Evocative

Something about the weather.  Low, loose, gray clouds, the type that sometimes move enough that you can see the blue sky underneath.  Sputtering drops of rain, warm enough.  I want to go camping.  Or travel.  Or work outside (for a while.)  And I want to be with other people doing these things.  Standing around drinking coffee, decided what to do next or waiting for the right moment to begin.  Just the weather. Evocation.

Sometimes walking past a tree, the sun warming the needles, I'm suddenly 8 years old and chasing around with all the neighborhood kids at dusk (we played "SWAT".)  Or the smell of laundry detergent and it's a gray, winter, Saturday morning and I'm 10, and my friend and I are riding her Radio Flyer wagon down the hill, steering with the handle; or I'm in my grandma's house in El Paso, and it's hot, we take the bus to the military base and eat deep-fried burritos and drink grape-flavored punch.  The back of my legs stick to the seat of the bus.

When I do guided meditations, the memories come through visual or tactile senses, but in waking life, they come through scent and weather and sound.  They catch me unaware, all of them, how do I drop in them on purpose?  Quickly, if I need to?  How do I blow those out to create an emotional response not specifically related to the actual memory?  How do you create an emotional truth not reliant on a memory?  How do you make it real enough to affect everything you do going forward?

I was wrong about the clouds.  They increased, the sky darkened, and it's a complete downpour.  It's a pleasing sound on the leaves of the camellia, but I'm glad to not be outside right now.