last updated: 9/18/07

wild morning glory vine connecting

the spirits at Pied Beauty ranch

see Browning's "Two in the Campagna," lines 1-30, in your anthology

 

Writing about Nostalgia

 

Nostalgia, n. O. E. D.

 

[< post-classical Latin nostalgia (J. Hofer Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe (1688)) < ancient Greek return home (see NOSTOS n.) + - -ALGIA, after German Heimweh HEIMWEH n. Cf. French nostalgie (1759), Italian nostalgia (1764).]

 

1. Acute longing for familiar surroundings, esp. regarded as a medical condition; homesickness. Also in extended use.

 

1756 tr. J. G. Keyssler Trav. I. xix. 141 At least it is thus Scheuchzer endeavours to vindicate the nostalgia, pathopatridalgia, or the heimweh, i. e. home-sickness, with which those of Bern are especially afflicted. 1770 J. BANKS Jrnl. 3 Sept. (1962) II. 145 The greatest part of them [sc. the ship's company] were now pretty far gone with the longing for home which the Physicians have gone so far as to esteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia. 1780 J. THACHER Mil. Jrnl. (1823) 242 Many perplexing instances of indisposition,..called by Dr. Cullen nostalgia or home sickness. 1818 S. SMITH Wks. (1867) I. 250 What a dreadful disease Nostalgia must be on the banks of the Missouri. 1842 J. WILSON Christopher North I. 57 That pond has..about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not sickened and died of Nostalgia. 1877 S. J. OWEN in Marquess of Wellesley Select. Despatches Introd. p. xlv, One who was to spend so much of his life in the East..should not be hampered by ties and habits calculated..to foster nostalgia. 1937 W. S. MAUGHAM in Hearst's Internat. Mag. July 166/1 Some of the convicts..had such a nostalgia for France that they went mad with melancholy. 1986 J. NAGENDA Seasons of T. Tebo III. iii. 131 He opened the curtains... The clear light gave him a sudden pang of nostalgia for Africa.

 

 

2. a. Sentimental longing for or regretful memory of a period of the past, esp. one in an individual's own lifetime; (also) sentimental imagining or evocation of a period of the past.

 

1900 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 5 606 It is reason and convenience that lure him [sc. man] from the time-hallowed; it is nostalgia that draws him back. 1928 A. WAUGH Nor Many Waters vi. 231 He pictures with a sense of nostalgia, too acute almost to be endured, all that marriage to M_____an would have meant. 1933 D. GARNETT Pocahontas xx. 234 Seeing all these things again filled her heart with that violent sentimental nostalgia..felt by the very young about the very recent past. 1959 Observer 8 Feb. 7/5 Nostalgia for one's childhood does not necess_____ly mean that the childhood was a happy one. 1995 Independent 12 May 21/5 VE Day became national nostalgia for a lost national connectedness.

 

 

b. Something which causes nostalgia for the past; freq. as a collective term for things which evoke a former (remembered) era. Cf. MEMORABILIA n.

 

1976 P. DE VRIES I hear Amer. Swinging ii. 28 Her potato bread was sheer mouth-watering nostalgia. 1979 United States 1980/81 (Penguin Travel Guides) 320 Pizazz..sell amusing nostalgia and contemporary adaptations.

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November __, 2004

 

Dear ___,

 

        You know how sometimes, when you’re around the right people, and the mood and the conversation are just right, you know exactly what you think about something and how to say it? But if you don’t write it down right away, you lose it again, like snow in Texas.

        That’s how I felt when you were visiting a few weeks ago. The three of us were sitting outside under a sort of canopy by the Alumni Center near Waller Creek in the middle of the night. It was lit at first, but the lights went off eventually. We were left in darkness, except for three lit trees about fifteen feet away from us. I had a fleeting grasp of a metaphor, or maybe of that sense of unity with the rest of the world. For the briefest of moments, I was fully able “to penetrate the barrier which space put between” you, ___, the trees, and myself, and “to secure a momentary but complete identification with” all of you.1 We were those trees. At the very least, we and the trees were reflections of each other in that moment. I knew what I wanted to say right then, but I’ve lost the words again. I’ll have to start rebuilding from scratch.

 

        I think you’ve noticed that I’ve been hung up on nostalgia for a few months. It started off with feeling nostalgic for last fall. That was the happiest I’ve ever been, at least in the illusion that comes with looking back. I began searching for ways to evoke nostalgia. Driving on 2222 was the most powerful way, especially listening to certain songs. Music evokes past emotions better than anything for me, which makes sense, considering the well-known psychological phenomenon known as state-dependent memory: you remember better “in the context where you experienced something.”2

        Mr. Jones by the Counting Crows does this so well because I was hooked on it last fall – that’s probably why it’s my favorite song. We all want something beautiful. It makes me so happy. I feel like more of an optimist when I’m listening to that song than at any other time. Believe in me / Help me believe in anything / I want to be someone who believes.3 Another song that evokes this nostalgic, longing, and yet somehow hopeful mood is Frou Frou’s Let Go, maybe because it was used in the trailer for the movie Garden State. You really need to see that movie, ____. Like the teaser trailer 4 promised, the movie conveyed this mood for almost two hours.

 

       We talked about nostalgia for an hour out there near Waller Creek that night, and I’ve thought about it for many more hours than that. I feel like I’ve just been throwing that word around: nostalgia, nos-tal-gia, n-o-s-t-a-l-g-i-a, until it dissociates into nothingness. What exactly is it that I’m talking about, and where does it come from?

        Well, first of all, I think it’s largely dependent on repetition or routine. You don’t feel nostalgic for something that happened in isolation; you merely retain a fond memory of it. But things like the sum of what happened in your childhood, or _____ and I driving to UT every Friday last fall to visit ____, or even the routines of high school life, allow nostalgia to develop.

