nostalgia

How promising today's generation is. They can whip out their cellular phones like sheep, instantly take a million digital photos of their cat and then just delete them. But I'd like to see these kids try to artfully use a traditional film camera or make a super 8 home movie. Traditional film takes integrity, nostalgia, effort, patience and imagination - things that the 21st century has very little of. Everything these days, even a superior medium like film photography with an extensively vivid history and an iconic meaning, is becoming disposable in this age.

In her eyes was the reflection of everything that mattered: old diners with neon signs, vinyl records, celluloid film, drive-in movies, Pears soap, department stores, her brother__ old blue Camaro car and the smell of coal dust in the rainy sky of a summer lightning storm._And all the nice bright colors of the past that she thought were gone for good came flowing back into her life like a wave of nostalgia flooding over her, reds, yellows, blues and greens drenching her gray memories in psychedelic ribbons and glittering fireworks._She hoped that the world would always hold those miniscule yet beautiful, deep and mysterious traces of memory.

A picture's worth a thousand words. But a single word can make you think of over a thousand pictures in your mind, over a thousand moments, a thousand memories.

we always knewthat good times camewith termination contractseven if we weren't quite readyto sign it.

They think I__ not entirely __rounded in reality_, they say. They want me to go to some live-in nerdy activity ranch thing for troubled Canadian youth, that one out in Ontario where you come back programmed like some robot, dressed in a tye-dyed shirt and eating tuna sandwiches,_ Mandy explained, a horrified look on her face. __ou__e eighteen, not twelve! Would they really send you to some rat__ nest like that?_ Wendy questioned in mock horror. __w hell no, if you get sent there, they__l make you hold hands and sing songs about caring! And they__l force you to recycle everything in blue canisters, and to discuss your emotions in front of groups of bratty little dopes!___ear god, they__l have geeky youth wiener roasts at night, and no locks on the doors!_ Mandy added, eyes wide. __It__l be the day pigs fly, my parents have the camp brochure on the fridge but they__l never go through with sending me there. They always forget.

People say that a time machine can__ be invented, but they__e already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world__ first time machines.

The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue.

This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's someone who wants to take care of you.

Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.

Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan__unk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish.

I am filled time and againwith a heart-aching wonder when I thinkof the fireand frost of memoriesof the everlastingnessof lovethe solace of familyand the power of prayer.

I'm chasing a decade old ghost. Searching beneath the rafters of a cobweb-filled haven lined with old memories which my brain cannot accept are dead. The light of nostalgia is burning bright inside my heart. Ignoring the emptiness around me, and hoping for a resurrection of love.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.

Once a thing is removed from your heart, a trace of it still remains.

I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles livedBut there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together.

Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after_ you know_ after the funeral we haven__ had the money for any of your weird little games and I was hoping you__ be more mature now that Jud__ gone,_ her father had disappointedly added. __ow much__ that cake cost you?___t__ paid for,_ Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. __ used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy__ last year and I_ it was my birthday, dad!___ou can__ even be normal about this one thing, can you?_ her father had complained.Mandy hadn__ cried, she__ only stared back knowingly, her voice shaky. __I__ normal.

This empty kitchen's whereI'd while away the hoursJust next to my old chairYou'd usually have some flowersThe shelves of booksEven the picture hooksEverything is goneBut my heart is hanging onIf this old neighborhoodSurvived us both alrightDon't know that it withstoodAll the things that took our lightYou on the stairI can see you thereEverything is goneBut my heart is hanging onOnce there was a little girlUsed to wonder what she would beWent out into the big wide worldNow she's just a memoryThere used to be a little school hereWhere I learned to write my nameBut time has been a little cruel hereTime has no shameIt's just a place whereWe used to liveIt's just a place whereWe used to liveNow in another townYou lead another lifeAnd now upstairs and downYou're someone else's wifeHere in the dustThere's not a trace of usEverything is goneBut my heart is hanging onIt's just a place whereWe used to liveIt's just a place whereWe used to live.

Over-familiar, the music has become a kind of audio-Valium, background music rather than something I listen to actively and attentively. A gin and tonic after a long day. A shame, I think, because while each note remains the same, I used to hear them differently. It used to sound better.