Four In The Morning

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

It is indeed Four In The Morning and I'm lying awake again unable to get back to sleep. Some people count sheep when they can't sleep, I seem to lay in bed and contemplate what to write on here.

I was working late last night and as such was not having my evening meal until way past my usual time. I couldn't be bothered cooking so decided to stop off for a Chinese take-away. The particular place I called in to I had not visited since 1991 and as I was in the area thought why not. It was an old favourite of mine and it proved to be a very strange experience.

The woman who used to run the place was still there but had been relegated to the fryer while the little kids who used to be running around in the back where now taking the orders and dealing with the customers. This gave me a real feeling of tempus fugit.

I know time moves on but this Chinese lady seemed to have aged a lot more than the seventeen years between my visits. She had put on a little weight and didn't seem quite as "with it" as she did all those years ago when she did single handed what it now took three of her children to undertake.

I kept looking at her hoping she would recognise me but she must have served thousands of people over the years and there was no way she would have remembered me. But I wanted her to. I wanted to know how she thought I had changed over the intervening years... but it wasn't to be.

The experience gave me a real feeling of nostalgia.

I spent many years of my life living in this area and I bet there is no one there today who even remembers me being there. The building I used to live in has been knocked down and most of the people will have moved away.

I even remembered the day of my sixteenth birthday. Walking to school through the local park and experiencing a feeling of total "wonderment" with the world. A feeling of total contentment that I have never felt since and had only felt once previously to that.

Images, memories and feelings from the years spent living in the area were flooding into my head as I stood and waited for my order...

...A girl I once knew...

...An old departed family pet...

...asthma I developed and outgrew in the space of a few months.

Why did I remember so much about the area and the people who lived there but there was no one there to remember me? Too many times one of these many thoughts just ended in what if...

Maybe, sometimes, it doesn't pay to dwell too long in the past.