let’s interact: what makes you ache?
Can I Feel Nostalgia for Something I Never Had?
Dagda brings up an interesting paradox: the feeling of being nostalgic and dissatisfied. It made me think about that word we don’t have in English: a feeling of yearning for something that never existed. Couldn’t find that word, but I did find saudade:
Some say that the ultimate form of saudade is one felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown…
Although it relates to feelings of melancholy and fond memories of things/people/days gone by, it can be a rust of sadness coupled with a paradoxical joy derived from acceptance of fate and the hope of recovering or substituting what is lost…
Heavy. I certainly can site many examples of objects/places/sounds that can evoke a deep, bittersweet nostalgia, based on my real — or imagined — past. Real. Imagined. Real. Imagined.
I bring this challenge to you, my delicious readers! What are the objects/places/sounds/smells that bring a pang to you? What speaks to your real or alternate universe?
Use the comments, if you like, and I’ll compile them into a page.
Flying. If I have had any experience flying, other than in my dreams (I attended a flight school in my youthful dreams with hoards of other people, dreamers like myself, I suspect), I am quite familiar with the effects of floating through the air high above buildings and its intoxicating allure in this apparently real universe. Whatever the word might be for that pining of things barely removed from my physical reach, I know its definition like the very insides of my long and twisted guts. I have until yet, only imagined. YET.
Who’s the romantic, la, la, la, la, la, la.