Blog: Ramblings and Rants

Happy Bastille Day! Happy birthday, Pam!

I was happily working when my random MP3 play began strumming out the sadly melodic notes of Nickelback’s “Photograph.” It got me thinking and oscillating between joy, longing, sadness, fondness, reluctance, acceptance, and nostalgia.

As the song is still in heavy rotation on top 40 radio stations, I see plenty of people singing along in their cars, front yards, or even standing on line at the bank. Most of those people smile, content in the nature of the song as upbeat and warming. It isn’t.

Listen to the lyrics. It’s a deeply emotional song about letting go of one’s past.

It’s hard to say it / time to say it / good-bye / good-bye

The song accounts the emotional ordeal, a moment in time, faced eventually by everyone who has left home. Distance can cool even the most passionate relationship, suck the comfort from any intimacy. Bestest friends who share each other’s deepest secrets, can suddenly realize that they haven’t shared secrets in many years, and that what they once knew, no longer has relevance.

Everyone faces good-byes, but for someone like me, who has left home and gone wandering, there are frequently more good-byes than good-to-see-you-agains. Stay in your home town, and you stay and grow with the same people; good-byes are fewer and less frequent. Move away, however, and keep on moving to different places, and the good-byes pile up.

That’s a tough song for me. More than a decade past my high school days, I’ve said good-bye to some old friends, but with others, I’m not ready to admit closure just yet. Saying good-bye is a hard thing, and people don’t do it easily. A small, naive part of us always longs to return to the moments of the past and the people and places who made up those moments. That spark of innocence freezes those people and places in time, refusing to recognize that they, like we, have moved on and formed new moments. Like everyone else, I have that spark of naivete fooling my heart into remembering Brad, Jennifer, Jenny, Carla, Terri, Johnny, Chris B, Debra, Dawn, Naomi, Chellie, Odette, Elaine, Chuck, Jason, and a dozen others exactly as they were in high school, as if they did not exist but suspended inanimately in my memory, waiting for me to restore them to exactly the same state when I wish to relive our moments together. Of course, it’s not like that.

Carla got married, had children, and divorced. She was my first, you see, and there’s never a way to say good-bye to someone like that, not all the way. I was not her first, so I am not as well cemented in her memory.

Odette disappeared into a bottle. After his father died, so did Johnny.

Elaine leaped into so many men’s beds that I eventually lost sight of her, hopping under the covers on the horizon.

I saw Brad five years ago, just before I moved to Oregon. I tried to say good-bye to him then, but it didn’t seem as final as it should have.

I still keep in touch with Chris B once in a while, but we haven’t seen each other in six years.

I hear Debra, arguably the most level-headed of us, got married and lives in the same town somewhere—that town being Lakeland, Florida, where most of graduated from Lake Gibson High School.

Someone told me Chuck is doing time in Tallahassee for drug trafficking.

Jennifer, the first girl I ever kissed, is brought pointedly to mind by the lyrics of “Photograph.” (Coincidentally, Def Leppard’s “Photograph” also reminds me of her.) Last I heard, Jennifer was doing just fine, married, I think. She’s the kind of person that wouldn’t settle for good-enough, and I wish her the best of everything.

Jason and I, once best friends, had a falling out about his wife, whom I had been seeing when he started up with her. They’re married now. Between the situation back then, as well as all the imagined justifications we’ve heaped upon the reality, we haven’t spoken in ten years.

Despite immolating desire and a few attempts at correspondance, Terri I found out we didn’t really have much in common once we put our clothes on.

Dawn and I were penpals for a while, never meeting in person, but getting pretty close through letters and drawings. She’s a famous painter now, with her own Website.

Naomi, aka Jasmine, and I were also penpals. With both of us moving around, losing touch was easier than it should have been. The same is true of penpals Chellie and Wendy, whom I also miss intensely. Chellie became a mom, but we lost touch when she fell in with some bad people. Wendy, whom I have met in person, got married and went back to school to become a doctor. I hope she followed through; she was a fantastically compassionate nurse.

Other people I miss, not named here, were drawn away from me by time, our careers, families, or travel.

As the song goes, it’s time to say it. I recognize that. And, to some of the above, I have already said good-bye, at least within the confines of my heart, if not within their earshot. Others, though, still tug at my soul. I’m not quite ready to say good-bye to them yet, to squelch that little spark of naivete that keeps them alive and frozen in my memories. Foolish and naive as it is, there’s a part of my being that believes I’ll find these people again, that they’ll greet me with hugs, kisses, and a mischievous plan to get us all into trouble—just like the old days.

If you happen to be reading this, wondering if the 7-year old picture in the top-left corner is a particular person you once knew, let me make it easy. When I was in high school, and for a time afterward, I went by my middle name, Scott. Throughout school I also alternated my last name between my father’s, Burke, and step-father’s, Cardarelli (and occassionally hyphenated them both as Burke-Cardarelli). So, if you know a Scott Burke (or P. Scott Burke) or Scott Cardarelli who looks kind of like the picture up there, then you’re probably thinking of me.

Drop me a line, let me know what you’re up to and how you’ve been. I’ll welcome the contact, even if we’ve both already said good-bye to who we knew in the past.