. It is easy for me to end up lost, especially when I am mesmerized by the oversized ochre and amber flowers.
CONCLUSION: Not sure. But as long as I do not get pushed off the sidewalk by the vibrating colors, I will keep on this ride.