a certain feeling.
Sitting in my bedroom.
Window open.
The air wraps around me like nostalgia.
This will happen every year for the rest of my life.
I suppose.
And although my heart is aching, my head is clear. I don't feel like crying, or dancing, or kissing. I pick up my guitar and create. Songs that we'll forget in a day. The skin on the tips of my fingers is smooth, tough, leathery. The room is warm; the breeze from the window is cool. Shit. I wish I knew what she was thinking right now.
Over a year ago, I wrote something in this journal called "Begin. Again." The title isn't mine. Three years ago, I woke up on a winter day. I looked out of my window and saw that several feet of snow had fallen overnight. The house was warm. I was in high spirits, and for whatever reason, very awake that morning. I walked downstairs, got a glass of cranberry (or maybe it was grape) juice, and, still in my pajamas, went back to my bedroom. I logged onto the internet with the free (and very illegal) internet service I was using at the time, and then I found it.
I don't know what I had been looking for. I found myself on the blog of a girl. Her last entry. "Begin. Again." It had last been updated almost two years earlier. Nothing about the entry marked it as being "the last". It just was. She was just writing about what had been happening in her life. Like many people do. She wrote about cruising down a huge freeway outside of Los Angeles, where she lived. Her windows down, a cigarette between her lips, the Dead Milkmen blasting out of the stereo of her shitty Volvo.
This really happened.
A few minutes later, my friend called me on the phone. We had work to do. The day turned out to be one that I still remember, because it was goofy, and ridiculous, and makes for a good story, and I got paid for it. But those words, that title, they lingered in my head. Begin. Again. I tried to explain to my friend what I felt looking at that dead blog. How sad and scared I was. I wanted to know, more than anything, what that girl was doing, where she was, what cards had been dealt to her since then, why she stopped writing one day, without warning. I couldn't explain it, only feel it. It didn't just feel like her little space on the internet had died. It felt like she had died. And she was perfect, because I would never meet her. I would never see her.
This memory came to me as I held together a few chords on my guitar today. I remembered it with heart-breaking fondness. On a day that already felt like nostalgia. I don't know why I was dwelling on this particular memory, or why it came so strongly. I know that before I started writing this, I looked for those two words on the internet. I didn't find them. I wish I knew what she was thinking.
A girl I know turned thirty. Unsure of what to do, unsure of who she was, of what she was doing, she left. She went back. She drove down the old roads she knew so well. The abandoned streets that she walked on with the friends that were now gone. She was doing what we do all the time, in our own way.
It was evening by the time she got there. A warm, perfect summer night. The sky was filled with stars. They say everything hits at once. She cried in total silence without even knowing it. She walked down the sidewalk and looked at the house she grew up in. Everything was the same. She knocked on the door, and the family living there let her in. She went into the room where her younger sister had lived for eighteen years. The words she had carved on her windowsill were still there. She had never asked her little sister why she had carved them there. She never even knew about them for a long time.
The room was deathly quiet. Downstairs she heard the faint murmur of the television. The lamp in the room burned a dull orange. There were someone else's posters on the wall, someone else's clothes in a pile on the floor. She looked at herself in the dresser mirror. She was a reflection. This old room, this house, a reflection of the new family living here. She never wanted to see this place again.
She walked along the old main street. The beach. The boardwalk. She wondered why she had ever come back. Although she secretly knew. Those of us who grew up in one know the tyranny of the boardwalk town. That they have a way of bringing us back. Of keeping us pinned down. Those houses on stilts, those narrow roads. It's okay to run from them so long as we never see them torn down.
She sat on the edge of the dock. She smoked a cigarette, thinking about something she couldn't explain, only feel. In the distance, someone was setting off fireworks. The colors reminded her of the pink and blue neon lights that stretched down the streets of the city she lived in now. On another dock, next to hers, she noticed a person sitting, watching the fireworks. She wanted to say something. After a minute, he put a single beer bottle on the edge of the dock and walked away. Coming back here was a mistake. The town was like a piece of soap; something that would never rot if only you didn't use it.
Somewhere else, a girl is driving down a freeway. Windows down, cigarette between her lips, music blasting. We don't know where she's going. She's driving without looking back. The sun is setting. The air is wet. Everything is new. She's driving towards something she can't explain, only feel. I wish I knew what she was thinking right now.
