On Nostalgia

Driving back to New York yesterday through the Pennsylvania mountains, I found on the backseat of our dusty car an old, scratched Ani DiFranco cd—Living In Clip, it was.

And I fished it out of its broken case and fed it into the player, and it was like riding in the car with an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years. I sang along with all of the songs, loudly and out of tune, and the memories were good, and enhanced by the scratchy kiss kiss kiss noise of that battered old cd spinning ‘round in the player.

I don’t miss that time in my life, necessarily, but I miss what I didn’t know then, and the heady sense of freedom that came along with that unknown. I was just a college student ready to cut loose, with my battered shoes itching to roam and my tip money in my pocket, standing on the brink of some great something, ready to sniff out the adventures and happiness that lay just around the corner, or over the next rolling Pennsylvania hill.