music: Tea Leaf Green- High Sierra 7/4/03
I spent Wednesday through Sunday of last week in Milwaukee. Had a good deal of time to spend with immediate family, extended family, and a handful of friends. Going home is usually a stressful occasion; having it coupled with the holiday seaston makes it especially so. a visit in late August, then, was not nearly as stressful as the visits impending in late November and December. Thus, there was time to stretch out, lounge about, and relax a bit.
The theme every time I go to Milwaukee is the same: I have a past. I know this, of course, but upon each visit, I seem to be reminded of certain corners of my past about which I had forgotten. The big chunks are always clear: family, extended family, high school friends, camp. But more often than not my memory is more declarative than episodic. Visiting home does quite a number on cueing up the ol’ episodic. And this trip was more different.
I had some good conversations while home. Briefly checked in with Trangy regarding his big shift from the ultra-familiar at our summer homeland to the expanses of the American West. (Others at camp are preparing to step up to their respective challenges: Drayna tells me he is digging deeper into med school, A.K. is figuring out how to best approximate the camp experience year round and moving in an easterly direction while doing so, E.H. is about to graduate and get his move on as well.) M.M. and I shared two fairly significant conversations, which really hit the nail on the head as far as all the things I was thinking about in terms of past versus present. The Rapper and I got down to some grimy issues while pacing Milwaukee’s downtown, he getting restless with kicking around Fox Point in his post-med school shift and is taking steps in a positive direction, presumably leading to Chicago. Funny how the theme was the same throughout the weekend: recognizing one’s past and figuring out how to integrate the past’s lessons into one’s present.
For a lot of folks in Milwaukee, this season is one of fairly significant change, voyage, shear, and shift. Same story on the family front. Sarah is setting up her own place and now has a quasi-serious boyfriend (this time her age). Jessie is working towards flying the coop in one year’s time, and is having quite a time figuring out where she’s going to end up. Cousin Benji is about to drive to Denver and become a buff red-haired rat in that wonderful race we college grads tend to run. Grandma Lois is gearing up for a trip out east this September(an increasingly difficult task for her), and (recently-turned 80 years old) Grandpa Max is trying hard to not slow down. Grandma Doris is staying busy keeping Grandpa Max a little less busy. It’s a wonderful interplay.
Considering all: different challenges, Same theme. Including me.
Now back in Boston, after spending a good day sleeping late, eating right, fixing up the Live Live website, working through some post-summer reading for school, and a good three hours on the bike down to Park Street and back, I have had some time to chew over the theme of last week’s journey home. And consider some solutions to its dilemma — and it is a dilemma — how to best integrate aspects of my past into the present?
Part of the problem is physical location. I tend to focus on what is directly in front of me. I tend to concern myself with things and issues with which I can interact on a sensory level. Which is fine. But many issues, situations, people are not physically proximal and therefore get less attention. I think getting a cell phone was a step in the direction of remembering that I carry my past with me. But it’s more than being mindful of such issues and people. I think that it’s important to in some way ritualize these connections to the past, to engage in action with regard to my past, to actively bring it to the forefront and into my present.
Gut-reaction: this seems like an unnatural action for me. It seems forced, contrived, unnecessary. Four years of undergraduate psychology tell me to flag such actions as important simply due to my knee-jerk reaction. Santayana’s axiom about history, then, seems to apply to individuals as well as civilizations.
And as much as I do shunt my past to…well, the past…I do enjoy the moments when it collides with the present. This seems to happen a lot in Milwaukee, which is why the trips home are both stressful and fruitful. No doubt things will just get more beautiful and complicated come December…
Posted by davidtaus at August 27, 2003 07:19 PM | TrackBack