Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
Occasionally I will catch my mind walking down the roads of my past. Both dark alleys of sadness and bridges of joy. It’s my personal form of time travel. An escape from the present and whatever is consuming me here. I often think of time that way. Not as a date or an event, but as a place.
We’re all formed by a personal history. Histories that are made up of actions and places taken by us and upon us and within us. The synapses in our brains connect and some elements of our personal histories become memories. In time, a choice few stand out while others fade.
When asked about my past, I recall not what was said or how the weather was or who was there. Rather, I recall the street.
London Avenue with site lines to the Great Lake.
A manilla colored apartment in Stadium Village. The Landlord must have been cheap, because the walls were made of painted cinder block.
In the woods of Cook, Minnesota, surrounded by wet pines.
In my parent’s forest green living room with our corduroy couch. This time, with the vague memory of Bob Ross painting trees in the background.
When I saw Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris last year, I connected with it deeply because of this very notion. While others marveled at the cinematic stylings or the sharp dialogue or the talents of Tom Hiddleston and Allison Pill as the Fitzgeralds - I fell for the bumbling Cal. He was captivated by memories that weren’t even his own. (How torturous!) He believed that the streets and the shops of a long-past Paris were more magical than the streets he walked then. Since I often can’t allow fictional characters go after their running time expires, I now imagine Cal in sunny Los Angeles writing a novel about trinkets from the early 2000s and thinking longingly of Paris in the form it impressed upon his mind only a few years ago.
At this point in history, we have a deeper understanding of the human mind and memory. While scientists are focused on curing lost memories due to disease and decay - me, the hackish writer, is focused on comprehending why certain memories never leave. And why do they exist in the form of a room? Or a street? Or a cinder blocked wall? I’m sure a therapist could tell me, but psychosis is a license to write.
Instead, I’d rather imagine time as an available booking for the traveling couple. Where would you visit?
A place since flattened by war?
A place that brought you happiness as a child?
A place since destroyed by commercial endeavors?
No longer would we have to rely on the strength of our memory to take us back to these places! And yet, whenever people talk about time travel - they want to go to the future. A time when we live on Mars. (Although I should point out, that too is a place.)
Last night, while walking along the Mississippi River with some girlfriends, I stopped them to remark on how the city really was quite beautiful from our particular vantage point. It was a good thing to do - to appreciate that moment. To appreciate that place. I wonder how long before my memory will take me there again.
Photo and video via TIME Style and Design.
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