More Die of Heartbreak

Yeah, it's been a while. A couple times I almost came back and tried to write something, but then The Fear would stop me. It's been so long, what if I can't pull it out anymore? What if I suck? My mind is a blank, what will I write?

Well, I'm tired of caring, so I'm just gonna wing it.

A warrior lyricist of my acquaintance had recent cause to lament an urban development project that threatens a bit of cherished childhood (or at any rate post-adolescent) real estate. I often hear her wax nostalgic, but more often for some aspect of "the good old days", rather than for any specific childhood memory or experience. Or maybe I'm just not listening. Salome, veiled, dances with Mnemosene, and all memory becomes art.

Once in a while, though, some tantalizing glimpse of previous lives (of which I am sworn never to speak) is revealed in a gap between the shifting veils, and I collage it in with the various other pieces in hopes of constructing a coherent whole. Living in an abandoned office building? Now where did I put my pencil...

And That Makes Me Think Of:

Isn't it funny when you go to some reunion, and look around at all the people you went to high school with, and realize how much they've all changed? There's a real cognitive dissonance there, seeing the balding, overweight forty-something guy in front of you, and trying to reconcile him with the captain of the football team, lady's man extraordinaire, who used to steal your girlfriend and shut you in your locker. You have a view of both ends of a story arc, when most people see either one end (current coworkers), or the whole thing (family members). But there's a middle piece missing.

Everyone has changed, you think.

Everyone but me. I'm the same.

So, with time, people change (duh). And this phenomena is symmetrical. What that means to me, I guess, is that your new best friend, who you've known for a couple years maybe, was a very different person way-back-when. Maybe not a person you would look twice at. Or dangle a participle in front of.

Hey, I didn't say it would make sense. I said I was winging it.