The Ruins of Nostalgia 45

We traveled to a walled city, the kind we had seen in medieval paintings, and felt

snug at night inside the bed, which was inside a room, which was inside an

apartment, which was inside a building, which was inside the walled city. For the

first time in a long time we felt that we were inside, not outside. For the first

time in a long time we were pretty certain that we were indisputably inside. At

first we did not hear the ticking of the little plastic alarm clock, but soon we were

listening to its ticking with ever-increasing alarm, because we wanted it to be

always nighttime, with the gates to the city shut and us snug inside the walled

city, inside the building, inside the apartment, inside the room, inside the bed,

inside the walled city of our mind. In the daytime, the gates to the city would be

flung open, and the inside would no longer be clearly demarcated from the outside.

In the daytime, the gates would be flung open, and we would remember that the

gates had always been shut in the medieval paintings. We did not know who had

the heavy golden key to the city. Lying awake in the bed all night it was hard to

remember what being outside the walled city had felt like. We tossed the plastic

alarm clock out the window, but could still hear it ticking from beyond the wall of

the city. We pictured the long verdigris rampart descending to wherever.   *   We

wanted everyone to feel this feeling, of being inside, but the walled city was small,

and there were only so many buildings, and so many apartments, and so many

rooms, and so many beds, and so much room inside the walled city of our minds.

And anyway, after two ecstatic, sleepless nights inside, someone replaced the

alarm clock, and then we too found ourselves once again indisputably outside,

headed home to our habitual vigilance in the exposed ruins of nostalgia.