Do you ever wonder what things you’ll reminisce about when you get older? I’ve noticed that as people age, they have more fun reminiscing with their peers than with their children and grandchildren. When my parents get together with their friends and start talking about people they knew in school or things that happened before I was born, it’s feels like I’m standing outside in the cold and staring through the window at the warmth inside. Time buys them a membership to a club I can never join. But reminiscence is tinged with sadness when the conversation turns to friends who have died. It’s the sharing that makes remembering sweet, and death precludes the sharing.
My generation belongs to the first wave of university students who experienced the influence of Thatcherism and Reaganomics on the campus — the rise of a new conservatism. The word “liberalism” took on a new meaning; it shed all claim to social concerns and became a buzzword for a kind of economic transaction. Most of all, a new kind of individualism asserted itself. I became an economic actor, a consumer, a residue of tastes and personal preferences, a battleground where armies of ad agencies would wage their wars. But as I get older, I wonder: what good am I as an individual? What will be worth remembering as such an individual? I can’t imagine myself sitting with my products remembering the good old days. They won’t laugh at any of my stupid jokes.
I wonder if maybe my generation will be in for a shock when it approaches its 70’s and 80’s and discovers its memories have been sold for a lot of ticky-tacky.
All of US
They left their hearts in San Francisco,
pulled the flowers from their hair,
moved to little boxes, row on row,
ticky-tacky everywhere.
We, the children of the sixties,
left that world to gather dust,
hula-hoops with musty attic pixies,
metal swing sets pocked with rust.
While Saigon fell, we played with Lego,
snapping blocks in perfect lines.
We learned from Luke to let the Force flow
against the darkness of the times.
We took degrees in Reaganomics,
flayed the self from mortal bone
and welded it fast to an economics:
all for me and me for none.
Lie awhile by the poolside
while Haitian servants buff our nails.
Shining burnished gods before the neap tide,
let’s take the sea and damn the whales.
We did this, and we did that.
Memories! Another case
of planting the flag where we have shat,
declaring it our native space.
But we and we and we and we
was never thou, but ever thus:
that what could scarcely pass for me
was the work of all of US.