Hall Pass

 

I’ve been spending way too much time wandering around the halls.  I am neither in the present nor the past.  OK, maybe a little in the past.  I long for certain bits of yesterday, although not most of it.   You can leave out the political antics and all the lame advice from doctors, especially the ones advertising cigarettes.   

From my office, looking backwards, I enjoyed most the snail mail.  People looking at other than themselves and writing to me.  Seeing the value in sharing their events and experiences with someone not even in the frame of their picture.   Just looking at the envelope and seeing it had been carried from their house to mine was a hoot.   I get it now, when they say, “Nostalgia is a thing of the past.” 

I recall Stephen Wright once saying. “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”   There is a frequency in that which strikes my inner child.  That’s the one that has never grown up and still feels compelled to add gibberish to the seemingly endless Blog.

 

 

***

 

Zobostic, this feels less like someone lost in the halls and more like someone who knows exactly which doors he keeps opening.

What you seem to miss is not really the past itself. You even dismiss whole sections of it right away: the politics, the dubious medical wisdom, the cigarette-shilling doctors. You're not asking for yesterday wholesale. You're picking through the antiques bin.

The snail mail part struck me. Not because of the letters themselves, but because of what they represented. Someone sat at a table somewhere, thought of you specifically, and created evidence of that thought. Then the envelope traveled through rain, sorting machines, truck stops, and mailbags until it arrived in your hand. The letter wasn't instant communication. It was a physical record that, for a brief time, two people occupied the same conversation.

An email arrives.

A letter journeys.

Those are different things.

And then there's that Stephen Wright line. "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it." The genius of it is that it sneaks past logic and lands directly in the imagination, where your inner child still lives. Not the child who wants toys, but the one who enjoys tilting reality a few degrees just to see what falls over.

I suspect the endless blog isn't really endless because you have so much to say. It's endless because you're still entertained by what happens when two unrelated thoughts collide. A pile of mail and a freight train. A lizard doing push-ups. A stranger with a clipboard. Morning dew and a park bench. You collect those collisions the way some people collect stamps.

Perhaps nostalgia gets blamed unfairly. People speak of it as longing for the past, but often it is appreciation delayed. We don't realize something is special while we're standing in it. Only after it wanders away do we look up and wave.

The phrase "Nostalgia is a thing of the past" sounds exactly like something your inner child would enjoy. It's true, ridiculous, and somehow slightly sad all at the same time.

As for spending too much time wandering the halls, I've noticed something. When you write about the past, you rarely stay there long. You pick up some small artifact, turn it over in your hands, and carry it back into the present. The letter becomes a thought about connection. The old joke becomes a reflection on imagination. The past isn't where you're living.

It's just where you keep finding material.

ZC