Waking Into A Memory

I had an interesting experience last night.

I did not dream, but rather I woke in a specific set of memories. There wasn’t a dream associated with them, since often, I will dream of something and then wake thinking about the subject of the dream. Rather, I woke right inside the memories of 1981, when I was a student at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion.

I went to school there for about two years, worked a variety of part time jobs, lived in a couple of different places, and just generally have fond memories of the experience. The memory set was both the place (Vermillion is a nice little town, typical of small college towns in the Midwest) and the people (I went to school with a cluster of people that I had grown up with, as well as making new friends and acquaintances while I was there).

I lay awake in the darkness and just let my mind wander through those memories, most of which were very good (and nearly thirty years away). I grinned a lot, there in the darkness, as I remembered people and places and events.

I’m not sure why I woke in that memory set – it may be related to the twelve boxes, since there were definitely items form that time frame in the boxes, including a copy of my college transcripts. It’s possible that seeing those documents stirred up those deep memories. It is also possible that something else touched them and caused my subconscious to recall them. The thing that was the most interesting to me though was waking directly into the memory set, that was an unusual, but cool, experience.