We'd
Nostalgia is a prickly, fickle thing very similar to a fancy dinner out; one longs for it continuously yet always with the realistic notion that it is this very longing that makes it enjoyable, for if one were to indulge in the fancy dinner as often as one yearns for it not only would the yearning cease to exist but the sense of utter fulfillment when actually sitting down to the table, covered with a crisp white linen and set with several silver spoons, forks, knives, and devouring the dishes. Actuation of the fantasy quite literally kills the fantasy itself the moment it crosses from the world of want into the world of have. Think of blood in the veins, yet again, pulsating through just beneath the transparent skin of the wrist in pretty blue hue -- the moment one drags a razor's edge across the surface of the skin, dipping the tip inward so that it bites the vein in order to release the blood simply to witness the azure-bluey burst, the liquid turns red instantly and one feels empty due to the let down. "This is not what I thought it would be, my body ruined my mind's imagined result." Nostalgia, like blood, is best kept within the body tightly under wraps perhaps in those same veins that criss cross the patchwork of organs, limbs and other dumb human parts. The second one attempts to release it from the body, to try to regain it's physical image even for a moment, it bleeds out in an unexpected color and leaves the body dried and near-death. Please forgive the suicidal imagery, it's pedestrian enough to work because it is so simple: any attempt to drag the past into a present form brings death to both, much in the same way one picks up a razor in order to induce a feeling of something that's long gone (after all, one's pre-life moments are one in the same as one's post-life moments - and in this way suicide is simply a longing for the death of the present in favor of the past).
With that said, nostalgia is a hard thing to shake, especially when one's present condition is a mess when viewed side by side with one's past --- and oh how each colors the other, how the bad goodens the good and the good baddens the bad. We hate our jobs enough, but when we compare them with (the incomparable) years of adolescence it's no wonder we get so upset with ourselves; we used to be fun people without responsibility and able to do as we pleased. And, worse still, the job we hate now turns our childhoods into even more idyllic settings; unrealistically pushing them ever higher onto that ivory tower in our mind. Some stray memory like playing baseball in PE as a kid (which, at the time seemed like an unendurable hell of torment and frustration from lack of physical prowess) is now magically altered into some gauze covered snapshot from everyone else's collective past: gladly running, throwing and hitting that ball to the tune of applause and cheer when looking from the shaky vantage point of the present, with it's conference calls, voice mails to return, and bills to pay. This odd imbalance is always at work with nostalgia, making the past look more shiny while simultaneously making the present look more drab and dull. Even more odd is the notion that we incessantly inflict this pain on ourselves without wincing.
I've never been one to accuse the old pal Nostalgia with any wrong doing, or harm --- but then again, that simply speaks to exactly how delusional it can be at times. I praise it, I hold on to it firmly with a grip that I don't use much but is tighter and more unbreakable than any on earth (it's a part of me, "it's more of me than I am of it") and even dedicated years of writing and thinking to the very subject. What is writing if not an attempt to right the past, to straighten out the slight wrinkles imposed on it by the present and there is only one tool which the author has at his disposal: his own dazzling sense of nostalgia, his own blaring past. Yes, and there is also that other side that says: "you are a fool of the most supreme kind for mining a sea of experiences" and still, and still... So with this sort of odd, sentimental feeling for Nostalgia I say thanks and no thanks at the same time, and offer the below meagerly, meekly.
We'd, as a contraction for "We Would" as well as "We Had", is the main prayer of devotee to nostalgia. Chanting it invokes the spirit of the past almost immediately. Start a sentence with it. "We'd blank blank blank blank blank." It is the Our Father lord's prayer of the past. We would, the alliteration is lovely and in its contractive state it has a short but crisp sweetness to it --- not a cookie overly loaded with chocolate and sugar, but a perfectly Proustian madeleine with a dab of honey to dip it into. We would. As different from "I'd" as birds from turtles. We has the togetherness of memory, me plus person, not alone but together, and in this there is a spreading of smile that is wide and deep: in this past there is a sharing, a mixing of memory, a single point seen from several sets of eyes and saved by several sets of cataloging brains. We would. We'd - homophonetically, its cousin happens to also be an inducer of memory. We would. In it is also the seed of the future, the possibility of potential, the imagination projecting forward into some other world. This blending of the past and the future, the done and the to do, has a dreaminess to it that I simply can't ignore, nor can I sum it up appropriately.
We would be made into statues of granite if we were so lucky. We would be scattered into a million fragments and blown into the air of eternity if we were so lucky. We would be flown on the wings of the whitest dove into the brightest sun. We would go to an old shack on the beach and live happily, free from phones and the other tethers of the world. We would do what we wanted, and gladly did, each minute of each day. We would smile. We had joy. We'd wake when we wanted, we'd leave when we needed, and we'd know how to behave. We'd swim in a pool kissed by clouds. We'd turn into ants and follow each other around the garden. We'd straddle the border of Will-do and Have-done, happy to be in the newness of Now.
