What Was, and What Is – But What Will Be?

This is a story of my night, my present, our collective present, of my past, our collective past, and our collective future.

I played a video game for about an hour this evening, trying to unwind from the day. Feeling the pains in my neck, the lower back pain which I have always had to some extent but that was exacerbated by 10 years of a physically demanding job at a grocery store, and feeling the emotional exhaustion of life under capitalism. Trying to relax into my game, but not succeeding. So I decided I needed to go out for a bit. Stretch my legs, get some air, get out of this condo in which I currently reside, but do not call home. The place in which I grew up, but had no desire to return to, that is filled with the ghosts of the past, a sort-of place of limbo.

So I went out for a walk, one that unexpectedly turned into a very long walk. Maybe two or three hours long, spanning a distance of something like 4 miles. I hadn’t realized how long it had been until I had gotten home. I walked up and down the roads. Through the side streets, the neighborhoods, the alleyways, the fields and the hills. I grew up here, and walked to work about a mile away every day for nearly 10 years, until leaving the job in early 2016. Its been about 10 years since then, since I’ve walked these streets. I have been out of there as long as I was in there.

The area looks so different now, familiar, still, but different. The trees are much taller, everything is more grown in. Some places abandoned and decaying, some having seen little update since I was young – slowly aging, some having been renovated and looking more contemporary. It was a very strange experience. I remember when I was just a kid, back in the mid to late 90’s, and I explored all up and down here with my bike. The trees were but little sticks back then, the condo developments having been brand new at the time. An attempt at providing ‘affordable’ housing, though you still needed two incomes to make the threshold, and the buildings, while offering a new start for some, a reprieve from rentals, also being made from cheap materials that are aging like milk, and governed by quite repressive and privatized homeowner’s associations.

In this area, you could see for miles when you climbed a hill here in the late 90’s. Having been so new, the area was not very developed, so the distance visible was vast, at least as I recall it from my childhood. Most of the trees were but saplings, and the landscape itself was very raw and new, having been geoengineered by the large-scale construction process. The hills themselves but artificial creations sculpted out of the construction process, molting the natural landscape into something new.

Then, ahead to the 2010’s, I walked outside a lot at night, as I’ve always liked the nighttime, enjoyed the quietness, the tranquility of it. The trees were mid-growth then. But in the here and now, everything looks different from what I recall even in that time period. This isn’t a bad thing to me, just a new thing. A surreal experience I would say. It offers an opportunity of rediscovery, as the future always has the potential for healing.

I know some people don’t like change, and long for ”the old days” with nostalgia, but I’ve never really been like that. That sort of thinking, in my view, kind of flattens things into either a distorted sentimentally positive recollection, one that idealizes a past that never really existed – that notion that is typically associated with nostalgia, or into despair. This was neither for me. The trees having a more “old growth” look to them now is a nice feature. The street lights are more vibrant now, being LED’s rather than old flickery incandescent bulbs. The sidewalks redone, being more smooth and of a seemingly better quality. Can you imagine what possibilities a socialist society could bestow upon it? I remember the past, yes, but almost as a reclamation, of “holding” the past and the present side by side, so as to not flatten them into nostalgia or despair. Seeing what was and what is, simultaneously, and imagining what could be still. Projecting into the future what possibilities may yet await us.

As I walked these streets, I had a ‘memory’ from when I was a kid. I’ve remembered this a few times before, but always thought it was a dream. In this dream, I was on my bike exploring the nearby neighborhood, and came upon a particular hill. From this hill, recalled as taller than others in the area, you could see very far, for miles. It offered a panoramic view of the surroundings. Some mountains were just barely visible in the far distance, and the vibrant sunset could be seen from here in beautiful yellows and oranges and reds – as far as you could see. A field lay out in front of the hill, full of wild plants, bushes, likely home to many animals. The scene was always vivid. I remembered this as I walked, and it happened to be as I neared the area I associated with this dream/memory.

So I decided to take some extra time and go check it out, walk through that area and see if it was really there, or if it was just a childhood dream – the kind you remember vividly as though it occurred, but yet know it was just a dream. As I walked, I checked out one spot I thought might have been the one, but it didn’t really fit the memory. It was nice enough view, I could see and imagine how it may have looked long ago, there now being a development of large bougie mcmansion-style houses visible there which hadn’t been long ago, where there once was a field, or a farm, or a forest. But it didn’t have the same “vibe” nor the same look as the memory I had. So I walked on.

I wasn’t quite sure where I was going, nor where exactly I was. Though I could easily pull out my phone now and check the GPS map, I kept on without it, exploring more naturally, trying to be present in the moment rather than divide my attention with my device. As I walked and came around a corner, I saw another hill. There was a relatively newly paved basketball court here preceding the hilltop. As I walked past this basketball court, I started to see my old workplace, a large grocery store, right nearby and realized where I was. I climbed up to the top.

Then, it hit me. This was it. This was the hilltop that I remembered from my childhood. This was the spot where you could see so far, that I remembered as beautiful. It looked different now, of course, the trees much taller all around, not really able to see into a vast distance as before. A relatively newly built fenced-in recycling bin enclosure now nearby, with LED lights and a push-button coded entry door. Gatekeeping at its finest, literally and figuratively.

