The ability for photos to bring back memories continues to amaze me. This photo was taken approximately three months ago and yet, looking at it now brings back so many memories of my time in Vienna and all the amazing people I met. Odd! Photos, it would appear, are much more than a simple image on paper (or in my case, on a computer). So could it be said that photos are simply a memory-aid or is there something more to it than that?

For me, this photo and the many others I have finally seen of our time in Vienna, are not simply visual memories in my minds-eye (always an entertaining concept) but are also somehow memories that have not finished.

This seems like it could be explained much better in Spanish, which has a continuing past tense (imperfect) as well as a past-past tense (simple preterite). Looking at myself and my friends there reminds me not only of the time in Vienna but of the subsequent time with emails flying back and forth, which continues today.

It's all incredibly airy-fairy but then again memories always seem a little that way and I'm left with an incredible sense of wanting to be back there, while still here, and feeling like three months has been an amazingly short, and yet so long, time. And that, my friends, is the subjectivity of time and a whole other rant . . .