strictly nostalgic
Did you hear the news? Hear ye, hear ye, the internet has announced that the one, the only, Bennifer is back, baby. Apparently many people have strong feelings about this reunification of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. I’ve seen posts of them on vacation together captioned with long strings of crying emojis and all-caps declarations of shock and excitement.
I was a little confused about the fervor around this news when I first saw it. Famous people dating famous people they’ve dated in the past? Okay? Are we surprised? That’s about as expected as it gets. Will Ben date a Jennifer? Is water wet? It’s both an inevitability and completely uninteresting.
However, then I saw a side-by-side montage of them back then and now, seemingly getting right back to exactly where they were almost twenty years ago, and something clicked for me. Suddenly I was thirteen years old again, glancing at the racks by the checkout counter at the grocery store. Unlike the current day, I was just along for the ride with my mom, not worrying about much but whether my current crush obsession even noticed me, if I’d be allowed to go to the movies with my friends on Friday, and whether or not I had enough allowance saved up for the latest Warped Tour CD (yes, this is embarrassing). It was a time jump both unexpected and weirdly emotional.
And I think that must be a little of what this Bennifer fervor is all about. The nostalgia for an earlier era, where, for some of us, things were simpler, or at least we remember it that way. It’s not lost on me that the phrase “the new normal” seems to have usurped the formerly ubiquitous “get back to normal” in the last six months or so. I don’t hear folks looking forward to getting life back to a pre-COVID existence. I’d guess that many are now accepting that that’s not going to happen. So maybe, when we see ol’ Dunkin Donuts & Cigarettes with his arms around the woman who seems never to age, we like the feeling of being transported to an untouchable time.
Or maybe we’re just suckers for a cheesy celebrity romance. Either way, this week’s prompt is about nostalgia, and I hope you enjoy it.
prompt #48:
Let’s allow ourselves to indulge and be nostalgic. Pick a time in your life to imbue with the hazy tinge of rose-colored glasses. Take your timer, set it for five minutes, and reminisce. There’s no shame in romanticizing a time in your life for a little bit. What do you miss about it? Place yourself right back there and explore what used to be.
If you’re feeling a little cynical (or realistic), you can also reflect on what wasn’t so great about that time, too. But you can keep it strictly nostalgic if you prefer. When you’re done with your five minutes, read over what you’ve written and see if you’d like to expand, transform, or shift what you’ve written. Then, if you’d like, send me your piece to share in next week’s newsletter.
ashley's piece:
I can’t quite touch these memories anymore.
I sorted through them so frequently in the intervening years that I must have lost the true memories long ago.
That’s what happens in our brains, you know.
We remember the remembering,
rewriting the story over itself,
like a game of telephone,
shifting in each retelling,
until you’ve got something brand new at the end,
the original lost long ago.
So what should I do?
To hold on to the truth?
Never remember, so at least it’s preserved, though never recalled, locked up tight somewhere in a vault, slowly dissipating into vapor?
Lost anyways.
No.
I write these things down,
in hopes of keeping them as real as they can be,
though we all know
the writing is its own form of rewriting.
It’s just the best I’ve got.