Yesterday whilst hanging around Orkut I found some pictures of old friends and classmates, which I admit put me in a nostalgic mood but also a strange one. Recently people I meet, complete strangers on trains even seem to be so wistful about their school days. As though they really were the best days of their lives. And frankly, I don’t get it. I don’t think I had a particularly unhappy experience at school, it certainly was not unique and I will happily admit nostalgia, I enjoyed parts of it, made some very good friends, fell in love, had fun, things were good at times. But I have no desire to relive those times, to go back to it, I hated parts of it, made some horrible mistakes, fell in love, stopped socialising, things were really, really bad at times.
And yet, people want to talk about school, about what they did, about how they’d love to do it again… why? Why would you want to do that to yourselves? This guy I met on a train coming back from London couldn’t stop telling me about how great school had been, how he wished he was back there. I deffinately don’t, and yet I refuse to grow up.
It’s to do with my own personal deffinitions of things. I can no longer claim to have stepped out of the gender question, I’ve become too female of late and sometimes in the worst ways. But an adult? A grown up? They are too sad and serious, too concerned with what things look like, too boring…I don’t want to be any of thse things. Although I am sad and seious and boring, and sometimes, even horribly concerned with what things look like. But if I don’t step into their circle they can’t claim me. If I’m always elsewhere they can’t make me.
Adolescent aren’t I?
Nostalgia, its easy to wallow in it, like it was a lake you could easily drown in. But I swear last night I was caught in a time slip. Living somewhere else in some other stream, borrowed time that wasn’t my own.
The party for Miss UD, Man of Taste and Archie moving into their new house (My Favourite Uncle is their landlord) and all of Big Beardy was there, as though they were non-stalked again and I was watching my soap opera from a long way away….I got kind tripped out so Man of Taste put me on his bed with a couple of books… and then we were two years ago and talking about everything a reading books together and the Naiad was in the next room with Beardy Best Mate et al…and it was wierd.
Everything was suddenly a long time ago and a long way away. I was not, am not, I just watch and somehow I’m still on borrowed time, not really here at all. I’ll see you in another stream.
*laugh*
Keep skipping across the streams. Never cross them – I assume you’ve seen ghostbusters.
We’re never really anywhere. We just think we are.
Time is illusory and every stream is just around the corner – the boundaries are just kinks. Unfold them and its all flat. A plateau of indescriable vastness and you ralise it doesn’t matter what path you take.
We’re all here Mish, in between your every footstep, before your feet touch the ground.
Responsibility? It’s just keeping a record of the imprints you leave. And even if you try and throw away the paper there’s a scribe noting every little thing. And she has your face.
We never go anywhere my dear. Call us forth, and we can be there again, for a time. But only temporarily. Why? Because we were always only there temporarily. We just know it now.
Yours
A thirsty man drinking from the streams.