Nostos: Return Home

Sloppy snowflakes today, the slightly surreal sort, like shaking a snow globe, and watching gravity restore order. And something about this youthful exaggeration of snowflakes transforming harvest season into holiday season is opening the door to nostalgia and to nostos (from Ancient Greek νόστος meaning “return home”).

Tomorrow, we’ll illuminate Christmas lights in Rosslyn’s windows and the boathouse. The holiday season will feel official then, and I’ll no longer have to sneak-listen to Christmas carols.

And as I fumble forward toward one of my favorite times of the year, Vienna Boys Choir soundtracking my drives, I will try to untangle nostalgia from sentimentality, to decipher what exactly infuses this season, this home with feelings more physical than emotional. Or at least as much…

And grappling with nostos, with the quintessential return home, there’s no finer guide than poet , Louise Glück.

Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image 
for relentless earth…
[…]
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

— Louise Glück, “Nostos” (Source: Meadowlands via The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor)

Perfect honesty. I’m wise enough to sidestep any pompous additions, so I’ll curtail any current observations on my own “nostalgia, sentimentality, wistful-if-illusory longing” for now. Instead I’ll revisit several touchstones in my quest toward/away from nostalgia as a quick sketch or map in anticipation of better fleshing out the borders and byways anon.

Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)

—//—

I revisit… [almost two decades of Rosslyn memories] with a tinge of nostalgia and a whimsical wonder about the future.

[…]

An introspective retrospective. Looking back. Looking forward…

I’m still sometimes uncertain about saying goodbye. So I sit with Susan and scheme up a new adventure…

Have we evolved toward a different collection of curiosities and creative possibilities?

So much still coalescing. So much flux and reimagining, brainstorming and experimentation. Each of us drawing on these 18 years, each of us pushing our creative limits, each of us endeavoring to listen as well as we speak, trying to remain nimble and open despite our pet passions and fleeting panaceas. And all the while doubling back to braid and re-braid Rosslyn’s tresses, weaving welcoming words and tailoring photographs into some semblance of an invitation… (Source: Waterfront Retrospective)

Over the last couple of years anticipated nostalgia has permeated blog post after blog post as I both celebrate and lament the arc of our life at this singular dwelling. (Source: Anticipated Nostalgia)

—//—

There’s a detour ahead. And mixed emotions. Second guessing. Contradiction. Paradox. Possibly veering toward cognitive dissonance. (Source: Mixed Emotions)

No. Nostos. Nostalgia. Return home. Again. And again. While sloppy, oversized snowflakes fall…