Nóstos Álgos

Time is something intangible, liquid and free flowing. Sometimes it trickles by, drip by drip, hovering into a teardrop form, thick like sap. Other days its current is overpowering, I’m swept away, left looking back and wondering how I ended up downriver and when. I remember being a child, sitting in the booster seat of my mother’s car. This was before model, make or year mattered. It was blue, this was the only relevant fact I knew and accepted. When you’re a kid, a day away from home is a monumental event. Surrendering time and control used to be inevitable. Driving home for the day, from whatever activity my parents planned to keep me busy, always proved to be quicker than on the way out. Road trips stretch in the morning. At night, my mind was full and heavy from the day. Resting my head against the cool glass, I wondered vaguely how my parents could ever know where we were going. Roads, trees, fields and buildings blurred in my field of vision. I had no sense of place or reality, certainly no sense of time. The shadows grew long. The last of dusk’s orange persistence submitted to sudden blackness. I closed my eyes for just a moment- shocked that in that single blink we made it home. Groggy from the nap I always denied, I wondered sleepily how the moon managed to follow us home.

It’s strange to me that I remember this so vividly. The car ride stands out more than the softball games, trips to the lake, picnics at the park. All too often when I innocently glance out a dark car window, I’m transported back to nodding off in a booster seat. A wistful smile follows, and I’m momentarily swept away by that channel of time. I miss the naïve mindset of finding a friend in the moon. Why is this scene what my mind drifts back to, over and over again? The seeming insignificance of the moment doesn’t accelerate the process of forgetting. Forgetting is decaying. Feelings and memories rot and fade until the initial form is unrecognizable. The ones that escape this decomposition, that stay fresh and sweet smelling and green, are random and jumbled in my mind. My past is a patchwork quilt of nonsensical scenes that erupt out of the blue and into the forefront of my attention. The common thread they share is the overpowering nostalgia these recollections drag along.

I often struggle with the meaning of nostalgia. The dictionary definition contradicts itself, by claiming first that it’s a wistful longing for time that’s passed, followed up with the inclusion that this is a happy, positive association with remembering. In my opinion, this dramatic leap to a positive association with memory is too rash of a conclusion to make. It’s too easy. Whoever sat down and penciled that into Oxford’s Dictionary had too clear a mind, too easy a life. Maybe he transcended, reaching inner peace or fulfillment. It goes against human nature to have such an uncomplicated relationship with the passage of time, the revitalization of memories, the loss of them. The word itself originates from the Greek word nóstos, meaning “homecoming”, and álgos, which more fittingly translates “to ache”. I think its origins as homecoming is a comforting thought, as though you can reach a place of belonging through reminiscing.

Before it was used by poets, daydreamers and the like, nostalgia was used clinically in the medical field to diagnose 17th century Swiss soldiers with homesickness. The longing for home manifested itself into physical symptoms including dizziness, fever, even death. This diagnosis lasted throughout the American Civil War, before disappearing from the medical realm in the late 1800s. Throughout histories of war, displacement, and disaster, nostalgia has wormed its way into the human condition, driving people mad with memory.

Personally, I identify more with the Swiss fighters far from home than the reminiscing romanticists. Nostalgia makes me nauseous. I indulge regardless, triggering the overwhelming longing with songs, photos, stories. There’s a market for nostalgia, and I’m the ideal consumer. I’m drawn in by those who use time periods of the past and wield them to create an image of coming home. It’s comfortable to fall back into time gone by, where all the best pieces of an era are hand picked and marketed. Memories are strategically combed through, repackaged and sold with the promise of returning to a simpler time.

One of my favorite songs includes bittersweet poetry about glamour and glory in the 1920s. The singer creates a vintage narrative out of melancholy melodies and a devotional tone. It’s astonishing how appealing it is to me despite the fact I could never relate to the tales of this era. Sometimes I reject relatability, and instead search intently to disappear from my own present experience. I allow my memory to be warped as I listen, closing my eyes and drifting amongst old-fashioned love stories.

Brands too rely on past consumer contentment to market their futuristic products. Microsoft depends on its image of catering to “90s kids”, and Motorola released a smartphone with a retro folding keyboard. Buyers are reminded of growing up with these products, and the comfort of returning to a simpler time is too strong to resist or ignore. Maybe it’s just restless escapism that makes this yearning so strong and vicarious. The complexity deepens as I ache over memories I’ve never had, periods I haven’t lived through.

Defining memory is a bit less emotionally tense than nostalgia. It’s the storage of information, simply put. A toolbox for present and future use is routinely filled with gadgets and gizmos shaped by the past. Thoughts are stored and organized in the hippocampus, later retrieved whether for a purpose or on a whim. This recollection is due to chemical exchanges between neurons, which are the cells in the brain with dendrites that jut out like Albert Einstein’s hair.

