Empty
London, ON, February 2008
An old classroom in a school that no longer exists. A place where our kids learned their earliest lessons, now sold, gutted, renovated and unrecognizable as the humble former library building that used to be their home away from home. It exists now only as a memory, and the kids who studied here have since moved to a spanking new building, built just for them, nearby.
As I look at my children's old classroom, I think about places similar to this that housed my own childhood. They, too, are now gone or repurposed. I guess nothing is ever truly permanent, that every place that matters will eventually be abandoned to time, remembered only in images and words, if at all.
Your turn: Why we look back. Please discuss. (And if you haven't shared your "abandoned" vision for this week's Thematic Photographic, please click here.)
Wow, and I was just wondering where I could find a good hookah.
ReplyDeleteLooking back keeps us grounded, reminds us where we came from. Sometimes that's even a good thing for those who came from horrible places in the past. But only if the present is a better place.
Like it had to be for these guys:
Thematic Photographic 62: "Abandoned" v.6.0 - "Someone Will Come"
I guess it's time for me to take up a new hobby.
ReplyDeleteI caught another piece of comment spam from this moron in my filter, but this one slipped through as it was directed at a recent post. I'm inclined to keep it as an example of the seamy underbelly that continues to fester online.
I guess everyone, even a hookah pitchdoofus, needs to look back at some point.
Carmi ~ This photo looks remarkably like the classrooms I spent my elementary school years in. ~ jb///
ReplyDeleteI look back on occasion and am always glad some of my touch stones are close at hand.
ReplyDeleteFor example, my first school.
I motorcycled through Burgessville recently (60 km. from London), my first home town, and took pictures of 'birdhouses for sale' in front of the first house I lived in (birth to age six) and first school.
A flood of memories filled my mind and I later connected with a childhood pal.
I'll continue to look and go back to rediscover hidden gems. It takes some sorting, but our maturity and experience will help with the task.
http://itstrikesmefunny.blogspot.com/2009/08/memory-lane-my-dad-pulled-out-pigs.html
Well done, Carmi.
Cheers,
GAH
The other day I was walking past some used furniture stores and I happened to see a set of old wood and metal school desks, just like in elementary school. I remembered vividly hhow it was to sit behind them.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know why we look back
ReplyDeleteI only know why i look back...and i just know it's because i had a brilliant childhood. It was a time of certainty- I mean, I always knew my Mum would have tea ready for us. There was no dount about that at all.
there was no doubt ( for me anyway) that my folks loved me, wanted me, wantde the very best for me and yet, would love me whatever and however I turned out.
But between there and adult hood, lurks the great sea of image, friendships and dating... pulsating music and soaring hormones.
And in all that soup of teenage angst lurk huge sharks of uncertainty and doubt.
For me....that era divided the certainty form the uncertainty.
So me?
Whilst I avoid ( as the plague) anything that even looks like the uncertainty of my teenage years.....yes I do look back on snatches of my childhood and i do it in the hope that i can maybe recapture excatly what it was that brought sunshine and happiness so seemlessly into my life.