Rediscovering narratives - in a different city by another sea

On this blog, I always refer to St Kilda as 'the city by the sea'. When I fly back to my home state of Western Australia I reassign this term of affection to its original owner, to the first town to capture my fascination and inspire flights of whimsy in the way that St Kilda, and Melbourne generally, currently does. I'm talking of course about Fremantle, the town that was the setting for so many of the adventures of my youth.

I revisited it the other day with my best friend Jess (second photo from top). As teenagers, we were such devoted disciples of this town that we created 'the Fremantle Book' to document our adventures. At the centre of this book were glued a bunch of photos taken one day when we were 14 or 15 at some of our favourite places to linger around, where we would do things like write lists of things we loved and hated (happily, the former list was ten times longer than the latter) and discuss all our big, wild dreams. Anyhow, I'm rambling (that's what blogs are for though, right? Eg. I have written before about a Freo-centric summer when I was 16/17 that was particularly magical here). A week and a half ago, Jess and I revisited this day by grabbing the SLR and recreating some of the old photos. Jess has written up this beautiful, lazy day on her new blog here.

I think that our blogs are the digital equivalent of the old books and diaries we had as teens (there was also a 'Rottnest Book' but that most certainly contains stories for another time). These are spaces where we reflect on our adventures, where we try to use words or images to capture the memories and moments of clarity before they recede into the distance as our brains become cluttered with work, day to day responsibilities and new experiences. Like trying to cup and hold water in your hand, the inevitable always happens and it slips through your fingers. Spaces like this help you delay it though, or reacquaint yourself with why days like the above were worth remembering in the first place.

Mood: Blood bank by Bon Iver, wearing a shirt with the collar turned up