        But I’ve also realized that nostalgia itself is an illusion. You feel some strange combination of longing and sadness and happiness and unity and meaning and despair. You think you’re feeling the same way you felt last fall, or whatever time period’s memories are evoking the nostalgia. But that’s a lie. This is not how you felt then. This is how you feel now. 

        Yet at the same time, I don’t just mean “nostalgia” in the sense of missing something that has passed. It’s even more complicated than that. There are other layers. Remember?

 

        “Sometimes, I think I feel nostalgic for something that hasn’t even happened,” _____ said at one point. 

        “Exactly!” I burst out. “It’s like you are waiting for something to happen to fulfill the longing you feel. But you don’t know what. Just something.”

        You brooded in your usual way for a few moments, and then declared, “There is something in C.S. Lewis’s biography which I never fully understood until just this very second.” (How very typical of you to bring C.S. Lewis into every conversation!)

        In his book Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis begins by discussing three specific childhood memories that filled him with a kind of longing. Reflecting on the first, a memory of a "toy garden" his brother once made for him, Lewis realizes that “before [he] knew what [he] desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to [him] was insignificant in comparison.”5.1 It is particularly significant that especially childhood memories should draw up such a strong sense of longing, not only for that event in one's childhood, but for a larger, more important, and yet somehow unknown something. (I'll discuss the childhood aspect of my nostalgia in more detail later.)

        Thus, Lewis asserts that “in a sense the central story of [his] life is about nothing else” than “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” He calls this desire “joy,” but insists that it is distinctly different from happiness and pleasure because, although we want to experience it, “it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief.”5.2 _____, you were right. This is an important part of what my “nostalgia” is.

        You proceeded to connect this to a longing for heaven. But you know _____ and me: we don’t want to and can’t take any sort of proof for religious beliefs in the way that you can. My nostalgia for something other than what I’ve already experienced doesn’t prove the existence of heaven to me. It just proves that so many people have some sense of it and need labels such as “heaven” to explain it and come to terms with it. But like C.S. Lewis, I feel utterly consumed by it.

All of this talk about nostalgia also reminded me of something we’ve been talking about in my World Lit class: a sense of place. I didn’t get a chance to tell you and _____ about this that night – I would have liked to stay there talking all night, but you had to go back home, and I had class early the next morning – so I wanted to add some of those ideas.

        The need for a sense of place, to me, has its basis in the need for sense of belonging, which is one aspect of my nostalgia. It is a “love of security, or an habitually undisputed standing-ground or sleeping-place.”6 This is most easily found in a home – by which I do not just mean a house. You know how deeply I love Austin. 

        Consider what Barry Lopez says: that a relationship with place is “a fundamental human defense against loneliness.”7. When I first read this, lyrics from the Red Hot Chili Peppers song Under the Bridge immediately appeared in my consciousness: Sometimes I feel like/ My only friend/ Is the city I live in.8 We somehow create relationships with the places we live in, partly because our memories are irreversibly linked to where they took place. I realized this quite strongly while I worked on my "Roadmap of Places in my Life" writing for World Lit. In some ways, where something happened is more important than exactly when it happened.

 

        Garden State is so powerful because it hits on this idea of a sense of place so intensely. One scene (the fourth clip on this site), quoted more than a few times in my own and my classmates’ journals, addresses this exactly. 

 

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you can put your stuff, that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew: You'll see when you move out. It just sort of happens one day, and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean, it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start. It's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.9

 

        We’ve all been struggling with that since we’ve moved off to college. Our dorm rooms are only quasi-homes, and when we return to our actual homes, we feel a bit out of place, left out, and almost anxious to return to the dorm. I've included a picture of my room for you, since you only got to see it briefly. You feel all of this even more than I do, being at Notre Dame, since I can get “home” in half an hour whenever I want to. It is no coincidence that “our word ‘nostalgia’ comes from the Greek nostos, which means ‘to return home.’”10

        The reason this movie affected most people of our generation so much is that it indirectly expresses this inexplicable longing around which I’ve been trying to wrap my fingers, like being homesick for “a place that doesn’t exist.” One review even says that “it is a film that speaks to an entire generation.”11 That is the magnitude of this phenomenon of nostalgia.

   What I did briefly mention the night of our conversation is that we’ve been talking about childhood nostalgia in World Lit as well. Though I don’t think that all of this “nostalgia” I’m obsessed with is based on a longing for childhood, this is undoubtedly a part of it and might help you to understand what I mean.

        According to Edith Cobb, adults seldom feel “the need to be a child” but rather experience “a deep desire to renew the ability to perceive as a child and to participate with the whole bodily self”12 in the surrounding world. It is hard to find such happiness as an adult or a near-adult in the seeming complexity of everyday life because the calm, wondrous, and unifying connection with nature has been lost. And yet, we are invariably drawn to reminders of this way of being. The first few lines of Blake’s Auguries of Innocence appealed to almost everyone in my World Lit class:

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour13

 

        It’s sad, really, that we inevitably lose this sense of childhood. One of the best examples is Christmas. I distinctly remember the year when the month-long holiday season lost the mystical quality I had always associated with it. The Christmas tree had been put up and the house was decorated, but I just kept waiting and waiting for that special Christmas feeling I remembered from previous years. Even with the onset of vacation, I just kept waiting, until there was nothing left to wait for: Christmas had passed, the tree was taken down, and the second semester began. I've never quite been able to explain why this happened that year, but using it as a milestone, my childhood ended in sixth grade.

        This is what is expressed in a vignette called The Mystery: spoken by a child (though quite obviously not written by one – it is an adult’s expression of childhood nostalgia). “The secret of being happy” [is] “to feel the mystery.”14 The desire to feel this is an essential part of childhood nostalgia as well as of the broader nostalgia and longing that I mean.

