Time and Transience

Isn't it strange and wonderful at the same time how quickly some things disappear without a trace? How things that were laughed at yesterday are suddenly on everyone's lips?

I still remember it as if it happened only recently and not already in 2009.

A couple of classmates and I had bought glasses without prescription lenses. In a shop that said goodbye to Würzburg's city centre long ago. When we sat in the school theatre with these so-called "pieces of jewellery", we were laughed at by the row in front of us.

"What kind of weird stuff are you wearing?", the others asked.

It didn't take long before the "nerd glasses" made their way into the pop culture of the time and everyone was walking around like that – and no, I didn't feel like a pioneer. I felt rather taken the piss out of. Perhaps not like the lady at directory enquiries when I asked her for my own number, but close.

I have no idea who decided that what had been considered odd a few months before was suddenly all the rage. But well, every year a new fad sweeps through town, doesn't it?

Another time a teacher told us that we would be ashamed in a few years when we saw old class photos and saw how we dressed back then. I let this statement sink in for a moment. Then I looked around the room and realised… wait a minute, I'm already ashamed now!

"Buffalo" shoes. Paisley scarves. Skinny jeans.

Yes, that was the low point. Only cardboard has even less taste – and good taste not at all…

And yet I long for that time.

Often I then imagine that everything was simpler back then, like so many people over 20.

My reason tells me that can't be true: that men who showered more than twice a week were called metrosexual. That the day was ruined if I didn't get a crush back on schülerVZ. That everyone had the latest iPod, whilst I was still limited to CDs from the city library.

Nostalgia is a strange feeling.

It lets us see all the things that were so unpleasant back then in a different light. Similar to the lenses of rose-tinted glasses that we wear at the beginning of a new love affair. Everything feels wonderful. Except that instead we're looking back and not forward.

But who likes that? After all, sitting in front are the grumpy others who will laugh at you for exactly these glasses.

"Don't live in the past", they tell me then. But where else? Where is life cheaper than in familiar memories? In Steinbachtal? Certainly not…

Accordingly… Even if there are the hippest smartwatches these days.

Time – can only be measured. Stopped – you cannot.

You can try to save it. But don't those who try to do exactly that always seem the most hectic? As if they had the least of it? Even though they should have so much of it now?

Usain Bolt will catch up with you. Time? Too.

Until then?

I will continue to think of the year 2009. Of the teacher who noticed our bad taste even back then.

And of the wonderful certainty. That all of that is past and new things will come and may come.

New terrible things. Even worse clothing. Even more banal facial jewellery without prescription lenses.

But also much beauty.