It has always fascinated me how seemingly trivial things can trigger one’s memory on a dime and transport you to another time or place in an instant– hidden snapshots of one’s life peppered throughout our daily comings and goings.

This morning, paying bills at my desk and watching the rain pour down, iTunes surprised me with a memory jolt– a musical time machine back to college:

This song always propels me back in time to a rainy night in Pittsburgh— biblical rain, soaking you to the bone and waiting on Carson Street for the 54C back to Oakland. The experience or night holds no significance to my present life, no new characters came into my life that night, no profound observations were made on that day, the rain did not catalyze anything other than hailing a taxi and yet it remains as a warm and vivid memory: Crumpled up in an old leather jacket, waiting beneath a street light flipping through sketchbooks with the other regular from my coffeeshop (who was also waiting for the overdue bus), wet licorice streets, headlights exaggerated by raindrops…

It seems strange to me that such an insignificant moment in my life remains so firmly imprinted upon my memory and yet it does.

What random moments are firmly implanted in your memory, dear readers?