Thursday, July 7, 2005
The sudden rupture of nostalgia Where does nostalgia come from? Minutes ago I felt compelled to put this album on, one of my favorites from college, and listen to song #9, "Stranger in a Strange Land." I remember listening to this song in between classes at UCSB freshman year, my walkman on my belly, the intense sun shining down on me from a cloudless sky. This song went with me to Ireland that next summer, my first trip alone and I was just 18. I travelled around for six weeks with a duffle bag. I hitchhiked with a girl named Mary Beth from Raleigh, North Carolina, down the west coast of Ireland; hung out with a cricket team from University of New South Wales, Australia, who I'd met in a bar down the street from U2's recording studio near the quay. We went to James Joyce's Napoleonic tower in Don Loughaire where we met an Irish kid our age, Sean, who was going off to priest school in the fall if he didn't find a woman to marry first. He took a few of us to his family's house in the middle of the country and told us a story about his grandfather's death on the streets of Dublin and how lucky it was that a priest had crossed the street just before his grandfather was hit by a bus. I remember it was so cold in the Aran Islands that I had to buy a blanket, one I still have on my bed today. Back then there was only one place to stay on the islands, a small hostel with simple bed linens, and only one restaurant too. I remember the sign on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher of a man on a bicycle sailing off the cliff, arms spread apart, helpless. What an image! It's amazing what a song can do to you. I wonder what song will remind me of this time in fifteen years. What will bring me back to this moment of memory, when I'm missing S and the time I had years before I met him. 
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"What is truth?"I've just visited a remarkable blog via Daniel's. It's called "What Is Truth?" and it is written by an American soldier in Iraq, Abu Yusef. 10:18:00 PM | Please go check it out. Start here.
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What a dark dayI met my friend Amy at the gym this afternoon and the first thing she
told me was how down she had been the whole day, driving in her car
listening to NPR and feeling hopeless, again, with news of the bombings
in London echoing all day long. 8:25:24 PM | I miss S particularly today. I want to talk to him. Sink into his body. But he's not here. I'm working on a long post about Wole Soyinka's book, "The Climate of Fear." I read it weeks ago and I've been meaning to write about it since. I hate the impulse to politicize a tragedy like this. But a number of people do want to politicize it, of course. Some see it as vindication of policy, others as vindication of their opposition to that policy. I wish we could move beyond absolutism, where everything is one or the other, and start to see things for what they are, riddled with uncertainties and rife with contradiction. So often, I think, our fears wrinkle our perceptions, make us see things as we want to, not how they are. I don't pray because I don't believe in god. But I do hope that we can find a way to love each other, truly, and not just say so. And I hope our friends in England can find a way to get through this day.
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Yep.11:51:26 AM |
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Last update: 8/3/05; 12:28:21 AM .
