as in “Friko’s thoughts ranged in a dozen different directions of what she could do or would like to do.”
Nostalgia has been the basis for these posts; persistent rain and the pressure of nose against window pane while the owner of said nose stares out at a sodden and gloomy world, lend themselves to equally gloomy thoughts. Nostalgia was invented in 1688 by a Swiss medical student, Johannes Hofer, who described it as a “neurological disease of an essentially demonic cause.” The German word ‘Heimweh’ was eventually translated into the nationally unspecific ‘homesickness’, which means anybody can catch it, of whatever nationality. In the 19th century, due to vast numbers of immigrants, America was the most openly homesick society known.
'Home is where the heart is’ or some such drivel. Platitudes don’t help. I am not sure if the feeling of displacement ever leaves a first generation immigrant. Nowadays we call them ex-pats; the word implies an eventual return to the mother country, a temporary sojourn in a country other than the country of origin, for whatever reason.
In London I knew lots of immigrants to the UK who said they would go ‘home’ again some time in the future; people of many nationalities who had lived here for decades, like me. In Valleys End there are just a few of us, less than a handful, all residents to the end of life. Probably.
Going ‘home’ is a fantasy. In any case, it is far too late for me. In spite of watching German thrillers, documentaries and clever talk shows on TV, I wouldn’t know my way around, wouldn’t know modern life, wouldn’t be able to conform anymore. Worse than that, I have got into English habits. I am no longer used to excellent workmanship, efficiency and cleanliness. I have no better way of describing it than saying that I have got into the habit of sitting down on a bench in the open without wiping it first.
Also, I no longer have any close family there.
So, here I am, and here I’ll stay.
But there is one thing I can do. I have made arrangements with those in my family who still speak to me that I want my ashes to be chucked into the nearest river that flows into La Manche/Nordsee/The Channel. However diluted, I will eventually wash up on home ground.
There’s a thought for a rainy day!
Ah, sweet nostalgia! I didn't know it was a disease; from now on I will think of it as "permutation of memory".
ReplyDeleteSorry Rosaria, I clicked on ‘Publish’ far too soon.
Deletehaha....yes, it can be a disease....smiles
ReplyDeleteSorry, Brian, ditto.
DeleteWhat a funk! I pray for sun to cheer your spirits. Once a crocus or daffodil rears its happy head you will return to the normal edge of things. I guess I should be thinking about where I want my ashes sprinkled. Hubby has told me he was them in the ocean in a warmer clime.
ReplyDeleteI don't see you in a funk, but rather thinking quite honestly and clearly. Nostalgia/homesickness is a good sign..despite what that old doc said. I have been holding back commenting on your last post....much to digest there, and I am a serious person when it comes to such matters. Maybe I'll email you some thoughts, maybe not.
ReplyDeleteThe feeling of displacement.....I wish you would write about that more, that is a much underwritten subject.
But I have sneaky suspicion your feeling of displacement is much deeper and sorrowful than just living in England. You are a fascinating woman and I feel privileged to be witness to your words and feelings.....
a big smiley hug for you whether you want it or not
I LOVE that little tidbit about "nostalgia". I often find myself homesick, but the problem is that I have had so many homes I am always homesick and heartsick for some other place than where I am at. I suppose this may be an advantage as I've not had the deeply rooted and settled experience that some do, and I think that I would find myself intensely melancholy to have to cut myself loose from such a place and resettle.
ReplyDeleteGloomy thoughts indeed. Thomas Wolfe, one of our writers said 'you can't go home again!' Given the change in most places, perhaps not Europe, even if you go back somewhere it isn't there. Dianne
ReplyDeleteOn ashes
ReplyDeletemine to be sprinkled
in these old woods :)
Make sure you check your winds and tides...don't want to see you whizzing past Ouessant in a brisk easterly.
ReplyDeleteIs it the recent unpleasantness that has made you look for a return to the past, that has made you aware of something in the air of the U.K. that does not sit well with you?
I understand your feeling of not being at home.
ReplyDeleteThings will seem better when spring arrives, I promise.
see, i just went right to nPk.
ReplyDeletebad flask.
bad, bad flask.
Nostalgia. I think my Nostalgia illness is terminal -- the older I get, the more it manifests. And certainly the gloom doesn't help.
ReplyDeleteYes, I can see why it would be harder to return, not knowing your way about or having close family, although I suspect if you really want to go sometime, you can find a blogger who can take you about and welcome you. Everyone knows that I am to be chucked into my lake up north, or at least so long as they outlive me! Then I'll have to find new folks!