 

        Just the next week after your visit, we spent an entire class period at Waller Creek. I vividly remembered my two other significant experiences there. The first was one Sunday afternoon when I parked my car on San Jacinto and walked from there to Jester for lunch. It was one of those days just at the beginning of Texas fall, when the temperature is absolutely perfect and the sunlight suddenly takes on a new, gentler quality that, for me, evokes overwhelming feelings of nostalgia. I walked along the creek and thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the day. My second experience at the creek was the one with you and _____ that set up the premise for this account.

        The creek, with its waters rushing and trickling over rocks, an oasis hidden from view by tall and thick trees, seems to be a perfect backdrop for these feelings of nostalgia and immersion in beauty. This phenomenon is heightened at night, I think, when the distractions of construction and cars cannot be heard. The preservation of nature, especially in an urban setting, reflects attempts to deal with what I have come to consider a kind of “mass nostalgia,” as can be seen in essays like Synder’s Poetry and the Primitive, which express “the idea that perhaps civilization has something to learn from the primitive.”15 It is this mass nostalgia for nature that causes people to be willing to die defending trees and results in such events as the 1969 Waller Creek Riot. Jones quotes the Austin American Statesman indicating that the protesters were “saddened by the loss of man’s fast-receding natural environment.”16

        You would like this man we read about, Joseph Jones. He spent over forty years in a relationship with Waller Creek. Waller Creek served as a sort of home (remember what I said about a sense of place?) for Jones, while at the same time fulfilling his human need “to cultivate fresh acquaintance with those remaining parts of our cities which most easily and powerfully reopen past time, returning us to our half-forgotten origins.”17 This single statement echoes the sentiments behind the mass nostalgia that protesters and poets like Snyder attempt to remedy.

  There's one last thing I’d like to mention to you and maybe even get your opinion about. Is the nostalgia good or bad, constructive or destructive, a help or a hindrance? Consider two alternatives:

 

        “Sometimes feeling nostalgic even gets in the way of really experiencing the present moment,” I lamented to you and _____ at one point during our conversation. I feel so consumed by a longing for something else that I can’t immediately see the beauty of what is happening right now. I’m always searching for something, and I don’t believe it when I tell myself that this search might be a reward in itself.

        E.M. Forster has a story called The Other Side of the Hedge that addresses this somewhat. It’s basically about being happy without having to always move forward and be productive. The story’s narrator says of the people on the other side of the hedge from “normal” productive life that “they all seemed happy; and [he] might have been happy too, if [he] could have forgotten that the place led nowhere.”18 I first read this story a few days after I talked to you on the phone, when you told me to find a beautiful and peaceful place to step out of hectic college life for a while. You’d love my World Lit class, because we do that all the time, at places like the Turtle Ponds or the Taniguchi Garden. In fact, I jotted “Send this story to _____” in the margin of The Other Side of the Hedge. It's hard to step out of everything going on around us, though. I am always running around trying to finish things early, so that I can have more time later to... finish more things early. It's a vicious cycle. You know how it goes.

 

        On the other hand, when I summarized our conversation during a World Lit class discussion, Chris said “Sometimes I feel like I’m nostalgic for this very moment. Like, this is something I’m going to be able to tell my grandkids about.”

        I’ve felt this too – haven’t you? These are moments when C.S. Lewis's "joy" is present and not painful. Do you remember when, at ____’s birthday party last year, we walked to the nearby elementary school and ____ climbed onto the roof and threw a watermelon onto the pavement below? I felt so nostalgic for and because of that event the exact moment it happened. Poems spring out of moments like this. Sometimes I think the reason I haven't managed to write a good poem in months is that I've been unable to feel my nostalgia in the beautiful way I could feel it that night.

        Such fulfillment is rare. My nostalgia is a constant search for beauty and unity that I want to feel right now but can’t always reach because I am so blinded by wanting to. I suppose this continual struggle is worth those exceptional moments when it is possible. What do you think?

 

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reader responses:

 

Basically, I loved your writing. It put into words what I think most college students suffered, or are suffering from. It certainly put my thoughts and inexplicable emotions into perspective….. It’s sad, really, that we inevitably lose this sense of childhood. One of the best examples is Christmas. I distinctly remember the year that the almost month-long holiday season did not hold the mystical quality I had always associated with it. Using this as a milestone, my childhood ended in sixth grade.

 

I think you have done a wonderful job of putting emotions that everyone feels but cannot express into words. I can identify with nearly everything you write about and I think it's really cool to see my own thoughts before me written by someone else. Nostalgia is such a crazy thing because it is always present in my thoughts and I, like you, have yet to decide whether its influence is a good or a bad thing.

 

Great writing. I liked the format and you definitely captured the feelings of nostalgia that we've all been feeling in these first few months.

 

 

You have been able to articulate the struggle that every college freshmen goes through but has no idea how to express it. Your letter spoke to me because it could have been me speaking it. I liked how personal it was - I think that emphasized your nostalgia.

 

I really liked your journal. You consistently make comments which bring forward in me feelings uncomfortable in their honesty. (I hope you understand what I mean by ‘honest’ feelings) This letter certainly put words around thoughts I’ve had for a while and, indeed, made me nostalgic while I read it. Cruel irony.

__________________________________________________________

 

2^nd semester contributions to a DB on nostalgia (for “Nostalgia Soundtrack” go to end)

 

An Effort to Resist the Passing of Time

 

     All last semester, I longed for my home in The Woodlands and the sight of familiar faces and streets.  My ten years in The Woodlands has made it a home, and my eighteen years of age has made it time for me to find a new home in Austin.  Time brings continuity and change, and amidst all of it, nostalgia has become a way of resisting its passage and the change that it brings.

