Replay.

Something odd just happened. For some reason – and I’m not quite sure what – I felt impelled to listen to the Tony Bennett version of Stranger in Paradise that I posted on yesterday’s blog. As soon as he began to sing the first line my conscious shifted. I was a child again, not as a memory but as an actual presence. I was back in the house I lived in between the ages of 1 and 11 – really back there, looking around at the hazy outlines of walls and furniture. I felt sure that it was Christmas and that my mother was in another room. It lasted only a few seconds and then I returned to the here and now. I was trembling, my skin was tingling, and I felt dizzy.

You will immediately conclude, of course, that this was merely a psychological aberration, and you’d probably be right. We all know that the mind is capable of producing all sorts of odd experiences which have no basis in reality. But I also give much credence to Hamlet’s assertion that there are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And the message coming from the cutting edge of physics appears to say: reality is not quite what we think it is. Watch this space.

So what should I make of it? Is the universe – or one of its agents – trying to tell me something? Is it right, as some claim, that all of time exists at the same time, and that it is sometimes possible to shift to a different groove in the vinyl and pick up an earlier or later state? Or am I just a little closer to the edge of sanity than I ought to be?

We don’t know, do we? That’s the problem. All we can do is let the experience remain a mystery and take its place in the treasure chest along with all the others.