life of uncertainty

Thanks G for being my vocal audience. It really does somehow make writing more fun for me, even if it somehow adds an odd pressure :)

Ever since I was a small child I've had this weird fondness/eeriness for things "older". I recall my mother taking me out to the hills in West Salem to the Salem Academy campus. The buildings are older (or were the last time I was out there somewhere around a decade ago). You can peek in the windows at the very tiny little wooden desk-chair combo desks. We usually were there on a weekend or whatnot so it always had this kind of ghost town feel about it. I could go real quiet inside myself and picture my mother as a child, in a school uniform, playing about the yard. I could smell the chalk, hear the joyful plays. Sometimes I would get a signal of foul things that happened too. I always felt transported right back to that time. I honestly have never known the correct way to describe what happened, then or now. I get the same out of body experience when I watch anything about Vietnam. I used to have breakdowns when watching China.Beach. Maybe I was just too sensitive of an adolescent for that kind of stuff? I think there is more to it.

I was always disappointed that my parents were so young (born in the mid 50's). Whenever we had dress up ocassions at school I never had any resources. No poodle skirts, no penny loafer, no bell bottoms, no butterfly collars. As an adult I realize that had more to do with who, what, where and when kept the momentos than it did the year they were born. I'm fascinated by all that is missing as glimpses into my parents lives as youths. It only got ever worse when my mom, in fits of whatever, burned even stuff from their earlier life as a couple. Several, frequent moves lost whatever was left.

I don't remember much before the age of 10. At all. What I do "remember" I remember from photos. I love to visit former places of my youth and try to conjure up what the colors, signs, smells were at that time. If I listen closely I can hear the thudding of feet, the shrieks of joy when the seeker is rewarded, I can feel my grandmother's nails soothing me to sleep. I guess it is the sensation of having something so interior tickled so delicately.

I am deeply saddened by changes to the fluff of life. I don't want Circle.K to get a new color scheme and repaint. I don't want Kix New and Improved. I don't want entrees to have new and improved kitschy names for the new millenium. I am depressed when historic buildings are destroyed, I could even go so far as to say remodeled. The buses don't need to be replaced, the cars should stop getting so streamlined. I want to wander in musty halls and feel all the old energies. I want to pour over photos of myself as a girl, of my grandparents as newlyweds. I want to climb inside of them and be enveloped in some sort of make believe security. But even then I'm not sure if that is what this is all about.