The sugar high leads to musings

On my drive home today I did some thinking.  This thinking was spurred indirectly by the decision to take city streets instead of the boring, bland ol' freeway.

Familiar streets, streets with memories wrapped around them.  Also streets with yarn stores and independent clothing stores and coffee shops and neat, little old houses on them.  My kind of streets.  This happened on this corner, and Remember all those things that happened here? and I could write a book about this dollar theatre.  This is my town, and a lot of my life has played out right here, in tiny seperate sequences that are usually the ones which stand out in memory most.

You know: boys dated, solid friends I don't talk to anymore, funny stories with friends of friends, the lingering ache of heartbreak.

And then I thought a thought that was so sticky it got stuck to the inside of my head before it could disappear.  I thought, "These are old memories."  Old!  I'm not old by almost any standard, and yet it was true.  Such old memories these were!  And I realized I've been clinging on to these old memories for so long, wishing they were yesterday, today, yet to come.  Missing them.

And this was all probably inspire by my musings lately about  the "vintage" and "retro" coolness phase everyone seems to be going through.  (Even me.)  I've made a few vintage finds of my own, and can drool over vintage-styled modern homes as well as anyone, but the past little while it's all left a funny taste in my mouth.  Pastness is good, of course, but is it possible to dwell on it a bit too much?  In a mad sort of way?  I can look at those same photos of beautiful 60's-ish living rooms and feel the past closing in on me, like a slightly discomforting dream I wouldn't be able to wake from.  It's why I like to watch TV: a something in my personal world to let modern in, to help me feel connected with the world as it's happening.

I know I'm weird, so maybe this all makes sense only to me.

Back to my sticky thought.  I don't want to clutch these memories so tightly anymore.  I want to make new ones.  It's time to embrace the beautiful things that can happen tomorrow, or even right now.  I'm a different person than I was in highschool, in subtle, gigantic ways.  And I will keep on changing.  Isn't it grand?