TTLY Syndrome

I've always had a particularly pronounced sense memory. Smells, sounds, even a certain atmosphere, light - all provoke the return of sharp visceral memories for me. This little trick came in handy at times during acting classes when I was in college. But on a day to day basis, this sensitivity piles up into what I refer to as TTLY Syndrome or "This Time Last Year Syndrome" (TTLYS).

The oppressive heat and humidity of the last fews days have thrown me into last year's frame of mind. Indeed, the past few weeks have brought on a bewildering myriad of memories. This time last year, I was interviewing for The Job. I was feeling bereft and rootless. I was waiting.

And inside, away from the shimmering heat, in the cool darkness of my brain, the chemicals were sliding out of the proper equation. My stomach was burning, turning itself inside out almost every night. The Panic was coming.

This time last year was a tipping point, away from what was and toward what is. It was a precarious lean into the unknown. Everything was tossed into the air, floating down in a slow-motion freefall with no end in sight. Everything was all questions and no answers. The unknown was my only friend.

It's back again, like a second wave. I am waiting. Waiting for a movement away from this stalemate of grief. This terrible endgame, all the pieces on the board and nowhere to go. The Panic is rising. I waffle on the edge of nausea, try to push it down, pray through it. The unknown is siddling up next to me...it's reminding me that in a year, I haven't made very many strides. I haven't built the life I envisioned.

The heat lashes down on me when I walk out of work each day. I stumble through the evenings, fight the TTLYS washing through my veins. I remind myself that I have moved down the road, made progress. That I'm waiting and panicking and befriending the unknown because I had not choice when life jumped the rails in February.

Tonight, Dad said to me, "I feel like...we're never going to be normal again." And somehow, seeing the weight of it on his face, hearing the crushing reality in his words, I thought, "Not any time soon."

As I stare down the barrel of TTLYS right now, I rue the next season of it - the last season where everything was normal. And that season followed by the one where everything fell apart.

Nostalgiaism

Today I went to a meeting with a local organization that advocates for and preserves historic buildings in ATown. The office is located in a renovated fire station, a corner block brick building with the firepole still in the far corner, massive glass-globe chandeliers, and the pale green fireman's lockers lining one wall. As soon as I entered the building, I was accosted by nostalgia. The smell of an old building - aged wood, old paint, and history (it smells, I swear). And when I reached the top of the stairs, I was almost speechless at the tall arched windows whose frames were painted almost the very same pale blue-grey shade as the ones at Grace Street.

The whole time I was there, I couldn't help noticing how suddenly I felt at home. Like I wanted to spend the whole afternoon there. I belong in an old, rickety building. I need the splintering wood and the creaking boards and the drafts and the echoes and the ghosts. I left feeling a little bit renewed, like I'd had some sort of spiritual transfusion.

And then I had a fairly good day at work, which included a brief meeting with my boss about several projects I have been working on that needed his input, one being an interview with an intern candidate. "She's got enthusiasm," I said. Like you, he responded. "Me? Are you serious?" Yeah, he said. I hear that banter going on down the hall. And I laugh and say yes.

But later, I'm thinking about banter, and I'm thinking about sitting at my old desk at my old job with my old coworkers. I'm thinking about shouting ideas to my boss next door. I'm thinking about eavesdropping and answering everyone's questions. I'm thinking about fake arguments with STGD about when he's going to get a job done. I'm thinking about raucous lunchtime chats and late afternoon staff meetings and brainstorms where everything goes downhill quick but you can't stop laughing. And I think, That's banter.

Right now -just right now - all the good is rushing into the sad and the past is haunting the present and my heart is creaking against the memories. And I am lonely and struck down with nostalgiaism.

I Am Adult Contemporary Radio

I stayed home from work today to work on the I-Robot software system, whose full functionality still seems to be just out of our grasp. Since I didn't need to factor in time to get my hair coiffed and my clothes ironed, I slept in rather late. And when the alarm went off, it was oddly on the radio. I usually set it to the horrible screeching sound because it's the only thing that will wake me. But this morning, I was woken by the sounds of WIL FM - and in particular "Rock On" by Michael Damian. You may not recall "Rock On" or Michael Damian, as it was the only hit by a veteran of The Young & the Restless back in 1989. But I was a big fan and got the tape in my Easter basket that year. "Rock On" was followed by "Closer to Free" by The Rembrandts, of the "Friends" theme song fame.

