I call it The Thaw. You know the feeling. You are in the middle of a fit of nostalgia. Or you are living in a very specific moment that you want to remember for a long time, possibly forever. You feel that chill, like the water that pools at the base of an ice cube as it is melting slowly on a cool, wet stone.
That cold, comfortable chill, the act of remembering and living in tandem. I've often thought about personifying the act of remembering good times in my life. I try and picture it in my head sometimes, as a quantifiable locale, a loving construct made of laughter and joy, interstitched with moments of pain for a needed level of realism and humanity.
Sometimes a cold wave of darkness will embalm me in the very moment that something wonderful in my life is happening. It won't make me shiver physically. But it hits me like a fit of drowsiness. And in those moments I surrender to the sweet cold mirth, as I go under I look for icons that I can draw with me into the most intimate recesses of my gray matter.
The mole on her left clavicle, just above her breast. The way her chin feels as I run my fingers over it, like a clumsy shaving kit brush. A pint of beer with the froth sticking to the inside, above the foam. The smell of fresh blankets mixed with piping hot molé, the light glistening off of the sugar skull collection on the top shelf.
I blink and I pass out, but am fully awake at the same time. I try and go inside my mind and find what I want and sometimes I wish I had a better idea of what that place really is. But the sensation can only be described as a soothing wave of ice gliding across my soul, hypnotic in nature and pacifying in strange and wonderful ways.
I am able to see my brain working hard to remember my own humanity and I adore every single moment of it. Sometimes it is so powerful and intense, it makes me cry on the inside, tears suspended in mid motion, flying through hallways filled with dimly lit rooms occupied by me in all parts of my life, bathed in burnt orange or technicolor®, or midnight turquoise, or dream haze charcoal. I feel like being in love, and being kidnapped all at once.
I sigh and can see my own breath, a deep longing sigh to conjure up these memories into reality, but every time I try the failure induces a grin, a prideful chuckle as I spin through my collection of kisses, smashed bottles, fistfuls of anger, boot prints in fresh snow, fireplaces ashed with glowing embers of a long night of conversations that faded naturally into a rhythmic see saw of lumpy mattresses and melting walls.
Sometimes I hear the sound of the heater rumbling to life and I tune my mind to it. I can see into deep space, but do I want to? I feel her hair on the bridge of my nose, and I can smell her clear across the morning. I see the frost on the grass as I slide across it, before the bell rings and the boys and girls have to line up for roll call. I can feel the scrape of my knee as I score my first goal and catch a pebble in my rollerblade in the middle of the woods on a Sunday afternoon.
I want to stay here forever, but I hate it here too. The inky black likes to rubberband off of the things I care about the most. But the shame makes a cameo once in a while too. The rage, the shame, the anger, the sadness.
Why did he beat me for getting a bad grade? I wonder that aloud as I relive that moment. Why was I so angry at him for trying to be honest with me about relapsing into heroin? Into meth? What was my agenda? Why do I feel anxiety whenever I think about San Francisco? Will I ever make it back there? Why did she leave me for being the same skin tone as her? Why did she hurt me so forcefully? Why was I alone in my car, with three issues of Hustler Canada at 2:30am in an abandoned parking lot? Do I always have to be this broke?
I've found myself wandering the Avenues in the fog, and wondering why I didn't do that more often. I wander them in my imagination just for fun, sometimes circling the same block multiple times. There, in the olive bay window, is a view of the first time I saw my mom cry. There, along the ivy fence next to the duplex full of strangers, is the golden retriever i fed an entire pizza to, somewhere in the desert on vacation. At the end of the block outside the laundromat, is the corsage my dad helped me buy to give to my prom date, next to the first bottle of wine I split with Kathleen Kennedy's niece, on a stack of encyclopedias my mother bought me as a birthday gift one year.
Do I dare fall asleep? Do I dare dream? I feel like I am already there. I feel like I already have what I came here for. Do I need more? My eyes are open but I am lying down on a soft pink bed in a room with a painting of a sailboat, wondering why I got to be so lucky. I am in Bible class, listening to my classmates' prayer requests, as my bodybuilder teacher crosses his arms and grows his terrible mustache. I shake my head in disbelief at the compendium of things in my life I used to care about so deeply and so desperately... and in many ways, wishing I still did.
There's that cold again. There's that chill that runs down my retinas and deep into my spine, finishing on the outside of my forearms and inside of my shins. I look to my left and see the drunken threesome 3 years out. I look to my right and see the 6 times I have seen Primus®. I look up, and see the ceiling to the 38L, the rumble down Geary towards downtown in the middle of my tenure as a shitty art student with a bad attitude and ripped overwashed jeans.
Jump. Land on a picnic bench, reading liner notes to the latest Propagandhi album, wondering why I couldn't just go home on my free period. Tumble into Yosemite, eating cold mac n cheese in my boxers and swimming in a murky lake. Do I cheer for Will Clark? Or Matt Williams? Or Barry Bonds? I can't really tell because my dad keeps fiddling with the car radio at the bottom of the 7th to beat traffic out of Candlestick. Nevermind, we are at the lighthouse now, far away from all of his problems alone with his sons.
I want end credits, but fortunately for me I can't read backwards out the other side of the mirror. I still have so much to live for.
But it feels good to feel the pain of not having that feeling anymore, even though it is still there.