40 years back/ come

Borges has an excellent novel about a guy who keeps every single memory of his life as bright and vivid as it had happened with him. He separates himself from the outer world as it's too painful for him to experience new things; it's more than enough to remember the shades of the wall, the pattern of the bathroom's tiles or just the smell of the freshly baked bread. But that's just a novel; pure fiction, right?

I'm unsure. Normally, our memories fade as time goes on; some stay sharper, others lose their characteristics, change their taste, color, smell, feel etc. Our memory is a tricky bitch: even if we choose to keep things we want and forget the ones we disliked it doesn't always serve us. For instance, I could recall my 12 year old self walking down the street from school during autumn, kicking the leaves and thinking this moment is so meaningless I definitely won't remember it later (and yes, I did kibitz about things like this at 12). Yet no way I could remember how my sister looked like a baby, how she crawled around even though I saw her plenty of times during her babyhood (do we use that term? like a ghetto for babies. the babyhood, yo).

Oh well, I'm sure everyone works this way. Disturbing enough, my problem is how these memories pop up in my head in the nick of time. My example will prove how much I resemble the hero of Borges.

Röyksopp is probably the best band to listen while writing. So I open a new tab with the clear goal to continue my little Nordic saga about an invented warrior nation's struggle in conquering Northern Europe. My brother Daniel misses my stories and now I can't tell any before sleep, so continuing it online would be a nice-brother move, right? But god (ha!) has other plans, and Röyksopp- 40 years back/ come starts to play. I actually hate that track, always skipped it before, but this time I wait and when the melody shifts around two minutes, everything changes around me.

It's Turkey. It's Hasankeyf, the sun is scorching. Seven in the morning. We climb the path uphill, turn here and there, breathe the fresh air and reach the top. Thousand year old ruins all around, we lay down in the grass. Smiling white clouds wonder through the blue sky and the sun laughs in our face. A gust of wind tickles our feet: we smile back at nature. Breathe, in and out. There is nothing more precious than breathing, and nothing joyful than that. I feel alive.

I'm still in Turkey, but this time the scene tells me about twilight. Gorgeous colors paint the bottom of the sky with warm tones. Proud clouds amass together to see the sun going down. The scent of the tired country looms everywhere around and darkness takes over. It's like being there again... It's like living those memories again, and living the future again. Hasankeyf, I'm 60, 70 years old, bent and white haired but still breathing. Breathing the memories of my past, my life... Sun is going down behind the temple. The temple which has been standing for thousands of years, witnessed centuries come and go. Peter is just a tiny and forgettable part of its lengthy life. But the temple is the cornerstone of Peter's life.

Teardrops chase down my cheeks. What happened? It's Eger again, raining outside, I'm in pyjamas, laptop rests in my lap, fingers on the keyboard. Three years! It happened three years ago. I never even listened to that damn song- and still it ignited such a powerful flashback that I just sat here for minutes without doing anything.

Well, except for breathing.

And then, writing.