Almost an entire year living in the same city. It's almost as if my deeply tumultuous relationship with the concept called nostalgia is maturing. Or... I've successfully averted the risk of making memories here. I float through this place as if only one of us really exists, and neither will ever find out which one.
Not all has changed though. Yesterday, a colleague who comes with the rare built-in features of great spirit and genuinely solid character, pulled the most overworked amongst us together and took us to a shooting range at the end of a particularly demanding day. Merrily, we rode a golf-cart. The gentle hum of its engine harmonising with the distant gunshots, as he described telling our co-workers about the plan earlier. Everyone he spoke to, made the same joke about the many perils of putting me and ammunition together. I may have had my sunniest impersonation of a smile on for the last 10 months, but there's more truth to my advertising than there are holes in my targets.
***
This here is a place that was made with great, great love 10 years ago. Angst and rage and bewilderment and wonder, sure... all the elemental constituents of a great love. 2009 was when I came here to find a vat I designed to pour the excesses of my personality into. 2019 is the year I come here, to find parts of myself that were too heavy and non-aerodynamic to carry into the hyper-optimised adulthood I've designed to usually move at a slightly punishing pace.
***
I turned thirty this year. I've lived in fourteen houses. I've attended seven schools. I've lived in seven cities, but cycled between them thirteen times. I've fallen in love thrice. I've fallen out of it once. I've simplified my story by enumerating parts, often.
I've lived completely by myself under solitary-confinement levels of isolation for months at a time. I've socialised till my knees buckled and collapsed into a pile of friends sleeping like puppies, and stayed motionless through the night. I have taken intercontinental flights to unfamiliar lands by myself for no particular reason, and walked the length and breadth of the cities I found myself in. I've traveled 17 hours to see my favourite people and crammed enough "living" in those few days than I would otherwise live in a lifetime. I've won over my critics, and been terribly negligent with what were the kindest of my people. I have given (and received) great measures of fondness and gratitude. I've traveled miles and eons into the unknown with strangers, but sometimes failed to find a familiar bone in my proverbial tribe. I've seen, heard, tasted, and felt things the intensity and perfection of which I cannot - on most days and in good sense - deem possible. I've romanticised my story by preserving snapshots like pressed flowers, often.
***
The dinkus (three-asterisk punctuation used liberally in this post) reminds me of the formaldehyde smell of freshly-printed grade-school examination sheets. All printed in thin, unsettling Courier New. The kind that were imperfectly punched and scattered tiny white paper circles on your uniform. The kind that used extremely thin paper, seemingly designed to self-destruct after the school year is buried under a thick layer of awkwardness, social trauma, teenage anxiety, and regrets. I got excellent grades in school, but this memory makes me nervous. I grew up in the format of a shuddering ball comprised almost entirely of nerves, and my childhood was a panic attack that lasted 9 years. Now I'm a Type A, ENTJ professional "fixer" with a reputation for taking no prisoners, so life sure ensures balance and symmetry in creatively cruel fashion. The many successes of overcompensation may have taught me some questionable lessons.
***
My heroes have grown old and some are dying. This is a variety of heartbreak I was unprepared for, which makes me question the necessity of linear time and madly lust after the power of infinite memory. Knowing fully well that that which is my deepest desire is very clearly and predictably my ultimate downfall.
The heart wants what it wants; and this heart has been known to hold a lifelong grudge against Newtonian physics.