This was definitely the spot I remembered, despite the changes. But, the thing that stood out most to me about it? My old workplace. It was planted right on the open field that I remembered. I had walked past this spot hundreds, maybe thousands of times heading back and fourth to work, and never once walked up this particular hill, nor realized where it was and what it had meant to me long ago. So focused on getting to the workplace, which I was probably running late for. Focused on getting out of there, and heading back to rest or going out somewhere, anywhere but there, that I had missed where I was at.

But now I know. Now I remember. I plan to return and check out the sunset there tomorrow evening, see how it compares now. It blows my mind, though, that this place of tranquil beauty that I recall as having a dream-like peace to it, had turned into my old workplace. A workplace that became a source of workplace trauma and exploitation for me. A lovely field paved over with a parking lot and a cheaply constructed corporate chain store.

This was enlightening, exciting that I found the spot (and it was a real memory, not a dream!), surreal as to where it was, saddening as to its fate, and angering that this is what had become of it. Very strange to experience all at once. Completely random that I happened upon this because I decided my legs needed a stretch, and happened to go down a different path tonight; different, but familiar; that I had recalled this thing from my childhood at that moment, and actually found the spot. And that it had been right there all along, right next to the route I walked down so many times. That the place I toiled in for long exploitative shifts was the very same spot that was once a calming space.

As I walked back after that, I climbed another nearby hill on the way back. This one I had climbed many times in the years I worked over here, though it, too, was different. 10 years had changed it as well. The trees much bigger. The soil a bit more eroded. It somehow seeming darker at night in this spot now. Though the sky was mostly obscured with high-level clouds, you could tell that this was my other safe, tranquil night space. One where I would gaze out upon the stars and imagine what was out there. One where, in our early years, I had talked to my partner on the phone many times after a long and late work shift. It was a place of rest, of calm, and seemingly remained so. The feeling I had here was odd as well, though. The space still being lovely, somehow feeling more secluded now. Though the road was right nearby, the trees were huge and largely obscured it from any meaningful way of being spotted from the road. 

Yet, now, I gaze upon this tranquil view alone. No parents to return to, no neighborhood friends to tell this story to. My partner and I – having suffered from years of having no community and systemic exploitation, growing in conflict between each other and ourselves – recently also suffering a (hopefully temporary) rift, one that has led me to this place now, thus not having my partner I can talk on the phone with about this (at this time), as I once did in this spot. My own child being 10 miles away, in his own childhood home – one that I consider my home now, but one that seems so far from where I am at in this moment. A home indicative of our time, a rental unit, governed by a landlord, one that seems so distant from the dream of a home you can call your own, yet lucky to have something.

I look forward to hearing my child’s own memories akin to this experience I had tonight, ones that he forges now and in the years ahead. Hopefully hearing them in a future that has real community, a better system, a better society. A future such that he can look back on these moments and see brightness in his future as well as his past, rather than the uncertainty and soul crushing exploitation we face at this time. And so, with no one at this time to whom I can regale like a lion with this story of my discovery, I write it down.

I write it here to you, the reader, but also as a copy of this story for my own records. Writing is the best outlet I have right now, for lack of connection and growing isolation is a problem, one that many face in our society today. The alienation that capitalism breeds is insidious, and creeps into corners we barely knew we had. I think I grew sadder as I wrote this all down, as I was not feeling this alone when I got back tonight and began writing; I knew there was a loneliness, sure, but it wasn’t at the forefront. The shock of the discovery, the injustice of what had become, and also the peacefulness of the night, were at the forefront.

But now, I realize this discovery is just sequestered to myself, within my mind, and onto these typed pages. For now at least. I wonder how many others have similar experiences, and have no one to tell the tale to. Just as survival under capitalism forces us each to focus on work for wages, in a constant state of survival for ourselves and our immediate loved ones, preventing us from engaging in truly meaningful passion work, deeper connection, and greater understanding of the world around us – as well as the world within.

I hope to tell my partner of tonight’s experience when we reforge our bond, and work on maintaining a healthy relationship. But for now, I hold on to it myself, and share it here. But one human in existence, aware of this thing that was and what has become, of what it could be in a better world, yet somehow alone, lonely and alienated in a densely populated world, in a densely populated state, in an immeasurablely vast universe where anything and everything is occurring at this very moment all around us, at scales and distances we will unlikely ever be able to traverse or meaningfully comprehend.

Here I sit, at this desk (which is really just an old table), in this condo from my youth in disrepair, clearing old stuff – some junk, some memories, some antiques – the ghosts of the past, in this place I never sought to return to. On the one hand lucky to have at all, on the other, burdened with its state and existence. But it is just one root, one branch in the forest of life, not the whole story. Here, I sit. Dreaming, again, of a better world, of a better future for all. It is not just possible to achieve, but absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet, the survival of each and every one of us – without and within, the survival of our loved ones, and the survival of those little tranquil moments in time – those which stand out long into the future – to not be crushed into a parking lot of exploitation by an omnipresent and indifferent system that is capitalism. More than that, we need to move beyond survival. We all deserve better. We all deserve an existence that is meaningful, and fulfilling, and loving. One that does not pit us against one another at every turn, or sully our private and precious moments unnecessarily. Let us build socialism now, and build the future that generations yet to come can look back on with pride and hope.