I want to be the last to know about something again.
I want to see a small run book or magazine, or a record, or a cassette tape and wonder where it was made, and by whom. I want something to come to me from far away. I want to be amused by simple things, because there is nothing else to do. I want to wonder how life is different in big cities, and whether the big city people would find it interesting here. I want to proudly show something off. I want a new restaurant to open up, and have the whole town be excited about it. And I want to be excited too.
I'm tired of being jaded and coy and on top of things. I'm tired of reading about it a month ago. I'm tired of having tried it already.
When I saw your picture, unabashedly having fun in a place that I cannot anymore--worse, that I could not permit myself to--it made me sad. It made me nostalgic for the person I used to be, who experienced the world through pictures in magazines and tenth-generation cassette tapes re-dubbed so many times that the hiss and pop seemed to map the miles between me and What's Going On.
But now I can't be bothered. Take me to the beating heart and I can't be bothered.
All The Sad Young Literary Men seems passé and cliché, I won't read it because I've already lived it--and besides who cares about people in their 20s. The band with the new, new sound just reminds me of The Fall.
And, oh, how I wish it were not that way. It's not that I want to be younger, I don't. Or happier, I could not be.
But how I long for innocence, and the smell of honeysuckle and decay in the air. For the whole world to lie out there somewhere beyond me, unknown and mysterious and full of surprises.
