I am posing for a selfie, a digital moment frozen in time, under the concrete gateway leading into the University of Sussex campus.
The brutalised architecture, ugly and imposing to passers through, feels like the way back home to my sentimental, nostalgic self. Walls tower upwards on all sides, like a 20th century Camelot, giant flagstones paved on all sides of a bizarrely installed modern moat.
Strolling past the energetic courtyard thronged with young students, I conjure up a long-forgotten scene when – tuning in, turning on and tabbing up – I watched a blazing fire bird phoenix rise in the dawning sun behind the Mandela Hall building.
The fire bird that, in the near thirty years past since this epochal moment, would emerge from the dusty ashes a reborn black phoenix.
A tattoo for my future self, I muse.
A man on a mission, just like the clandestine day trips of yesteryear, I was on a wild bear hunt for a memorial tree lost in the ravages of time. The tree, planted on the old East Slope wilderness fringes where the University meets the Sussex Downs, was rooted by fellow students to commemorate a much-loved friend from Uni days who tragically succumbed at a young age to the cancerous ravages of time.
The weather, on this day of days, is tempestuous and wild, as I pick my way through the ‘Death Star’ tunnel on the winding path towards East Slope. I am scanning the horizon for a miraculous rainbow to grace the intermittent powder blue skies and rolling thunder clouds, in amongst the blazing sun and torrential downpours.
As the clouds part for the umpteenth time, soaking the grounds in sunshine, I am reviving and navigating the old campus map in my head. Passing by a rebranded café selling limp burgers and bitter coffee, and high street supermarket flogging marked-up consumables, I wonder whether the new wave of fresher student is more consumer cannon fodder than brave new brains of the future.
Climbing the steps to my past life, between the fresh maze of Chinese industrial style apartment blocks, they lead to roughly where in my minds eye the tree once grew roots in the wilderness.
And in place of the tree on the banks of East Slope towers a soulless student ghost dwelling, clearly still reeling from the traumas of Lockdown. And I wonder if the high jinx of the past, of infinite corridors of fun and camaraderie, has given way to a nanny state of red tape, rules, and regulations.
After a pit stop for a bite, I am sitting on a commemorative bench dedicated to another alumni or affiliate who passed over in the Nineties. Observing the comings and goings of the young prospects, I wonder what lies in wait for these brilliant minds in waiting, while the Autumn sun blinds my eyes. Microchip wars, polarising pandemics, and climate chaos – with a sucker punch of a future spent wading through the swampy waters of debt.
Sitting on the train homebound besides an old woman who smells of crayons and moth balls, I am thinking about the tree of remembrance lost in the vortex of time and space. And how the tree lives on in the memory, growing deeper and deeper roots – kissed by the seasons – blooming in springtime, shedding patchwork leaves in the autumn. Always remember. Always remember.
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