Time. Memory. Place.

I heard today Out of Town News in Harvard Square is likely to close soon. As a former Boston resident and previously frequent visitor to the Cambridge area, it is sad, sad news. I used to buy Dunhill cigarettes from them... and later, after returning from England, Camel Mediums - which could not be found in the states anywhere else and were - at the time - the perfect cigarettes.

Sad to say, my experience with the place was more as a smoker than a reader of world news or magazines from far-off lands. But I do remember fondly ogling the Time Out London mags in my final semester at BU... and I used to spend time just looking at the many offerings they had on hand. Wishing I could travel more and feeling briefly re-connected to the less isolated and more allied feeling I had experienced in Europe.

It's been a long time since I've really walked around the Cambridge area, and particularly Harvard Square. It is a place associated with strong memories and a very important time in my life. And, since my husband is a former New Englander as well who grew up just outside of Boston, it also represents the link we never knew we had until we met, approximately 10 years later, in the city of Chicago.

I wish the city would rally and find a way to keep the little brick building with the funkily eclectic and multicultural feel. I can only imagine how many of us there are for whom that place is a touchstone buried deep within memory and personal history, looping through narratives containing that seemingly small detail.

Perhaps it is silly to be so romantically nostalgic about a kiosk at a metropolitan crossroads... but sometimes there are aspects of our self-concepts and traveled journeys tied to place - and when they shift or disappear, we feel it.