The 1970s flickering light display of the Intercontinental Hotel that comes through my kitchen window each night evokes a certain kind of nostalgia, for what exactly, I'm still not sure. My immediate thought, as I sit and write this now, is the radio towers across from Mt. Bonnell, that brought comfort on good days and bad days, cold afternoons and warm nights, that time back in Austin that might as well be another life. I must have spent days up there spread across various points and phases, on dates and with friends and more often than not alone, mulling life over, looking down at the expensive waterfront properties and wondering in the silence of the night what I'd need to get there too.
But the reds and yellows and greens could likewise be more Nigeria-centric, reflecting a time when this whole socio-economic Nigeria project was a hopeful enterprise, which comes when anything is new and fresh and yet to be tainted by things like basic human greed and selfishness. I've seen videos taken from helicopters high above Lagos when Nigeria had just become Nigeria, and in so many ways, my idea of those buildings in faded shades of roughed up colors is what I see across the way right now. The country has changed very little, but has also probably changed a lot.
Nostalgia is in the end, a personal emotion. It draws on your own unique longings and memories of what is and what was. It plays on your desire to feel those things again. Was it freedom you felt? Was it comfort? Was it wonder? Was it needing nothing but the cash in your pocket that would buy your next tank of gas to another small forgotten American town? Was it that sense of excitement flying over the landscape of a new country you didn't know yet but surely would soon? Was it this need, without logical explanation, to have someone in front of you again and be able to put your hand on their cheek? I have felt all those things, and many more, and more than anything now, as I sit here, I feel the need to throw 2014 in a sack and shake it around a little and there is no better place to do this than out on the open road.
New images sprout to life. In one such dream, I am weaving along the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up past Big Sur to Salinas, the true John Steinbeck country, and then continue all the way to San Francisco. And if I have gone that far I might as well keep going because off to the right on the map is Yosemite, where John Muir spent endless summers in his cabin, before dedicating his life to its preservation. It would be a shame to not sit and see what exactly all that was for. Further north still it's wine country, which is a part of any country I have learned graciously to love. And then perhaps a final culmination in Redwood National Park, where some of the oldest living things on Earth tower peacefully above the forest floor as they have for a few thousand years, if anything just to remind you subtly, when you start feeling big, as to how small you still are and how short your life is. "Oh shit, we just killed something older than Jesus," a druggy remarked to his friend after accidentally burning down one such tree recently in South Africa.
What about sleeping in a shady cabin in the woods, or my mom's couch, or my dad's spare bedroom, or the back of the old Nissan Versa shivering in the cold? What books would I pluck off my shelf and toss into the trunk and draw on at various points along the way? What does cold weather feel like to your ears and your nose (I have by now long forgotten) as you tie a scarf around your neck and throw a hood over your head?
These are all new experiences, and old ones. They are fresh starts, quiet spaces, views, smells, and sounds. They flash in and out of my mind in tandem with the lights across the way.
But the reds and yellows and greens could likewise be more Nigeria-centric, reflecting a time when this whole socio-economic Nigeria project was a hopeful enterprise, which comes when anything is new and fresh and yet to be tainted by things like basic human greed and selfishness. I've seen videos taken from helicopters high above Lagos when Nigeria had just become Nigeria, and in so many ways, my idea of those buildings in faded shades of roughed up colors is what I see across the way right now. The country has changed very little, but has also probably changed a lot.
Nostalgia is in the end, a personal emotion. It draws on your own unique longings and memories of what is and what was. It plays on your desire to feel those things again. Was it freedom you felt? Was it comfort? Was it wonder? Was it needing nothing but the cash in your pocket that would buy your next tank of gas to another small forgotten American town? Was it that sense of excitement flying over the landscape of a new country you didn't know yet but surely would soon? Was it this need, without logical explanation, to have someone in front of you again and be able to put your hand on their cheek? I have felt all those things, and many more, and more than anything now, as I sit here, I feel the need to throw 2014 in a sack and shake it around a little and there is no better place to do this than out on the open road.
New images sprout to life. In one such dream, I am weaving along the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up past Big Sur to Salinas, the true John Steinbeck country, and then continue all the way to San Francisco. And if I have gone that far I might as well keep going because off to the right on the map is Yosemite, where John Muir spent endless summers in his cabin, before dedicating his life to its preservation. It would be a shame to not sit and see what exactly all that was for. Further north still it's wine country, which is a part of any country I have learned graciously to love. And then perhaps a final culmination in Redwood National Park, where some of the oldest living things on Earth tower peacefully above the forest floor as they have for a few thousand years, if anything just to remind you subtly, when you start feeling big, as to how small you still are and how short your life is. "Oh shit, we just killed something older than Jesus," a druggy remarked to his friend after accidentally burning down one such tree recently in South Africa.
What about sleeping in a shady cabin in the woods, or my mom's couch, or my dad's spare bedroom, or the back of the old Nissan Versa shivering in the cold? What books would I pluck off my shelf and toss into the trunk and draw on at various points along the way? What does cold weather feel like to your ears and your nose (I have by now long forgotten) as you tie a scarf around your neck and throw a hood over your head?
These are all new experiences, and old ones. They are fresh starts, quiet spaces, views, smells, and sounds. They flash in and out of my mind in tandem with the lights across the way.
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