Sehnsucht

More on that often revisited topic--that feeling of homesickness for faraway places you've never been.

Today, Laura sent me a link to a blog post titled "Longing" that talked about sehnsucht. The author writes "there is something in the experience which suggests this far off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call “home”. In this sense it is a type of nostalgia, in the original sense of that word." This, of course, sent me scurrying to check the original meaning of "nostalgia." Etymonline says that orginally it was a severe homesickness. That seems right.

After checking that, I searched for more on sehnsucht. One tidbit, not actually related, is that this is the title of the second Rammstein album. Not relevant but not uninteresting, either.

Next I found a Wikipedia article (it seems the above blog entry was taken from here, actually) that has some good information including sehnsucht in C.S. Lewis' works. Here's a quote from Lewis they use, repeated here because I really like it: "That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."

And another Lewis quote: "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing." I am going to have to read his writings on this subject! I'm thrilled to find out that there's something to read!

Finally, here's an article called "Joy and Sehnsucht." More about Lewis. I'm saving it to read later. I'm just happy to have a word for this now.

Goethe

I ran across this quote from Goethe: One feeling which prevailed greatly with me, and could never find an expression odd enough for itself, was a sense of the past and present together in one — a phenomenon which brought something spectral into the present... It must not be forgotten that the closest unions are those of opposites.

This is another piece of the puzzle. I am always trying to describe how reading certain stories (usually mythic fiction, stories by Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, Terri Windling, etc.) makes me feel. I started by saying they make me feel homesick for someplace I've never been and that might not be real. Then Maureen McQuerry added this to my description: yearning for something longer ago, further away or yet about to be. Recognition of something we have never met but have always known.

The most interesting thing about the Goethe quote is that Goethe was born in the late 18th century...

A Glorious Repast

Yesterday, my copy of Charles de Lint’s latest chapbook, “Yellow Dog,” arrived. Glorious! I did something I almost never do—I sat down on the couch as soon as I was in the door and had fed the cat, and I read the whole thing. No dinner preparations, no checking e-mail, nothing until the story was finished. When I was done, I almost didn’t need dinner, I was that satisfied.

This is one of CdL’s desert stories. They are just as powerful and entrancing and moving as his stories of greener places, and whenever I read one, I find myself wanting to visit the desert. Arizona. New Mexico. Dry, bright, harsh places, beautiful in an entirely different way from the mountains and trees here in Portland or the lakeside woods and fields back home in Chicago. I read these desert stories, the stories of canyons and cliffs and hawks and coyotes, and I can almost smell it. I can nearly feel the sand gritting underfoot, see the endless blue sky, smell the baked earth. And I want to go.

Even more importantly I think, at least in the grand scheme of my life, is that I want to write like that. I not only want people to be able to see and smell and feel my settings, I want them to long for those places the way you long for home when you’ve been gone too long.

That’s the best storytelling to me. The kind that leaves you satisfied, filled with words and images, and yet still longing for more. The kind that is so beautiful it leaves an ache inside you that is half joy and half hunger for something you can’t name.

I don’t know if I will reach that pinnacle. I do know that I’ll try. And I do know that I’m lucky that I at least know what it is I’m aiming for.

Running Down a Dream

Has anyone else noticed how hard it seems to be to live your dreams? I wonder if it’s always been this hard? I think it’s harder these days to pursue your passions than it was a few hundred years ago. I have this image of the world then—more wide open, more space to move out into, more room for dreaming. I’m not saying living a dream was easy then. Just maybe a little easier. And I wonder if there’s any way to make it easier today?

Since I am actively pursuing my writing dream now, this has been on my mind a lot lately. I wonder if that notion of the past being easier has any truth to it or if it is just a romanticized excuse for not trying harder?

Our world now is filled with ten hour work days, working to pay the bills, keep a roof over your head, keep the car running, buy food. How is living your dream supposed to happen in the middle of all that? How does it fit into the modern world? Living your dream requires time and focus, and there are so many things around us that eat those up when we aren’t looking. It’s so easy to let it slip away, to swear “I’ll start tomorrow.”

In part, I blame the difficulty in living a dream these days on our fast-food culture. We want everything, we want it right now, and we want it to be effortless. I have actually heard people comment that a microwave dinner that takes five minutes to cook “takes too long.” They decide on the two minute version because it’s faster. How are we supposed to sally forth and pursue our passions when we won’t even take five minutes to microwave lasagna?

I also think our modern ideas of what it means to live your dreams are skewed. I think we are too focused on making a living, and this blinds us to what it means to really live. Maybe we need to focus more on the richness of doing what we love and try to turn away from the idea that we must have three bedrooms, two baths, yearly tropical vacations and a brand new wardrobe to go with our dreams.

I know there is some way to strike a balance, to live your dreams without moving into a cardboard box under the bridge. It is possible to live your dreams; there are people out there doing it right now. But how?

What’s the answer? Oh, you wanted an answer? I have no idea, not right now. Maybe some vague inklings, but nothing concrete enough to put into words. Not yet. But I’ll keep trying to figure it out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Stirrings

I am feeling stirrings of words in my mind. Stories are in there, reaching up like tiny plant roots taking hold in the dark of the earth, winding their way to the surface and the light of the sun.

Yeah. Poetic. That’s nice. I am trying to get at the feeling, and it’s not quite a poetic feeling, really. It’s something different—almost that poetry but not really.

It is August. August is my favorite month. It has always meant back to school, school supplies and new clothes, books and pencils and the promise of a new beginning. August is all of that, but now it is coupled with that bittersweet tang, that feeling you get when you read a perfect line or see a perfect picture and suddenly find your heart wrapped in an ache, being squeezed, a pain almost a pleasure, homesickness for a place you’ve never been. That’s what August is now, because school is behind me. Even teaching in the public schools is behind me. So I am longing for that back-to-school new beginning, but I am without a classroom.

And wrapped up in all of that are stories reminding me that they are still there. And right now I don’t have nearly enough time, and I want to sit and write, and I have other obligations and timeframes I need to work with in the next few weeks. And then I can write. I can write all I want. But I’m going to do some of it now, even if I can’t sit down for the hours I would like.

I am finally feeling the ending of Ordinary Girl. That may be because I know what story I want to write this November for NaNoWriMo. Maybe having that is letting the other stories stir again. Whatever the cause, the end of Ordinary Girl is ready to be written. It is just waiting for me, and I am going to sneak some time with it in the middle of other things I am supposed to be doing.

A little secret: On Friday I have the day off for no real reason. I told my boss I had a reason—something about working in the house because she understands that sort of thing. But there’s not really a reason for the day off, at least not one that she would understand. Yesterday, my daily Note from the Universe said something about taking time off as if I already had the lifestyle I want. And the p.s. said something about how all the things in the note were important but especially taking time off. And then it said, “How about Friday?” And I said, “Yeah, how about Friday?” And so Friday and I, we have a date for sleeping in, piling the bed high with pillows and books and notebooks and the cat, and just writing and making things and not doing anything else.

Is it Friday yet?