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dolorosa_12I caught the bus to visit Raphael in Hughes today. This involved catching one bus to Civic and another bus from Civic to Hughes, which meant a nice scenic route all through the inner-south suburbs of Canberra. The first bus wound through my old stamping-ground of Forrest and Manuka, while the second took in much of my not-quite-so-old stamping-ground of Deakin. It struck me that although I *want* to leave Canberra, I am not *ready* to leave yet. Everywhere I went had meaning. If you've had a connection with a place for 20 years, 16 of them actually living in that place, you cannot help having complex, spidery roots twisted into just about every inch of it. And if you have a memory as good as mine, every street is a jolting reminder of those roots.
Deakin was the worst, because both Mimi and I had lots of friends who lived there, at various points in our lives, as well as living there ourselves. So every street was 'Oh, that's where Mimi's friend Lilly lived,' or, 'That's the street where Emma lived, and that's the street on which her block had a Halloween party in 1991 when we (very proud of our 'scary' witch costumes) danced around saying teasingly to less-scarily-dressed kids "Who's scared of a princess?" '. There is the street we used to walk down to get to school, me a block ahead of Dad and Mimi because I was old enough to walk 'on my own,'; there the house with the scary dogs that I'd always cross the street to avoid.
And seeing all these places was like the most exquisite form of torture. [/cliché]
I thought at first this was caused by sadness over the passage of time, a search for lost youth. But it's more complex than that. For me, time has both passed, and not. When I walk or drive in my old places, it's as if then-Ronni walks beside me. I can see my five-year-old self riding her first bike around and around the block in Arthur Circle, and yet I can also see my nine-year-old self walking solemnly along Melbourne Avenue on the way to school, wrapt in her own imagined world, oblivious to this one, *and* I can see my 14-year-old self sitting self-consciously in the newly-built Manuka McDonald's with her friends, listening with half an ear to gossip that seemed so important at the time. So the problem is not that the past is 'passed', but rather that, for me, it's parallel to the present.
I remember everything. And I only remember that I remember everything when I realise that my connection with Canberra is going to be weakened for a while. And it hurts because although at times like this I view Canberra as my own personal book, upon which my past is written, in reality it is a book that belongs to all who live or visit it, and it will not stay frozen, a museum to my childhood, unchanging until I return.
I really hate change sometimes.
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*Title comes from a poem in Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute (I think. It could also be from The Lady of the Sorrows).
Deakin was the worst, because both Mimi and I had lots of friends who lived there, at various points in our lives, as well as living there ourselves. So every street was 'Oh, that's where Mimi's friend Lilly lived,' or, 'That's the street where Emma lived, and that's the street on which her block had a Halloween party in 1991 when we (very proud of our 'scary' witch costumes) danced around saying teasingly to less-scarily-dressed kids "Who's scared of a princess?" '. There is the street we used to walk down to get to school, me a block ahead of Dad and Mimi because I was old enough to walk 'on my own,'; there the house with the scary dogs that I'd always cross the street to avoid.
And seeing all these places was like the most exquisite form of torture. [/cliché]
I thought at first this was caused by sadness over the passage of time, a search for lost youth. But it's more complex than that. For me, time has both passed, and not. When I walk or drive in my old places, it's as if then-Ronni walks beside me. I can see my five-year-old self riding her first bike around and around the block in Arthur Circle, and yet I can also see my nine-year-old self walking solemnly along Melbourne Avenue on the way to school, wrapt in her own imagined world, oblivious to this one, *and* I can see my 14-year-old self sitting self-consciously in the newly-built Manuka McDonald's with her friends, listening with half an ear to gossip that seemed so important at the time. So the problem is not that the past is 'passed', but rather that, for me, it's parallel to the present.
I remember everything. And I only remember that I remember everything when I realise that my connection with Canberra is going to be weakened for a while. And it hurts because although at times like this I view Canberra as my own personal book, upon which my past is written, in reality it is a book that belongs to all who live or visit it, and it will not stay frozen, a museum to my childhood, unchanging until I return.
I really hate change sometimes.
________________________________________________
*Title comes from a poem in Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute (I think. It could also be from The Lady of the Sorrows).
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Date: 2008-01-27 01:11 pm (UTC)