What decade this scene depicts is anyone’s guess. If I had to place the influence and surroundings, I’d go with somewhere between the 70’s and 80’s – right in that neat niche in which I was born and raised. There wasn’t much to be said for taste or elegance, yet there was a raw, wooden-paneling kind of incandescent warmth that seems to be missing from the memories made today.
I feel old now.
At least, older.
The passing of time is a palpable thing.
The space between the ticks and tocks feels smaller.
There is no longer the expanse of a year or a month or even a week – it all rushes by so quickly. Where once a season seemed to last a lifetime, now it’s the quick turning of a calendar page. Sometimes I forget to flip the month until we are a week or more in, and then it feels like I’ve lost the bulk of it anyway.
Pockets of timelessness are still to be found, often in the night and in the relative solitude of a stay in Boston. Loneliness doesn’t usually reach me there, even if I find myself missing Andy and the comfort of our bed. One grows accustomed to company after almost twenty years. The company of oneself doesn’t count.
You don’t always see the movement of years in the mirror. We give too many looks in a given day to sense the change. Only in photos and timehops do we notice the ravages of time. Oddly enough, I’ve never much minded getting older. I was an old soul from the day I was born.
That’s not to say that my vanity hasn’t fought against it, in fittingly vain fashion. There’s no point in fighting the inevitable – the best you can do is delay. At this point I’d rather face these things head-on. Charge into the future with the wisdom we’ve gained, the gray hairs we’ve grown, and every wrinkle we’ve earned.
