A House That Appears Empty from the Outside

Listening to: Clara Schumann — Nocturne Op. 6 No. 2 (1827 Stein piano)

I listened to it through my earbuds with eyes closed, letting every detail of the sound felt in its entirety. This music is profoundly soothing, slowly carrying me to another world—to a house that appeared empty from the outside. Yet inside, I saw a young girl playing a bell. Suddenly, it was as if a faint, illusory sound of a bell seeped into and merged with the music itself.

It was only my consciousness that entered that house. The girl, playing there alone, was completely unaware of my presence. The room bore a touch of Dutch colonial architecture, and the dress she wore was very distinctive, reminding me of the Victorian children’s dresses I had once glimpsed on the internet.

Sometimes I think that when my imagination carries me as if out of my body to observe places related to history, perhaps the era I visit is another reality. I imagine that the girl in the European dress truly once lived, and that place truly once stood, even though in today’s world that space might have been replaced by a modern hotel or a parking lot. Of course, I don’t take my own thoughts too seriously—I merely regard them as a playful, wild conjecture.

However, this Nocturne Op. 6 No. 2 leaves me with a question: Can I truly travel to another time?

Or is it that, because the historical information in my brain is still limited, the past I can reach is only the fragments of reality whose boundaries I already know?