Self-Inflicted Sadism (Oh wait! There's a word for that . . .) ahem, Masochism

Nostalgia hurts. If you've got an emotional wound that you want to neatly seal itself at the edges and disappear with only a hint of scar--no infection, no gangrene, because we know that infection and gangrene are bad--live in the present. Stay firmly entrenched in the now. Dig yourself an at-this-minute foxhole and hunker down! It's the only way to stay safe.

Of course, this whole living-in-the-present thing does involve some tightrope acrobatics. Nothing too big--a little turn of the head to the past here, a nod to the future there. But you need to perform these maneuvers strictly from where you stand. In the present. With a nod of acknowledgement to the future, a glance back at the past . . . and that's all. You have to learn to let yourself glance.

It is unwise to pull out the photo albums for any more than twenty minutes at a time. In fact, twenty minutes is pushing it. You've got to know your boundaries. Exceptionally strong people can elbow their way through infrequent half hour intervals, but I don't recommend it. Slightly insane people attempt to write intervals. Those who succeed show the aftereffects. (I mean, come on, have you ever read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?) *Note: I'm not egging Eggers (pardon the pun, unless you liked it--then please, don't pardon it all), he just has a different sort of thought pattern than the rest of the world.

In fact, I admire memoirists. There has to be something cleansing about the experience, or else I think fewer people would do it. I mean, I know why I read memoir: Hey, Eggers is disenchanted with his life on occasion too. And sometimes his life sucks. I'm starting to feeling a little better about myself . . . wondering if I could make money off myself somehow . . . I won't go into the whole my stream-of-consciousness bit because I will lose you somewhere around the ophthalmologist office and myself somewhere around the pining for places that don't exist (oh Stars Hollow, would that you and your inhabitants were real).

Anyway, my ultimate conclusion (to save you the mental acrobatics I would otherwise make you endure) is that video CDs from my last semester of college are bad. Very, very bad.