【时间旅行者的妻子】03

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Sometimes you feel euphoric. Everything is sublime¹ and has an aura, and suddenly you are intensely nauseated² and then you are gone. You are throwing up on some suburban³ geraniums, or your father’s tennis shoes, or your very own bathroom floor three days ago, or a wooden sidewalk in Oak Park, Illinois, circa 1903, or a tennis court on a fine autumn day in the 1950s, or your own naked feet in a wide variety of times and places.

　How does it feel?

　It feels exactly like one of those dreams in which you suddenly realize that you have to take a test you haven’t studied for and you aren’t wearing any clothes. And you’ve left your wallet at home.

　When I am out there, in time, I am inverted⁴, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant⁵, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.

　Is there a logic⁶, a rule to all this coming and going, all this dislocation? Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell? I don’t know. There are clues; as with any disease there are patterns, possibilities. Exhaustion⁷, loud noises, stress, standing⁸ up suddenly, flashing light—any of these can trigger an episode. But: I can be reading the Sunday Times, coffee in hand and Clare dozing⁹ beside me on our bed and suddenly I’m in 1976 watching my thirteen-year-old self mow¹⁰ my grandparents’ lawn. Some of these episodes last only moments; it’s like listening to a car radio that’s having trouble holding on to a station. 

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