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“Hey man what you doing?”

“Who me? Ah, you know, looking at the old neighborhood.”

“That’s a reasonable response given how the old neighborhood is laid out in a wide panorama beneath us from our current vantage point. But I suppose my question was intended more as a pretext for us to enter into a thoughtful discussion of feelings and the like. Uncharted territory, I know, for two gruff men like us with intertwined and troubled pasts.”

“Well, I’m thinking about things, you know? How sometimes they change and how other times they stay the same. Pondering, with a sense of somber importance, how these aforementioned things used to be. Taking stock in my life. Measuring the man I have become against the boy I was."

“I will nod knowingly at you as I mull your words in an attempt to stall while I formulate a valuable response.”

“Okay. But as long as you know I’m trying my best to do it wistfully, in a way that’s pregnant with meaning. I’m allowing the old neighborhood to jumpstart a catharsis, given its historical relevance as a poignant setting for such matters.”

“Yeah, right I acknowledge you. But you know no matter how hard you try you can’t go back in time, man. There’s nothing you can do to change the past. All those memories, man, remain lodged in the fourth dimension – time. Each of those moments still exist but unlike height, width or that other one, we can’t go ‘walking’ around in it. It’s impossible.”

“Time. You may have noticed me ‘spit’ that word out instead of just speaking it in a normal tone. That’s because your mentioning of it fills me with even more self-contempt. Those feelings of contempt are compounded since as I stand here talking to you about the way things used to be I am reminded of several discussions you, me and Tommy used to have by the tire swing when we were all friends. Certain agreements the three of us made to extend our friendship indefinitely. How that agreement seemed as sturdy as that ageless old oak we tied the tire swing to. How we expectedly grew apart given our fundamental socio-economic differences.”

“They cut that tree down, guy. Heart rot. Pathogenic fungi precipitated premature decay.”

“Aw man. That’s extremely meaningful. That piece of symbolism conjures sepia-toned images of Tommy’s sad hopefulness, his early death, the smell of my ma’s Pall Mall cigarettes, lost intimacies…

“No worries. Those intimacies were returned after a thorough soul-searching.”

“Your interruption has temporarily made me lose my strain of thought. Where was I?”

“You were reeling off a string of nostalgic images.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you. …the oil stains smudged on the old refrigerator after pa came home from the factory, which, incidentally, is now closed, another of the several changes I have been pondering.”

“You can’t let all this get to you man. Market forces compelled the factory to relocate in order to take advantage of lower overhead and remain competitive in an increasingly global market. Its benefits on the old neighborhood are ‘invisible’ in the classical sense, as most market benefits are, but they are real nonetheless.”

“I suppose it may lend a certain gravitas to our future memory of this discussion which has just transpired if we were to stand here for some indeterminate amount of time in silence as we strain to preserve the moment with the wind blowing through our graying hair.”

“Agreed.”

“Before I forget, are we still on for a sub-textual drink at a traditional ‘watering hole’ located along one of the crowded corners in the old neighborhood.”

“Unless something happens to affect my life’s current trajectory causing me to miss our meeting and altering in some small but painfully significant way how our fates unfold, yes.”

Date Written: February 26, 2005
Author: scoop
Average Vote: 3.5385