Nostalgia Read Online Free Page A

past disappears. History gets rewritten, the dissenters say. But does history matter? In the cosmopolitan world that’s now evolving without deep memory, conflict is reduced. People—and nations—without long, painful memories are free of guilt. They fight less.
    But then sometimes an odd scrap of memory, an innocuous ribbon of thought, worms itself out into the conscious mind. Something completely unrelated to the person that is currently you begins to toy with your thoughts. Then you must hurry and see someone like me.
    Who was Presley before he became Presley? Futile question, because according to the privacy laws not even the government keeps this information. After a grace period of a few weeks the discarded self is destroyed. So we are told—but is any data actually thrown away? Perhaps there exist filescontaining discarded stubs of personalities the way drawers used to be kept in the past filled with amputated limbs. If they exist, nobody wants to know. There is no going back.
    There is always the temptation when treating an attack of Nostalgia to peep further into an intriguing, hidden past and even to speculate. It should be resisted; but at the same time, to successfully close off a leak one needs to understand it—to probe it. There’s a fine line here.
    I stared long and hard at that Profile. There was something that threatened to overrun it from behind, destroy that cubistic composition, like a painting underneath a painting that threatens to bleed out and consume both. What was the painting behind this painting? Every published profile harbours clues from a past. What were they in this case? Beethoven, Wagner, and Conrad? War games? Fighting barbarians? Every profile also attempts to hide those clues.
    Aboubakar Touré. Lanky African in dashing robes and trademark embroidered skullcap, leaning forward as he sings, arms embracing the crowds like the wings of an angel. The young love him—in any language. He is French Malian. Could this charismatic entertainer be another stray thread—both he and the lion coming from Africa? There was the Afro hair too.
    Presley Smith’s selected photos. I can recall three of them, prominently posted.
    1. Presley is in combat dress, in a combat park, head shaved, posed with a light automatic rifle held in the right arm and resting on his shoulder. Ready to hunt down theBarbarians, presumably. He’s smiling, posing. Linked to a video clip.
    2. Presley, head and shoulders. He has a reserved sort of grin, unlike the previous photo, and looks more like the patient who came to see me.
    3. Aboubakar Touré onstage in New York’s Central Park. Tens of thousands of young people, arms raised in adulation. Linked to a video clip.
    Here I am, be my bud.
I clicked, Yes, I’ll be your bud. The lion had awoken in his mind, and he needed me.
    —
    Holly Chu’s Profile was virgin by contrast. The soundtrack was by the Congolese Jean Bosco. The girl in the picture looked younger than on TV, had partly Asian features, with straight brown hair, and was somewhat dark skinned. She’d reported previously from India, Kuwait, and behind the Border—mostly Maskinia but also Bimaru. Photos from a class reunion, McGill. Photos with children in Maskinia, in which she wore a flak jacket. Photo with Jean Bosco in which she wore a light blue dress with red flowers. A person with a conscience, then.
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There was an invitation to sign a petition:
Bring Down the Border! OWEO—One World for Every One!
And look where that got you, I couldn’t help murmuring, then chided myself.
    Born in Berkeley, where her father Kelvin was a professor of chemistry, and mother Pearl was a violinist in the San Francisco Orchestra. Three younger siblings, Jennifer,Monty, and Frank, all talented in music and science. Monty an absolute genius—in what field, Holly didn’t say. She was the dumbfuck of the family, for which she apologized to them.
Sorry Mom and Dad!