This time last year...

In the last couple of months I've been enjoying a nostalgic little habit of changing the desktop picture on my laptop to correspond with somewhere I was this time last year.

This time last year I was busy being a happy tramp, travelling, and abandoning this blog to my wonderings and wanderings at www.twohappytramps.wordpress.com (if you are the curious sort).

Call it processing/settling/naval-gazing...whatever. I have been finding great satisfaction in creating a purpose to trawl through my travelling photos every couple of weeks in search of a new and timely photo that grabs me.

I wanted to share this current one from a rainy day arrival in Kuala Lumpur, around this time last November. Maybe after my first week of wet feet back in Dublin, this one feels meaningful.

I love the colours; the spotlit hanging bananas, the red bucket haplessly 'collecting' rain and all the other reds in the picture... the lanterns swinging, the red on the scooter, on the umbrella, on the building ahead. Did I notice there was so much red at the time? This photo makes me remember the buzz of exploring a new city coupled with the annoyance of feeling hungry and wet, walking up and down flooded, slippery tiled streets feeling confused about where to eat.

I never can tell exactly why I'll choose a particular photo from my past, but it always seems to bring into focus my present place. Often it will be a photo I don't even remember taking, until it catches my attention again, and I remember something beyond the picture itself.

So far, it has not been famous landmarks or tourist sites that make the desktop. It has been that sugarcane train I caught on camera in dusky light as it snaked passed our van in North-eastern Australia. It was that out-of-focus side-selfie shot I took of us on a spontaneous beach walk by that campsite near Byron Bay. It was that bend in the great ocean road (we don't even recall who took the photo) with the signpost and the puddle reflecting a sky that had just cleared of rain.

Choosing these photos makes me think about time. It makes me think about the time I have now and the things I will remember in time to come. The trains passing, the bends in the road, the walks on beaches whose names we don't remember. It makes me wonder at the things that seem meaningful and then wonder again at the things that really are meaningful.