Communication

Coffee shop.  Santa Barbara.  Two young adults step out of an fancy Mercedes.  One guy and one girl, both wearing light blue hospital scrubs.  They walk up to the counter, each order a vanilla caramel latte and sit down.  Paper to-go cups in one hand and in the other their cell phones, whipped out moments before they even settle in.  Sipping their drinks facing each other, never looking up, their thumbs twitching away like rapid gun fire.  They break for a quick moment and each pulls out a prescription bottle, wash down some pills with their vanilla caramel lattes and resume to their repetitious texting.  They finish their drinks before too long, never saying a word to each other, stand up, and walk to the car still on the phones.  The black slick paint is bright in the mid day sun as they drive away.  Birds land at their vacant table looking for crumbs, there are none.

Nostalgia

How does this paranormal emotion even find its way into the human psyche, out of the depths of our longing memory?  It's hard to even pronounce, sort of gives ya a mouth full, doesn't it?  A sexy word with lingering erotic under tones: Nostalgia. But what does it actually mean besides: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrevocable condition? Is it a disapproval of the present, and the knowledge that your previous younger, more wild life brought about a sense of excited wonder and egoic satisfaction? Is it Saturn returning with its identity daggers testing the individual with how content they are with their new found body, slowly fading, and their strange confusion for the future? Nostalgia permeates and marinates within us for some reason, it shakes our core on such a mild violent level.

I stroll through the streets of Santa Barbara seeing the past with eyes of my 18 year old self.   I glare upon the sidewalks I used to skate, the restaurants I went on awkward dates, the corner where I got a jay walking ticket, waves I surfed while chocking on a water, and the hills above the city I used to sit and watch the night take over the sun, alone and happy.  Further along I come into the heavy mess of healthy yuppies.  I've found my old bench near the Tuesday farmers market. It's colder than I remember it, but maybe I'm spoiled from living in Hawaii. I feel some what detached, like I'm a stranger in my own home. Almost ghost-like. People from years past wander by, faces older, hair gray with crying babies. I recognize them, but they have no clue who I am. They don't remember me observing them 10 years ago, seeing through their transparent lives. To them I'm just a hipster kid on the street eating carrots, drinking tea, writing my life away. It's so easy to see time pass when face to face with once youthful people now full fledged adults, wearing suits and sad eyes. Nothing can show you the time that has passed more truthfully than the social observations of people you once knew in your past. I've come to understand Nostalgia as the sweet pain that emerges from your heart when you realize that you too have undoubtedly aged just as much, and that maybe you have nothing to show for it. But what can anyone show for it that doesn't eventually turn into tumble weeds? What has anyone really accomplished that can be worthy of admiration? Honestly, what has anyone got that holds any value besides a softness in the eyes, a gentle heart and a listening smile?