Bartolomeo Pinelli:
The Letter-writer in Piazza Montanara in Rome
(19th century)

" … an utterly impossible aspiration …"

This week's excursion has taken us into territory I once inhabited, though seemingly several lifetimes ago. I have been experiencing real trouble distinguishing between now and then, and I'm finding that I revere the past more than the present. The present seems like a Fun House Mirror reflection of the familiar, similar but degraded, whatever the advertised improvement. The world has changed over the last fifty years but somehow failed to improve, for the replacements I find masquerading fall utterly flat when attempting to live up to even a distant shadow of my expectations. When home, continual exposure lessens this effect, though it's certainly still present. Traveling, I have only current sensory experience to compare with my expectations, so I live in continual discouragement.

I remember when because I still live there. I certainly spent more imprinting time then, so those impressions understandably seem more dominant than any present passing glances. I catch myself—or The Muse does—geezing, preconsciously sermonizing about how it used to be and how it seemed better. I understand that this world was much newer then, much less shop-worn and more filled with promise. I also recognize that not all those promises manifested into satisfying experiences, and I, like everybody, carry at least my fair share of regrets. I genuinely miss those days and those places, however difficult my original passage. I recognize that I was never the master of anything then and remain much less of a master than I once expected I'd become. Still, those days, however actually horrible, constitute my Good Old Days, for better or worse, until death, I suppose, us do part.

I sometimes ache for those innocent times. Whatever replaces innocence hardly seems worth the expense, for innocence seems essential for living a meaningful life. Experience tends to leach out meaning. It dispatches searching for knowing, inquiring for certainty, and none of those trades seem worthy of us. We're better when we're pursuing before we've caught our prey, when success remains a dream, and struggle remains the satisfying content of our days. We seem to strive for states that will ultimately smother our purpose. We seek what we should hope we never find, for the seeking somehow defines who we are much better than finding ever does. The shelf life of understanding should be measured in microseconds lest we conclude that we've managed to accomplish something. I ache for the unrequited life, where my identity remains unresolved, where my potential remains my most prominent part, where I'm permanently, perennially not quite myself yet. Yet.

The Muse catches me explaining how it used to be to a supremely disinterested audience. They were patient, as I once was when an elder attempted to impart how this world once was. How it was seemed irrelevant then, before it became curiously sacred. The distance between consignment and history sure seems short. What was so recently consigned to the dustbin somehow evolved into antiquity. My remembered-whens serve as my baseline, the foundation upon which all this crazy modern construction stands. I no longer seek to understand. I prefer to travel through this world, feeling some mix of confusion and astonishment. I recognize the folly all modern development entails, and I know why my fellow man feels so compelled to change the world they inherited. I do not care if the world improves, for I have never aspired to change this world. I just wanted to fully inhabit it, an utterly impossible aspiration that still passes for my inspiration when Ghostwriting.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GoodNuff, #PureSchmaltz