Where are they now?
At the moment, I'm wracked with insomnia, and let me tell you, the internet is a lot like caffeine. For the past ungodly hour or so, I've been Googling random people from my past; in fact, I've been playing a game to think of the MOST random people from my past and Googling them to gain some insight as to what they're up to in life.
Needless to say, memories, both fond and less-than-fond (but mostly fond) have flooded through those magic, invisible cables of the internet and have been routed wireslessly into my brain. High on remembrances of things past, I'm compelled to shout-out to some random people I've lost touch with, who've re-entered the zeitgeist thanks to the meddlings of an internet search engine:
Gretchen Sauer...Gretchen was among the first people I met in college. We had classes together all the time, and spent our freshman year making theater, drinking wine and listening to Songs for a New World (I know...). When I met Gretchen she had long, beauty-queen hair, and halfway through our freshman year she cut it all off, and in doing so became not only the most badass, but the most beautiful girl in school. Last I was in contact with her, Gretchen went on to postgraduate studies in queer Latin American theater, a course we took together in undergrad, natch. But that was ages ago.
Brian Sette...Brian was one of the neighboorhood gang growing up in Baltimore. I haven't been in touch with him since I was 13 or 14, surely. We (that is, the gang) used to trade comic books and spent our summer nights playing hide-and-seek into the wee hours. A Google search reveals that he (or someone with the same name) is a visual artist in New York. Which, you know, is cool.
Paul Caiola...It took a little memory jog to remember Paul's last name, but Paul was a boy from college that I met when he was doing a play in rep in the same theater I was doing a play. Paul looked like Edward Norton and I had a palpable crush on him. My one lingering memory of Paul is in a diner somewhere, me sitting across from his puppy-dog eyes. I think perhaps Buffalo wings were also somehow involved. Or perhaps I'm mixing my memories, as it were. Remember how fun it was to have crushes on people? Now there's only dating, which is considerably less fun. Or maybe I'm just dating the wrong people.
Kate Donadio...Kate and I had an absolute fucking blast in London our senior year of college. We laughed and looked at castles, invented soap operas inspired by the soundtrack to Magnolia, had an unhealthy fixation on Australians. I remember in some class or other, we were doing some exercise where we had to say something nice about another person in the class (God knows what kind of exercise this was -- this was theater school, people), and I said that Kate had a flair for the dramatic. I think Kate was momentarily offended, but I meant this as the biggest compliment possible. A couple years later she moved to Atlanta and we lost touch, but the internet tells me she's still acting up a storm down South.
It's funny, these moments when the past tugs at you, isn't it? I have these spells where I become obessesed with the past. It's not nostalgia; it's fascination. Fascination with how the past is a launching pad to the present, and how the present is, one day, in a moment similar to this one, going to be a launching pad to some future, yet to be known. It's like in that movie Donnie Darko, where Jake Gyllenhaal has that inexplicable, gellatinous line that he follows as if he's following the trail of his own future. I can see lines shooting forth from all these memories, as if my memories are all dots that are longing to be connected into some kind of linear path. A Great Progression. The Meaning of Life.
Or maybe that's just me hallucinating because it's 4am and I should be asleep.
Needless to say, memories, both fond and less-than-fond (but mostly fond) have flooded through those magic, invisible cables of the internet and have been routed wireslessly into my brain. High on remembrances of things past, I'm compelled to shout-out to some random people I've lost touch with, who've re-entered the zeitgeist thanks to the meddlings of an internet search engine:
Gretchen Sauer...Gretchen was among the first people I met in college. We had classes together all the time, and spent our freshman year making theater, drinking wine and listening to Songs for a New World (I know...). When I met Gretchen she had long, beauty-queen hair, and halfway through our freshman year she cut it all off, and in doing so became not only the most badass, but the most beautiful girl in school. Last I was in contact with her, Gretchen went on to postgraduate studies in queer Latin American theater, a course we took together in undergrad, natch. But that was ages ago.
Brian Sette...Brian was one of the neighboorhood gang growing up in Baltimore. I haven't been in touch with him since I was 13 or 14, surely. We (that is, the gang) used to trade comic books and spent our summer nights playing hide-and-seek into the wee hours. A Google search reveals that he (or someone with the same name) is a visual artist in New York. Which, you know, is cool.
Paul Caiola...It took a little memory jog to remember Paul's last name, but Paul was a boy from college that I met when he was doing a play in rep in the same theater I was doing a play. Paul looked like Edward Norton and I had a palpable crush on him. My one lingering memory of Paul is in a diner somewhere, me sitting across from his puppy-dog eyes. I think perhaps Buffalo wings were also somehow involved. Or perhaps I'm mixing my memories, as it were. Remember how fun it was to have crushes on people? Now there's only dating, which is considerably less fun. Or maybe I'm just dating the wrong people.
Kate Donadio...Kate and I had an absolute fucking blast in London our senior year of college. We laughed and looked at castles, invented soap operas inspired by the soundtrack to Magnolia, had an unhealthy fixation on Australians. I remember in some class or other, we were doing some exercise where we had to say something nice about another person in the class (God knows what kind of exercise this was -- this was theater school, people), and I said that Kate had a flair for the dramatic. I think Kate was momentarily offended, but I meant this as the biggest compliment possible. A couple years later she moved to Atlanta and we lost touch, but the internet tells me she's still acting up a storm down South.
It's funny, these moments when the past tugs at you, isn't it? I have these spells where I become obessesed with the past. It's not nostalgia; it's fascination. Fascination with how the past is a launching pad to the present, and how the present is, one day, in a moment similar to this one, going to be a launching pad to some future, yet to be known. It's like in that movie Donnie Darko, where Jake Gyllenhaal has that inexplicable, gellatinous line that he follows as if he's following the trail of his own future. I can see lines shooting forth from all these memories, as if my memories are all dots that are longing to be connected into some kind of linear path. A Great Progression. The Meaning of Life.
Or maybe that's just me hallucinating because it's 4am and I should be asleep.
posted by Adam at 3:27 AM
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