It’s a weird day. I don’t really know what keeps my thoughts turning round in circles, without seeming to have a particular goal, they simply do. Perhaps it’s because I’m a bit tired. Not in a physical sense. My soul’s tired, which, in a sense, doesn’t surprise me. Before I see anyone of you making an emergency call and sending an ambulance over to my home: I’m not tired of life in the sense that I’d end it. I’m in a melancholic, nostalgic mood.
Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I went to my elementary school – not because I wanted to, but because I had to: it’s where the polling-station was at the last city election. Going back there, to a place in my village where I haven’t been for some time, a place where after all I passed seven years of my life, including kindergarten, was a literal trip back through time. I suddenly remembered things long forgotten, games I used to play with friends – some of which I have lost sight with over the years – and people I forgot over the years.
Maybe it’s because of university and friends who are spread throughout the whole continent. Mayhap it’s because I know I won’t see some of them ever again, at least not till a class reunion in ten or twenty years. Some of them might decide to go on living in a foreign country and those who return won’t be the same people that left. They won’t be less friendly or have a worse character, they will simply be different. What I wish for in this moment is to have the good ol’times return. I know they won’t. It drives me crazy. I have become a perfect specimen of Pirandello’s theory. And now, after having been aware of it for some time now, I finally begin to accept the wind of change which Gilles noticed some time ago, too.
My circle of friends is changing. To be aware of this, to conciously see how some lose and others gain importance in my life is strange. I don’t want it to happen. I didn’t make it happen. It simply does. And it’s natural, which makes me even more sad. I don’t want the people I have spent so many years and such great moments with to lose importance now. But most of them are gone to universities far away, and even though there’s the possibility of keeping in touch with them via email, IM and VoIP, it’s almost scary how much physical presence still matters in our world where VR has become most important. Everyday life goes on without old friends, sending an email every once in a while doesn’t help in keeping them a part of it. Still it’s interesting that my knot of friends basicly remains the same, I still talk to them regularly, exchange experiences about university or have a talk about god knows what else, although some are hundreds of kilometers away and I won’t see them till Christmas. Even with those who are still here, it’s different than I imagined. There is no sitting around in our once favourite pub, there is no being together with them on Friday afternoons anymore. Some have switched school and have met new people, others have a timetable which allows them to leave school already at 11.30 a.m. on Fridays and they don’t remain in town till 16 o’clock. Some simply have disappeared and I don’t really know where they have gone.
It’s like I already stated before, the world won’t stop turning, no matter what happens. Perchance, the solution to it all is considering all these old friends as inner companions, just as I try to do with her. People that influenced my life could continue to be a part of it in becoming a part of myself. Keeping the good old times in memory may help to confront myself to the future, which, at least for now, is not so uncertain as it was a few months ago. Memories are the most precious thing a human has. It’s the one thing that nobody can take away. Through memories, people long gone can still influence us, in good or bad terms.
So should I simply be lucky to have so many memories, saved not only in my mind, but also on pictures and videos? To be honest, I haven’t the feeling it would suffice. The melancholy still hasn’t gone. You may consider it a weakness being a nostalgic, but, thinking about it, I’m proud of being one. No memory will ever lose importance, no good friend will ever be forgotten. And even if it’s hard confronting myself to the fact that life goes on without having them around every day, it is in fact this difficulty that proves me how important these people were, and still are.
I ought to take it by the words of Frank Sinatra: you’ll never walk alone. But the fragrance of chrysanthemum has almost completely gone.
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