The Past Is Gone

I walked past my old primary school today. I think you Americans call it Elementary School. Anyway, it's the place I stopped going to when I was eleven.

It's similar to how it was but it's not the same. They've replaced the windows, built a new classroom and taken out the shed (which I mentioned a few days back in my Steptoe & Son post).

These little pieces of school that existed in my head are gone. They don't exist in the real world, only in my mind. The reality is a building with new windows and a paranoid metal fence. And it means nothing to me. The picture in my head means everything.

Pretty soon everything changes. The years go by and the buildings fall apart and everyone looks twenty years older. And a while after that the buildings are gone and the people are too.

And you capture this image of life and you keep it in your mind because it's the only thing that's real even though it doesn't exist at all.

You can get married or find a soulmate, you can even talk to someone you knew when you were small. But they saw something else. Their lives are a photograph of a place of a town that existed once, and just for a while.

Nothing lasts. It evaporates into thin air. And then it's someone else's turn.

Care to share?

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