4 posts tagged “memories”
“What does ‘tame’ mean?”
“Something that is frequently neglected,” said the fox. “It means ‘to create ties’.”-Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Can you imagine how lasting some ties may be? Time doesn’t matter - it’s been almost two years. Mutuality doesn’t either - it was all one-sided. Yet, it is miraculously hard to end, let go and forget. But I can do more than imagine.
For once in an eternity, there is something that needs to be written. And there’s no doubt as to its necessity and sincerity. It’s only a matter of courage and finding the perfect form.
Bittersweet symphony this life…
Today was the rarest occasion of no clouds and brilliant, orange sunshine. Today was the strangest occasion of… recalling. It was sillily beautiful outside and when I sat in class, learning what I’d last learnt two years ago, watching the pictures of past days like these shift behind the window, it all suddenly came back to me. Tied to a single, irrelevant question of our teacher’s, a whole parcel of smell, sound, picture and feeling arrived. There was the quivering air of spring and sunlight, the smell of sweet washing powder, the black earth, there was love and dripping icicles and golden days, when everything ended early and was significant and of childhood.
It was almost a loop in time, this strange occasion of a day. And I wished I could travel back, if even for a night.
It was Geography today when I suddenly remembered my old school, or rather my oldest school. It's appalling to think I started attending it just about ten years ago. It was situated on one of the small islands belonging to the city of St. Petersburg, a fairytale sort of place in any of the seasons I frequented it. The place was a good two hours of train, subway and walking away from my home and I was always considered such a poor child having to go through all the strain. There was a regular ocean of people every morning, pushing and pulling and swaying and calling me a young man, because in the blasted cold of the Russian winter there was no wearing feminine attire. Through the course of the four years of education, the various routes changed at least once per annum, but almost always included crossing a bridge over the river, clawing wind rosying cheeks, hands and ears. The troubles were repaid though - I was the exemplary child who lived the furthest and arrived the earliest. I must have been genuinely proud of that.
Somehow, there's no slipping over a certain pair of shoes I had which seemed to attract dog poop with irreversible certainty and always smelled accordingly.
The island itself was a park afloat. In the autumns, there hung a haze of fallen leaves and their odour, heaps, hills, mountains of them everywhere - oak, maple, poplar, all the variety a child could wish for! In the winters, the drifts were magnificent and there was so much room for exploration. It was a whole lotta park.
The schoolhouse was an odd building, red-bricked and all, surrounded by bushes we played our own imitations of Lion King in. The institution I attended being not worthy of the whole house in the eyes of the bureaucrats, we had to share with a mystical half-a-building of other children, something we referred to only by the school's number and saw in the lunch-breaks, preferring to shun 'the other crowd'. How small a world can be when you're eight years old and dragging a huge bunch of gladiolus on the first of September!
Memory is deceptive, true, but I think I wanted to go to school most of my four years in the 626th. It was a special one. At the time, my mother'd been all immersed in a certain educational (and in the end, universal) principle and pushed her point of having me learn the proper way, whatever other members of the family might have said. We had about three hours of Class Teacher's lesson for starters. Its subject depended what epoch we were in. There were epochs (they lasted for a month, I think?) for drawing shapes, spirals, triangles, different types of knots, periods dedicated to learning to write using a feather. A real feather, you know. We played 'shopping', while simultaneously learning maths and discovered how a house could be build. We helped build a house. The methods must have been devilishly complicated to design, but they were heavenly to learn by. In language classes, we drew. I found an English notebook which was nothing but pictures I'd made. D'you know what that means? At some point in my life I was not embarrassed for any visual creation of mine.
Now that I think of it, we were taught to live. Nothing deep even intended.
How did I reach all of this in the middle of Geography? There's a memory of me, probably in the later years, being extremely excited about buying workbooks just for the fun of it. None were required at school, so the ones I purchased on my own accord were such a joy to fill! I remember starting with a contour map of Africa, I think, colouring the countries one by one and writing down their names... We didn't receive marks either, instead there was a detailed summary of our characteristics, strengths and weaknesses handed to the parents by the end of the year.
And there are still more tales to tell about that Old School, but I think I'll leave them for later.
***
Sensationally, they say there's going to be a snowstorm on Saturday! Funny, seeing how I wished for one just a few hours earlier, snapping my fingers and surveying what was left of the pouring rain. Which reminds me of the storms of childhood...
I think one of the funnies questions asked on a regular basis is the 'How are you doing?'. Always a dilemma between a simple 'well-good-fine' and a proper explanation. The latter rarely wins because just stopping and telling people what your life's about is a weak option. Not everyone wants to hear the 'drama' of my life anyway. And not everyone's ready to reveal theirs. Despite that, I feel silly when forced to go with the 'good', so that mostly my response is an even less interesting 'more or less' and 'weeeell....'. All the little episodes whipped together make up a lurid mass which can't really be complained about.
Things have never been so interesting before. It seems. At least there's not a moment when I'm bored (History classes exempt) and queer episodes and opportunities surface in pace Time. I was just about to write about the past weekend, but it appears a new one's right here anyway. A short summary would include a scary episode of working, a mediocre emotional upheaval, no Monday Syndrome, a continuously runny nose and a wasted chance of seeing the Queen, that is Elizabeth II. Factually, it's not wasted yet, but considering the most important test of this whole period takes place while Her Majesty will be waving about the Townhall, I can be reasonably sure. I'm amazed at some people's thought there's nothing to see. Yes, I do know she's just a person. Not nearly as glamour laden as an average Hollywood star, for that matter. But that's beside the point. My whole idea was 'mapping out' another bit of uncharted territory. Only when you've seen someone like that from a small distance, can you actually believe in their existence. Until then, they remain fictional characters. A pity such a marvellous chance to have a real monarch in my world is lost.
It was today, while making tea, that an idea that's been running around my head for a while actually shaped itself into a proper thought. I suddenly remembered the Old Days when the world, including yours truly, was young and the sky a lot further away. In that hazy past, my family (a part of it at least) had the tradition of having holidays by the Black Sea. Each summer, we'd go to this single beach, the same monuments spread amongst the grassy hills and acacias, the same gargantuan bomb holes, the same procedure of going to the seaside every morning, when it was still chilly, waiting for the heat, swimming among the wild weed and some stray jellyfish, building fortresses out of hot oblong stones that covered the area. And then there's the memory of other kids scuttling about and the magical proposition of 'Let's be friends'. Completely introductionless, it was delivered with some shyness but not the slightest hint of worry I or them have acquired by now. I guess it was a different time, different country, different world.
How I sometimes wish I could do the same now!