     Much of nostalgia is about people who share the same memories and sense of longing.  In The Book of Ruth, Naomi survived the death of her husband, but had their sons by which to remember him and their memories.  The three were able to remember Elimelech because they share many of the memories, as well as the longing for their lost husband and father.  In my bouts of homesickness last semester, I found a close friend in a fellow Plan II-er who also comes from The Woodlands but did not meet until we arrived on campus.  Within a few weeks, we felt like old friends simply because we share longings for the same hometown and some of the same friends.  By remembering The Woodlands together, we have been able to resist the passing of time and the accompanying change.  In fact, our conversations are probably not very different from the one that ____ shared with _____ and _____ by Waller Creek.  In short, nostalgia is best when shared with others.

      Although time brings change, its irreversible passage also marks a certain sense of continuity.  Time is the Energizer bunny of human history; it can be counted on to continue indefinitely.  In "Ode on Melancholy," time inevitably whisks away the "Beauty that must die" and ushers in the "melancholy fit / that fosters the droop-headed flowers all / And hides the green hill in an April shroud."  And, because of the unpreventable passage of time, we know all things are fleeting as we steadily move from birth to death.  I know that with time, my feelings of homesickness will become a thing of the past, and Austin will become my new home.  After graduation, I might even become homesick for Austin and college life.  It's a perpetual cycle and it can be counted on to be so because time will always continue and bring change along with it.  Keats aptly captured this sense in "Joy and Sorrow": "Laugh and sigh, and laugh again."

      Keats juxtaposed opposites of emotion, weather, and milestones of life in "Joy and Sorrow."  Such couplings are very much like nostalgia itself.  As I turn to nostalgia as a way of remembering the past and resisting the changes brought by time, the experience itself is very bittersweet.  My heart experiences tormented emotions as I long for reminders of home, but it also reaches heights of elation when I am finally able to return to the room in which I grew up.  The emotions are "Of the day, and of the night."  But, as I'm sure many of you have also experienced, things are never quite the same as you remembered it.  When I return to my room, the floor is scattered with my brother's video games and my closet has grown with additions from my mom's wardrobe.  While I was gone, the past - the continuity of home - that I longed for was also changing.  "Time and tide wait for no man."  Nostalgia is only a limited effort to resist the passing of time.  The people and places that we long for change, as do the memories in our minds.  We tend to look upon the past with rose-tinted glasses and augment the good while eliminating the undesirable.  I often find that after longing for something over an extended period of time, I begin to construct an idealized version of the notion that is staggeringly different from reality.  A few weeks ago, I couldn't wait to be reunited with my best friend who attends college in New York.  I could hardly contain my excitement and recall the endless stories that I wanted to share with him.  But, a few short moments after our conversation began, I realized that he has changed, and I've perhaps constructed an idealized friend from our best memories.  Such is the roller coaster of emotions I have experienced over the past month of being at home.

      Nevertheless, I am once again becoming nostalgic for home as I realize that my second semester at UT starts in less than a week.  Even though I have found The Woodlands to be very different from the one in my memory, I still long for it in an attempt to hold on to the past and resist the change that as brought me to Austin.  Despite the ephemeral quality of memories and the continuity of time, I know I will always miss The Woodlands, even as new stores pop up on every corner and my brother, who is now taller than me, turns my room into his very own video game heaven.  My nostalgia for home will always remain, complete with the roller coaster of emotions.  After all, perhaps nostalgia is best when shared with others and filled with the full spectrum of emotions.

 

The Transfer of My Nostalgia

I am packing up my home, once again, and moving it back to Austin.  I remember doing the same thing in August but so much has changed since then!  Over this break, I have thought a lot about how this class has helped clarify what I have felt these past couple months.  When we first started talking about nostalgia, I resisted the feeling, that looking back that stirred something in ______.  It was easier for me to deny my feelings then to confront them.  I feel like I spent most of last semester suspended in a place of hope that actually was denial.  I denied my loneliness and replaced it with work.  I denied my discomfort and blamed it on others.  I denied my fear and focused on my strength.  But it didn’t work.  By the time I returned home, I was a wreck.  Embarrassing as it is, the moment I came home was the instant that my world, which I had so successfully held upright for months and months, finally fell apart.  Thus began my crazy phase: a decompression from the stress of finals, from my own denial and from the uncertainty that I could not confront.  ¿A Song of Opposites¿ reminds me of those days that I succumb to my confusion: ¿Dancing music, music sad, / Both together, sane and mad¿ (Keats).  I missed U.T. but I did not want to go back; I spent days with my friends but tired of their drama; I loved my family but wanted to be alone again.  Conflicting feelings flooded my emotions and I finally accepted them all, approaching the point where ¿Fair and foul I love[d] together¿ (Keats).     

Once I was back in the life I had left, I finally felt true nostalgia, the ¿longing and sadness and happiness and unity and meaning and despair¿ for times past (______ 2).  At first, it was for my life before college.  For the first time, I was actually living my disconnection from my family and I understood how bittersweet the reunions with friends would be.  I was finally watching the life I once lived die.  I feel like I could be Keats, saying to my past: ¿Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death, / call¿d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, / to take into the air my quiet breath¿ (¿Ode to a Nightingale¿).

Then one day, I stopped mourning the death of my life in Dallas.  Gone it was from my present, although I knew I would always be nostalgic for certain times and people and places.  With the departure of this, I started to genuinely miss my life in Austin, that young, shapeless life that I was nurturing into maturity.  When people asked me, ¿What do you miss about college?¿ I could never pinpoint a certain source of happiness and I realized that I was actually experiencing nostalgia for U.T., for Austin, not ¿for something that happened in isolation¿ but rather the whole experience that was paused for my return (______ 2). 

