I just felt a major pang of nostalgia writing those words. Walking through the aisles, the smell of the old leather-bound encyclopedias, wood bookshelves of decades past and the musty smell of paper touched and thumbed through by so many children, scholars and bookworms over countless years. Oh, that smell was something wonderful. {I should probably visit a library}
Now we have iPhones for our contacts that we've collected for years, and wellofcourse the Internet, which turns a week of library-perusing and paper cuts into a a couple hours on Sunday afternoon scouring a database so vast it rivals our universe.
The archives in our brains and our very memories are a combination of the two- prehistoric {in current opinion} and advanced.
I spent a good hour a few nights ago, on my iPhone, reading one of my best friend's blogs, on the Internet, that she hasn't updated since 2013.
I remember reading all the posts years ago. I remember many of the conversations post-post and all of the events that led up to each entry. I remember the feeling of reading my pseudo-persona on her blog for the first time and how flattered I was to be detailed in her very personal thoughts in a very public arena. I don't, however, remember the words really. Not just the exact words, but I felt like I was reading it all for the first time. It wasn't like reading your favorite novel every summer at the beach, I was reading her words and they were foreign.
This reflection of the past is very much like a weekend visit to the library or finding your old Rolodex in a box in the attic. It exists but it's not easily accessible like your photos from the weekend collecting in albums on your iPhone. It's sandwiched between countless aisles, shelves, books, bindings, pages, chapters and finally words in the deepest archives of our psyche.
One of her entries described the struggle in understanding how even after life chapters have closed, those people characters keep on existing and living out their story. No longer in your story, but still progressing in parallel. {it's one of her bests, and one of my favorites. It can be found here: http://stylesaturnreturn.blogspot.com/2013/04/as-world-turns.html }
Another reflected on her past relationship, the most significant and impressionable until her current beau, and featured a photo of her on the beach with him many years ago. It got me thinking about all the photo boxes I have, a collection established before the cloud, when actual film was the medium, in my bedroom at my childhood home.
Those boxes hold the archives of my past, much like a library. Harboring moments frozen in time of past loves, significant events, and regrettable fashion choices. Illustrating a lifeoncelived that is rarely if every visited. Moments in time that once seemed important enough to document, but never get revisited. Never reseen.
My best friend started her blog when she was in her return to Saturn. An astrological event we all experience, typically thrice in our lifetimes, where our lives shift and things realign, adjust and change.
Because I don't focus much on astrology & astrological theories, other than for a work-escape to read my weekly horoscope, I only found out yesterday that I am now in full blown return of Saturn. I've felt an uneasiness lately. A feeling of Jewish guilt for choices I've made, family I've neglected, and my very cavalier attitude about life, behavior and consequences. I've never regret anything in my life, but maybe it's Saturn churning my insides and leaving me with a feeling of looming change that's causing a very vivid reflection of my past, dissection of my present and questioning of my future. It's impossible to decipher if it will be positive or negative. It's difficult to figure whether or not I have control over it. I think I do. I think the guilt is an emotion indicating personal change, but I've never been very proactive... So currently it's just looming like a raincloud on the brink of bursting on my head, the very morning I woke up early to actually straighten my hair.
So it looms, the way the Rolodex stays tucked away in the attic, the photos lay dusty in the boxes, the books remain tightly shelved in the library, it will loom. For now, I'm not inclined to address it. I'm not quite ready to revisit the past or evaluate the present with highlighter, researching why it looms. However, I anticipate that one weekend afternoon I will find the urge and energy to filter through the archives of my mind, reflecting, to pinpoint that hidden piece of information that completes Saturn's purpose for return.
Change is coming, that is certain. The past can be safely tucked away, for the most part, but the future, with all of its mysteries and secrets, is inevitable.
Missing the days of simpler times, less thoughts & void of rainclouds.
