lost time, friendships and innocence

...so we went to Clarke Quay for supper.

Supper? No, really, it's a place for drinking...

A bunch of old friends. Just four of us. The only four that would come after we spammed the Whatsapp conversation for days.

One guy said he'd be late for dinner, everyone ended up arriving four hours later.

Alcohol. Blurs lines. Blurs the past. Makes it feel like no time has passed. Not the distance from the appointed time, not the years we'd spent not seeing each other.

We drank.

And ate, at least. Maybe that counts for something.

And it being four of us guys... The talk ended in our exploits.

I don't know how much of the enthusiasm and back-slapping was forced. But I felt distance; maybe they wanted to make it so that the distance counted for nothing. But I felt it anyway.

Pissed off, too. Everyone's busy. No time during the day. No, the only time to meet is at 11pm in a district where drunks are a frequent sight and policemen are always visible to keep order. Then we can all get drunk together and pretend that the last four years hadn't existed, that absolutely nothing had happened, that we were still back where we once were four years ago.

Everyone wants to forget everything, sometimes at least. I think.

Perhaps some of us forgot too much. Not sure what we did four years ago, even after wanting to ignore everything in between.

The talk. Sex. What else? Who's done this, who's done that, which girl you'd fuck, which girl you'd shoot before having anything to do with her.

People from back then, those were the days, let's relive them once more.

I participated. It was a little awkward, I didn't have much to contribute if I do say so myself.

Maybe we all just hadn't drunk enough.

Sometimes you just can't ignore real life. The present. Regardless of what things may have been like in the past. There's work to be done. Possessions to be minded. Cash to be saved.

People, to keep from worrying.

Maybe sometimes you have to value the present and the people in it over a past which is dead, gone, and not coming back.

Time. Time changes people. And you find you barely know them after a few years.

We're older. Wiser. More attuned to the world. We know what can be done and what can't. What's too much to hope for. So let's just take the practical route and do what other people do. Loosen up a bit. Let go of unrealistic expectations. You think that's bad? No big deal, we've seen stuff like that before. Done stuff like that before. It's actually quite fun. You should try it someday. Open your eyes, you know. Get some new experiences.

They say I haven't changed. I don't know. Does anyone know? They probably don't want to know.

Maybe I don't want to know either.

But I hope I do cling on to some fragment of what I was. Was? No, perhaps what I hoped.

Ideals.

Why I admire the idealist.

You refuse to compromise. Not on your goals, not on your methods, not on your morals. And retain the smallest sliver of hope, that somehow, someday, you will get to where you wanted to be.

Vision.

And you set out on your path, and the world falls away from you into the depravity of normality, and paths diverge, and you're left alone.

I've been up long enough, but I just had to write this.

Just a collection of stuff off the top of my head. Perhaps more feeling than thought. Maybe I'm wildly wrong. But I think it's important, at least, for some unknown reason, that this stuff is discussed, perhaps heard. Even if I don't know entirely, specifically what it really is about.

A bit like music?

Maybe I should have just gone home first. But would I have written this then? It's hard to say.

The past may have been glorious. But the past is gone. No reliving in the present will be as good as it was back then.

Good times, good guys. But no longer. Not today.

I think it's finally time for me to move on. Have my good times in the present rather than in the past.

You get on the horse, and it takes you somewhere, faster than you could have gone alone, seeing many things along the way, arriving at many new revelations and destinations.

But I think I have to accept that the horse I rode in on is kind of dead. Hasn't moved in years. No point flogging a dead horse.