Nostalgia.

                                                                       Nostalgia

I've never quite understood nostalgia. I do however understand that people experience it daily. It's failed musicians who couldn't make it past the bar scene in the 80's, or high school athletes who never made it in college who now run used car dealerships that experience overwhelming nostalgia...I assume. Maybe everyone experiences it equally, I just don't know.

Some people experience nostalgic feelings for a time or place that they never experienced. People my age (apparently) just want to go back to the 60's and hear The Beatles when they were fresh and new, for example. Or they want to go back to the 50's and attend Happy Days style rock'n'roll jive/twist/swing dances. I don't know all the desired destinations or time periods, but I know that people who were there want to go back and do it all again while people who's parents didn't even exist at the time want to go back and see it and live it "first hand". To be eye witnesses to things that (allegedly) matter to (some) people. Like I said, I've never quite understood this feeling. I like living at a time when we have the polio vaccination, HBO and other stuff like that. iPod's and junk. I freaking love the time we live in. Always have. Always will, even when Skynet gains self awareness and all across the world we see things like this:

 I like including pictures to illustrate my points (I learned how to operate the "copy" and "paste" functions of this laptop. It's pretty awesome, if I do way so myself.

Anyway, I've never really got nostalgia. I just don't get it. Well, I didn't anyway; not until tonight.

Not until I started writing about my love of basketball at age fourteen/fifteen. Not until I thought about all those hours I spent watching Andrew Bogut (that years no.1 NBA Draft pick) dominate the Mountain West Conference (back when they still played in the MWC). Or Alex Smith (the no.1. Draft pick in the NFL Draft in 2005) tear it up on the field. Not until I thought about all those hours I spent in Utah watching snow fall on the Wasatch Mountains, or skiing in Park City. Or when I thought about all those friends I made that I miss. Not until I thought about any of this did I understand nostalgia.

But now, after all that - I think I finally get what nostalgia is. I think I'm starting to understand it. At least what nostalgia is for me, anyway. I think it effects all of us in very different ways.

To me it feels like a strange kind of happy-sadness. It's being grateful for great times, but missing them. Remembering the beauty of a sunrise over the mountains, but being sorry that it's gone. It's remembering waking up on the floor of your friends basement on a Saturday morning and realizing that the day is full of possibilities but now understanding that those possibilities passed and they're gone forever; but your glad that the possibilities came your way and that you seized them when you could. It's tears shed for lost loved ones maybe and lost friends too, but a laugh or a smile when you remember how much fun you had when you were with them. How awesome they were.

I understand now what people are talking about when they talk longingly about someone they once knew, or something they once had or did. I know it because as I typed those last sentences my mind was flooded by pictures and sounds, faces and voices from my past. And I'm smiling, even though I'm holding back tears.

I remember the time I sat in a dark living room with 7 or 8 friends and watched The Grudge for the first time. I remember being absolutely terrified, then not sleeping a wink that night because every shadow or creak was potentially a death waiting to strike. I'm thinking about that and I can't help but smile. I can't help remembering sneaking up behind a friend at a tense moment, waiting until the climax of the scene, then grabbing her arm from behind the couch; possibly taking away 3 years of life in the process, An early death due to fright.

I remember this and I can't stop smiling.

I remember playing basketball in a good friends driveway, jumping up pretending I was LeBron and slamming the ball into the 7 foot hoop. The hoop snapped off the backboard, staying in my hands; I panicked. I remember hiding it in her rose bush then guiltily going inside to wash the blood from the thorn pricks off of my hands. I can't stop smiling again now too. I was an idiot.

I remember, and I miss it. I really miss it.

I wouldn't trade my life now for my life then. Not for anything. But I still miss it. I really do.

Damn you nostalgia. I wish I'd never started to understand you.

As I think about these memories, these friends, these little moments that I'd forgotten for so long I can't help but think about who I was then and in a round about way, who I am now.

I got my first iPod when I was sixteen, for Christmas. I was stoked! A black, 60GB box with a two inch screen that was ready for my music/videos. I remember getting on iTunes, begging my aunt to let me use her American Express card and then going nuts and downloading hundreds of hip-hop/rap songs. Fifteen year old Graham was gangsta, bitch!

I can't stop thinking about all those songs I got, how I sat in my room for hours (it was too cold and wet too play basketball outdoors that December - February) listening, rapping along and writing my own raps. I can't help but smile in a "man, I was a goofy loser back then" sort of way.

The first 6 items that I downloaded onto that iPod were:

1. Deep Cover - Snoop Dogg ft. Dr. Dre

2. California Love  - Dr. Dre ft. Tupac

3. Mo' Money Mo' Problems - Notorious B.I.G. ft. Puff Daddy and Mase

4. Boyz-N-the-Hood (Remix) - Eazy-E

5. Wonderful - Ja Rule ft. Ashanti and R.Kelly

6. Boundin' - Disney Pixar

I realize in hindsight that a kid as gangsta as I shouldn't have had Boundin' on the same iPod as Dre and Eazy, but hey; I was 16! I was an idiot. But I could be wrong; gangsta's watch Disney too.

I'm thinking about that iPod and all those nights I lay awake listening to hardcore beats and profanity and I'm smiling more. I thought I was so cool, I thought I was awesome. I was awesome! I really wasn't, but I tried and I can't help but laugh when I think about that awkward 16 year old who thought he was black. He had no responsibilities, yet he still acted like the world was on his shoulders. He liked to read Tolstoy and super-long Stephen King novels and watch Desperate Housewives, but pretended to be the coolest thing on the whole damn planet. He was an idiot, but a lovable one. And I miss him.

I started off by saying that I've never understood nostalgia, and that is totally true. That's not too say that I never thought about these memories until today. To say that would be totally untrue. I think about them a lot less than I used too, yet I still think about them all the time. I suppose until tonight I never really felt anything majorly moving about them. They were only memories until tonight. When I got started on all that basketball stuff on my last post I guess  I stopped simply remembering what happened: I started feeling what these memories mean to me. They mean everything. I can feel that.

They mean everything to me now, just like they meant everything to the guy who experienced it back when it all happened. We're the same person, just years and wisdom apart.


I guess that's nostalgia. Thanks nostalgia, for letting me remember and feel...well, everything. I guess I forgot a lot. And to anyone reading who helped me create some awesome memories; thank you. For everything. I wouldn't change any of it (except maybe those really mean comments I made to you...sorry! I was an idiot, remember? Of course you do). Thank you. 

This was kinda serious, but tomorrow I'll get back to some pointless crap about Wimbledon, or the worryingly increasing increase in the size of Nicki Minaj's ass (the video for Starships was on a music channel a few days ago and at one point they could literally only fit one massive cheek into the frame...that's unnatural).

I still don't get how people can be nostalgic for something they have never experienced though...like people born after 1985 who wish they were teenagers in the 50's...to you I say: why? We have HD and iPhones now; stuff Buddy Holly records. I guess that's nostalgia I'll never get.