When strolling around one's old neighborhood, the Used-To-Be Scrim is a useful visual aid. Once unfurled, it projects a perfect image of the way things used to look. The shopping center reverts to a field. The Rite Aid becomes a Woolworth's. The Starbucks becomes an empty building, then with a further turn of the dial, becomes a coffee shop run by that nice couple with the handsome son you used to fancy, and then it goes back to being the hardware store, before becoming once again a five-and-dime where your father was able to buy candy for a penny. Resist the urge to crank the dial back too far, else you'll find yourself looking at a bubbling pool of mud that sits right at the edge of the ineffable state between life and the lifeless.