Rose-tinted
Things were so much better back then.
That moment Jodi recalled; when she was twenty-five. It was autumn - the air cold, the sky deep blue. As she ran down the university steps after work a wave of irrational pleasure swelled through her. It wasn’t attached to anything other than being good to be alive. The night was heavy with promise and she could do anything if she put her mind to it. She swung round a lamp-post and ran towards the tube station, breath blooming in front of her face, a wide grin spreading across it for no reason whatsoever.
That moment stuck in her memory two decades later as the yardstick of happiness against which she measured her life.
For the past ten years life had come up short.
Walking down those steps could no longer engender anything near that famous mood. The present was grey, dull. Her head was full of gloomy fog that slowed her thoughts. Easier to go home to her bedsit and watch TV. Too much trouble to go out. Even if she did she endured the evening as if from behind glass, the experience only reminding her of the kind of life she no longer had.
The doctor had prescribed pills. They worked but only by making things bearable within certain limits. Curtailing the lows and the highs. She put on weight but didn’t care. Being single was no longer an issue as her libido had gone.
On a deep level Jodi knew this wasn’t right. How could she get back the kind of life that contained moments of irrational joy? Therapy was no good - she was intelligent enough to know her own mind.
★
Jodi woke at 3am, crying. She’d been dreaming about that moment and the realisation it was the only time and place she could be happy. If she could get back there she would make the most of it second time around. She’d steer herself away from the melancholy waters she’d ended up in twenty years later.
★
In the rational light of day it was clear that the real answer was to make the most of her life now so that twenty years further down the line she didn’t have double regrets.
Sitting on the tube Jodi stared at the strip of adverts above the windows. The woman in the Open Mind Technique ad was familiar. Jodi squinted to read the small print.
Focus your mind and take control of your emotions. The Technique allows you to live the life you want, free from the shackles of bad learning. Look forward and back to discover the best of all possible futures!
It was drivel, but it was friendly drivel and the familiarity of the woman in the photograph gave it extra weight. Was she someone from college?
Hating herself, Jodi made a note of the URL.
★
The Open Mind Technique’s website was hard on the eyes, the same smiling face set against a garish orange background, random words picked from the text in bright green Comic Sans. The name at the bottom of the photo caught Jodi’s eye.
Zoe Good.
Zoe! She’d worked at the university with Jodi twenty years ago. Around that time. They hadn’t been close but had gone for a pint in the student bar once or twice.
Jodi didn’t believe in fate, but this was right. That someone from then could help her let go of an idealised past and start building a better future.
★
The studio was in Chenies Street. This was a plus - if she joined, Jodi would be able to walk there after work.
A woman opened the door. Her face was familiar not only from the advert but also from deeper archived memories, a face that had once belonged to the surprisingly foul-mouthed finances assistant.
“Don’t I know you?” Zoe frowned.
Once they’d got over the initial exchange of surprise about small worlds there was nothing to reminisce about -- the university was very different now and Zoe didn’t recognise the names Jodi brought up. She’d moved on.
Moving on was why Jodi was here. She explained the way she’d been feeling and her hope that this meditation would help where drugs had failed. Would help her make the most of the here and now rather than fetishizing her past.
“That’s the beauty of the Open Mind Technique,” Zoe said, “Time is an illusion. In a meditative trance you can access your past. People use this to come to terms with trauma, but there’s no reason you can’t use it to find out what made you happy and bring it forward into the present.”
Jodi was sceptical. Still, she didn’t have to come back if the session didn’t work.
★
“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth! Visualize the time you have in mind.” Zoe’s voice reverberated around the room. Eyes closed, Jodi could feel the texture of the thin rubber mat beneath her, hear the breathing and smell the armpits of the man to her right.
This was useless.
Hang on what was that?
Underneath the body odour was something else, a smell Jodi hadn’t come across for years. A smell that excited her, brought the past roaring back and reminded her just how pale an imitation the present was.
It was the smell of flowers in the concrete trough that used to sit outside the university steps. It had been removed before the millennium but for a while had been part and parcel of Jodi’s experience of the end of the working day. Including then.
Her heart beat faster. The smell grew stronger. The rest of her old life began to return - her hopes, her blind optimism about a future pregnant with potential.
And wasn’t that the sound of the traffic; the rasping shudder of diesel engines as the buses pulled up at the stop across the road? The rubber mat beneath her buttocks was forgotten as memories jostled for Jodi’s attention. The chilled air. The sky. And above all the positivity and that swell of irrational happiness.
There was a crack and Jodi opened her eyes. Had she been close to dropping off?
Zoe had just clapped her hands. Jodi blinked at the clock. The hour was up.
★
Jodi walked back past work. The memories she’d experienced while meditating still buzzing around her head. She stopped at the bottom of the university steps and looked at the patch of pavement that had held the flower trough. It had been gone for fifteen years and yet was still there in her head.
Was it true? Could she access her past?
If so she no longer wanted to come to terms with it and move on. She wanted to go back and live there.
★
Jodi lay in bed practicing the techniques she’d been shown earlier. Breathe in through the nose. She reached out with all her senses. The sheets needed changing. The clock ticked - a tiny sound she was normally unaware of filling her head. Her mind began to wander and she had to keep dragging it back to the task. Concentrate on that time. Breathe out through the mouth.
On the edge of sleep she fancied her body had started to spin with a tumultuous stillness. In through the nose. There was a head next to hers on the pillow. Its face was her own. It smiled and nodded at the unspoken question. Out through the mouth. She rushed down a tunnel of non-light, static, accelerating. Exhilarating.
The sound of traffic replaced the sound of the clock. In through the nose. There was the smell of the flowers. The creak of the revolving door, the chill of the air. The coldness of a smooth metal handrail. Out through the mouth.
Jodi opened her eyes. She was standing at the top of the university steps. The experience had startling intensity. This was no reminiscence, no rose-tinted memory.
This was her past. She was there.
She laughed out loud. It had worked! She began to jog down the steps, delirious with pleasure. The pleasure at what she had got back. The pleasure of the knowledge that what she’d left behind was gone forever.
What had she left behind? She paused. Her awareness of the future she’d escaped evaporated, feeble in the face of the memories of the here-and-now hard-coded into her twenty-five year old brain.
What future? What awareness?
Had she just been somewhere else or was it simply deja vu?
She shrugged and continued down the stairs. Irrational pleasure? Enjoy it! It was good to be alive. The night was heavy with promise and she could do anything if she put her mind to it. She swung round a lamp-post and ran towards the tube station, breath blooming in front of her face, a wide grin spreading across it for no reason whatsoever.