Nostalgia day

I'm having a nostalgia day. Too misty and drizzly to be funny and inventive this morning. The weather's lousy too, can't even see the nearest hill. So revisiting old thoughts and ways, looking at stuff I wrote thirty years ago and wondering about people I once knew, in all shades of the word. With the accessibility of the net this kind of exercise can no longer be a dreamy romantic ramble; the harsh reality of photographs is too hard-hitting. But there are a few people out there ... I can still look into their digitally inscribed eyes and think, yes, I know who you are. And there are quite a few I can't feel that connection with at all, but I'm pleased to see their details, like a German friend who at one time was my closest confidante until a sudden split over religion and sudden marriages on both our parts took her right out of my sphere. It gave me a simple pleasure to read her name today and an uncluttered recollection of what was a great friendship and complicity in its appropriate time. Trouble is I can't help thinking it's the things I can't remember that I want to think about.
So nostalgia day is over for another ten years or so. It's been interesting to engage with the past from a perspective other than that of identity, although I suspect that work on this identity-themed book has been responsible for raising the nostalgia Kraken today. The good thing about looking back is that I realise how much better and better and better life gets. I like now best. And I can keep now forever.