It will doubtless come as no surprise to most people who know me that I like to have the familiar around me. Whether it be pictures on the wall, ornaments, furniture, toys, etc., I derive a certain comfort from being surrounded by things I grew up with from childhood to adulthood, and although I sometimes think I'm a slave to them and should perhaps learn to let go, I know that I never could and never shall. I realise that I'd miss them if they were gone, and then I'd probably spend a small fortune and a lot of time I don't really have in trying to reacquire or replace them with exact replicas.
Earlier this evening as I reclined on my bed with a cuppa char, my eye fell upon a picture of Fireball XL5, culled from an Annual and put up on my bedroom wall sometime around the mid-to-late '70s. Or at least the original was, but two or three years back I made duplicates of most of the pictures, posters, pin-ups, and pages that had faded, browned, rippled, and mottled over time and replaced the originals by means of my trusty scanner and printer, along with the application of a bit of computer technology to enhance and make them look fresh and new.
The paper those pictures once adorned may be new, but the images on them are ones from of old, familiar 'friends' from my youth that I'd miss if they weren't there whenever I care to cast my gaze over them and remember earlier, better times. It does sometimes bother me that they aren't the originals, but they were well-past their best and made my room look like a forgotten tomb on which time had taken its tiring toll. Now that they're bright and clean and new again (and colourful), my room doesn't seem like a repository of relics, but rather a brand-new edifice at the start of its existence, not near the end of it.
It's daft I know, but sometimes I like to pretend that it's my first full day in this room back in 1972, which makes me feel like I only just flitted from my previous house the day before. In that way, it creates the illusion (even if only for a short time) that my life up to that point is as fresh and as recent as only a day earlier, and that I'm not as old as I sometimes feel - or my mirror often testifies I am. When I look at something from the '70s it's as if I'm back there again, and as I've said before many a time, it's the closest thing to time travel that any of us will ever experience outside of photos or home videos, or revisiting places from our youth (if they still exist).
So am I just completely bonkers, or do any of you fellow Mellows ever feel the same? Do you surround yourself with the familiar, either in a physical way or just by entering the evergreen land of memory? Do tell, if you'd be so good.
I have a lot of things now in electronic form only, due to an ongoing clear out. If I don't, someone else will have to. I photographed and scanned lots of things, and it's reassuring to look through them occasionally. But there are also some thing I could not bear to part with, illogical things, like the duster I wrote about recently.
ReplyDeleteI'm off over to your blog to read about that duster right now, TD. Thanks for commenting.
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