this double dutch bus is my ride

Speeding down the sidewalk came a blur of yellow, red, and what looked like the ugliest haircut of the 80s. This blur, was but a little boy sporting his “bowl-cut”, riding down the rocky patch of his parents house. On it he rode a Fischer Price Bus, and perhaps the happiest grin in the world. This little boy, was me.

My greatest moments of nostalgia always bring me back to my childhood of living on a ranch. Although not much of my childhood was spanned there, I remember it as if it encompasses every moment of my distant past. That particular day, my siblings and I just finished swimming in a frog-infested pool. The pool for the most part, was ripe with green algae and was lined with the roughest walls ever to grace a swimming pool, which in turn, gave me many a raspberry. However, the sheer joy of living a careless life, swept away the pain of any cuts and bruises that I might have received. If I sit back and drift gently into a lucid state, I can still smell the clover-laced grass with bees humming vigorously about, while memories of the chicken coop, among other barn animals fills my senses. I was perhaps a fortunate child; to be running about and exercising my skinny little legs around the sloping hills of the ranch. For those glorious years I discovered a beautiful world of nature, full of life and adventure, as opposed to a life attached to the Nintendo.

My experience with nostalgia it seems is also shared by a character in Ishiguro’s novel, Artist of the Floating World. The main character Ono, has reasons similar to my own, in that he wishes for the ‘good ol’ days’. With Ono’s predicament, he is disturbed by the social and political changes that Japan has undergone. In this new era, Japan’s national identity has conformed to the beat of the war drum. This transformation has permeated into his society, and into his love of art. It is this influence of militaristic art which fuels Ono’s desire for times past. Before the War, Ono felt free to be the painter that he was, free of propaganda, and free of conformity. But now he feels in a way, prisoner to the demands of his nation and the duties that he feels he must fulfill as a nationalist.

I cannot not remember the last time I felt such cheery indulgence in the simple pleasures of life. Perhaps this is something most people feel, the longing to be like a child again. For me, it is my childhood which holds such powerful nostalgic imagery. In a way, one could reason that retreating into nostalgic moments leads to escapism, which is interpreted as a bad thing. However, I do not believe that all escapism is wrong, but sometimes rather necessary. I have often been called a day-dreamer and one who is often in my own world. With this said, maybe I am not the best candidate to be making a proposition for healthy day-dreaming. Despite this, I believe even the most focused people occasionally spend their time drifting off to a place where a heightened, blissful state of mind consumes them. Most of us can agree that our childhood was filled with day-dreaming and wasting the days away. Maybe this is exactly how it should be. Maybe all of us are like Ono, constrained by the pressures of the world to conform, when we should be living from the center of our heart.