Style Track

Each year a photo is taken of the high-school graduating class, and you can see the current trends in hairstyle and clothing. Ten years pass, and there is usually a reunion photo, showing the updated styles.

What gets me is when the classmates with similar hairstyles, although separated by distance, will often end up with the same hairstyle.

I suppose this could be just the overwhelming pressure of mass media, targeting a frequency I don't perceive, that affects graduates of the same age.

Pop Culture pushes our perceptions here and there, but we are the ones that make the ultimate choice as to our appearance. Or are we? Is there something even more sinister, an unknown force that already has us in its grip? ...A demonic waste-product of Popular Culture that has infiltrated our decision making processes. I call this the "style track".

If you meet up with someone from your generation, and you see the similarity, run! Fight! Flee! Change! Dig deep!

Amid the Noise and Haste

Got to a box while cleaning, and inside was my high school yearbook.  

I know my high school experience wasn't the greatest of my life.  I was in a state of angst up to transferring to a new school in 11th grade, and had no friends for the first 3 months there.  But since then, time has passed.  I sat looking back at the experience with a sense of...not nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a feeling on the surface.  What I got was something so much deeper.  Reading the comments people had written, I began to embody the self I was in the 1990's.   This dusty part of my memory was like one of the boxes, just waiting there for me to delve into.  I've gotten this kind of memory before.  Every memory has its own distinct flavor, and I could taste what it felt like to be that kid.  It was refreshing.  I began at once to want to go running, and to do ridiculous amounts of math.  

So I can see why people sigh longingly over their high school years.  I think some part of my brain has transferred all these memories into a 'good' folder.  Egocentrically, I can say 'this is part of what made ME, so of course it's good.'  However, even stuff I went through 2 years ago, or 6 months ago, have their own memory-taste.  Call it place-ness or once-ness...whatever.  I am not in the best place I've ever been in my life (I mean it's okay...), yet I expect the overall sensations of this moment will seem good when I look back on them 10 years from now.