DelBloggolo: AN UNIMAGINARY TRIP THROUGH GOOD AND EVIL

Monday, March 09, 2015

AN UNIMAGINARY TRIP THROUGH GOOD AND EVIL

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A lawyer was just waking up from anesthesia after surgery, and his wife was sitting by his side. His eyes fluttered open and he said, "You're beautiful!" and then he fell asleep again. His wife had never heard him say that so she stayed by his side.

A couple of minutes later, his eyes fluttered open and he said, "You're cute!" Well, the wife was disappointed because instead of "beautiful," it was "cute." She asked, "What happened to 'beautiful'?" His reply was:

"The drugs are wearing off!"

Being a man of tradition, I have always enjoyed nostalgia and the memories that become re-enforced by the experiences from timeless frozen moments with old photographs and that instantaneous appearance of those past moments once again. For that brief moment you are caught in a time long ago, with all the smells and memories, the nuances and inflections of those times that help re-enforce you feeling of being ‘there’ once again.

When I’m feeling down for some reason, I like to look at the pictures of my kids growing up, and now a new source of let’s say a: joyful revenue, pictures of my granddaughter, La Principessa!

But the best connections I ever make are the ones on the radio or YouTube, the music I loved from the past. There are songs that make me cry and songs that make me nuts, songs that I sing a long with and songs that trigger memories of people in the past, sometimes songs that bring out the evil in me. We all have that, we are all subjected to our memories and culture and it is what makes us who we are.

Whenever I hear Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, I see myself once again, a 3-year old listening to mom’s radio on top of the refrigerator, Catch a Falling Star brings me back to my grandfather’s death.

Third from your right bottom row

But give me a black and white photograph with a thick white border and a squiggly edge and I am back in the 40’s and 50’s, carried away to a way of life, a memory of a park or a school or even a church.

Of course there are the mementos, the things that give a memorial, an attestation to being somewhere at one time, so maybe long ago. A hat, pen, maybe a tool, all give testimony, all carry us all back, one small way to say to someone who has passed, I love you still.

I think sometimes I am so busy that I don’t think about the fact that somehow I got here: something or someone made me what I am today!

One of the greatest pleasures in life I have had is the honor to help run a class reunion. I did two of them and they made my life feel a little more fulfilled than it would have otherwise. It took home again; to classrooms and places I hadn’t seen in many years, I am grateful to my classmates for allowing me that opportunity