You know the moment when you realize that a certain life experience has shapeshifted and is now filed into the annals of memory? You suddenly have confirmation that something is passed and opening, and somehow interior thinking space has been shuffled around in order to make it a permanent part of you.
I had this feeling this morning—yet it felt more like the pluck of a string had struck the side of my head. It had the same snapping sensation I remember from my dad’s chalk line, the tool that held a spool of pastel blue coated string that was required to make a precision cut or marking. It’s a simple yet trusted tool that only requires that you pull the string taut across whatever you are working on. Once in place, you pull up the string and then let go. Snap! The surface is now tattooed with a line that will guide you. It is now easier to cut, paint or ultimately just advance forward as a matter of nature progression, destruction, and creation. And a bit like this pulling back and sudden letting go, this morning it felt like a new memory had been snapped onto my brain.
This morning is a quiet and sunny Sunday morning in Rome. The days are hinting at growing longer, and you have to believe that this is more than just an imagined hope because the mimosa trees are flowering with their technicolor yellow blooms. Tangible signs of things to come. It is now late morning, but even for a Sunday it is still surprisingly quiet outside. I would wager that much of Italy is a bit sleepier this morning since late last night concluded Sanremo 2022.
Two years ago, I only caught flashes of the five-night Sanremo Music Festival. I didn’t really watch it back then, seeing as how I couldn’t grasp much of both the language and Italian cultural nuances. So much more than a singing contest, each night is laden with four hours of special appeared by various public figures and entertainment personalities. Wild costumes, sustained applauses, questionable face tattoos, and seemingly endless repetition…it’s a lot to take in without an interpreter present to teach you a bit about why this spectacular is so popular. Like Sanremo 2020, something else incomprehensible back then was the free fall the planet found itself. At that time, as we all collectively remember, was the early days of the pandemic. Sanremo the following year would be performed to an empty theater.
As I was preparing to go this morning for a run, I grabbed my usual stuff. Keys, mask, ID and a small bit of money. Before starting, I dropped my recycling into the large bin on the street and proceeded to head for one of Rome’s big green areas. The streets were so quiet, that as I moved away from my street I suddenly froze. Wait. Did I remember to bring my autodichiarazione form AKA the government’s permission slip that you fill out explaining your approved reason for movement during lockdown? Wait. Am I straying further than the 250 meters that was once allowed? What are the rules again right now?
This battery of thoughts took a second to filter through my brain, but that brief flight through panic ultimately brought me to a new understanding. No, you are now okay and don’t need any form to leave the house. It is now almost two years since we were living like that. Still, when the city felt this quiet, it was easy to get confused. But now this is all just the echo of time—no longer a living experience. The snap of the chalk line had set that into a fixed place.
I think about other memories where I have lived through challenging stuff. I remember once helplessly declaring that I wanted a FFWD button, so I could leap to a future me where the conditions were better and whatever I was living through was only a recollection. Of course, all of that wishing was futile. To each moment its own unceremonious time. The boring truth is that sooner or later, everything we manage to live through will eventually slip from contemporary routine and someday suddenly recalled as something that no longer applies as it once did.
It’s nice to see the changing season—especially in the springtime. Especially right now after two years of seeming stagnation it now appears to come with signs of new life that do feel markedly different than what we were living with when lockdowns were so prevalent. Along with the mimosas and lack of permission slips folded up and stuffed into my workout gear, there are indicators that we are moving further away from the height of COVID’s wickedness. You never know that you’ve most past the peak until much later on, when you suddenly recognize that your parameters are completely different. Snap.
It is always a bit jarring to have simultaneous moments of remembrance and realization flash into your brain. The understanding that while we weren’t paying attention to the bigger picture, existence has solidified into memory and has now found a home in the static part of our minds—huddled in amongst other creations that seemed to have also magically taken shape while we were busy sweating the details. Chalk lines that guide our lives. That tell us what once was, and helps to show us how we’re getting to where we are going, even if we don’t realize it until we suddenly do.