Lost In Thought

You know those moments when you get lost in thought and you come out the other side with something new? You sometimes end up with a feeling and a set of ideas that are powerful enough to change things, about your life, about who you are.

I remember driving towards the sunset some time in September at golden hour. The sun's rays were coming through the trees and a golden song was playing on the stereo. In my mind it took me somewhere, into the future, into my heart.

I began to catch glimpses of a scene. I was on a beach with someone, they were wearing a floral dress and a sun hat. I couldn't recognise them but they seemed familiar somehow. I remember taking photos of them, as they smiled at me, the light of the suns glare caught in my sight, obscuring their face. But I remember the smile.

As I saw this I felt something new, it was like falling in love with some kind of idea. It's hard to describe, but it left me with a vague and powerful compulsion that I knew would eventually lead me somewhere. It's not something I could follow logically, but I knew if I felt again what I was feeling at that moment, that I would find it.

The next time it happened again was in Melbourne in October. I went out to dinner with some unfamiliar friends the Thursday before PAX. It was a strange night, for a lot of reasons, but I picked up glimpses of other things in between my awkward silences and conversations among strangers. Images in my mind that have stuck with me since.

Late that night, after a few too many cocktails and missed opportunities, I sat on the train platform at Flinders. I played those glimpses back in my head; the light reflecting in the puddles, a rerlective flash off of someone's glasses, a set of bright arches, and crossing a bridge over the Yarra. As I sat I felt it again, in the stations golden light. I was meant to be there.

The months that followed were full of chaos, misdirection, and a few mistakes. The details of that story I'll leave for another time, but suffice it to say my attempt to find that feeling again was fraught with disappointment. There were moments lit up in that same special way on those journeys, not enough to change my direction, but enough to remind me it was all happening for a reason.

I'm still convinced that the end point of this whole thing is in Melbourne somewhere. I'm not even sure why, it's just that feeling again. I know I'm always talking about that search for something and I guess this is it. But what will I find when I finally reach those glimpses? Will I recognise the picture formed by it all at the end?

When I look back on things, I've been lost this way once before. Following it led me on a very long journey, it took me around the world and back to myself. There is great power in experiences like that. I only hope that by the end of this one that I know who it was that was smiling at me in that daydream in September, or the significance of the rain and the glasses that night in Melbourne.

I have lost myself in this thought, in the hope that I'll be found somewhere on the other side.