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How many times has the moon waned and waxed since I was a child falling asleep in the backseat to the time I was driving myself? Not my own car yet, sixteen and stepping on the gas too forcefully and the brakes too often in the Mercury Sable I inherited from my Grandma. The car was old, lacking the modern luxuries of a Bluetooth system or aux cord. I passed the time with the CDs I collected from my childhood, audio book recordings of The Hobbit, and mixtapes I fumbled to make. The Beatles were singing about how yesterday their problems seemed so far away when I saw the moon from my rearview mirror. It wore a face like a ghost, crystal in color and shape. I pulled over on the shoulder of the streets, marveling at its low suspension. How could a moon so swollen and healthy be hiding from view for so long? When I finally continued my drive, the illusion that the moon hovered above my car, guiding me home was maintained. I tried to encourage my friends to go look at this sight for their own. If its brightness struck me in the gut, working an emotional reaction so strongly my breath caught, surely this sight would resonate with them. It was a message they must’ve been familiar with by now. I think I sent this over and over, longing for once that someone would tell me to look first, that they would feel the same affinity for that overwhelming, heavenly site and think of me.

I’m working through the fact that experiences can never fully be shared. I was so taken aback when I learned the moon didn’t follow every child home. Even what I believe to be universal can never be. Weighing the heaviness of this, there’s a delicate balance between isolation and freedom. How wonderful it is to embrace our own reality as the only one.

How lonely.

Reminiscing with others proves this disparity. There’s comfort in rehashing the good old days with friends or family. Photo albums and camera rolls are a dedication to this. Every moment captured, frozen in time, comes with thousands of different stories. No matter how close you circle a memory, it’s impossible to come to a shared conclusion. Magic can be found in hearing the versions of life we all go through. I hold my own close to my heart, almost reluctantly after desperately trying to explain exactly how the moment went. It’s a failing mission each time. I’ve grown to be content with keeping these memories locked away, only taking them out and dusting them off on special occasions so as not to dull the freshness.

Aching for the past is a practice of self-sabotage. I reflect so heavily that I’m reluctant to stay present. My memories are skewed, tampered with and altered. Sour moments are turned sweet when I flee to familiar flashbacks. I rewrite the truth from the point of view of a romantic poet, watching the past play out across the stage in my mind. I wonder, will I ever feel the way I used to? I claw desperately at these scenes, reworking myself into the narrative, refusing to let go, refusing to choose this moment over the last.

It’s easier than surrendering to the lack of control in the present. Or worse, the future. It’s far easier to romanticize yesterday than to face the uncertainty of tomorrow.

There’s always an urge to announce my nostalgia. As though if I don’t name it, call it out, jot it down, the memory will fade, the drug-like euphoric pang of recognition with it. Memories hit me from the ether, slamming into me full force. Writhing and slippery, I grapple with the emotions, holding it down and pinning it like a butterfly on a styrofoam board. I peer through the lens of a microscope, carefully dissecting each moment, each perspective. It’s an exhausting process, spending too much energy deciphering what’s important, what I should remember. My fear of forgetting drives this anxiety fueled, meticulous process. I want to capture every emotion I’ve ever felt, label it and keep it in a jar.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders”. I’m not a scholar or expert in knowledge or culture like Nietzsche, yet I feel compelled to disagree. I don’t envy those who forget. I’ll take every crushing lesson learned, every brutal consequence of nostalgia. I’ve made up my mind that in spite of it all, every painful memory earned or time spent yearning has worth. Every flashback that splinters into dizzying kaleidoscope fragments in my mind is a reminder that I have been and still am. This proof is in every truth I learn about myself, every relationship I forge, every space I make my own.

It’s evidence I’ve loved this world and been loved back, that I’ve summited mountains and cried at the moon and lost myself over and over. Every moment, and every memory makes up the version of who I am today.

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I was raised to marvel at the sky, at the Earth and its suspension in orbit. Memories of these lessons and taught values shock me with their sudden potency. Sitting around the kitchen table in elementary years, my small brow furrowed as my Dad uses the same apple to model planets and explain Newton’s “Aha!” moment. This scene comes to me fifteen years later as my family lingers around the same kitchen table, watching live footage of the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. A video plays on the small TV in the corner, which used to exclusively play cartoons during breakfast before school. The kitchen feels congested with all five of us in attendance, closely watching the magnified planets drift closer and closer. How ironic that the joining of these celestial bodies joined my family together. It’s the first time we’ve been seated together at the table in months. We’re united by activity 500 million miles away instead of by shared meals and news. Saturn and Jupiter take longer than expected to cross paths. I don’t mind the wait. I take this memory, distant planets and people growing closer, and imprint it in my mind. We shared our smallness in the universe, five specks floating, clinging to our feigned ideas of centricity and significance. I’ll never know if the others felt the intensity or the intimacy of the moment as I did. Maybe it’s gone from their memories already, or disguised as just another winter evening.
The fact of the matter is, I’m a biology student. I fall back on scientific explanations to navigate my place in this world. I know that truthfully, the reasons some memories are stronger than others is because of the number of neurons activated in the moment or in later association. At the same time, I dispel this idea. I want to believe we have agency in what we prioritize. I can think of no better way to live than to find meaning in everything.

Olivia Troiano is a graduating senior in the Environmental Studies program at ESF with a focus in Policy, Planning and Law. In her three years at ESF she has been a web writer with Syracuse University’s music publication, 20Watts Magazine. Olivia’s interests lie in environmental communication, outdoor management, and conservation. She is looking forward to learning more about the field as she becomes a part of it, starting as a crew member for the Student Conservation Association this summer!