recollection

Is nostalgia just a construct? 
I can't remember.

Tea is just an excuse. Why does tea bring back memories on its own?

~~~

There is a surprising amount of nostalgia (what, are we talking quantities here?) on the black sun. You suspect that in a life less stalled there would be a lower quantum of it (is there some magical formula?). There are lists to remind us of what we're missing: the 20 books one must read; the 100 films one must see; the ten places one must see before one dies and so on and so forth. If you live in linear time something will always be lost and never regained. Come again? There is a list which I cannot find.A list that is lost.

~~~

There will probably be less nostalgia as time passes. 

If you're constantly on the move, if technology is rapidly changing, if you live in a shape-shifter's world defined by the latest fad, fashion, or trend..then what will you be nostalgic about? Is something deep-rooted in human history about to to be lost, erased from memory-or at least set to decline in significance? 'You are reaching the limit of your storage capacity'.

Nostalgia for the book, for instance, only makes sense if one has been brought up in a culture where books are part and parcel of the culture or your individual life. But what if that isn't the case? Will people even remember that there was a different way of paying attention, of being friends, of preparing food?

But there are limits..and if you don't let go how can you move on (gosh, that does sound like Oprah, doesn't it!). Is nostalgia a function of limitation? Surrounded by things I have less attachment to any one thing? 

~~~

There is a restaurant on High st. Ken where you can sit for two or three hours and not think of time. No matter how bright it is outside it is always cool and dark inside. You have been going there for ten years and have only ordered one dish (I kid thee not!). And the tea is probably the best tea in the world. Tea, conversation, and ease represent the old world (not that you're averse to coffee). There's a small bit of Persia in London. And that is the great thing about global cities: they gather people who bring with them in large carpet bags a treasure of objects and memories and stories so that even when the original place has vanished a trace of it lives on (in a word, a gesture, a taste, a recollection). London, the great whore, the great hoarder. 

Nostalgia: for what we could have been. 

He sees a woman in the train across from his. In a casual moment both stare out and catch each other's glances. That is how faint the connections are. He wonders. Two hundred years ago they could have been master and slave. Now there is the formal equality of strangers. The equality of exchanges. Is nostalgia anything but a moment for a moment?

Words were spoken. A world away from my heart. Your star is rising, mine is falling. A note was played, and the fingers retained a dim memory of its form. There was the tinkling of china in Kyoto. Introductions were made as the snow fell effortlessly. London was the beautiful city in which everything happened, and I its exile. Of the thousand days that have passed, the mornings lied through, and it appears I lived but one night unspoken. Outside, beyond the glazed windows it was winter time, summer time, and only my head and book above water. Outside still further, the Roding found another day, forgiving all those who walked by her side. What ocean had she left?

Little r stood on a tree stump, we at her feet, and she proclaimed all time had come to an end. But inside time passes faster than I can recall.