I can't even blame it on Thyroidzilla because since the doctor upped my meds last Monday I feel great. I'm not tired all the time, and I have loads of energy...
I often find myself feeling nostalgic for days gone by when I sat in dark cafes writing in my journals. I was younger and full of artistic angst. So many feelings; my hand couldn't write fast enough to keep up with everything in my head. My head is just as full, but most of the things I think about these days are more pressing matters than unrequited love, or feeling misunderstood by the world. Who has energy for that kind of self-indulgence after 50? For that matter, who cares?
Sometimes I long to have been born a little earlier (despite the fact that I'd be even older now!). Born earlier and living in a flat in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Black turtlenecks, espresso, folk music, cool jazz, red checkered tablecloths and Chianti Classico bottles with drip candles in them. Instead, I was a pre-adolescent beatnik wannabe soon-to-be hippie, decorating my room to suit my fascination with a lifestyle that was only a fantasy.
I've been to the Village twice, but that was over 10 years ago. I had dinner at some little cafe that had live music, and later that week I sat at the bar at Arthur's Tavern on Grove Street, listening to jazz. At both of these places I felt that longing. I stepped out of the cafe onto the sidewalk to get some air, and as I looked around me that the narrow street, I felt as if I should be able to walk around the corner, enter a building and climb the stairs to my apartment where I'd sit down, pour a glass of wine and write through the night on an old clicky-clacky typewriter. The weird thing is that this sensation is a visceral one. It's so real. It has always been. It's not like wishing, it's more like experiencing, or remembering.
I hope the theory of multiverses and alternate realities is true. One of me just isn't enough to live all the lifestyles I crave.
Do you have an alternate out there somewhere, living a life you can only long for?
