I'm linked by history, to my hidden ancestors, and their hidden traumas which still live on within me, within the survivors of those who were shipped across the seas to toil the fields for others’ gain. While my ancestors past is lost, my immediate family’s past is found now in small square Instamatic photographs and fading Polaroids of family, friends and Prince our dog. Images of strangely clad people, younger, stronger, and alive, all photographed in a house that doesn't exist anymore. Telling stories from the past to people in the present who fear the coming future.
Yes, all hail time, that changer of context and provider of new meaning - if only via nostalgia.
We all find ways to heal those wounds, of course, even if they are wounds which our journeys into nostalgia and the past trigger again and again. More so as we age, and we sail further away from the shores of certainty, which the past once provided, and we find ourselves caught in the headlights of fate. Not sure whether to jump back into the past and repeat ourselves or to take that leap of faith and hope that the future will carry us home to where we belong.
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