Tomorrow, I am finally returning to a different home with a refreshed mind and renewed perspective.  And I hope that it makes all the difference.  The many unknowns that weighed on my first semester are no longer pulling me back and now, instead of walking cautiously, I will finally be able to run.  ¿Be careful, ______,¿ I feel myself thinking.  Keats reminded me of this with his repetition of Lethe in his poems.  I returned to our faithful source, The Oxford English Dictionary, to understand the depth of this word:  ¿Myth. A river in Hades, the water of which produced, in those who drank it, forgetfulness of the past. Hence, the ¿waters of oblivion¿ or forgetfulness of the past.¿  I must not forget the past!  For me, this class has been my way to remember the journey for when I someday reach the end. 

I cannot even describe what a blessing this break has been for me:  a time to relax, reflect and remember.  As I have come to see, my dance with nostalgia will never end but after opening up to see my partners in the spin of emotion, I can finally understand that vague longing that I carry wherever I go.  Now, more then ever, I agree with ______¿s final words in her reflection on nostalgia:  I know¿this continual struggle is worth those exceptional moments when it is possible.¿

 

Keats and Nostalgia

          One of the most marked feelings I was left with at the end of last semester, and one that I still feel now, is that of disbelief at how incredibly quickly the time flew past.  I am confounded by the thought that I have potentially completed 1/8 of my college career.  And, as I sat at home over the holidays considering that very idea, I was also met with a feeling of something like disappointment and regret.  I cannot say that I did not enjoy my first semester of college and that I did not do many of the things that I had hoped to do, because I did.  However,  it seems as though most of my experiences were tainted to some degree by my inability to see through the nostalgic mist that invariably clouded my eyes.

            To be sure, this mist was not of such thickness that I was blind to the existence and value of my new surroundings.  But, it was of a sufficient density to keep me from venturing out uninhibited and unchecked into the new world around me.  In other words, I feel like many of the actions I took had a focus more in my past than in my future.  I did things with the hope of reviving past feelings of happiness and comfort, instead of with the hope of creating a new definition of happiness and comfort in my new environment.  But in the end, my bent towards living in and glorifying my feelings of nostalgia has proved to be quite unfulfilling as I realize that not only was I not able, nor will I ever be able, to relive my fond memories of yesterday, but also that I have spent far too many todays and tomorrows in the pursuit of such days long past.

            I sense in the writings of John Keats strong feelings for the past and an unwillingness to part with what he has known and loved.  Such a condition bears many similarities to the one in which I have found myself.  Just as I have found that I was clinging to certain hopes and ideas, so too does this excerpt convey and unwillingness to let go:

           

                                    And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

                                    That I shall never look upon thee more,

                                    Never have relish in the faery power

                                    Of unreflecting love! ¿ then on the shore

                                    Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

                                    Till Love and Fame to nothingness to sink. (Keats)

 

But, it can be said that the pursuit of the past and the happiness that it may have at one time evoked is probably the easy way out and surely not the most profitable; ¿Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veil¿d Melancholy has her Sovran shrine,¿. (Keats, Ode on Melancholy)  It seems as though any joys derived from such a pursuit cannot be more than temporary and hardly have the power to sustain the heart of man.

            Am I doomed to dwell in the past forever?  That would be depressing, so I should like the thing that the answer is no.  Keats eloquently expresses his hope for the future and his faith in human endurance when he writes:

 

                                    But, when the melancholy fit shall fall

                                    Sudden from heaven like a sweeping cloud,

                                    That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

                                    And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

 

                                    Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

                                    Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave

(Keats, Ode on Melancholy)

 

He does not doubt that we as humans will be overcome by ¿the melancholy fit,¿ but he also does not doubt our ability to cast it off and to see the many prospects the world holds for us.

            Personally I am very grateful for the opportunity to start fresh this semester.  Whatever time I have spent seeking the past is gone now and I look forward to the chance to live my life for the future and not for the past.  This is not to say that my past is gone or removed from my being in any way, it just means that I now feel less of a need to keep it alive and active in my day to day life. Thus, I ¿Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,¿ that I know will inevitably come with new experiences as I lift my misty nostalgic veil to greet a world that beckons my perusal.  (Keats, A Song of Opposites)

 

 

Nostalgia and E.Q.

 

In ______’s letter, she remarks that with nostalgia, “you feel some strange combination of longing and sadness and happiness and unity and meaning and despair”. This idea is similar to John Keats’ Joy and Sorrow. You can feel “sane and mad” and “laugh and sigh, and laugh again”(Keats) all while never really knowing how you feel about anything. That is how I feel about college so far. I guess I like it here, but I just can’t convince myself that I am happy, even if I am having fun. I can see the “serpents in the red roses” (Keats) of good times. I realize that there were plenty of “serpents” back home too, but perhaps it is like the saying that “love is blind” and I blocked them out. To continue with the flower metaphor, Keats says that he “cannot see what flowers are at my feet”. I relate this to my focus on the serpents even though I am surrounded by flowers. “I feel so consumed by a longing for something else that I can’t immediately see the beauty of what is happening right now” (______, Nostalgia Letter).

Last semester I called my mom and told her how I felt about Austin, or college in general, whichever it was that it was making me feel the way I was. She reminded me that my feelings, or “the voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient days by emperor and clown” (Keats) and many other college freshmen from years back. This “corridor of time” that she created for me made me step back and see the big picture and allowed a bit of comfort to the situation. Time is the best medicine, but also the hardest. There is no catalyst, you just have to wait out “the long and winding road” (The Beatles, The Long and Winding Road.

 

Keats & Nostalgia

            As ______ indicated in her writing, all humans feel a longing, a yearning, a desire for the world or the life or the feeling that sometimes seems to be just past our fingertips.  When I read the beginning pages of the anthology and saw the suicide prevention article, I noted the article¿s statement that the transition to college can cause temporary depression.  I think we¿d all agree on that.  Nostalgia, I¿m beginning to believe, is like the eulogy in a funeral: in the midst of our mourning for the people and places that have passed away from us, we memorialize and glorify the seemingly deceased.  Just as we remark on fond memories and positive attributes of our loved one, nostalgia frames for us a picture of the place we¿ve left in terms of how we¿d like to remember it.

