So I was just looking through one of Soung’s Dwell magazines and there was this picture of San Francisco. And I sort of missed it all of a sudden. Kind of interesting. Sort of. Maybe not really.
I find myself missing Glennwood Springs, Colorado every now and again and we were only there for 14 hours.
I miss places I haven’t even been yet. I miss people I haven’t met. I miss cars I haven’t owned yet, and apartments I haven’t rented. I have longing down to an art form.
I believe Wordsworth used to describe poetry and art as a “spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility” (or some such nonsense), which is to say that an experience is never fully realized and appreciated in the moment of its occurrance, but rather when we return to it in our thoughts. Maybe you just have a Romantic aesthetic? Kinda like some of the southern writers of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s who had a longing for a South they never knew (and never really existed).
Thanks for making me think about this. Like you, I moved around a lot as a youngster, and I often felt that longing that you describe—even when I was a young adult here in Buffalo. I must confess, though, that lately (say the past 6-10 years or so) my life has been so full that I really haven’t felt that. I look back fondly on many things, but I realize now that the longing I used to feel has been gone for quite some time (and to be honest, I don’t think I even noticed it was missing). Perhaps I’m in the middle of something wonderful that I will look back on in the future with longing, or maybe I’m just spritually sapped. Who the hell knows!?
Anyway, maybe longing is a signal to ourselves that we have the capacity to feel more than we are currently feeling, to offer more emotional energy than is currently required of us? It’s a reassurance that we have not depleted some emotional or psychological reservoir, that there is a surplus that for now can only be channeled to those things to which we have attached value.
Heh, maybe you ought to start procreating. I don’t miss longing (that stands to reason), and I have the vague idea that perhaps my focus turned to the future with the birth of my first child.
Or maybe that’s when I started working and it just drained me of my life. Go figure.
This is both irrelevant and nosy-
how’s that for a start?-but I’ve been happily lurking and appreciating the pieces of your life for awhile now, and when I read your last post I suddenly felt like I had missed a part of the story. A Lebo? “Still”? Were you? What changed?Toldja it was nosy. :) You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.
heh I may have dated a gal or two in my past.