Déjà vu on a sunny Sunday morning

November 20th, 2022

Lazy morning. Lazy Sunday morning. Lazy sunny Sunday morning. It is very quiet and still, everything — even the air — seems to be frozen. And crisp to the point of breaking at the lightest touch. Freezing cold mutes thoughts and limits movement by forcing numerous layers needed to leave the house. I am at my desk with sunshine amplified through the window pane and pleasantly warming my left cheek and expanding inside me in a way that makes me feel safe and content.

That feels acutely familiar. Obviously.

There were plenty of lazy Sunday mornings with comfortable sunshine felt through the windows in the safety of a tidied-up apartment, and blistering cold outside. Obviously. And I am trying to remember details of the previous times like that. Was it last year? Maybe — but I was too busy doing everything to appreciate it and register it deeper in my mind. Was it five years ago? No — I was in a fog and chains of dependency when beautiful details wouldn't register with me at all. Was it ten years ago? Again no — then I was living in a place where sunshine would come in the afternoons and only from the right side. Twenty years ago? That is closer to this memory I am reliving today anew.

I am catching up on my reading, going through (online) magazines about books and arts and culture and music and museums and exhibitions, with essays giving a glimpse into the inner workings of thoughts and emotions of people I only know by their given names. I am making lists again. Lists of books I will never read, music I will never listen to, museums and cities and towns and villages and sights I will never visit. There is no time (and money) to get to everything I want to on this lazy sunny Sunday morning. Even with the best lists already made. Obviously.

But I still feel fine. And feel still. There is no rush. Making lists is plenty, especially when I know I won’t have to follow them. I feel calm and curiously interested in thinking about irrelevant issues. I feel like I got to the point in my life where I already was once. And I don't feel that I wasted my time going on a bumpy, circuitous road back to where I was. I am glad I have memories of emotions I once felt at a different time of my life and a different place. There is continuity. And even if that continuity is at times tedious — I accept it and enjoy the moment like today on that lazy sunny Sunday morning exactly like I did years before. Obviously.