Well, this is awkward.
Kinda like greeting an old friend, except I have grown and changed yet he hasn't. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU09wuC4QXP
Well I'm 21; I'm a big boy now! 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXHOuEqHpyz
Maturity. Yes!625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSIZMRagqrR
Experience. Yes!625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyrOTS0aCns
Flawed. Yes Yes Yes!625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡULjvUyfpgs
But lately I've been thinking about younger, less experienced, less mature me. Or should I say, feeling about him. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG9PuDcSa56
My memories seem to not so much focus on retaining detail or accuracy, but retaining feelings. Kinda like the feeling of writing on online, self-centric blog in 2016. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNcZNYRAxBQ
But also, more importantly, the feeling of having only my own company again. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdDRjdNA76b
Lemme tell ya, the Back Street Boys must have finally gotten around to their big reunion tour, because everybody is staying the heck inside! I, too, hear the approaching music, and it frightens me...625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0wkIr89to1
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Backstreet's back, alright!625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpeYwgeMz0H
But in using my memories to try to make sense of this new, strange and worrying world, I came across an interesting phenomenon.625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLOQKv6x2MU
The cold helped to jog memories of my younger years - of chilling yet sunny winters, of hugging warm cats, breathing dusty icy air, of the listening ears and hopeful hearts of dogs, and of being alone with no one to worry about but myself. All with distinct feelings attached to them that could finally be accessed through the feeling of darkness and cold and curling up reading in it. And it brings comfort, to know that you have lived and that you are, at this moment, living. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfdPg8G3P5J
That's great and all, a real hum-dinger of a thing (really), but that's like, everyone's lot. Not much interesting in that.625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkkFwpmibHj
But what is curious is, within that recollection, what I have come to call 'Phantom Feelings'. These are kinda like the emotional recall associated with some of the catalytic memories that I briefly mentioned, but the funny part is that there's no real memory that goes with them. Just a sort of image in the head that almost comes out of nowhere, and since it isnt anhored to reality it's bound to change in imagined form, retaining only a few key elements and the approximate yet distinct feeling tied to it. And because of this amorphous nature of the associations, the feeling comes up at the strangest times as if it should be a reaction to what is being experienced in the present but really can't be, because it is based on an experience that I have never had! The mind and body are strange, chaotic things. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpH1U8tvEcF
I have three, clear examples of this.
The first is rather more simple in its origin and expression. It comes along with images, and was connected in association to a song I would listen to often, however I cannot feel it strongly at the moment, quite possibly because the conditions which may have assisted in the activation of this feeling may no longer be present. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBwL33ze7b9
The image is of curling up in mostly darkness. It is in a cold room, with exposed, unpainted brick walls. Alone, afraid, hopeless I would sometimes imagine. I associated it with the city. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGsXl2SvsG7
The second is quite strange indeed. Somehow I came to associate it with the character Mario, since it surfaced about the time that Mario Maker 2 came out, even though I had never played the game or intended to buy it. It still surfaces sometimes when I play on a 3DS (that is 100% Mario themed). I can best describe it as a kind of fear, overlayed wiith a feeling of portent and the unstoppable movement of time, of a future that is threatening, simultaneously, existence and absence. It makes sense, given the circumstances at the time of its inception, but it still resurfaces with disturbing clarity, and you must understand, dear reader, that I sometimes think that Mario may be a portentious symbol that is connected to my fate! 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0dEZK7m4sC
"Your death is-a-coming. Wahoo!"625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1PAzqacaBZ
The third seems to have followed me for quite some time now, and I have a theory on the circumstances of its inception but cannot be sure. This one in particular is special, since its a feeling of comfort., a feeling that I look forward to experiencing. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzVoG8kKwF3
The images associated with it always have a few key elements: Being in the blue shade of something cold, like stone - sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. The world outside of the shadow is green and bright with a golden sunlight. I know the warmth is there, but in the shadow I do not feel it. There is a pool of water nearby, sometimes silent sometimes babbling. It is part in the sun and part overhung with the shadow of foliage, and oh so cool and inviting, but I do not leave the shade. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3f5pAHxdOt
It's a nice feeling, a feeling of ultimate contentment. A temptation to let go. To close the eyes and be cold while knowing that warmth still exists.625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC07bJY4PQr
The feeling sometimes emerges when I enter a cool shade or exit the sun, or for other reasons I sometimes cannot identify. It predates my good friend Temporal Anxiety Mario. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYF72JrZd7Z
Sometimes I feel like these are the conditions I would like to cease life in. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvUZ5TUcwJS
Like phantoms, these emotions seem to come and go with a mind of their own, each draping itself in a spectral facade as an identity. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡITL4ewhB7w
But I myself am not the ghost! These veins and this brain still doing their thang, bby. 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGoBRG1Dfw0
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So, in this time of organ ache (ears, mostly, - curse you BBB) and four walls, I think memories, and the feelings that they bring, may be a temporarily accepted subtitute to creating new ones associated with people. And in enaging with emotion, an engagement with creativity may also be a suitable way to complete the flow of that ethereal thing that pumps through the heart and electrifies the mind. There is art within borders and limits!625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1raCjcsEsx
So I'll attempt to give more creative expression a whirl, and expression is what it will be! 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFIjVKrErrG
I'm lookin' back at you, little J ಠ‿↼625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtK9BczmXmC
Keep living you guys, and within these walls you can make it artful!
Aufwiedersehen 625Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtC6wHZCvB2
(^^)ｂ
