The Unbearable Pleasance of Flashedback Familiarity

On the train to town this morning, a family boards at Nowa Iwiczna and sits across the aisle from me. Mum and dad, son and daughter. Along with them, a smell - a blend of suntan oil, perfume and stale tobacco - wafted from their clothes. I'm looking the other way, out of the window at the blue sky over the passing fields between Dawidy and Okęcie, and I'm also conscious of the smell. It's familiar. It flashes me back to summer holidays in Northern France in the 1970s.

Instantly I'm hit by a deep yearning to return there, to experience that precise moment once again. 

This is a typical triggered qualia flashback in which a sensory stimulus sets off a memory of a past conscious experience. The other forms of qualia flashback are the bidden one (where I can conjure up a memory of a past conscious experience), and the spontaneous one - the rarest - which out of the blue serves me up a qualia memory, despite a lack of stimuli or willing it into existence.

These sharp pangs of nostalgia are always pleasant, bringing me through their very familiarity deep joy and comfort; yet they are tinged with the frustration of knowing that the qualia once experienced and remembered cannot be returned to. All that can be re-experienced is a congruent simulacrum of that exact original qualia moment. 

And when that qualia memory happens, it needs to be savoured; rolled around in the mind for a while before it evaporates (though this time, that lingering smell helped keep it it there longer). Unbidden and untriggered qualia memories are the most ephemeral - I love the moment when I can catch the original experience, and say to myself - "ah, that's _______" - and pin down precisely where and when the experience was felt.

[It is important to note that qualia memories are different to memories of specific events. Qualia memories refer back to the conscious feeling of experience, of being there, rather than a sequence of things that happened, or were said.]

Later today, in the evening, out for a walk in Jakubowizna, I had another flashback - but this was not from this life, one of those anomalous qualia memories - xenomnesia or exomnesia - just as pleasantly familiar, but seemingly related to 1950s America. Certainly nothing from my West London youth. These are most likely happen most when the sky is clear, the sun bright, and around the changes of the seasons. Landscapes also seem to be a factor. I have them more often around Jakubowizna than in Jeziorki; I have them far more often than I used to when living in London.

The anomalous qualia memories are less frequent but no less intense as the ones I can put my finger on. How they happen is beyond me; I have written before that the vectors which convey exomnesia could be quantum in nature, or electromagnetic radiation, or carry through DNA (atavistic resurgence), or passed through gut flora - I just don't know. I am, however, aware that I have experienced this phenomenon since childhood, and seeking an answer to this is something that keeps me going.

"But when you get right down to it, don't you want to relive this moment again? All over again, all over again, just live it again..."

"Let's get together and do it again..."

"Can I take you back there, can I take you back..."

This time last year:
The imperceptible end of summer

This time two years ago:

Another new bus stop for ul. Karczunkowska

This time three years ago:
Energy, focus and state of mind

This time four years ago:

50 years on - Gunnersbury Grammar school reunion

This time six years ago:
All things visible and invisible

This time eight years ago:
Work starts on Warsaw-Radom rail modernisation

This time nine years ago:
Won't be long 'til summertime is through

This time 11 years ago:
It was a good year for the apples

This time 13 years ago:
Early-September moan about the commuting