It isn’t like turning 25 brought on a sense of nostalgia. My memory doesn’t work that way. I have simply refrained from speaking with anyone about the way things used to be. Whether my fear be that no available listener could understand in more than a general way, or worse, the listener would simply laugh at me for being old, I have kept the longings for things gone to myself.
Nostalgia seems irreverent of audience though. Most times I have been nostalgic I have not been surrounded by anyone from the era for which the nostalgia was felt. But maybe that’s just stating the obvious. Perhaps nostalgia ONLY overcomes you when you are in a familiar place with unfamiliar people.
I must introduce a concept into my discussion: Kitsch.
In his novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” Milan Kundera presents kitsch as “…the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence (Kundera, 248. Harper & Row Publishers).”
I would like to think that I have consistently examined my surrounding kitsch throughout my life. This would be an absurd assumption on my part though. If I only consider those times since I left my hometown though, I may find sporadic points where I was aware of my own personal kitsch. It is these moments for which I experience nostalgia.
And once again, perhaps this is the obvious, or it’s just the way I am, but I don’t feel nostalgia for the times and places of my past, but for the people that filled those settings. The weird thing here is, although I am still in contact with several of the people that live in my memories, I don’t feel that I can speak with them about the times past. In some cases I have let fear lead me as far as refusing to contact great friends that I have had (e.g. John L).
I don’t know how to close this line of thought. Perhaps there is more here than I have touched on though.
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