Recently, it seems my soul and imagination have wanted to be elsewhere, and I've been trying to figure out where that is. I don't mean anything morbid by that. Just that nostalgic longing you get from time to time, and the feeling that if you could just go back to a certain place or time, things would click, even if you could only do it for a day. As far as I could calculate, the place and time I am longing for today is Sarit Centre, Westlands, Nairobi, roughly 1993, by the popcorn shop that probably isn't there any longer. It was one of the entrances to the mall, and it always signified escape for me, if only for a moment. Video City was straight ahead, but as it was an entrance, all around were options.
Today after lunch I sat at my desk looking at a satellite image of Westlands, and trying to remember exactly what the drive looked like when I would drive from our former home in Westlands to Rusinga School, my elementary school alma mater. I knew it wouldn't work, but I typed in a directions request on Google maps: From: 13800 Biola Ave, La Mirada, CA 90639, To: Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya.
Even Google couldn't tell me my way back to where I long to be.

"Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places"

Ok, so I visited a high school campus today, which I rarely do, so I may be overly morose and drunk on nostalgia, but the phrase does ring true. I stayed up a little bit tonight looking at an old high school yearbook. I cannot say that I've had the experience of going back to visit now that I know what I received in that time. Truly, I am now in a far away place.
But all the faces and places in the pictures draw me there mentally; how has it changed? How have I changed? I look in the mirror. I'm a different man now, yet those echoes of that time still reverberate in the framework of my face. How much changing have I left to do before I am that final creature?
Praise God things move forward. I remember standing there in front of the school, last day on campus, or whatever we called the school property back then. I would never have let you go, Rosslyn, had it been up to choice. I would never have sought to know new people, to grow.
And yet, praise God the memories remain. You who I've known since that time were some of the most influential in my life. Sometimes looking back serves as a better guide forward than all the road maps in the world. I noticed a bumper sticker on a car parked near mine today. It said, "Remember who you wanted to be..."
For me, tonight, the scent of the past is strong.

49 weeks, 2 days, 32 minutes.
That's how much time, cumulative, I've spent on our schools email/bulletin board system.
If virtual time were money, I'd be going to the bank.