nostalgia

what is, is.
what is not, is not.

The dead wood of philosophy must be burned by love.

Let's be clearer here: when people say 'is' they're usually not thinking of the total realm of possibilities but, rather, existence as it is, contingent, accidental being. This is as good as it gets, then it's over. Raw flesh, a rag-bag bundle of sensations loosely held together or a few flashes of neurons. Dust to dust, after all. Poetry, art, all very charming, but ultimately an illusion, a refuge, a consolation, for neither can time be frozen or brought back, nor can we escape our finitude. Religion: not a vision of the good, but a mere matter of the will, dedication, fanatical adherence, horrendous dogmatism etc.,etc.,
...
The social history of nostalgia, the academic analysis of it, is not very interesting. Of course, the political dangers of the return home, the construction of it: tribal purity, the stifling conformity of "the family", the heritage industry with its sickly-sweet sentimentality and kitschy retro-mania. Even at the individual level there's a suspicion of unhealthiness. Endless longing, dreaming, the fantasy of lost time regained, distances overcome ("restorative nostalgia") or the heightened tension, the bitter-sweet feeling, of being an exile, of being homesick and sick of home (as in "reflective nostalgia).

The social history: why now? A balm to soothe the anxieties caused by the dislocations, displacements of globalisation, the loss of a sense of rootedness, 'place' and continuity? The irreversibility of, the linearity of time, when before meaning had been found in what we repeated, need one say it again. Randomness and the shock of the new, uncertainty and a 'risk society', go hand in hand, perhaps, with the deliberate development of, and emphasis on:conservationism, 'community' and nostalgia. It's later than you think.

True. But isn't there something universal about nostalgia? Aren't all versions ultimately reflections of 'the Garden': nostalgia for the absolute, for the time before time? Not as a point in time and therefore a place, but as a starting point, a world of open, unforeseen possibilities? When two cars or trains pull side by side and you see a beautiful girl heading in the opposite direction..she suddenly looks up from her busy world, you too, different paths intersect, she catches your thought, wonders about the life, the infinitely different life, you live.

Nostalgia, then, not as a longing for the absolute past, or the design of a future utopia, but a side-glance at the forgotten tracks, the futures that were not yours. We look, not just north of the future, not just at what 'is' but what could have been, what should have been. The mirages of what never is, the dead branches of the future that never was, cast their spell. The philosopher or scientist will talk of truth and falseness in such matters; the poet of the strength of one's desire, the fidelity to one's imagination.

This strange lump of clay, that sometimes burns and glows and hisses, also wonders and wonders much.Turns,and thinks, and remembers..can be broken, reflective, crossed,..large, open, hard or magnanimous,..can cheat, be true, and see.