Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal ®

NOSTALGIA, PROPERLY experienced, | happen to
believe, is One of the most important mental conditions.
It is also possibly the most wonderful.

At the very least it is energy ef-
ficient. Fantasizing is great but it
requires imagination. Nostalgia
doesn’t even require a totally-
functioning memory grid.

All you have to do is get an
approximate fix on a given time
and place and, zing, there you
are, feeling warm over an event
that’s cold.

One delightful aspect of
nostalgia is the fact that we only
‘get nostalgic about good times.
Nostalgia is selective. Nostalgia is
positive. It no doubt airbrushes
reality, but let’s not quibble.

Getting nostalgic is something
that tends to be associated with
aging, but J think that’s a bum
rap. The other day, as I was
delivering my little girl to
playschool, her big brother asked
me if he could come inside and
have a jook around.

Even though he’s only in
Grade 4, stopping back at his
own playschoo! filled him with
nostalgia. He almost wanted to

_ weep, so much did it made him
miss the good days when he was
a carefree playschool kid, un-
aware of the horror of real
schoo! that lay ahead.

It seems to me, in fact, that I
spent more time when J was
younger feeling nostalgic than 1
do today. Maybe I’m just too
busy nowadays. Fits of nostalgia
can be time-consuming as hell.

But that’s right. As a kid, [can
remember moping around my
grandparents’ old house,
enveloped by flashes of memory
from when'I wasn’t much more

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than a toddler.

These memories would fill me
with an almost physical ache, so
badly would I long to be small
again, snugly back in the world |
was so vividly recreating in my
mind,

Maybe nostalgia insulates you
somewhat against the harsh
realities of the present, like a wad
of psychological cotton batten.

As soon as | moved from one
municipality to another, | started
pedalling back in the evenings to
take nostalgic looks at the old
neighborhood. It was heart-ren-
ding. I could barely stand it. It
was torture. I did it again and
again.

When I moved downtown, I
would drive out to the suburbs to
let myself be haunted by the fa-
miliar sights and sounds.

Nostalgia followed me
everywhere, it seemed. I would
no sooner move than the last
apartment I’d lived in would
become the subject of poignant
nostalgic rushes.

In secondary school, I longed
for the good old days of elemen-
tary school. In high school, sec-
ondary looked beautiful. No
sooner was I out in the job mar-
ket than high school became the
great nostalgic magnet.

Some people, I notice, carry
their high school nostalgia with
them front and centre well into
middle age. I can only conclude
nothing has happened to them
since, poor souls.

When I first moved to Lon-
don, I couldn’t believe it. There |

was, remembering Winnipeg
fondly. The city { had spent my
life until then trying desperately
to escape from was suddenly a
profound source of nostalgia.

Wouldn't you know it? No
sooner did 1 get back to Win-
nipeg than London became the
new nostalgia lodestone. |
replayed it ten thousand times,
weak all over from the over-
powering vividness of the
remembrances.

‘Yoday, more than two decades
after moving to the West Coast, !
still get little rippling nostalgia
flashes of the old home town.
Not often. Not for long. But
every once in a while, yes. It
happens.

Generally, though, nostalgia
-seems to cast a beam that keeps
being refocused as you go aiong
in life. :

It might be that nostalgia
works like radar, except that it
scans backwards. The  bleeps
show you the outline of the
channels you have negotiated, the
shoals you've passed.

Nostalgia, I think, paints a
composite picture, although it
can’t be trusted for accuracy, I
hope you realize.

On the whole the process of
sifting the past through the sieve
of your memory has to be a
healthy exercise.

By feeling such an urge to be in
the past again, to feel the way
you felt, to do what you did one
more time, you regurgitate expe-
riences, savor them, chew them
up one more time.

Eventually, you do digest the
things that have happened to
you, and you get to move on.

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