2004-06-13 - 2:09 a.m.

Everyone feels it, even though it�s always very personal and uniquely specific to the individual feeling it. But everyone feels it, although some more intensely than others, and it affects everyone differently.

Is the word nostalgia? I want to say sure, why not? because the word is close, but nostalgia has a sour ring of fake diners with old hollywood pinups--that were made in 2002--on the walls.

For me, and I have this way more under control these days, it�s waking up--new day--not remembering who I am or what I was thinking last night, and what assumptions I�ve been laboring under, and feeling whatever of the memories that happen to come up while I�m trying to remember who I am and why I�m in the bed I woke up in.

It�s like rebooting, and that�s when I�m most vulnerable to what we�re calling nostalgia for the time being, when it�s the morning--a new day--and I remember that there are clients visiting the Big Company and I have to dress nice, and I remember that when I lived in Allston there was a little tiny room we almost never used, and I kept my clothes in the closet there, and I remember those two things at the same time, and what both feel like too.

That�s when I miss the past the most. If you asked me right now what it was like to live in Winter Hill, which I remember fondly anyway, I could tell a few anticdotes, but I�d go on a ton of tangents, putting a today spin on my life back then.

But if I got up in the morning, and I was all of a sudden in that bed in Winter Hill, and I looked up and saw the Compaq on my left and that dirty window on my right--in the morning during those few seconds where I�m remembering who I am--I could get up and out of that room and talk with the people who lived there as they were, and fit right in.

Waking up--first few seconds of actual consciousness--and you could probably fool me for life if you wanted to try, and I remember what that place smelled like and I remember what it felt like to be there and I remember what it was like to wear feet pajamas as a four year old and I remember waking up in room 403 in the Little Building and for a few seconds there�s no oh, when I lived in Winter Hill these few things stood out to define my experience there and no oh, when my Ma put me in feet pajamas we called them �snugglies,� which I thought was the word for it �till I realized it wasn�t and no oh, I remember that dorm room and Billy who left after two weeks but then I had Craig to deal with and he was a horrible roommate with his Absolut posters lining the walls and I never once saw him drink vodka or anything else and I later found out that he had dropped out to go to cooking school.

I remember what it was like to get up in the morning there, for a second, and then it�s gone and I remember basically what I remembered the morning before.

(That�s why weekends are the best for waking up--and especially because I usually work six days--wake up, try to remember what�s going on, and then after a few seconds, it�s there�s no work today.)

If we�re sticking with nostalgia, I swear to you that I get up in the morning and feel nostalgic for feeling old nostalgia. I�m hopeless, and I�m also too old to believe that each morning could quite possibly be the start of the only day I�ll ever live--I�ve been around myself too long for that to make any sense.

In the morning--first few seconds of actual consciousness--you could fool me if you wanted to try.

If a person�s life is a soap opera (and it is), waking up is like turning on the TV and as it itself wakes up, trying to figure out what�s going on--is it a rerun? is what I�m starting to see what�s really happening? is this the right channel?

The rest of the day is watching the show and the commercials. The first few seconds are the ones where anything could be possible, and maybe, just maybe, but then it never does and then you remember it never has.

Yet.

And then it�s time for some coffee.