What year is it in your imagination?

The title question is from Lynda Barry’s What It Is, a book about writing images. And it’s a question I can’t quite answer; it’s not 2026, but it’s also not any other year. It’s the past; is it in my lifetime? I think so. Late 90s or early 00s? That would make some sense: the late teens to mid-twenties are a very formative time.

I’ve an image in my head in response to this question that I very much doubt is a memory, unless it’s a memory of an imagined image. I’m walking out of a building. It’s a sunny day, but cold. I’m wearing a long coat and a scarf. Is it me? What city is it even in – is that New York, where I’ve never lived? Is it imaginery imagination, or some memory of a Friends episode (The One Where It’s Not 2026)? Why is this image the answer to “what year is it”?

I have no answers. I guess that’s okay.