I am in Kitchener for a DTS reunion. The “official” gatherings seem to be on the weekend, but in the meantime I have found a few faces from the past to revisit, and, thanks to my hostess’ acute sensibility to nostalgia, the reminiscing has begun. It’s strange. I feel detached from all this. I recognize familiar objects and faces, but…little remains of the base itself, in its place a slick, soulless condo development, the architectural equivalent of a smoking crater. The basic shape of the streets feels…familiar. The landscape is utterly transformed, yet it doesn’t feel like more than a decade since I was here. When I identify some old haunt, it seems perfectly ordinary, like the streets I walk everyday. People, too, have acquired lines on their faces, wives, husbands, babies, families. Yet, in some ways, it could seem like no time at all has passed. We are right back there, talking about the people, the place, that strange territory in time, space, and life that we mutually occupied thirteen years ago. In other ways, that once incredibly significant time seems perfectly unreal to me, as if unconnected, as if I am visiting places I’ve read about, meeting characters from a book. I suppose I must have mythologized these people, to some extent, yet so far, there have been few surprises. Few glaring discrepancies between the person in my memory and person as they now exist. The Characters are playing out their story arcs, and I recognize them instantly. And though I think I look different, and I FEEL very, very different, but they all recognize me. Thirteen years ago, at more or less this time of year, I was a gangly Nineteen-year old hopping off a bus in my thrift store leather jacket , lugging a battered guitar I couldn’t play. It’s funny. People keep bringing up their memories of those tumultuous months, and I remember it when they bring it up, but it still feels like all those things were experienced by someone else. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I was THERE. That skinny blond kid in the pictures is me.
I couldn’t see here from there, I couldn’t imagine it. But I can look back and see there from here, albeit at some distance. It’s an interesting view.
I step into my past, and I step into, literally, a different Identity. A different name. People here call me J.T. It was, initially, simply a device to differentiate me from another Jeremy, but it may have become a way for me to differentiate myself from the Jeremy I left behind in Edmonton, the one I tried to slip back into years later, but was unable to find. I picked up the name again, but the person, by that time, was long gone. And, in these parts, his initials seem to be the way he was remembered.
I have a bit of time here. I wander, taking pictures of ancient, mossy trees, old stone, and weathered brick. I remember why I love the east. Everything is older here. And, as I have long known, a thing usually needs a bit of history to have much character….
