memories, rushing back: so much life in things
a few weeks ago i finally got access to an old hard drive, all my computer’s files from 2000 through 2002. it’s a kind of personal archeology, of music and photos and documents. paging through it like a scrapbook makes me nostalgic and sad, and i half wish i didn’t have it, so i wouldn’t remember.
this photo in particular, of the kitchen window of my house in philadelphia, brings back years of memories, encapsulating three years of my early twenties in plants and objects.
1. the blue things on the wall, i never knew exactly what they were but i put them up when i lived with Dawn in 2000. we moved in with so much excitement, just out of college, a beautiful apartment in a happening neighborhood. every saturday we would go see cosmic cat, our favorite dj in the world, spin old school hip hop two blocks away, for free. since that time cosmic cat has moved to bigger venues, dawn has moved to san francisco and now new york, and i have moved, of course, 10,000 miles away.
2. this vine i planted the first spring in the house, with dawn’s mother, but it was only its third summer that it looked like a respectable plant. i never got to see it flower, which was the point when i bought it at home depot in 2000.
3. this table was a gift from my neighbors dan and susan, whose backyard you can almost see if you lean way over, out the windows to the left. i spent more time in their backyard than mine, late summer nights after dinner, sipping extra dry vodka martinis and commiserating about our lives and the helicopters flying nightly overhead. although the table he had bought me was decades more hip than theirs, we almost always ate on that side of the wall.
4. this cup i stole from the painted parrot cafe, a gourmet dessert cafe and restaurant where i first waited tables. at various times i was also the dishwasher, the bartender, and the dessert guy. they were about to close at the time and never really paid me, so i figured swiping the cup was fair.
5. this chair belonged to simon, a londoner who was my neighbor and friend for just a short time. he bought the chair with his ex-wife in 1999. now he has a beautiful little girl with a beautiful woman in northern california. the kitten he gave me is now a feisty cat who lives with my parents in wisconsin. i still wear the pair of wranglers he gave me in 2001, although they’ve long since become too big and tattered.
6. you can just see the bricks that line the so-called ‘fountain’ i constructed with my brother. every time i think of the fountain i remember that culmination of an idyllic summer, when i took the whole steamy day off work and steven and i hauled the cement and bricks up from the basement. from the ridiculousness of reading the directions on the bags of cement, to the sweaty satisfaction of drinking boone’s and watching the cement dry, to the ridiculousness again when we found the fountain didn’t actually work, that is, it didn’t spray water really, so to call it a fountain was kind of pushing it.
7. i got this plant from my ex-girlfriend anna’s father. he gave me a hunk of his old plant, and said if i put it in dirt, it would become a plant in three months or so. i believed him, and stuck the dead-looking leaf in a spare pot in my old office. i can still picture the pot there, stupid dead leaf in it, getting rained on through our office’s leaky roof, dirt strewn all over, the musty smell of mildew. i had given up hope but hadn’t had the energy to throw the pot out when finally, just like he’d said, three months later a new plant appeared from the forgotten dead leaf.
when i had to put all these things in boxes, when i gave away the plants and the table, when i threw away the old blue trash-picked decorations, i felt the pain of putting so many memories to rest. now, again, all it takes is a photo and the memories come rushing back. such simple things, all connected to so many people and events in such a crucial time of my life.
and i wonder, today, am i creating the same kind of memories? will photos of the inanimate objects i am accumulating here in buenos aires be someday as alive as everything in this photo? is my twentyfive-year-old life slowing down, the energy i threw into everything in those years stuck in these memories, objects and people strewn around the globe? am i building more permanent memories, ones that i can look back on and feel less lost, or more temporary ones?
this photo in particular, of the kitchen window of my house in philadelphia, brings back years of memories, encapsulating three years of my early twenties in plants and objects.
1. the blue things on the wall, i never knew exactly what they were but i put them up when i lived with Dawn in 2000. we moved in with so much excitement, just out of college, a beautiful apartment in a happening neighborhood. every saturday we would go see cosmic cat, our favorite dj in the world, spin old school hip hop two blocks away, for free. since that time cosmic cat has moved to bigger venues, dawn has moved to san francisco and now new york, and i have moved, of course, 10,000 miles away.
2. this vine i planted the first spring in the house, with dawn’s mother, but it was only its third summer that it looked like a respectable plant. i never got to see it flower, which was the point when i bought it at home depot in 2000.
3. this table was a gift from my neighbors dan and susan, whose backyard you can almost see if you lean way over, out the windows to the left. i spent more time in their backyard than mine, late summer nights after dinner, sipping extra dry vodka martinis and commiserating about our lives and the helicopters flying nightly overhead. although the table he had bought me was decades more hip than theirs, we almost always ate on that side of the wall.
4. this cup i stole from the painted parrot cafe, a gourmet dessert cafe and restaurant where i first waited tables. at various times i was also the dishwasher, the bartender, and the dessert guy. they were about to close at the time and never really paid me, so i figured swiping the cup was fair.
5. this chair belonged to simon, a londoner who was my neighbor and friend for just a short time. he bought the chair with his ex-wife in 1999. now he has a beautiful little girl with a beautiful woman in northern california. the kitten he gave me is now a feisty cat who lives with my parents in wisconsin. i still wear the pair of wranglers he gave me in 2001, although they’ve long since become too big and tattered.
6. you can just see the bricks that line the so-called ‘fountain’ i constructed with my brother. every time i think of the fountain i remember that culmination of an idyllic summer, when i took the whole steamy day off work and steven and i hauled the cement and bricks up from the basement. from the ridiculousness of reading the directions on the bags of cement, to the sweaty satisfaction of drinking boone’s and watching the cement dry, to the ridiculousness again when we found the fountain didn’t actually work, that is, it didn’t spray water really, so to call it a fountain was kind of pushing it.
7. i got this plant from my ex-girlfriend anna’s father. he gave me a hunk of his old plant, and said if i put it in dirt, it would become a plant in three months or so. i believed him, and stuck the dead-looking leaf in a spare pot in my old office. i can still picture the pot there, stupid dead leaf in it, getting rained on through our office’s leaky roof, dirt strewn all over, the musty smell of mildew. i had given up hope but hadn’t had the energy to throw the pot out when finally, just like he’d said, three months later a new plant appeared from the forgotten dead leaf.
when i had to put all these things in boxes, when i gave away the plants and the table, when i threw away the old blue trash-picked decorations, i felt the pain of putting so many memories to rest. now, again, all it takes is a photo and the memories come rushing back. such simple things, all connected to so many people and events in such a crucial time of my life.
and i wonder, today, am i creating the same kind of memories? will photos of the inanimate objects i am accumulating here in buenos aires be someday as alive as everything in this photo? is my twentyfive-year-old life slowing down, the energy i threw into everything in those years stuck in these memories, objects and people strewn around the globe? am i building more permanent memories, ones that i can look back on and feel less lost, or more temporary ones?
previously there was scraping by in bsas
afterwards you have motion. new.
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Disfruto mucho viendo viejas fotos mías con amigos y parientes. Me gusta recordar aquellos buenos tiempos... y la mayoría de las veces, terminar con esa típica frase hecha, tan común en los argentinos, "todo tiempo pasado fue mejor". Aunque no lo creo. Soy un convencido de que lo mejor está siempre por venir. [submitted on 23 May 03]