anima mundi
It’s a brisk Sunday night, and I have enjoyed the recent cool weather immensely. One thought of those humidity-induced doldrums of summer and I shiver – not from autumn‘s chill but from not-so-treasured memories of sweat and stagnance.
Today, after irritating computer complications, I accomplished a little writing, interspersed with research into competitions and festivals for my screenplay. Yes, it’s time to hop back on the screenplay horse and gallop it into the world like a celluloid Pony Express. Okay, yeah, that was a horrible analogy. Anyway, it was satisfying to be productive after a relatively lazy Saturday.
It was also a “minor blast from the past” weekend. I heard from my buddy Eugene on Friday. We’ve been out of touch for too long, and he called during my first Jim Beam and Coke (so I was still coherent). We caught up on recent events and plan on a poker game sometime soon. Then this evening I went into an e-mail account I check infrequently, and there was mail from my old childhood and high school pal Steve. The body of his message recalled a particularly disastrous party back in ’86. Ah, the fallacies and "trauma" of youth. I filled Steve in with my life on this side of the city - the abridged version. His mail brought back memories, and I realized that I am so far out of high school that it seems like it was another life, as if someone else’s dream - or nightmare. Nah, I’m being too harsh on high school. No, it wasn’t the best experience, but overall it could have been much worse. All those years behind me now – it will be two decades since graduation next year – and quite possibly dozens of years to go. I say “possibly” but I don’t want to seem pessimistic and such. However, I am aware of my own mortality. Oh, and am I considered an old man yet? To the kids, there's no doubt. But back in those teen years, to me, thirty years old or (gasp!) even older, was something that would never happen to me. How many people have asked, and how often, "Where did the time go?" I look back and see graduation, local college, supermarket jobs, WEOS and WSFW, the crushing angst of doomed teen amour, then moving out and moving on to Buffalo. From there came independence and self-reliance. Sure, I toiled in a couple of McJobs over the course of my twenties, but I made it on my own and I always managed to get the bills paid.
From the college dorms to Elmwood Avenue and then the corner of Grant and Forest in Buffalo, from the squalid Tenderloin to Post and Lyon Streets in San Francisco (with a brief foray into Salt Lake City inserted in there), and now the City of New York, I’ve blazed my own anomalous trail around the country. Scattered behind me is a crooked path dotted with a surfeit of people and places and incidents and events. It is littered with immeasurable ideas and countless conversations and late nights of intimacy and friendship. It is strewn with the triumphs, joys, gaffes, blunders and the simple heartache of life. I like where I have been - in both a literal and metaphorical sense - and there is little I regret. There are always some regrets, of course, and occasionally the past may dog my heels, but I know that somehow I will always move forward.
And remember that no matter where you go… there you are.
Today, after irritating computer complications, I accomplished a little writing, interspersed with research into competitions and festivals for my screenplay. Yes, it’s time to hop back on the screenplay horse and gallop it into the world like a celluloid Pony Express. Okay, yeah, that was a horrible analogy. Anyway, it was satisfying to be productive after a relatively lazy Saturday.
It was also a “minor blast from the past” weekend. I heard from my buddy Eugene on Friday. We’ve been out of touch for too long, and he called during my first Jim Beam and Coke (so I was still coherent). We caught up on recent events and plan on a poker game sometime soon. Then this evening I went into an e-mail account I check infrequently, and there was mail from my old childhood and high school pal Steve. The body of his message recalled a particularly disastrous party back in ’86. Ah, the fallacies and "trauma" of youth. I filled Steve in with my life on this side of the city - the abridged version. His mail brought back memories, and I realized that I am so far out of high school that it seems like it was another life, as if someone else’s dream - or nightmare. Nah, I’m being too harsh on high school. No, it wasn’t the best experience, but overall it could have been much worse. All those years behind me now – it will be two decades since graduation next year – and quite possibly dozens of years to go. I say “possibly” but I don’t want to seem pessimistic and such. However, I am aware of my own mortality. Oh, and am I considered an old man yet? To the kids, there's no doubt. But back in those teen years, to me, thirty years old or (gasp!) even older, was something that would never happen to me. How many people have asked, and how often, "Where did the time go?" I look back and see graduation, local college, supermarket jobs, WEOS and WSFW, the crushing angst of doomed teen amour, then moving out and moving on to Buffalo. From there came independence and self-reliance. Sure, I toiled in a couple of McJobs over the course of my twenties, but I made it on my own and I always managed to get the bills paid.
From the college dorms to Elmwood Avenue and then the corner of Grant and Forest in Buffalo, from the squalid Tenderloin to Post and Lyon Streets in San Francisco (with a brief foray into Salt Lake City inserted in there), and now the City of New York, I’ve blazed my own anomalous trail around the country. Scattered behind me is a crooked path dotted with a surfeit of people and places and incidents and events. It is littered with immeasurable ideas and countless conversations and late nights of intimacy and friendship. It is strewn with the triumphs, joys, gaffes, blunders and the simple heartache of life. I like where I have been - in both a literal and metaphorical sense - and there is little I regret. There are always some regrets, of course, and occasionally the past may dog my heels, but I know that somehow I will always move forward.
And remember that no matter where you go… there you are.
posted by Walls Falling at 9:18 PM
1 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Post a Comment
<< Home