Involuntary Memories

You know those spontaneous flashbacks to moments of vacations in far away lands? You're busy working on something and then for some reason your mind jumps to a memory of walking down a road in Brazil, or sitting on a roof in Morocco, or a restaurant in Thailand, crossing a street in Vietnam, talking to a street poet in Spain, etc..



I usually have had these at a rate of about a couple a week for most of my adult life. Lately I realize I'm having them a dozen times a day. I think my brain is trying to tell me something.

Apparently scientists call these involuntary memories and were popular in Proust's writings. I've been thinking I should start making a list of them. It seems like something a Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon character would do, collecting clues to their mystery of life. I found someone online who started keeping track of his/her own.