It's hard to express, but it's something like this: here at home, I can walk around downtown and think, well, yeah, this is where I had that strange experience in 2003, but the memory doesn't really affect me: I just keep on moving. Going back to Baltimore this weekend I would walk down a street and get stuck, thinking, in 1997 this happened here, and that happened here in 1999, and in 1990 I was right around here when. . .& etc. It was very difficult to move; difficult, I guess, to lay a new memory on top of the old ones. Every sight and sound and smell was a memory trigger, and not being there for several years only made it more intense. Each smell, each brick seemed to summon up a new memory. The underlying question here is, of course, is this only me? Or does going home again do this to everyone? Or, of course, am I haunted by the ghost of Thomas Wolfe, living as I do in his old hometown?

Never been home since leaving there in 1977, so can't say for sure. I recently came across a web site that helps people from my home town get in touch with others from there and looking over old school photos and the like brought back some really vivid memories, not only of the people in the photos, but of events that happened around those people. Maybe the memories are so strong because we have not laid any other memories over the top of them that connect with those landmarks in our database?

No, you're not alone. I'm still living in my hometown, but I had a similar experience when I went to my dad's house recently. I haven't been there in years because he moved back in with the rest of my family, but everything was remeniscent of some experience I had there.

Also bizarre was, in the vein of laying new experience over old, connecting my new geographic knowledge of the place (I wasn't of driving age the last time I was there) with my previous recollection being limited to landmarks.

I like dg's theory.

I like to place-shift when lying in bed. Sometimes very disorienting if light is coming from the wrong direction, or there are other overriding sense impressions like smells or sounds, but it can be very dramatic -- the feeling of: "just over there is one-armed peanut vendor" and "below my window is a wide-guttered street with large rats poking through waste".

That being said, it happens unintentionally sometimes, like on a certain humid night in Vancouver a few years back, when the bus I was on at night stopped in front of several shops whose signs were all in Chinese characters, with a temple next door. My head swam and I almost needed to be sick.

As for hometown -- I'm always more struck by what has changed than what has stayed the same. As my childhood mall was entirely demolished during my absence, I am now aware that an entire place only exists in my mind along with many other people of my old community.

USA SUCKS! Corporate killers! The root of all evil! Down with the Imperialst Empire!

Oh, sorry. Wrong thread. Difficult to keep track of them even in Metachat.

Damn, I was just about to agree with you, too.

For extensive reading about place and memory, may I recommend Ecotone Wiki? They're closed for editing now but all the topics are still up.

I know what you mean though. Every time I go back to Delaware (home?) I get into a very deep internal dialog and have a hard time connecting that place to who I am now. No matter how jarring it may be, it's always good thinking material. Good journeys...

Surely this experience is exagerated if one has moved around. When I moved back to Albuquerque eight months ago, it was (and still is) really weird to be just driving around and see so many things that stir up memories. I had lived in Austin for eight years and I had no memories there but the ones I was then making. It's a big change.

As for my "hometown", which is the small town I grew up in from the age of 3 to 18; it's been four years since the last time I was there, and I've only been there a few times in the last twenty years, but the experience is both slightly pleasant and slightly unpleasant. Also, I'm dating a woman right now that I went to high school with who still lives in that town. I don't have any family there, so my break with it was almost total. And it is weird, and mostly unpleasant, when hearing from her about people back there to have all those people from my childhood come back to life as real people (and not safely as people in stories I tell). So far, by the way, I've flat-out refused to go there and visit her (she's only come here).

How old are you? As you get older, it gets worse. I was born here in Albuquerque, both my parent's families are from here, and most of them are still here. I've got my own memories here that go back to the sixties. My grandfather was a prominent member of the community, and so I know (or, really, knew) a lot of the business people here--their businesses are still around, mostly.

And then there's not specific memories, but just a general sense of familiarity. That's strange to me after living in (mostly) unfamiliar cities most of my adult life. Neighborhoods here can seem deeply familiar to me, they practically scream "home".

Mostly I welcome the reconnection to my past here in Albuqerque while, in contrast, I don't welcome the reconnection to the small town (Portales). I was especially unhappy there during my teenage years, that time seems like a long, long time ago and I'd just as soon it remained a long, long time ago. I did have some fun times, and I've learned from other people that most everyone else really liked me--I was more popular than I realized--but, fuck, I hated it there.

As for hometown -- I'm always more struck by what has changed than what has stayed the same. As my childhood mall was entirely demolished during my absence, I am now aware that an entire place only exists in my mind along with many other people of my old community.

Am I the only one who finds that experience to be incredibly sad?

No - I imagine that there are lots of places like that from my childhood, too.

No, (one of) my hometown(s)* (as locquacious can attest) is totally different from what it used to be. Going back makes me want to scream sometimes, it's been so ruined--stucco nightmare; condos where there were once falling-down hamburger stands . . .

Anyway, to more braodly answer, mygothlaundry, every time I fly across the country to go home, I almost lose my mind. I feel like I go back to being who I was there, even though I'm not that person anymore, and it is very jarring--trying to communicate through about ten layers of memories and expectations.

* I moved a lot. This is the town that I lived in for a while and went to the beach in my whole life; there is family there, etc. Just to be accurate.

I just visited my hometown of Pacific, MO after living in Los Angeles for 2 years. There really isn't anything in Pacific for me besides family and geography. Most of my peers have encountered meth on unfavorable terms...not all but many.

I grew up on 4 square miles of nature reserve about an hour from St. Louis. I didn't really understand how lucky and idyllic my childhood really was until lived in a concrete jungle...

Now i live in Rocheport, MO (pop. 208) which is a very quiet river town near Columbia. I help my brother-in-law do guided canoe floats on the Missouri river, and restore local historic buildings.

I've reabsorbed Missouri again...I'm recharging...I feel good.

It's been nearly 20 years since I've lived in the area where I grew up. If I had the opportunity to visit it again, I don't know that I would. One - my childhood was not a happy one and two - it's now a fairly dangerous place.

I went back to school full-time at IU in 2001 after a five-year hiatus. I was overwhelmed by memories...every building, every street I used to go down reminded me of something that had happened the first time around. It was so odd being in the same places, the same classrooms with an entirely different group of people around me.

I have two childhood homelands I could return to; I lived in the Bay Area until I was 10, then Northern California until college. All of my family lives in Northern California, many of my high school friends and former classmates remain there as well. When I visited my former neighborhood in San Jose, I had a difficult time reconciling my childhood memories with the present condition. How could I so clearly see both the tree-house my parents built in the backyard, and the empty spot where the tree used to be? I felt as if all my memories from that place were already filled, there was no room for new ones. The romanticised view was much stronger than reality. Very disconcerting.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, and I went back for a visit last month. I didn't have a chance to hook up with many old friends, but I did a lot of hiking around and 'L' riding with my son. The thing that really jarred me was how often the geography of the whole area makes it's way into my dreams. I seem to have an unconscious map of the city in my lizard brain; so many of my dreams feature this jumbled up dream version of Chicago and my old neighborhood that walking around the actual physical place was, at moments, very disorienting, but also fascinating. There's something about the vertical architecture of the city and scrubby flat prairie of my old hometown that describes the way I move through my dreamscapes. I wonder if my son is going to have a similar "inner L.A.".

When I visited my former neighborhood in San Jose, I had a difficult time reconciling my childhood memories with the present condition. How could I so clearly see both the tree-house my parents built in the backyard, and the empty spot where the tree used to be?

Are you aware that in this way you closely mimic Gertrude Stein and her famous "there is no there, there" quote? It was her childhood home in San Jose she was speaking of.