Intro
Did you know? Most people have had or will have a panic attach or something very close to it. It's diagnostic that the person thinks they're dying when the symptoms engulf them.
When in the course of everyday human activity someone becomes so overwhelmed, anxious, unsure, or insecure about the outcome of everything or a something, they may not quite achieve the heart rate, blood pressure, high anxiety, hyperventilation, chills or sweats of an actual panic event, but it's extremely uncomfortable and it may escalate.
Why did I write that intro?
Then and There – Here and Now
A friend mentioned that a mutual friend was very establishment, and that they are. We weren't making a value call on the person, who's a great friend and accomplishes a lot in the community. We simply were saying.
But then I said I'm still very Y2K. Am I really? And if so, why? Is that a value call? Does it affirm anything other than my love for mid-1990 through early aughts fashion? Maybe it does.
I spent more than a few minutes rifling through pictures of the place I lived the last year of my last sojourn on the east coast, specifically in Boston. Do I really want to return to that place? Probably not because I finally admitted I can't do the weather. Then there's what I describe as love-hate regarding the general area. But that's about place, about geography, and relates to overall culture.
Do I want to return to that time? I flew out of Logan into Lindbergh on Saturday 02 September 2000, one day after the earliest expected ambient temperatures allowed us to fly with with dogs or cats. A quarter century ago? Do I want to go back?
I've gotten fond of observing how the twenty-first century, southern California, and the wake of a global pandemic haven't helped my overall situation and my ongoing search for opportunities at all. I have a lot of intense anxieties about right now and about the unseen, unknown future. Panic? There have been a few times my body reacted so intensely I thought I might be dying and I was just fine with that fact.
Short answer is yes, in some ways I want to return to a quarter century ago. I get nostalgic about it. I remember my landlord and housemate Nick. Good meals, good though guarded conversations. Saturday evening Scrabble. Having a former boss and colleague over for lunch a few times.
Since then the world has experienced a long string of literal assaults on what used to be a normal way of living and being. No need to list them all because everyone knows them. I want to return to simpler times, to what feels like innocence from here, though I know it didn't feel innocent or naïve at the time.
I'm still very Y2K. I'm not making a value call. I'm just sayin'.
It was all much older then,
ReplyDeletea place and time of Staid,
but for me Remember When
is not how life is made.
All the blokes were their own Dad,
all sheilas were their Mom,
and dreadful polyester plaid
was the golf-course norm,
but now everyone's got a tat,
and impaled tongues are the rage,
and I think it is good that
the world has turned a page
to youth and mad virility
instead of pale vapidity.