Novel excerpt from "The Last Roundup" by Jeff Masuda

When we look back to our old lives it is not just nostalgia, or some wish fulfillment; we do not just want to revisit. What we look for are those invisible threads and fabrics that comprised a communal blanket. We look for the blanket that covered us, but it was so sheer and light that we did not realize its existence; we didn’t feel its comfort or warmth until gone. Now, we try to reconstruct it by seeing old friends, and talking of past times, but what we really desire is to once more share a common culture, some shared origin, because the blankets of our youth are long since shredded and threadbare. It is a futile task perhaps to be these tailors of memory, but we cannot stop.