I mentioned it before, but one of the things that made the bowl trip to Birmingham so satisfying was that it was in a town where I had a past, where I had memories, where I had a life that could easily be related and relevant to the here-and-now. And that’s not a small consideration.
I’ve mentioned the black hole before, I know, and how at diverse times it’s felt as if my past is falling into it, with me one step ahead like Indiana Jones jumping crocodiles or crumbling cliffs. I guess 2007 was the worst example – leaving Apple, being gone from DC, my surrogate big sister’s moved out and the car I’ve driven since Clinton was sworn in is no more and I don’t have any friends from college or grad school and I’ve barely heard from anyone at my high school in a decade or more, and there’s the void yawning behind you. And it’s a lot harder to keep your balance with a void front and back.
Part of it, I think, is just about having a past. Remember when that bar was something else, remember before Pancake Pantry had the apartments built next to it, remember when that was Alpine Bagel, remember when that restaurant was a dodgy clothing-and-Chinese-cellphone shop. I was here before, I’ve seen the change, I have institutional memory, I knew my way around and who knows, maybe I still do. (hint: not as well as I thought I did.)
But part of it is about having that shared local culture. Mayfield Mall and the Old Mill. Don and Mike and Low Budget Jeopardy and Vegas-style shows. KDF and HFS and 95 Rock. People’s Drugstore and Big B and Long’s. William Faulkner’s famous like about the South was that “the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.” Which is true…if you’re there. If you aren’t, then your past is definitely in the past, because I have at best tangential contact with anyone who shares common memory of the life and times of my first 25 years.
That’s what made it odd both times I made a big move – when I arrived in DC, it was almost fully-formed from scratch in 1997. No past, no history, nobody around who could vouch for my prior existence – a big part of the reason why I was essentially rebuilt from scratch in the DMV. And then, when I moved out here, nobody but my fiancee had any more than the faintest sense of my past existence, so I was dropped anew into a new world.
If I’m honest, I really haven’t done enough to build it. Sure, I’ve had Cal football tickets for a decade (even if we don’t get very much use out of them lately), and I tried diversions as random as java programming lessons, Catholic RCIA and an a cappella men’s chorus – none of which really worked. Work really hasn’t been as conducive to things social as it was back East, for better or worse – there’s no one tying me down to a crappy job, but there’s nobody there making it better, either.
But the other part of it is just time. Putting in the hours, and the days, and the years. Doing enough things that you can point back later and say “remember when”. And in about five months, I’ll have a lot more to say about that.