Window open.
The air wraps around me like nostalgia.
This will happen every year for the rest of my life.
I suppose.
And although my heart is aching, my head is clear. I don't feel like crying, or dancing, or kissing. I pick up my guitar and create. Songs that we'll forget in a day. The skin on the tips of my fingers is smooth, tough, leathery. The room is warm; the breeze from the window is cool. Shit. I wish I knew what she was thinking right now.
Over a year ago, I wrote something in this journal called "Begin. Again." The title isn't mine. Three years ago, I woke up on a winter day. I looked out of my window and saw that several feet of snow had fallen overnight. The house was warm. I was in high spirits, and for whatever reason, very awake that morning. I walked downstairs, got a glass of cranberry (or maybe it was grape) juice, and, still in my pajamas, went back to my bedroom. I logged onto the internet with the free (and very illegal) internet service I was using at the time, and then I found it.
I don't know what I had been looking for. I found myself on the blog of a girl. Her last entry. "Begin. Again." It had last been updated almost two years earlier. Nothing about the entry marked it as being "the last". It just was. She was just writing about what had been happening in her life. Like many people do. She wrote about cruising down a huge freeway outside of Los Angeles, where she lived. Her windows down, a cigarette between her lips, the Dead Milkmen blasting out of the stereo of her shitty Volvo.
This really happened.
A few minutes later, my friend called me on the phone. We had work to do. The day turned out to be one that I still remember, because it was goofy, and ridiculous, and makes for a good story, and I got paid for it. But those words, that title, they lingered in my head. Begin. Again. I tried to explain to my friend what I felt looking at that dead blog. How sad and scared I was. I wanted to know, more than anything, what that girl was doing, where she was, what cards had been dealt to her since then, why she stopped writing one day, without warning. I couldn't explain it, only feel it. It didn't just feel like her little space on the internet had died. It felt like she had died. And she was perfect, because I would never meet her. I would never see her.
This memory came to me as I held together a few chords on my guitar today. I remembered it with heart-breaking fondness. On a day that already felt like nostalgia. I don't know why I was dwelling on this particular memory, or why it came so strongly. I know that before I started writing this, I looked for those two words on the internet. I didn't find them. I wish I knew what she was thinking.
A girl I know turned thirty. Unsure of what to do, unsure of who she was, of what she was doing, she left. She went back. She drove down the old roads she knew so well. The abandoned streets that she walked on with the friends that were now gone. She was doing what we do all the time, in our own way.
It was evening by the time she got there. A warm, perfect summer night. The sky was filled with stars. They say everything hits at once. She cried in total silence without even knowing it. She walked down the sidewalk and looked at the house she grew up in. Everything was the same. She knocked on the door, and the family living there let her in. She went into the room where her younger sister had lived for eighteen years. The words she had carved on her windowsill were still there. She had never asked her little sister why she had carved them there. She never even knew about them for a long time.
The room was deathly quiet. Downstairs she heard the faint murmur of the television. The lamp in the room burned a dull orange. There were someone else's posters on the wall, someone else's clothes in a pile on the floor. She looked at herself in the dresser mirror. She was a reflection. This old room, this house, a reflection of the new family living here. She never wanted to see this place again.
She walked along the old main street. The beach. The boardwalk. She wondered why she had ever come back. Although she secretly knew. Those of us who grew up in one know the tyranny of the boardwalk town. That they have a way of bringing us back. Of keeping us pinned down. Those houses on stilts, those narrow roads. It's okay to run from them so long as we never see them torn down.
She sat on the edge of the dock. She smoked a cigarette, thinking about something she couldn't explain, only feel. In the distance, someone was setting off fireworks. The colors reminded her of the pink and blue neon lights that stretched down the streets of the city she lived in now. On another dock, next to hers, she noticed a person sitting, watching the fireworks. She wanted to say something. After a minute, he put a single beer bottle on the edge of the dock and walked away. Coming back here was a mistake. The town was like a piece of soap; something that would never rot if only you didn't use it.
Somewhere else, a girl is driving down a freeway. Windows down, cigarette between her lips, music blasting. We don't know where she's going. She's driving without looking back. The sun is setting. The air is wet. Everything is new. She's driving towards something she can't explain, only feel. I wish I knew what she was thinking right now.