Your words are so perfect to describe that heavy feeling of missing home. I told my mom that I will have my ashes buried in her plot somewhere. Whether or not I have that done, it was reassuring to her and to me. Sigh
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mathwords.com/p/permutation_formula.htm
ReplyDeleteEven as a small child, I felt like a sojourner in an alien country. Nothing has happened in seventy years to change that impression. Always, though, I've carried a sense that home was still familiar, though far away. For fifty years, I tried to conjure up images of my heart's country. When I could no longer see well enough to make paintings and sculpture and drawings, I began to write stories about it. There it is. On a page somewhere. I can't remember the way to go there, but I can see it clearly. Very soon now, they will come for me, and take me back where I belong.
ReplyDelete"Nostalgia is deception wrapped in sentiment. Nostalgia is a ghostly lover dressed in a lovely, old-fashioned gown, who beckons you to dance with her, to make love to her… and then she turns into a hideous mummified ghoul who rips your throat out with her teeth and blood gushes and the screaming, my God, the screaming… That is nostalgia."
ReplyDelete--Dave Campbell
I have a similar relationship with Philadelphia - I look on in wonder at what used to be my family home.....but it is not "home" now.
ReplyDeleteALOHA from Honolulu
Comfort Spiral
=^..^= <3
"You can't go home again" as one of our American authors said. I have fond memories of my childhood in central Florida before it became so crowded with suburbs and condominiums. The last time I went back, I could hardly recognize a thing -- I'll stick with my memories.
ReplyDeleteThese gloomy days -- how welcome spring will be!
That's exactly what my parents did! Both wanted to be cremated and have their ashes sprinkled in the ocean so they could float home to Hamburg. I kept a spoonful of ashes from each parent and planted it under a rose bush each, then my brother took the ashes to WA and sprinkled them.
ReplyDeleteI was born in Germany too, but feel no connection, having been raised in Australia from babyhood.
I can't even begin to imagine how much Heimweh those people must have who, in spite of living in a country for decades, never learn to speak its language.
ReplyDeleteFebruary is , more than any other , the month for sitting , nose to window , pining for home .
ReplyDeleteWhen we left Spain , I thought my heart would break but I know that I couldn't fit back in now ... it's all moved on and , more than twenty years older , I'm a different person .
On days like this, I just make a big pot of lentejas and take comfort from each spoonful .
There must have been some good to being a vagabond as a child and never having a place I came from until I was an adult and could adopt my own home. I love your posts, and I'm glad you're back to allowing comments so I can tell you so. :-)
ReplyDeleteMy definition of "funk" is in a down mood, not exactly depressed but gloomy and licking ones wounds.
ReplyDeleteActually not meant as a criticism but a sympathetic remark. I get SAD syndrome when weather is extensively gray and I find I am sensitive to all kinds of relationship issues much more than when the sun is shining.
DeleteHome is not where you came from; it's where they take you in.
ReplyDeleteI am certainly tired of the cold gloomy days myself. I've never moved from one country to another. but my transition from the city to the country is on-going. since I still have a house in the city and go in to work when we need to I don't feel so uprooted.I think a lot of my reluctance to selling the city property involves cutting the string that connects me to my past.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Love love, Andrew. Bye.
ReplyDeleteMy ashes will be strewn on high moorland, in Cornwall, with a view over the Atlantic Ocean. My husband will reunite with his parents near Lyon, France. You do reach a point where you must acknowledge that "Home" no longer exists, as remembered. I think that the trade-off of no longer cleaning a bench before you sit, is well worth it. How freeing. (It never occurred to me that one might pre-clean a bench, until I read this. Maybe I am still English:)
ReplyDeleteI also have occasional flare-ups of nostalgia, but my homesickness is for the homes of my parents and family, not where I was raised. It's an odd sensation and can be quite powerful. As a young man I related well to Hermann Hesse's "outsider" characters. It has stayed with me, but I can't dwell on it.
ReplyDeleteI am going to be an Ex-pat soon...as I am moving to Germany in July :)
ReplyDeleteWell Friko, if that's a gloomy thought, then I'm guilty and the sun is actually shining here. My kids know that I want them to take my ashes to Key Largo and throw them into the ocean. Then have a party, because I hate funerals. I've never considered that gloomy.
ReplyDeleteOuch! Not sure I agree with your rant about English's poor workmanship though. Or the English lack of cleanliness. But then maybe you and I hang out in different parts of the British Isles ...
