Wednesday, April 19, 2006

But, you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate.
Let us not talk falsely now. The hour is getting late.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to people. People I used to know.

Oh sure, I Google, but more often than not, there are no revelatory results. Occasionally, they pop back into your life after a long absence, which is always an unexpected treat. (Hi Carp!)

Sometimes, I think I have an over-developed sense of nostalgia. I'll run across something, an old picture, for instance, that will send me on an emotional trip down memory lane. The pangs of emotion I feel in these instances are unusally strong; they are part sadness, part fondness, and are totally unique to nostalgia.

(This is different, mind you, from the "glass cage of emotion" regarding my iPod that had me wailing and screaming incoherently in a phone booth, like my favorite scene in Anchorman.)

It's not that things suck now and they were better back then, and I am yearning for the good old days. That's not the case, because I am aging like a fine wine. (Ha!) Of course, there have been hundreds of times when I have fervently wished I had a "do over' to handle certain situations differently than I did, but that's a "whole 'nother" [sic] post.

I never know when or why it is going to strike, but when it does, it is nearly overwhelming. It isn't restricted to a certain period of time. Junior high, high school, college, law school, late 20's, early 30's... shit, I can even get nostalgic for this last Christmas Eve day, which was a particularly sweet day.

I don't know... It's weird. I wonder if other people experience it as often, or as strongly.