maybe nostalgia sucks
As I walked down the cobblestone streets in Universal Studios Japan, a familiar feeling washed over me. The recreations of 90’s movie sets felt eerily buoyant, eliciting dread instead of excitement for the day ahead.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how this trip was nearing its end. It was Day 3 of the 5-day trip out of Tokyo.
The presence of something overwhelmingly reminds me of its inevitable absence. I am neck-deep in “this, too, shall pass,” an annoyingly catchy phrase I may have taken a little too seriously and now can’t let go.
-
I can count the instances I am truly in the moment on my fingers. Ranking #1 is time spent with B.
At the Besant Nagar beach, the evening air is full of teeth, salty and nipping at our skin. Sand pours out of our sandals. When the pristine indoors of aesthetically curated cafes become off-limits, we eat punishingly hot tornado potato from the kiosks on the curb. He leads the way back to campus, and I am blissfully unaware of where we are at any given moment, directions dissolving in my head as soon as we turn the corner.
B and I hold up books in Odyssey and fabricate silly conversations using random titles. We wander into restaurants and effortlessly make ourselves at home.
The thread of lack that runs through life quietens in his company. We rinse and repeat and pick apart futures that are yet to unfold, but we are still firmly planted in gratitude for the moment. After a while, words become superfluous and we settle into a comfortable silence.
There isn’t a single thought in my head.
-
My first trip to USJ was 15 years ago, with my parents and my little sister sucking her thumb in her brown Aprica stroller. My predominant memories: heart thumping as I dove off a building in the Spiderman ride, coming out to a spray of water as we slid down T-rex’s tail, and my sister crying, terrified by staff in a caveman costume.
We watched the NO LIMIT! parade in the afternoon. My head was filled with memories of parades from my own childhood. The dizzying array of floats did not take my mind off of the looming fact that the day was ending and I’d be back in a very parade-less hotel room very soon.
Could the anticipation of sunset blues be a relic from certain childhood evenings? When guests left and I was given a rundown of every instance of bad behavior?
As confetti rained down on us, I begrudgingly stared at the kid propped up on her dads’ shoulders, munching churros.
-
Example 2: Karaoke nights.
The off-key but supremely confident voices spill into the hallway as my girlfriends and I walk down to our corner booth at the Shibuya Big Echo.
We browse the song library on the Karaoke console. The door swings open and the waiter appears. He sets the tray down on the table in front of us. He keeps his eyes down and backs out as if he didn’t just hear the embarrassing rendition of whatever it is we were singing.
Two hours in, and our throats are scratchy from shout-singing. I laugh when I notice that I goof up the lyrics when I stop moving my hand to the beat of the song.
The phone rings, and I am scared that the fun was coming to an end. The receptionist asks if we would like to extend our session, and we say yes.
The night goes on for hours.
-
That’s it?
The Spiderman ride felt longer and wilder in my memories. My sister, now in university, consoles me and tells me that it wasn’t all that bad. It was a decent ride for the late 00s.
I video-called our parents to show them the T-rex ride. “Remember this ride? We went into the dinosaur’s mouth!” I swing my phone around, hoping they’d supply me with details I couldn’t possibly recall.
Between rides, I wandered around in the Snoopy store, recreating pictures from when I was 8. Though these recollections were hazy and mostly concocted from the photos we had taken, I kept scanning for memories that resonated with what I was seeing now. Not much came back to me.
A couple of years ago, I forced my family to go on a long trip to an obscure tropical garden we had visited a decade ago. Nothing lived up to this time in my head. The greenhouse was not as magnificent, the flowers were not as vibrant, and the crocodiles were not as scary. This was not the first trip I had tried to recreate.
-
Example 3: Time spent with M
M and I are lazy in the same ways. We plan to wake up early for walks but never follow through. I know he has a favorite brand of tires (Yokohama). He knows about my desire to get adult braces. Our friendship is inextricably tied to our evening walks on campus. We talk about everything and absolutely nothing.
In college, M is almost always walking around with a book. (His copy of India After Gandhi still sits on my bookshelf.) He takes me to his pani puri shop in Kottur. I feel incompetent next to seasoned speed-eaters.
Our conversations hold no pattern but the person that I am has his influence and impact all over it. We are always talking about the vacations we will go on in the future and how we should be neighbors, at least for a few years before we become old. When we text, I am confident that I have good people in life, and unlike those who come and go, M is here to stay.
-
The roller coaster dropped and my thoughts were quite literally slammed out of my mind. Nothing parallels the brutal physicality of rides in centering my attention and grounding me in the moment.
We slid back into the station after merely a minute. With our legs still wobbly, we collected our bags and checked our phones. As we reoriented ourselves, we saw the coins caught in the net overhead, presumably from those who failed to empty their pockets despite multiple reminders.
USJ was lighting up around us. The park began to look dreamy, the sets rendered less garish in the cozy glow of faux antique lamps and torches.
To my surprise, I felt relaxed, relieved from the agitation of expecting the end. The end was here and the day had finally slipped away. I fondly looked back at the brilliantly lit USJ globe and knew it was forever burned into my memory.
I’ve always prided myself on my ability to remember the good times and the important moments, of processing and documenting and having irrefutable proof of a life lived. While this is a good coping mechanism that helps with my sanity during difficult times, it’s becoming apparent that this is simply my default way of being. Observing to remember isn’t the same as observing (= just living?). While the latter is being truly present, the former dislodges me from the moment I wish to enjoy to the fullest. I am always two steps behind my own lived reality.
Ten years from now, I see myself here, and I’ll remember the coins, the churros, and calling my parents from outside the T-rex ride.
I fear I may be pathologically nostalgic. Is ten years enough to work myself out of this? To have more instances of having fully lived even if it means the memories are slightly blurry and the details get lost?
I often think of this scene from Cinema Paradiso and wonder if I’d be okay trading remembering for being truly present, wholly in the moment.
