TBT #90: Synecdoche

I’ve been very nostalgic lately and I’m sorry for that. I know you don’t really like to talk much about the old times and that’s fine — I don’t really want to talk about them either. They’re in the past and I know that. They’re history. They’re done. They’re finito. I don’t pine anymore. Not for you. Sometimes I think you think that I do still think that way about you, if you can follow me there. I know it’s complicated but I kind of like that. We were complicated, too, weren’t we? Way back when? We always tried to find a place that was just simple and easy and comfortable but it was always always always complicated. That used to drive me crazy.

But you’re right. You’re right now and you were right when you left. It wasn’t good for either of us. And so I don’t pine for you. But nostalgia, you know, that’s different. It’s not a longing for the past. It’s just remembering. I don’t want to go back there — and I want to stress that again because you keep looking at me like that — but I would like to remember. I just want to be able to think of those things we did and we felt and we had and not, you know, have holes. Gaps. I want to remember completely.

We were in the same English class, you know. First semester. We didn’t really become friends until after that, but I remember noticing you in class a couple of times. I always sat in the back, scribbling palm trees and m-shaped birds on landscapes capped with a smiling sun wearing sunglasses. I always loved that stuff. The sun with the sunglasses, I mean — it’s still a really funny concept if you think about it — not the class itself. I hated the class so much. Damn professor would spend hours harping about adverbs and hours and how to properly research an essay. Can you believe they made us take a tour of the goddamn library? That sucked.

No, you’re right. I didn’t really go to that class ever. I skipped it a lot. But, still, I went a couple of times. And I could tell it sucked. Just from that.

There was one thing I liked, though, and this is where the nostalgia comes in. I have no desire to remember much about that class we took together. It has nothing to do with who you and I became later on, if you know what I mean. All that stuff with the drinking and jealousy and Marcus at the party and picnics in the park. I remember all of that vividly enough — some of it too vividly, to be honest. I can still smell the grass clippings and hear the car door slam and feel your hand slap across my face. I’m good with all of that.

It’s rhetoric I want to know about. Because this has been driving me crazy. Someone asked me the other day what my favourite kind of figure of speech was. Don’t ask why it’s just sort of this new girl I’m seeing. It’s pretty serious but I know you don’t really want to talk about that. We’re not friends enough for that yet. But anyway, she asked out of the blue and all I could think of was: fuck. Fuck, you know, is all I could think.

You’re laughing but it’s true. I just kept thinking about how I used to know ALL of them. Like I used to know what accumulatio and paralipsis were. And all because that professor bitch made us take a test on them in that class, remember? It wasn’t enough to waste a lecture going over these utterly worthless labels, instead we actually had to study and memorize the fucking things.

I only remember the easy ones. I remember alliteration, of course, because it’s so simple. And I remember spoonerism because it has a funny name and a funny definition. But everything beyond that? Just gone. Lost. All I could think of, when this girl — the girl I’m seeing; my girlfriend — asked me the question, was pathetic fallacy, and that’s the answer I gave her. And, thinking about that now, that’s just — forgive me — pathetic. Nobody really likes the pathetic fallacy. It’s boring and pretty stupid. Like, “Oh no, the character is sad so it is raining.” What kind of bullshit is that? That never happens. Not to me anyway. For me it’s usually the goddamn opposite in fact: which means it’s, what, an apathetic fallacy? I have no idea how this stuff works.

I remember it was so beautiful that fucking day in the park.

My real favourite was the one I just can’t remember the name of. And I thought, you know, that maybe you could help me, since you took the same class and whatever. It’s the one where you use the part to represent the whole. Like calling a car the ‘wheels’ or… well, I can’t think of another example. That was the one they gave us. I’m sure there are about ninety other examples. Like when I call my brother a dick. That would be another one, right? Cruder, though. They didn’t use that in class.

But I can’t remember what you CALL that. And I’ve looked it up, you know. I looked all over the internet but I just could not find the right search term. Must have spent hours one night just browsing through a whole bunch of pages on grammar and parts of speech but for some reason it was just not working out for me. I couldn’t find the answer. And it drove me crazy — it is STILL driving me crazy — to not know what to call this.

It’s such a stupid thing to talk to you about, I know, because odds are she — the girl — doesn’t even care about it anymore, but I thought it would be a nice thing for us to talk about. I am really glad we do this, you know, talk like this, even after everything that happened. It’s good to get past the blame and the bad times and just focus on, well, what we have now. And it’s pretty good, isn’t it? Sitting here, being nostalgic but not pining, talking openly about our lives — I knew we could do it; I really did — and just having a great time. Together, you and I, like all that shit never happened.

So I’m sorry that it took me so long to ask you this one question. I probably could have gotten there faster but it seemed like a more complicated question a few minutes ago than it does now. I was trying, you know, to think about why that figure of speech appealed to me. Why the part representing the whole was something I, well, almost identify with, if that makes any sense. It’s like I understand how a small part of something big can come to define that something big. Does that say something about me? About my personality?

You probably don’t have a lot to say about that. Considering what you did to me: I’ve changed a lot since that. For the better, for sure.

No. No, I didn’t mean it that way. Seriously. I’m just being nostalgic. Pretend I’m able to ask a question straightforwardly. Pretend I don’t ramble and go on tangents and get hideously off track. Pretend I’m just a guy, you know, you met on the street, and he’s asking you this question — this pretty basic question — about grammar. He just wants to know this one thing about grammar. Just pretend I’m him, and that it’s that simple.

I’ll understand if you can’t do it.