Time Machines Are Cheap

As I was flipping through my old notebooks I rediscovered this story about a bottle with a message inside:

One grey autumn day I was exploring the side of a lake with my friends Wille, Kim and Jonas. We were about 17.

The lakeside foliage was shrivelled and crystallised by frost. In the yellowed grass we found an old bottle of beer with a rolled up piece of paper inside. We passed the murky bottle between each other and tried to wring the metallic lid off it. It wasn’t budging. We could break the bottle to get it out, but then we would have nowhere to store this filthy looking piece of paper.

Luckily Jonas had a lighter. We hiked into the forest to find a wind shelter with a fire-pit. We held the metallic lid close by the fire until the heat made the lid expand. It came right off.

The paper was damp and sticky. We unrolled it carefully and found that it was a map. Someone had scribbled an X on it. The X was far away, so we never went there.

On the other side was a long message written in smudgy blue ink.

“Thank you for the beer, the wine and the fine company this warm summer evening…” It went on like this for a while, it got more and more poetic. It felt like whoever had written it was drunk, perhaps on life - it ended with a poem about the sun. As we read it we pictured one hell of a cosy party, when it was still summer, when they were younger versions of themselves. Perhaps the note in the bottle was a way for them to tell their future selves to enjoy the good times.

The way I rediscovered this story was a lot like finding a bottle message. It was one of many little notes, it bobbed on the waves of time until I found it again in a drawer.

I make notes often, but I rarely read them. So when I do, it feels remarkable, like finding that murky bottle. Except these notes are all addressed to me, sent from my younger self - to my future self. Instead of maps with X’s, I get some cryptic sentences or doodles that I can use to find my way back to an idea, place or state of mind that I long forgot.

Get yourself a notebook. Don’t let anything noteworthy inside your head go to waste. You might not find your way back otherwise. Just make sure to put the notebook where you can find it again, or those thoughts might float around forever.