Monday, July 9, 2007

Nostalgia.
It's like drinking this sweet and bitter potion that both tingles and burns all the way down. It's like putting three paper boats into the Bow River and watching the swells and the current carry them downstream until they disappear from sight, wondering what will happen to them and where they'll end up.
We had a Burning Bush grads of 2001 reunion the other day (meaning old friends I hadn't seen for 4 or 6 years) and it was...surprising. Oftentimes these reunion things are at the very best awkward shadows of past friendships but this one was intimate and funny and interesting and fruitful. The hours flew by and suddenly it was 2 in the morning before we all started from this eerie reverie we'd all fallen into. It seemed like everyone had grown up a little but...but at the same time it seemed like absolutely no time had passed by. It was like we were 14 years old again - Helina was laughing at Kim and Jon trading biting comments while Dan made the occaisional dry remark, taking pictures of our feet and hands and Kim's citronella candles and making weird faces and spraying bug spray on each other and...in the candles...and generally acting no different than we had with each other many years ago. Talking about the crazy random and dangerous things we'd done as preteens and reminiscing about the events we'd planned and the emails we'd traded. Spreading brie on bread with our fingers and kicking each other under the table. We'd all backslided into the past and came out with something different.
Why is it so hard to escape from the past? Is it because we romanticize everything and picture it as more perfect than it really was? Or does life really start beautifully and go downhill from there?
Jon said that nostalgia had a purpose. If so, what is it?