12.01.09

Some Have Gone and Some Remain

Posted in Philosophy, Bored musings at Tue 1 Dec 2009 by Stavros

I’ve unceremoniously deleted the blog I started writing. I was going to compile a top ten albums of the last ten years, charts that are all the rage here at the fag end of the first decade. But I thought that ten years is too long a time. What I liked in the innocent bug-feared days of 2000 is not necessarily what I like now. So what would my ranking prove? Nowt. Even for a quantitive junkie like me, that’s just a list too far.

Also what put me off is the maudlin nature of these decade lists. Years are fine, they don’t hang around long enough to get attached to, but the passing of a decade is like the passing of an old family pet. You don’t realise just how long you’ve had it until it’s on its way out with a bit of a limp and a lot of gas.

The reasons for this includes the fact that I started this decade skint, single, in rented accommodation and not being able to drive. I won’t finish this point lest it turns into some emo’s livejournal.

Also, I have an aversion to nostalgia. I hide when the old photos make an appearance at family gatherings. I’m well aware that for some it’s a comfortable place to be, memories warming them like a worn old blanket. For me though, it’s the stench of a neglected milk bottle as the fridge door is opened. Just now though it’s a fridge door with a broken hinge, opening at inopportune moments embarrassing the dinner guests. It’s not that I have bad memories, far from it really. But, like the beer bottles in the salad crisper, they should have their place.

The odd symptom with this bout of time flu is that these uninvited images of the past aren’t really of people or incidents or half-remembered conversations. They are of rooms. I’ll be working away in the office staring at Excel’s blank canvas like the grid lined Gauguin my company want me to be, when my mind will suddenly fill with the kitchen from my first student flat, or an out room at my Grandparent’s old house, or the faded dignity of the sweeping staircase of a holiday club house.

What can it mean? Is my consciousness building its perfect house, like Dr Frankenstein presenting Grand Designs? Like a ship needs its bottle, perhaps the past need my mental building project. If it’s anything like TV it will go over budget and the builders will go on strike. Ghosts are supposed to haunt a room, yet the rooms are haunting me.

So, contrary to what I want to believe, I’m as shackled to my yesterdays as anyone. But most immediately I must stop daydreaming and get on with some proper work, this pie-chart won’t bake itself.

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