Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Places we can never go back to

Lately I found myself longing to go back to a place that only exists in my memory. To be precise, the place still exists in reality but being back there is not the same. I'm talking about a house I used to spend my summer holidays on. I'd call it a beach house but that's far too glamorous to classify it. I went back there last week and I didn't feel comfortable there at all. Many details have changed, some things, like the garden, are a little sloppier, it has even more clutter than before. I haven't enjoyed being there in the past years: there's never anything to do, everything's damp and old.
But after coming back home, there was a moment when I thought "I wish I was back there" and I started to miss things that happened there during my childhood, some of which I probably didn't even appreciate back then. I missed having breakfast at the dinnertable, listening to the radio and eating honey. I missed pretending I was a circus lady in the yard, playing receptionist of a hotel, or radio presenter. Waking up every single minute of the morning because of the roosters. Eating really great home-made chips with lots of salt. Coming back from the beach in the morning and my grandmother having lunch at the table, moaning about us not being there on time. Getting out of the house at night without seeing anything except the lights of the insects. The smell the clothes got inside the closets. The cold and the wind that would appear at the end of the afternoons.
I'm almost certain I wouldn't appreciate any of these things with as much pleasure as I remember them because I'm not the same person anymore. But it's still nice to have memories I'm fond of.

6 comments:

Valerene said...

have we all changed that much? do you feel that deep down, at the core, some things would never change? i think we are still ourselves, but maybe we don't dare to...?? i have no answer to the questions i ask here. lol

but i guess as we grow older, we become better people, unless we don't want to, eh?

Devil Mood said...

Do we really become better people? I don't know, I wish I did but I'm not sure.
What I was trying to say is that I have changed (a bit or a lot, I don't know) but that was enough to feel different about certain things but still keep them in my memory.

Valerene said...

yup i get you... what we evolved into, good or bad, i don't think it's for us to take credit or put the blame on ourselves. but what we don't do or do to ourselves to other people, that's a choice that make us act how we act, and it could be a kind of a defense mechanism, don't you think?

Valerene said...

argh, typing error in last comment. "what we don't do or do to ourselves and to other people"...

Devil Mood said...

Yes, I agree. We can't change whatever happened in the past but we can start doing whatever we want differently now. We're getting really philosophical here! ;)

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