Nostalgia @ MindSay

So I dreamed once again that I was in Bethlehem. But it was one of the more sinister ones. There's different types of Bethlehem dreams: nostalgic, pleasant, practical, supernatural, sinister. They often blend as more than one as well.

 

We went into this house, the bottom looked like me great grandmother's house, and the top floor looked like the top floor of my grandmother's house. (my great grandmother doesn't have an upstairs) They looked the same in set up, but not design or feeling. There was something eerie & unwelcoming about it. When we left, someone mentioned something about it being the home of a psychopath. We had to lock it specially when we left, and put a black bar/piece of tape over the house number.

 

Today I decided to look up billboard top 100 hits of 1997-2000. Added some to my iPod. Hearing them brought me back...

 

This weekend was slow. It probably has a lot to do with the heat, but this weekend somehow felt like a weekend of '98. Time wasn't as relavent. I didn't care what time it was, it just didn't matter. It doesn't feel like I just woke up like it usually does each day at this time. And I didn't even do anything today.

 

Is this a rare taste? This isn't the first one though, just the longest lasting one.

 

Maybe now that I can tell when it happens, I can savor it more, and maybe make it stay longer...

Once when I was in my 9th grade Social Studies class, this boy Nick Harris interrupted the class to say, "Everyone turn to page 12! It's a picture of Emily!".  So we all flip to page 12, because hey, I really REALLY wanted to see myself in a giant textbook.  Do you know what page 12 was?  A picture of mosaic lion.

 

I've told that story to a few select people.  I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed by it, but it's not my favorite story of high school.

 

Tonight, I was IMing my friend Evan for the first time in ages (mainly, because I never go online anymore), and we were just talking about random things, and we were talking about how everytime I see an Ann Taylor store, I think of him and the day we hung out with my friend Lisa and she screamed it out.  So that somehow led  him to say, "I watched the movie I Am Legend and there was a scene at the South Street Seaport (where I used to live, while the movie was filming) and I thought I saw you, but it turns out it was just a lion".

 

How friggin' random is that!??!

I used to love these segments. :)

 

Nostalgia is such a killer....sigh!  I ardently wish that I wasn't such a nostalgic being, it takes so little to seduce me in to walking the path of memory lane.  Today was one of those days, cloud mast sky promising rain and fulfillment.  Rainy days usually makes me very nostalgic as it is, and on top of that I happened to come upon the face of my soulmate (whom btw, I am no longer in touch with), courtesy of mindsay avatars.

Sigh!!!

I wish I never knew him, I wish I never knew for a fact they existed...these prickly beings called soulmates in one's life.  Well I know now, since I found him (of course only to question if I really ever had...found him that is).  Anyway, I am not going to get in to that right now et oll.  To cut the long story short:  His picture made me go a long way back, and as I reflected on the nature of our bemusing relationship and on what he was to me...I went back even further.  To the days of cross your heart to death promises and candy floss crushes, and of course to the innumerous nights I spent watching MY show "Dawson's Creek."  I don't like to think much of my obsession with this show, it makes me too nostalgic and sad somehow.  Oh the good old days of adoloscence....sigh!  Growing was pain yes, but I wouldn't trade those years for anything, anything at all.  Here is to all the Joeys and Dawsons who got lucky enough by finding each other :)

 

 

JOEY: But fascinating. Faced with the choice, you stood surveying your options. Your eyes drifted slowly, from her, to me. And back to her.
DAWSON: And back to you?
JOEY: Yeah. But I was off having a drink with the rich guy at the bar.
DAWSON: Until Moneybags got fresh and you needed somebody to bail you out.
JOEY: Really?
DAWSON: Um hmm.
JOEY: I don't remember that part.
DAWSON: Oh, I do. Clear as day. Absolutely. You were definitely in need of a rescue.
JOEY: And were you man enough? Did you set aside your clear-headed analysis of the situation and act? -- Did we -- did we save each other that night, Dawson?
DAWSON: You know, it gets a little hazy at this point. I -- I -- I really can't remember. Couldn't tell ya.
JOEY: Well, when it comes back to you, I'd certainly be curious to hear how it all ended.
DAWSON: You'll be my first call. 
 
 
 
 

There is a rightness, to me, to be back on Standard Time.

It's dark outside, with a faint glimmer of morning far off in the east...a bare lightening of sky. I like that.  During DST, Cyclone leaves for school when it is this dark.  Part of me wonders what I'm thinking, letting him walk off alone like that.

But only part. Part of me remembers that he's thirteen, not five.  And really, my goal as a mother is to teach my children to do without me, after all. 

Most of me, though, remembers with fondness walking to school in the dark.  It was even better if it was dark and foggy. When I was a girl in Southern California, dark and foggy mornings were delightful.  For elementary school, I had only (in my fifth and sixth grade years) to walk down the street.  The building was ahead, I knew, and it grew clearer with each couple of steps.  In junior high, I walked a mile to school.  When it was dark and foggy, that could be an adventure.  I do not remember being worried, only celebrating with a sort of secret thrill, until the light grew stronger and the fog started to go away. I came to school  through the back field, where the fog lingered near the ground. My feet got wet. Uncomfortable, but the price one paid for mystery.  My first year of high school I walked to school often.  Along a long stretch of road (almost two miles) that was a public thoroughfare.  When it was dark (many days) the streetlights tried to illuminate the fog.

I lived in my imagination during those walks in the dark. Always, believe it or not, rather sad to have to change the clocks to standard time. 

It's a dark morning, here in South Florida.  Quarter past six.  Streetlights -- amber and white -- are blobs against the deep blue black in the west.  I can see the barest shadow of palm trees silhouetted against the night -- which is reluctant to make way for the day.

This time before dawn still thrills me. Still makes my brain walk on quiet ways of mystery and enticement. Still compels me to respond to the inner siren of my imagination.

It was a dark and foggy morning, and the writer made herself some cocoa, letting her mind wander...