NOSTALGIA
"Our fate spends itself in this succession of hope and nostalgia." --Natalia Ginzburg
The human condition arises from
a confluence of experience
and consciousness.
From your consciousness
of past experience flows
a feeling of dense nostalgia
for an invulnerable reality
where you know & discount all pain.
From your consciousness
of present experience flows
a feeling of the unknown hazard,
as yet incalculable,
devoid of density.
You are constantly immersing
your conscious self in present action,
lusting for experience
that will become nostalgic,
pleasing in your sight.
But because the outcome
of present experience is uncertain,
its first effect is not nostalgia.
It is hazard and excitement,
the incalculable power of hurt.
From pain of doing, then, with time,
a kind of quittance comes.
Natalia Ginzburg quote from "Winter in the Abruzzi." Translated from the Italian by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. New York Review of Books. 23 May 2002, p. 55. Copyright 2002 by Seven Stories Press.
22 May 2002 Copyright © 2002 Richard P. Richter
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