Nostalgia

"Nostalgia does not strike one as an altogether satisfactory word for such fascination (particularly when one thinks of the pain of a properly modernist nostalgia with a past beyond all but aesthetic retrieval), yet it directs our attention to what is a culturally far more generalized manifestation of the process..." Frederic Jameson {Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism}

Last Thursday, after writing my blog, receiving feedback from some of you and seeing the preparations for a festive holiday across an ocean, as I had students wish me a happy turkey day even though they aren't quite clear what we do and it didn't matter because I had to work so it wasn't officially a holiday, for me anyhow, I got my sweet and sour taste of nostalgia. That surge of memory that we get from time to time when we least expect it. The glance at on old photo that takes us back, the song that helped us through our heartbreak, the smell of a fading perfume that travels to that trip that changed us somehow or the crook of your mother's neck that always smells the same and doesn't ever change...the voice that we fear we will forget someday.

As I drank a coffee this afternoon with Mellie, the Hondurian 31 year old who immigrated to Barcelona 3 years ago, she painted her very own picture of nostalgia for me and it was so painfully sweet, so rich that I realized that we all have our versions of it. As long as we have memory, we carry that feeling of the past, that long definition that does not fit in the four syllable word nos-tal-gi-a which ironically is the same in Catalan, Spanish, Italian and change the final a for an e and you have it in French. Yet, depending on the person, that very word carries a different weight and sentimentality, making it one of a kind. And so as Mellie told me how she had received an 8 pound package from home this week with fresh cheese, homemade chocolate and a picture of her newborn nephew, her eyes welled up with tears and she looked at me and said, "I tasted home Heidi". And then she stopped and said, "You know what frightens me the most? That I will forget their voices, my mother's, my brothers' and sisters' and so I call home. I go down to the internet cafe and waste the little money I have left for the week on phone calls. I call each and everyone of them and guess their names when they pick up the phone to reassure myself that I still remember their voice. Then when my mom finally gets on she reprimands me for wasting my money on calls and little does she know that I am trying to save her voice, because right now it's all I have." (footnote: Mellie came to this city in search of a better paying job to help her single mother and extensive family. She has not been home in 3 years and does not plan on returning until she has enough money, according to her standards. Mellie bought a one way ticket and stayed.)

As Mellie's eyes welled up with tears, I realized that I never thought of 'losing' someone's voice, in fact, I think I can still hear each and everyone of you. But instead I fear losing my holidays, the food we eat, the smells I so love and so I try to reproduce those dinners, have guests from abroad bring me my lotions and listen to the music that links me to you.

On the contrary, the days I was suffering from a bout of nostalgia, I asked a good friend of mine if she ever felt "it", you know that sickening feeling that goes away by the next morning and she looked me in the eyes and sincerely answered, "No, I am okay..." and I worried that perhaps I had a problem for feeling this way after living here for almost 4 years and being 'okay'. But after analyzing this I realized again that of course we all have it, but it comes in different dimensions. And it is so personal, so private that perhaps sometimes we don't know how to word it. How to spell out those syllables and tell someone that I simply miss "that", the back then, but it doesn't mean I want it back because for some reason, we are doing what we are doing now and not what was back then.


On that I note, I close up with November and welcome in December. Today, finally, winter arrived to this city and I was able to put on my wool scarf and heavy coat and welcome a new season after a weekend of gourmet cooking with Oriol (he made Octopus(slurrp slurrp)!!!) I was sure that someday, I will be nostalgic for this as well, but does it really matter?

(Mollie waiting for something, anything to fall...I bet you she feels nostalgia too)