I originally wrote this post nearly a year ago. Going back to it I considered posting this on my creative writing blog... but reading back, I think although it seems trivial in the midst of 'big' stuff going on, in my own context in my own mind it fits perfectly. So...just read and relate (if it fits) and enjoy.
I often write my blog posts late at night. I seem to have the right creative energy at that time, and words flow more easily. With any writing that I do, I seem incubate ideas in my mind, sometimes for long periods of time until the opportunity and the inclination arises to put them into words on a page.
I often write my blog posts late at night. I seem to have the right creative energy at that time, and words flow more easily. With any writing that I do, I seem incubate ideas in my mind, sometimes for long periods of time until the opportunity and the inclination arises to put them into words on a page.
Something else that also happens at night is that I might watch old movies or listen to old music. In the world of a GenXer, this of course means movies and songs from the 1980s or even 90s. As most people know, even if subconsciously, music has a way of have evoking memories, emotions and even physical sensations like smell. I assume that, like generations before us, we return to the music of our childhood as it evokes a time when we were happy, innocent, with no worldly cares on our shoulders. I will have Wikipedia on my phone at the ready, will look up the artists I see in whatever music video or moving is playing at the time. I'll marvel that Brad Pitt is nearly 50 or that Kylie Minogue is closer to that than the youthful Charlene of Neighbours, and wonder where the time went. I will think of my own children, forming their own memories, and wonder what movies and music will be the hallmarks of their generation; what rituals do we partake in that are laying the foundations for them to look back on from the big bad world and evoke those feelings of contentment and safety.
The feeling that I would get at these times evaded description. Indeed, I'd never needed to try. I have attempted to above, but the words still do not seem to embody the depth of the sensations I would experience. And then I found...
SAUDADE
This fabulous word was like an epiphany to me when I read its Wikipedia entry, which describes it thus:
Saudade is a Portuguese and Galician word that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or deeply melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return.[2] A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing.
Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.
Whoever created and edited this Wikipedia entry managed to describe exactly what I was experiencing, and the Portuguese packaged this description into one word. This feeling has become more intense as I grow older - and perhaps its intensity will continue to grow as more time is put between now and those happy times, particularly those with people who are no longer with us.
I do feel I have to guard myself against too much slipping into the past, and practice a kind of mindfulness that ensures I am not blind to the present and all the blessings it has to offer.
But now and then I indulge. I put on MTV Classic or read a few chapters of Anne of Green Gables and escape to another time. That time is long gone and my young self in that time has passed through. But the memories and sensations remain strong. I will take that time and enjoy 'the love that remains' and my time lost in saudade.
