My brain is a bowl of cake batter churning in the wake of silver beaters. Fuzzy-edged memories spiral in and out and through my synapses in endless figure-eights. I watch the clips play in rapid succession like a disordered flipbook pasted on my inner-eyelids.

I cannot sleep.

When I open my eyes, the colors of my mental snapshots bleed into the blackness of the ceiling. On my right, the hint of green digits suggests it is 3 a.m. Central Time. I fumble for the bedside lamp and pull a thin, silvery chain out from under my cotton tee. The watch on the end is grasping the 12 and the 8 with its sinewy hands. It is 8 p.m. today in New Zealand.

My thoughts have jet lag.

Now in the kitchen, I rummage through a bowl of candies before settling on some chocolaty snack that is not worth mentioning because it is replaced before the wrapper is even crumpled. I chew and stare through the darkened pane.

America and New Zealand are both covered in velvet drapes, awaiting the unveiling of two different days. In these moments, I can pretend that underneath all this blackness, there lies a coffee shop beside a bookstore beside a flower shop beside a fruit stand beside a thrift store beside a kebab stand beside a record store beside a bay. The beautiful repetition is dizzying.

This is the way Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, mapped out in my mind.

Tonight, like most nights since I have returned to the states, I will stay awake until the sun rises and have no doubt that I am back in Alabama. Then, I will flip down the Venetian blinds, pull the covers over my head, and wander through the New Zealand that I have pasted together in my mind.

In my dreams, I sip hot chocolate with strawberry marshmallows from a porcelain cup as I shuffle down the streets of Wellington. “Baby One More Time” and other songs I haven’t heard since I had my braces removed pour out of the doors of the classy thrift stores full of Kiwis dressed in shades of grey. I buy buttercups from a bucket in front of a fruit stand and stuff them in the pocket of my pea coat. The sky is the color of liquid paper. I breathe in the smell of tandoori chicken mingled with the perfume of freshly pressed crepes deeply. An old man with facial tattoos is singing “Norwegian Wood” (my favorite Beatles song) into a microphone knotted with scarves. I duck into a used bookstore and dig through stacks of cloth-bound books that smell of old glue and dust. Back on the street, a man beside me smokes a pipe filled with tobacco that smells of burning waffle cones. A few more steps and I am seated on a rock beside Oriental Bay. I can see the mountains and the ocean and the city all in one frame. I scribble something in a notebook about how beautiful the city is, something about how I drink tea and write and read and dance and laugh and sing in the shower more here than anywhere in the world. I feel like I could stay here, indefinitely.

This is when I wake up.

I roll over, let out a deflating sigh and begin to contemplate how I can return.

The Maori people of New Zealand believe that traveling into the future is more akin to walking backwards than moving forwards. The future is the path behind us that is out of view and the past is the scenery in front of us which has already been visited. This idea takes on a special meaning when you visit New Zealand, a land a day ahead of the rest of the world.

Sans Delorean, I pull out myjournal and attempt to travel back to the future with only a pen.