This brings with it a couple surprising revelations.
First, the realization that, although I spent the first 20-some years living in that house, and that town, once they leave, I have no reason to ever want to go back to that hive of middle-class conformity and stultifying materialism which is Naperville, IL. With the departure of my parents, my one tie to the place of my youth is gone.
Second, in the course of preparing to move, my folx have been sending me several boxes of personal effects, which I had in storage in their house .... mostly book, some magic tricks, some clothes.
.... And some journals that I kept, at one time or another, in highschool and also in college and law school
I have not, yet, had the time to read through all of these ... I've been far too busy trying to sort through the various items, and decide what to keep, and what to dispense with, trade in, or give away.
But, I have found time to scan through some of these.
It's quite startling ... when I read it, I read a prose style much like my own, but more extravagent, less disciplined. I read the thought of this person who isn't *me*, now, but whom I remember. At this pass, though, I can have a certain objectivity about this person which I couldn't have at the time.
It's kind of like going to a party, getting into a conversation with someone who looks vaguely familiar .... and then realizing that it yourself, from 20 or more years ago.
At this pass, I can see all too many of my own faults, which I have never overcome: a leaning towards obscure words, and longish sentences. A tendancy towards being pedantically "full of oneself" (which, actually, can be an asset in the scholary milieu I now find myself). My youthful self shows signs of greater ego -- and paradoxically less self confidence and more self-consciousness than I have now.
All in all, I get a picture of someone who was much more fearful, but also more hopeful and exhuberant than I am now.
And, as I scan these passages, I think "If only I could *talk* to this person! I could tell him that many of the things he fears might happen *will* happen ... but that he will _survive_! I would tell him that many of the things he aspired to (power, wealth, fame) won't come to pass ... (well ... not *yet*, anyway!). But also, a number of the things he feared he might never have would come to him -- he would be married, *twice*, he would own a house, he would, after some mis-steps, find himself in a career which he, mostly, found rewarding, fulfilling, and sufficiently remunerative for his relative modest desires."
But, of course, that is not to be ... this voice I read, coming from the past, can only communicate into the future ... not the other way around.
As I read these old journals, I find myself sometimes feeling impatient and irritated with my past self ... but also affectionately indulgent -- he had no chance to know the self he would become in a quarter century, and therefore, the trivial things he feared, the silly things he dreamt of, the things he did not dare hope for, can all be treated with a certain retroactive compassion.
......
It all has me feeling much more introspective, reflective, and mellowly melancholy than is my wont.
.......
If you had the chance to speak to yourslf as you were, 20 years or so ago ... what do you think you would say? What advice would you offer?
bored
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