So a few years back I went to Budapest for my best friend's engagement party, and the city is simply stunning in late September, early October. Tourists are gone, trees are turning, and the mist covers everything in the mornings. We slept in boat on the Danube, drank insanely good wine and ate goose liver on everything. We had been out to a very excellent club on the Saturday, dancing our asses off to good house music but the piece de resistance was a broken down, bombed out, graffitied up pub/club we went to on a Monday night. The kind of place that I used to love in the 80's and early 90's when I was a young man, early 20's.
I was dancing with the late teens and early 20's guys and gals in the courtyard, quite drunk, still residually stoned from the weekend and the Smiths "How Soon is Now" came on. I started to sign along, and due to my being loud and drunk, it took me the first verse to open my eyes and realize by seeing that EVERYONE else was singing too. Eastern Europe is still hungry, and reaching out from the long darkness of communism, so the urgency of the lyrics, the angst and the fact that everyone looked like I did those many years ago lifted me into the air and for a shining moment, I was 20 something me, but without the angst, fear, insecurity and pain.
They say you can't travel in time, but you can. You just need to be ready to let the wrinkles take you there. Nostalgia is great, but revival is better. My older soul entered my younger body from one point in space time to another. Someone saw me crying and just smiled and gave the "thumbs up". I wish I could have stayed in that moment for the rest of my life. Bittersweet but oh so pure and oh so right.
