retrospection

i watched the time traveller's wife this weekend.

and had to try hard not to blubber and sob as the credits came up in a blurry haze.

i remember thinking the story was quite sad when i read the book, but the despair of the protaganists' unusual and painful situation just became more real and profound on the screen.

or something.

maybe it's because i liked the actors, or could actually appreciate in real time the disjunction between their meetings, which take place in various and unpredictable periods of time.

it's probably also because i enjoyed the setting.

the lake michigan side windy chicago city.

a city i only visited once, for a weekend, almost four years ago.

before i'd even finished reading the book by the same title, a book i'd bought with an exclusive books voucher casey gave me just before i left on the plane to JFK.

for four months away.

in the USA.

it doesn't seem like such a long time ago, but like the movie suggests, even the shortest durations of time travel can be significant.

i didn't fade unintentionally into the background, and end up in places i'd visited before, more than once.

but, like everyone else who has left their comfort zone, and experienced a different place, a different time zone, i think i've time travelled to an extent too.

and do, a little bit, every day.

almost every place i drive past or notice in my hometown city holds some kind of sentimental significance or associated memory.

and sometimes my memory is better than most people's, as i am regularly reminded when other people don't remember the same meetings, conversations, events, and details.

even though i remember them.

clearly.

or maybe it's just because i choose to remember.

because remembering is something i do, so like the characters of henry and alba in the movie, sometimes i travel back and forth in time too.

in my own head.

like when i walked through the weeping willow-lined magnolia dell park on charles street on saturday afternoon, and noticed the scattering almost-frogs in the algae-infested water of the pond.

a pond where as kids we used to float makeshift boats and catch the squirmy tailed tadpoles at various stages of their life-cycles.

a park where embarrassing footage of me pretending to be a CNN reporter at the age of 5 was taken.

a park we used to visit to swing on the metal swings, which got super hot-to-the-touch in the midday heat of the latter part of the year.

the kind of heat that would have heated them up on saturday afternoon too, except now they are more practically and comfortably upholstered in leather seat-swinging strips.

still in the same place, next to the same model-plane jungle gym and the same see-saw and wobbly train-thing.

at the other end of the same once-a-month art in the park section, which displays the same canvas styles, strokes and compositions.

on the other side of the stream from the same open air-market that sells the same mirror-mosaic crosses, wrought-iron furnishings and thick, chunky silver/pewter jewellery.

displayed on velvety pin-boards.

like the same car-park craft markets that i used to frequent in primary school, to find tie-die, leather thong jewellery and fake plastic sunflowers in pots.

except this time we were looking for food, and found a namibian biltong-spiced hamburger, a ginger bread lady cookie and some not-too-crispy-and-greasy chinese spring rolls instead.

which we bought from friendly ladies behind table-clothed trestles.

and ate on the itchy green grass, under the willows, while watching a maltese poodle being pushed along on the grassy lawns.

in a pram.

it made me happy that the park is still the same, even though it doesn't have the bronze statues of peter pan and wendy like it used to.

the stone statue-bases are still there though, on opposite ends of the pond, like silent tributes to almost- forgotten memory.

similar to the characters in the time travellers wife, henry and claire, peter pan and wendy were also separated by time and age.

and in the case of magnolia dell, a murky, tadpole breeding ground.

but, in contrast to the time traveller's wife story, it was wendy that was repeatedly stolen from magnolia dell, to the extent that eventually both statues were removed permanently.

as a child i remember thinking the placement of these children's-story statues was odd, both staring at each other longingly over the pond. but now, after watching the time traveller's wife, and feeling the urge to cry uncontrollably, their placement now seems poignant.

for me, it's like an intentional tribute to the often unintentional and unbridgeable separation between people.

and today, like empty seats, the statue bases remain vacant, dismembered and stationary in magnolia dell.

quiet, rocky and bare.

maybe those statue-bases are still there to remind everyone of the story, or the naked, sad reality of theft.

or maybe it's just for others who choose to remember too.