ReplyDeleteNow, this is the kind of cultural detail that speaks volumes in one line: "I have got into the habit of sitting down on a bench in the open without wiping it first." I'm also fascinated by the idea of nostalgia as a "neurological disease of an essentially demonic cause.” Sounds awfully Faustian, or something of the sort. It is an interesting thing, this sense of a displaced self. Even I, born and raised in the US, several generations in, have experienced a small bit of it: as a "city" denizen from Chicago living in Iowa, as a midwesterner living in New York City, and even now, as a Hudson Valley resident who would really rather be a "city" denizen, or so she thinks.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, one thing that slid by me in one of your earlier "Permutations" posts to which I just returned, and which had me laughing out loud is this: "Even Leonard Cohen coming over the earphones couldn’t dampen my newly resurgent spirits." Now THAT is saying something!
This makes sense to me. I have worked with many immigrant children in the United States. I have seen this homesickness disease. We even were trained to recognize the silent period that such children experience when they come to school and must learn a new language. We speak of acculturation rather assimilation. I don't know, especially after reading your post, if acculturation is really possible. We try to teach them to embrace the culture and language they left behind and to integrate it into the whole person. Does this ever happen? Perhaps. Does homesickness ever stop? I don't think so. It is interesting to read how you have been assimilated (?) or is it that you've just adapted and accepted the way things are. Acculturated? I hear mostly that you long for the land of your youth when it was a joyful place.
ReplyDeleteThis resonated with me Friko. I still have many siblings and friends in Ireland but I have no nostalgia to live there again. Many find that odd. As I love being in Ireland, I perform there, have lovely gatherings there, travel a lot there but leave it with no tears to come "home." Where my heart is. Right here.
ReplyDeleteLovely post.
XO
WWW
I think it's nostalgia and just getting older, too. But it is true--you can't go home again. The old family home I remember--someone else lives there now--and the fields I dearly loved were gone by the time I was ten, anyways. I know I haven't switched countries, but I miss another culture nonetheless. The days when you didn't have to lock your doors and kids played outside all day and into the night every chance they got. When the TV shows and movies had morals and sweetness...and a kind of innocence. I get homesick for another time. It's okay to feel whatever you feel, dear one. :) :)
ReplyDeleteI'm suffering too. With pleasant weather come multitudes of distractions from the too-much-living-in-the-head.
ReplyDeletePlease use old address.....http://balisha-neverenoughtime.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteWe are snowbirds in Arizona and for the first month my husband is homesick for Washington, where he was born and raised and formed his friendship. My father was a military man so I never had a home to return to.
ReplyDeleteWe are still a county of first generation newcomers - in fact The Great Dane is one. Most don't pine (at least openly) for the Old Country. Chances are things were not so good in the Old Country and First Generations are busy making a living and thanking their lucky stars that they moved on when they did. Nostalgia is usually for food and the language of home. My experience, with so many family members in that First Generation is that one can't go home again - in fact one rarely wants to do so, especially after a visit back.
ReplyDeleteI hope a return to decent weather will help pull you out into the sunshine, in body and soul.
Your feelings sound so understandable as you live in two different cultures -- the Germany of your childhood and youth and England. I know quite a few immigrants here and in L.A. and hear the same nostalgia a lot. My brother and his family moved to Thailand a year and a half ago and even his four-year-old has waves of nostalgia for Los Angeles. She and her parents were watching "The Wizard of Oz" video (for about the 10,000th time!) not long ago and she repeated "There's no place like home. There's no place like home." along with Dorothy. When her Dad asked her where she considered home, she replied "Always Los Angeles." Then she cried a little before launching into a happy account of her adventures at pre-school.
ReplyDeleteI really like your plan of spending eternity in a river in Germany, your ashes washing up here and there to be one with your native soil. I haven't decided whether I want my ashes to go back to Los Angeles or if I want to spend eternity off-shore in Maui. Will have to give this more thought.
I caught the reference about your children....oh, my Friko. I'm so sorry things have been so hard for you lately. I hope they grow past all the blaming sooner rather than later.
I can say for myself that I am completely at home where I am, for more than thirty years now. No resentments, no regrets, no yearnings whatsoever - Palmen fuer Kastanien! But true, I too met people who lost their identity and never really got "home" here, not learning the language properly, and longing for things in the past. Wishing you sunshine Friko - outside and in your heart. :-)
ReplyDelete