I am reminded of. Those are the words I began many a journal entry with. I am reminded of the journal entries which I began with I am reminded of, especially in April of 1999. You see, I am on a train now, much as I was then. My direction is the same as it was then. My destination is different, however.
I shall pass through Usti Nad Labem, but not stop. Dresden will occupy a few hours later in the day.
The resurgence of communication with Hela has awakened a wash of memories from that age. I’d visit sometimes twice a week. We’d sit in her over-furnished flat and listen to music, eat soup and drink Fernet. Well, I was probably the only of us who drank Fernet. I suppose she chose wine. I am reminded of the fact that I’d spice her soup with some chili paste or another to increase its sharpness to a level of my liking.
On the ride to Usti, I’d pen in my hand-written journal (that Victor now has) I am reminded of, but I cannot think now what the things were that I was reminded of. Surely the turning of wheels beneath me did not remind me of much. I had been in the Czech Republic for less than a year. The only wheels which had carried me before the intermittent trains were the rubbery and bland tyres of my Subaru. They were wholly unlike the wheels of a train.
Yet, it was the movement that always fascinated me.
Picturesque landscape pans by and I write. Or I would write. Or, better, I did write. But I did not usually capture the images from the window in my writing, but instead images directly from the emotional chaos of my mind. Those are the workings of true drama, I could say, but I’d rather like to think they were babbling melodrama. I don’t necessarily fault my writing from that time, just my instability both mentally and lifestylistically.
The subject of this entry has a banal double meaning. I was a different age in 1999, for sure, but it was also a different age of my life. By age, I mean a very different person wore this skin. I criticized myself with melodrama last paragraph, but the creature who wears the same skin now is nostalgic for that simpleton who thought of himself as such a complex entity. I admire his spontaneity, his rash decision making process, and his naivete. I admire that he was far less jaded than he thought he was.
I admire that he was unattached.
But he looked for attachment at every bend of his twisty, melodramatic road. He sought it! He wanted it. Of course, he eventually got it many times and look where it has left him. Well, HIM. It has left him mostly dead with another inside his skin, afraid of constant change which used to stimulating him beyond measure.
