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Is nostalgia the Drive-thru of memory?

I always knew it was him from the knock. A garbled, discord of taps; of polite urgency. It was morse code for ‘Hello, I’m in trouble. Can I come in?’ 

I’d look up and his face would be pressed against the narrow window pane of the classroom door, the pressure of his head on glass creating a paler island of skin on his forehead. I’d nod, and a stifled smile would break out on his face, his lips contorting to try and hide happiness, relief. The boy was a fugitive, running from the long arm of management after another classroom standoff and this became his hideout.

A dense fog shrouded his backstory and there was an understanding that we would never know his past. Perhaps he could grasp it. Perhaps he didn’t want to. There was no nostalgia there. He was only 12 years old but within him I sensed a deep well of history and experience that belied those years and was too big for his slight frame to hold.

He became a regular visitor and we fell into a rhythm of writing stories, his once timid knocks now replaced with a swinging door and ‘I’ve had an idea’. The pile of books I would be marking would be moved across the desk to make way for his notepad and we would begin. Our stories would more often than not pull in the direction of escape. Tales of kids whose blinks would transport them from the dark shadows of difficulty to the dusty surface of the moon. His wild eyes would flicker with a charge that came from somewhere far beyond the classroom, beyond him.  But when he paused to think and imagine, the wild would leave his bones. The need to bolt from classrooms, to hide in cold cubicles or in the heavy folds of the stage curtains of the hall would leave him. He was at peace in these moments, where imagination and pen and paper aligned and synchronised to flow with effortless ease. It was alchemy. But soon he was gone. Deemed to have exhausted his chances and in need of a ‘fresh start’, out of sight. The nature of his blunt leaving meant that scattered fragments of his present, instantly became those of his past as he left for a different future. One such piece was his notepad and written on a torn page within it was one of one many seams of gold that he had mined and brought to the surface -

There is a falsity to nostalgia. It is memory filtered with bokeh, a skewing of depth of field, where its dark edges are blurred to amplify the light. The angle in which we direct our gaze at a past incident, influences the reflection we receive. When Light slows down as it crosses a threshold, it refracts towards the ‘normal’ and when it speeds up as it crosses a threshold, it refracts away from the ‘normal’. The same can be said of memory if we substitute ‘normal’ for ‘truth’. There is a speed to nostalgia, a quick fix of recollection that takes us away from truth. Nostalgia greens the grass of the next field, dresses the deceased dickhead in the borrowed robes of the decent. 

Nostalgia’s primary function seems to be to console and comfort. When this is our need, we look at the past from an angle that will return the imagery and emotion that reflects and satisfies this need. Relationships that felt good, summers that were warmer, childhood chocolate bars before the advent of shrinkflation. Nostalgia is the drive-thru of memory, satisfying a hunger for comfort through a quick serving of palatable processed recollection. It is prospecting for gold, sifting the cold grit of truth away from the treasure we’re seeking to boost our emotional coffers. 

There is also a superficiality to nostalgia, a comfortable veneer on the face of uncomfortable truth. It is a trip down memory lane, peering at our childhood home from the picket fence.  But to engage with memory truthfully is to go inside and lift its floorboards; to visit the grave and go down to marrow and bone. 

Perhaps there is desperation in the act of digging in the grave of memory.