And so I continued listening to WIL FM, who played 9 at 9 today from the year 1988. That included
* "Desire" by U2
* "Cherry Bomb" by John (Cougar at the time) Mellencamp
*"Is This Love?" by Whitesnake
* "Shattered Dreams" by Johnny Hates Jazz (which, for the record, I actually remembered and did not have to look up)
*"What's On Your Mind" by Information Society (which I did have to look up)
*"Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison"
* "Roll With It" by Steve Winwood
* "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley
* "One of My Kind" by INXS

Now, I know Meg complained about this station, but I found myself falling in love with WIL a little bit as the morning wore into afternoon with more U2 and Edie Brickel and Pearl Jam's "Betterman." And then I realized...that this is the new adult contemporary. That I am quickly moving into the thirties crowd, that coveted demographic with disposable income that advertisers crave and that whole stations are built around - the kind that play the b-side tracks from the 80s and the vintage rock from the 90s. It's awash with nostalgia with its Toad the Wet Sprocket and Talking Heads and R.E.M. And there are a few of today's hits thrown in there just so you don't feel too old - The Fray and Snow Patrol. But in the end it's "1979" that keeps you there, thinking about how this song reminds you of middle school, high school, college. I guess I am getting old.

Or maybe it's what Penelope blogged about not so long ago, that need to hang on to all the knowns in the music realm. This music is like comfort food - you know all the words and how these songs fit in the framework of your life. Besides, you gotta love a station that puts "Stacey's Mom" in the line up right next to "Beast of Burden."

Firework Spectacluar

Tonight I was treated to an impromptu firework spectacular, no doubt launched from a river barge for some event at the Hilton or the Battleship. As odd as fireworks in October might seem, it made me smile. I've seen this firework display in October before - which inspired me to write a poem that eventually became the short story "Fireworks on the Fourth." There were two particularly eerie ones tonight - one that looked strangely like the Dark Mark in red and one that was at least 50 spinners that sounded like ghostly screams. Kudzu found them all particularly distressing and hid under the daybed in the living room.

Most of you have read it, but in honor of the occasion, here is the opening scene from the story that reads like de ja vu to me at the moment.

October
I called but I hung up before your answering machine picked up so I didn’t have to hear your voice. It was still strange to me, your absence, not being able to bear the sound of your voice. I wanted you to hear the anomalous explosions of fireworks popping off over the river in October. I watched them between the old oak trees in the backyard, feet propped on the wrought iron railing. The scream of a spinner broke through the cool air and gold sparks split through the stars.

I thought about going inside, and then I heard a remnant of your voice from July saying, “Wait. We can’t leave until the finale,” your eyes like marbles. That day at the park was the last time that we were together pretending to be happy. When the finale came, you put your hand to your chest to feel the vibrations of one boom after another. You left the next day.

From the porch I watched the finale, hysterical combustion of color and sound. I stood and put my hand to my chest, but I was too far away to feel them inside me. I saw only the spindles of smoke drifting across the sky like ghosts.

Days Gone By

Today I met with a man who was born & raised at the beach. He's a historian by hobby, and he has been collecting historic photographs from family, friends and other locals for a long time and assembling them into a historic photo essay of sorts. He's about 80, white-haired, brown-skinned. He was waiting for me to arrive, standing on the porch that faced the main thoroughfare of the island. He invited me to sit in a rocking chair on his back porch and chat for a bit before we took a look at the photos I was hoping to use for an ad series. We sat looking out on the waterway on a perfect afternoon - breezy, 83 degrees, zero humidity. He told me a little bit about his childhood and how the house he grew up in caught fire in '74 and took his father and he rebuilt in '78, retired in '85 and how his wife had just died two years ago so it's just him and his cat named Schooner.

When we looked at his photos together, he talked about each of them as a man who is profoundly devoted to place. He described riding the trolleys from downtown to the beach, stopping at Station 1 at the beach to get a soda and watching nickleodeons at the downtown theater. He remembers when no cars traveled over the main bridge. When the 200-room hotel burned to the ground in the 50s, he stood across the channel on the mainland and watched as bits broke off and caught the whole north side of the island on fire.

It was fascinating to know another part of this place that I know in my own way. To see for an afternoon how he has grown old as the island has grown up and developed around him in his little waterway-facing cottage. As I drove over the bridge, I thought about my history with the place. And something about the air and the light and the time of year reminded me of when Kim, Hoang-Anh & I drove out to see the sunrise in the early months of our first year of grad school. Those are some of the first pictures I took when I got here. And I couldn't help feeling as nostalgic as the old man for the memory of the way it was.