            I think Keats agreed with this ¿ he wasn¿t afraid to feel the bittersweet longing of nostalgia.  His charge to ¿Bare your faces of the veil; / Let me see; and let me write / Of the day, and of the night¿ seems, to me, a charge to flee pretenses and false appearances of fortitude and courage.  Sometimes we have to just admit that we¿re human.  Sometimes we have to hurt, because hurting is the first step in healing.  ¿Dancing music, music sad, / Both together, sane and mad¿ can coexist.  In fact, I think they feed off one another.  Catchy songs that make you feel good are often chart-toppers for a few weeks.  It seems that every summer a great pop song comes out and everyone sings it on their way to the beach.  But when you stop to think about it, which songs are the ones that last?  That stir our souls?  The ballads.  The songs which, sometimes broken, sometimes tearful, speak truthfully about pain and longing.  Now, we non-emo kids can¿t spend out lives listening to sad songs ¿ I don¿t think that would get us very far.  We need both types of music ¿ ¿dancing¿ and ¿sad,¿ ¿sane and mad.¿  We need to feel pain, but we also need to dance.

            My theory about nostalgia rests on the idea of death ¿ emotional death, or death portrayed in transitions such as moving, or break-ups, or growing together or apart.  Semisonic was on to something when they said that ¿Every new beginning comes from some other beginning¿s end.¿  We¿re attracted to the sweet things in life ¿ beauty, joy ¿ because of how they make us feel.  But, if we¿re honest, isn¿t there also a part of us that resists the good things?  That¿s wary of them?  That¿s hesitant to accept them?

She dwells with Beauty¿Beauty that must die;

  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

  Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

            Keats knew that the good we find on earth fades away.  He saw the transient splendor of a beautiful woman and understood that one day she too would not only be wrinkled, she would also be deceased.  Beauty, we understand, is neither permanent nor truly satisfactory.  Pleasures here please us only a short time.  When are we every truly satisfied with the sight of a beautiful person or a fun evening with friends or a great book?  You see the beautiful man or woman, but upon seeing them, your impulses drive you to either physical or emotional interaction or both; you enjoy the dinner and conversation, but eventually you have to depart and get some sleep; the book speaks to the very core of your heart, but its story trickles over only so many pages.  The good things we have here, those which we taste and see and feel, don¿t last forever.  Earth leaves us no choice but to long for what we¿ve had and to anxiously await the next pleasure which will temporarily abate the longing.  Nostalgia, it seems, is our reaction to this longing ¿ it is the attribution of our eagerness to be pleased to the sense of loss we feel when the things which ought to please us prove unable to do so.

 

Nature and Permanence

 

Nature is a beautiful connection that links us with times long forgotten.  Compared to the 4.5 billion year history of the earth, our lives are merely ephemeral moments.  Yet all throughout the reading, I had the distinct sense that we are somehow connected to the past and each leaving our own unique marks in the timelessness of nature.

 

Just writing this entry brings me a sense of nostalgia, though without the melancholy that many of us associate with it.  Just last week, I was sitting on my bed at home, on a brightly colored comforter of lovely spring flowers, writing my first journal entry.  Though it seemed like so long ago, I couldn't help but notice that my memory of that moment is so closely connected to where I was at the time.  The sense of place in nostalgia is much more poignant than I would've ever expected.

 

This very phenomenon offers a telling perspective of our connection with nature and time.  As I savored every last moment of home in the final days of winter break, I kept telling myself, "This house will always be here.  My room and the family that I love so much will be here waiting for me.  There is no reason for me to get hung up on homesickness."  This is the mantra that I hope will get me through the bouts of nostalgia and is so well captured by Tennyson in In Memoriam:  "But in my spirit will I dwell, / And dream my dream, and hold it true; / For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, / I cannot think the thing farewell" (A406).  He expresses the realization that nature and place are ever changing, but also holds it to a certain sense of permanence as captured by the speaker's memory.  Although nature is never stagnant- "They melt like mist, the solid lands, / Like clouds they shape themselves and go"- it still allows us to reach out and connect with times of long ago (Tennyson A406).  "By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone" (Eisley A407).

 

Although we're only here for a brief time and nature is ever-changing, places will always be the same in our memories; they gain permanence through nostalgia.  Likewise, nature preserves our existence by changing and reflecting the influence of all who've experienced it.  It is so that the memories of nature and the footprints marking our presence become timeless.

 

 

"Never again would birds' song be the same. / And to do that to birds was why she [Eve] came."

-Robert Frost, "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same"

 

The healthiest, most 'emotionally intelligent' way to approach nostalgia is to keep in mind that the import of your memories lies in the fact that they are unique to you.  No one else in the world has the same scraps of memories as you.  They inhabit only your brain, and they are, I think, a form of creativity.  So that's part of what's valuable about memories--they are one of the few possessions that no one else can use.  When looking back on the past, taking stock of your memories, it could be helpful to ask yourself, Who, if not I, for questing here hath power? (Thrysis, A481).  Your memory is one of the few places you can go to be completely undisturbed, your own portable history museum.   

 

I wish that I could keep that in mind and really claim my memories and be entirely selfish about them.  It seems healthy to be proud and overprotective of them.  A memory is far better than any material souvenir--plus, it's free.  Depending on how I quest, figuratively, through my old stomping grounds, my present and future are influenced.  I can see where I fell and know not to try going down that hazardous road again.  This sounds horribly cheesy, but I feel like I am empowered by my memories because they help me fight my own naivete and stupidity.

 

Nostalgia         Times Read: 3

Date: 12-05-2005 19:48

Subject Nostalgia: fear or love?

