Strange Memories
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. - Hunter S. Thompson
This quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas runs over and over through my head tonight, a near-perfect expression of being homesick for a place or a time or both. For me, it's always Amsterdam; I dream many times a week of being there, and try to imagine a scenario that would ever allow me to return, but it's hard to do that when even the purchase of a new pair of sandals from Wal-Mart wreaks enough budgetary havoc to give me pause. In some ways, my life was awful four or five years ago compared to now, because there was no love in it. In some other ways, though, I wish I'd appreciated how good I had it back then.
Strangely, my dream-Amsterdam contains several places that, though they do not exist in the actual city, remain consistent from dream to dream: an amusement park; an arcade full of tiny, authentic Asian restaurants; a wooden museum surrounded by lush tropical foliage. I also spend a lot of dream-time in the coffeeshops, though, and all of those are real.
This quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas runs over and over through my head tonight, a near-perfect expression of being homesick for a place or a time or both. For me, it's always Amsterdam; I dream many times a week of being there, and try to imagine a scenario that would ever allow me to return, but it's hard to do that when even the purchase of a new pair of sandals from Wal-Mart wreaks enough budgetary havoc to give me pause. In some ways, my life was awful four or five years ago compared to now, because there was no love in it. In some other ways, though, I wish I'd appreciated how good I had it back then.
Strangely, my dream-Amsterdam contains several places that, though they do not exist in the actual city, remain consistent from dream to dream: an amusement park; an arcade full of tiny, authentic Asian restaurants; a wooden museum surrounded by lush tropical foliage. I also spend a lot of dream-time in the coffeeshops, though, and all of those are real.