Interlude

The retelling of the trip I have recently taken made me wonder about an aspect of my life. As I was recreating the places, the situations, I became a character of my own story. I was narrator – selecting, cutting, flourishing. I was making past present. I let out a part of myself I normally do not encounter: me as a nostalgic person. Liar. I am the most nostalgic person I have ever met. Today I was cleaning my bookshelves. I would take all the books and dust them. So there were so many stories I had within reach but I have never read. So many other I have read long ago, when I was a child, and I would just love to reread and feel now I was really grasping what they meant for now I know better. I felt like a pervert, leafing through all those books, ones virgins who had never been open and others as old as my grandma, jackets torn and yellowish. They must be so wise, the way they have been sitting there, in other shelves before mine. How many pairs of hands have had them? Loose sentences, are they giving me a message now? A paragraph of page 7 there, page 245 here, some paragraphs of philosophy. I am a drifter then. The books back to where they belong, I went to the photos and by chance I was looking at delight and wonder in moments of bliss. There were also hugs and kisses that will never come back. What the fuck was that haircut? And that one? My god, how could I go outside with that nest in my head? And the places and people I tend to believe I will never see again? What are they doing now? Our memory is really selective. Why? I had done that? Is it really me covered by mud, feeding ducks, wearing earrings? I wish I could talk to some of these people, hey you in the picture, talk to me! We lived so much together. Now I just have to get rid of the willingness to be with all of you again. Past is past. What was untouched should remain so. What was their denial must go. Grudges eat you from the inside. I feel so ready, but sometimes I feel my shoes are too tight and I don’t remember how to dance anymore. Some alive are already dead. Some friends just don’t care anymore. Some dicks are never going to be seen. Why don’t you believe that? Why bother? Nostalgia, can you just vanish and let the future and its construction here be hegemonic? Set me free.