Remove

Oh, I guess I'm the only person posting tonight- so willing I guess...? I thought I heard you say last time something about Ben continuing the awesome discussion from Thursday...? Oh well.

 

To begin with, I was intrigued with the question: ¿Is the nostalgia good or bad, constructive or destructive, a help or a hindrance?¿ posed on page 876. But after much thought I realized that I tend to be nostalgic in two ways: one is rooted in fear, and the other in love.

I think it¿s the fear type that¿s being felt when the anonymous letter writer says that they ¿feel so consumed by a longing for something else that (they) can¿t immediately see the beauty of what is happening right now¿ (876). In cases such as these I can feel myself clinging to the past like some petrified child being dropped off on the first day of school. Nostalgia becomes my crutch for the possibility of failure and disappointment, a big crutch for all the realization of all the ¿what ifs¿ that I continually berate myself with during transitional periods. But in clinging to this part of my life that has already passed, I am left even more crippled, unable to fail or succeed in the present, my past fading away as surely as ¿glory days, well, they¿ll pass you by¿ (885).

But I think as much as nostalgia can be crippling, it can be empowering. Thinking about my childhood summers spent at summer camp doesn¿t fathom up feelings of fear that my summers will never be that good again. This kind of nostalgia is an acknowledgement of beauty and happiness and as T. S. Elliot puts it in one of my favorite poems, ¿leaping greenly spirits of trees and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.¿

Another element of the reading that I thought was fascinating was the discussion about nostalgia for a place. For me, I think that¿s true with bad nostalgia- it allows you to dwell on a more secure time in your life. I long for high school when I have nothing to do here, because I don¿t want to have to go out and make new friends, but would prefer to dwell on the established role that I played within my family, my group of friends, or my community. I think the same is true for the star quarterback, the prom queen, even the geek. We have these notions of who we used to be, and we long for them again because it feels so unstable to not place ourselves within one of those categories. I think its appropriate to cite ¿the Witness¿ here. In the same way that he describes looking at yourself from outside yourself, the past allows us to put that perspective on who we were. ¿But if all of our identities are only relatively real, coming and going as circumstance warrants, is there any part behind all our roles? If we observe our own minds at work, we see that behind all of these identities is a state of awareness that incorporates them all and yet is still able to rest behind them. As we loosen the hold of each identity so that we don¿t get completely lost in it, we are able to remain light and loose- able to play among these various aspects of being without identifying exclusively with any. We don¿t have to be anybody in particular. We don¿t have to be ¿this¿ or ¿that¿. We are simply free to be¿ (155).

This freedom, the freedom of being, is what good nostalgia is all about for me. It¿s about remembering not the feeling of security (adherence to some role), but about a time when I was free to experience the wonder and the mystery that is life, freedom through questioning ¿what is this?¿ and freedom to discover and constantly change that answer. That is what good nostalgia is for me: recalling this freedom, and being thankful and grateful for all of the richness it has brought to my life.

 

Date: 12-05-2005 19:51

Subject nostalgia

 

Two weeks before I was going to leave for Austin, I was standing in Subway when it hit me. A mom accompanied by her daughter and a friend entered while I was in line. The two kids had just come from a soccer game and were still dressed in the attire. At that moment, I started to relive a few very sporadic and short memories that I had had playing soccer and traveling all around Texas with my best friend Kathryn. Soccer had always been a part of my life until senior year- I played for about 13 years, and the post game fast food stop was a must. I think that this moment is when I realized that my life as I had known it was over. I had never come to terms with the idea that I had quit soccer; in my mind I was still skipping practices to do homework for my AP classes. I had never talked about it and how scarred I felt to be leaving something that I had done for so long. Krogue warned that ¿talking about the loss that occurred is a huge step towards healing and closure¿ (894). For me, I never said that I had quit soccer; I always told people simply that I had played it all of my life. It was still a part of me, even though I hadn¿t played for over a year. The time I spent in line that day forced me to accept that not only was this one aspect of my life over, but my life as a child and in The Woodlands was over as well.

Being at UT, I still find myself viewing my life as what I always did as a child. I still want to define myself as a soccer player, choir singer, student servant, and officer of various high school clubs. ¿Home¿, a song by Michael Buble captured how I felt about leaving behind my life- ¿I feel just like I¿m living someone else¿s life, it¿s like I just stepped outside, when everything was going right¿. I think that I have not been in college long enough to establish and identity yet, although I have joined a church and several business organizations. It is only after I have had countless study sessions at Starbucks, sat through boring meetings with friends, and have just been here for a long period of time will I feel that this is home. A student declared that ¿you don¿t feel nostalgia for something that happened in isolation; you merely retain a fond memory of it¿ (872). People miss the simplicity of their everyday lives. When I think of going home, I am usually most excited about driving around or going to my favorite restaurant that I always went to with friends. I refuse to let myself dwell on the small things that I miss though and try to focus on the fun things that I have discovered in Austin. My father helped me to prepare for the sense of loss that everyone experiences when coming to college; he kept telling me that though I was always loved and wanted in my home in the Woodlands, it really wasn¿t my home anymore. My family refers to me going home as me returning to Austin, and as sad as it can be at times, it is essential to my moving on. I agree that ¿feeling nostalgic¿gets in the way of experiencing the present¿ (876). When I was standing in line at Subway, I accepted the fact that I was now a college student. I was going to live in Austin with some of her dearest high school friends who would become her family, learn in an amazing environment, and still be close with her family. Its strange how one can experience Krogue¿s five stages of grief in such a short period of time, though there was a very long line, but I believe that I did experience ¿denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance¿ (895) in that line. I was able to overcome my sense of loss, and move on to the front of the line to order party trays for the farewell party that I was throwing at my house for my high school friends to get together one last time.

