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SubTitle: What They Mean...
Posted by: rs on 1/20/1998@21:18hrs:
In Reply to: Re: Halloran Hospital posted by: Old Timer on 1/20/1998@16:13hrs:
...apparently they mean something to all of us.
What they mean is a different question.
Do I have the answer?
No.
There may be quite a few answers.
Some of it may have to do with Raina's plight, asking where's the history, the kind you absorb without work or study, the received tradition. This country may be famous for the lack of it. Or maybe it's so plain we don't always recognize what's before our noses.
Let me give an example. When you see those old photographs, say from 75 years ago, and the men are wearing fedoras, and the women long dresses, and you see wagons or early cars, you may think what a great picture, so evocative of an age, I wonder what it was like.
On the other hand, would you ever think to take your little camera down to the strip mall, or the grand mall (no pun intended), and snap the shutter a few times just to capture what's what here and now?
Not very likely, I guess. Why? Because it's so plain it's not at all interesting. No one would look at it, and who's going to wait 75 years to see what we look like today?
So today slips by, undocumented, except if preserved while doing, or photographing, something else, and the local scene creeps in.
To make a symbol out of something, it has to be as plain as ashes, as someone said, a commentator on W.B. Yeats, I believe, or Yeats himself. For example, early Christians adopted a torture-execution tool to make one of the world's most powerful symbols of love and salvation, two crossed sticks. First frighthening, then revered.
Staten Island wasn't all pizza and crumbuns. But they, and the other things the expats and exiles talk about, which were so plain at the time as not to be worth mentioning, now evoke the warmth of select memories of friendship and love of person, place and time. It took awhile for this appreciation to creep in, and some distance, and some living. But we all sense it to some degree. So we talk about it. And by doing so, we say we were there. "Kilroy was here." Marcene, do you remember that? I know you do. It was on every bridge, building, and abutment. You can explain it if you feel like. So, we were here, and we are still here, and we will be here for awhile. And when we're not, "Kilroy was here." And we said what it meant.
So what are these memories? Baggage? I don't think so. Anchors? More like.
So raise a glass to the good memories of younger days, and may there be many more to come, for you and yours.
BobS.