 

Date: 12-05-2005 19:52

Subject Texas or Mississippi?

For me, at least, leaving for college has been a process similar to grieving. Sometimes I¿m not even sure what I¿m grieving over or what exactly I¿m nostalgic for. I couldn¿t wait to get out of high school. I loved my friends, but I was sick of the drama and the familiarity. Now, I feel like I am ¿¿¿ waiting for something to fulfill the longing [I] feel. But [I] don¿t know what. Just something¿¿ (873). I recognize that the nostalgia I feel is ¿¿largely dependent on repetition and routine. You don¿t feel nostalgic for something that happen in isolation; you merely retain a fond memory of it. But things like the sum of what happened in your childhood¿or even the routines of high school life, allow nostalgia to develop¿ (872). As I think back on the semester, I realize that the feelings and emotions I have experienced resemble the stages of grief that Christine Krogue discusses. My college experience began with bargaining. In May, I realized that I needed to be at UT the next fall. I had always wanted to go out of state, but it just seemed right. While I knew it was a good decision, I was also unsure. All of my friends were either going to school with each other or going somewhere far away; I was one of a few going to UT. I tried bargaining with myself and my mind by attempting to convince myself that I should go somewhere else ¿to prevent loss¿ (895). August, however, eventually came, and I found myself moving into my dorm, alone and scared. Yes, UT is only five minutes from the house where I grew up, but I wanted to get away, and I wasn¿t sure of how college would be for me. Most of my friends had left a week before, leaving me in a denial of ¿not accepting the loss and refusing to acknowledge it¿ (895). I didn¿t want to believe that they were somewhere, experiencing something new together while I was here by myself. Instead, I believed that things would go on as they had gone on for four years. Eventually, I realized that this wasn¿t the case, bringing on a bit of anger. I didn¿t think it was far that they were all together and I was here, and I hated that they had developed a new life together that I was left out of completely. I hated realizing that ¿time brings continuity and change, and amidst all of it, nostalgia has become a way of resisting its passage and the change that it brings¿ (877). This realization fist proved depression, sadness, and reflection, but eventually I came to accept the fate that my college decision had brought me. I realized that I, too, was making incredible friends and having wonderful friends that they would never experience. Yes, they were all still living together and experiencing everyday together. I would never understand what they were going through in Mississippi, but they would never really understand the torture of Plan II or the thrill of UT football or any of the other amazing things I am able to participate in.

 

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Nostalgia Soundtrack: suggestions

 

Bruce Springsteen, Glory Days

Pink Floyd, Time

Beatles, Yesterday

Don McLean, American Pie

Paul Simon, Under African Skies

Rolling Stones, Ruby Tuesday

Jeff Buckley, Last Goodbye?

2 flaming lips songs:

"all we have is now"

and "do you realize" 

in my life, the beatles--i know the 2nd part isn't really nostalgic, but the 1st is

 think that a good one is "Sincerely, Me" by Better Than Ezra

 

Another good one is "Old College Avenue" by Harry Chapin

or, "wishing you were somehow here again" from the phantom of the opera

 

"Winds Of Change" by the Scorpions.  The content of the song needs no explanation.  Whistling so sad and melancholy.  Reminds me of going to the public pool with my family and taking swimming lessons when I was but a wee little boy.

 

"Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd.  While this song actually deals with Roger Watters drifting in and out of consciousness at the doctor's office while getting treatment for herpes.  He remembers things from the past and is an altogether great song.  Talks about childhood memories.

 

And someone asked for the album to end on a happy note to which I suggest "Long December" by the Counting Crows.  Adam Duritz drives around California talking with friends about the past year, admonishes himself for not cherishing his time, and in the end looks forward to the promise of a new year.  This goes well with our theme of nostalgia and freshman anxiety and should help to pull us to the otherside of the discussions.  We've lingered long enough on those sad things.  It's time to move on.  Na nana na   Na nana nana nana naaa naaa   Na nana naaaa yaaaah.  (The sing along at the end is so triumphant too).

 

I also have to add "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads. 

 

"You may find yourself living in a shotgun SHELL/You may find yourself in another part of the world/You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile/You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife/You may ask yourself; Well...How did I get here?

 

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground"

 

And the song gets better and better from there, but I'll let you look those up yourself.

Sadly, the Dixie Chicks butchered this song... but "Landslide" by Stevie Nicks.... sigh.

Jim Croce, "Time in a Bottle"

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Selected Lyrics

Bruce Springsteen’s

Glory Days

 

I had a friend was a big baseball player

back in high school

He could throw that speedball by you

Make you look like a fool boy

Saw him the other night at this roadside bar

I was walking in, he was walking out

We went back inside sat down had a few drinks

but all he kept talking about was

 

Chorus:

Glory days well they'll pass you by

Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye

Glory days, glory days

 

Well there's a girl that lives up the block

back in school she could turn all the boy's heads

Sometimes on a Friday I'll stop by

and have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed

Her and her husband Bobby well they split up

I guess it's two years gone by now

We just sit around talking about the old times,

she says when she feels like crying

she starts laughing thinking about

 

Chorus

 

My old man worked 20 years on the line

and they let him go

Now everywhere he goes out looking for work

they just tell him that he's too old

I was 9 nine years old and he was working at the

Metuchen Ford plant assembly line

Now he just sits on a stool down at the Legion hall

but I can tell what's on his mind

 

Glory days yeah goin back

Glory days aw he ain't never had

Glory days, glory days

 

Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight

and I'm going to drink till I get my fill

And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it

but I probably will

Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture

a little of the glory of, well time slips away

and leaves you with nothing mister but

boring stories of glory days

 

Chorus (repeat twice)

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There are places I’ll remember

All my life though some have changed

Some forever not for better

Some have gone and some remain

All these places have their moments

With lovers and friends I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life I’ve loved them all