Last week, about three hours into a five-hour hike through the most beautiful canyon I’d ever seen, I felt a wave of melancholy I couldn’t quite place. I looked up at the rock cliffs stretching hundreds of feet above me dotted with cartoonish tufts of green grass; I looked down at the river rushing over my hiking boots and into a green pool enclosed by rocks as giant and smooth as whales. I watched my brother and boyfriend in the water up ahead, laughing at something I couldn’t hear. And I realized, with the appropriate amount of disbelief, that what I was feeling was nostalgia...for the hike I was literally, currently doing.
Wowza, where to start. First of all, thanks for documenting your hike. It’s silly that I didn’t even know that type of beauty existed and now it’s on my bucket list. Second of all (I hate I started the list with this, as I always forget to notate my points halfway through and still don’t quite understand the formal language when you get mid list. Seventh of all? Seems weird.) Anywho. I really enjoyed your perspective of being someone who is obsessed with remembering things. I’ve never thought of it like that, but I’m quite the opposite. I prefer to forget most things. There are whole times in my young life I literally don’t remember happened. I’m sure it’s coping mechanism that could be worked out in therapy, but I think it contributes to how much I love starting over. I love moving (not packing). I love renting so I can pick up and do whatever I want really. I love purging. My closet, my pantry, things I own (not my face thank god). I love finishing a tv series even if I don’t like it cause I’m done and now I’ve got the anticipation of a new series. I also prefer to feel my nostalgia than remember it. I’m very into music. I can put a song and feel a very nostalgic feeling but it doesn’t often come as a crisp memory, but a fuzzy feeling that washes over my brain as if you just gave me an IV drip of serotonin. When I say dream, I do so in more of blurry shapes and feelings of something new, something different. The pandemic been a real mental exercise for me. I can’t get out of the cycle of... “feeling for the future” and I’m just exhausted. I wish I could be more present in the present.
You know nostalgia was once thought to be such a dysfunctional emotion that it was considered an actual disorder. One from which I suffer constantly, it would seem - I'm nostalgic for EVERYTHING, even things I've never personally experienced, even the present moment; I completely understand your sense of loss even before something has actually ended. The worst is when you try to recreate something later on, trying to recapture that feeling by going through the same motions, but it's never ever the same.
Related: have you ever heard the term solastalgia? It's essentially a feeling of nostalgia for a place you never left, but the place itself has changed. I'm actually from Denver (now in upstate NY) and I felt solastalgia HARD as the hordes started moving to Denver years ago and everything became expensive, overcrowded, different (it's actually a little painful to read about you - or anyone - being in Denver because I miss it so much). Favorite restaurants closed and areas gentrified and tech bros clogged the bars and mountain trails became like a circus. I know it's a little ridiculous for me to be so angry about it, because change is inevitable and people are free to move as they please but...god I miss the city and the mountains they way they used to be. I felt solastalgia so deeply I literally couldn't be there anymore. Of course, now I'm just nostalgic for it in a different way....what was my point again? Anyway, you should look it up.
This is so spot on - I feel like I’m fighting and making up with nostalgia on a daily basis. One thing that I’ve done for the past three years now is a One Second Every Day video (You could do this manually, but that’d be a lot of work, and there’s a great app for it). It started when this guy realized he couldn’t remember the details of what he’d done yesterday, a week before, a month before, much less a year before. For the past three years, I’ve taken a video (almost) every day, and I usually try to wait until the year’s cycle is complete to then set it to music and watch it all. In a few days I’ll finish my most recent one, which captures my first year in New York since moving here last August. It always makes me cry to watch these, but it’s also pretty wonderful and has honestly helped me remember so many days where small beautiful moments and memories would ordinarily have slipped away. Highly recommend it!
"Us joking about the idea that rocks are actually soft, but tense up when you step on them"--I love this lol. And I love this newsletter. Thanks for writing and sharing!
Dear Haley, your newsletter is an absolute boost of life motivation and inspiration. It's what gets me through the Sunday blues (or the mean reds), it distracts me from my anxiety of the upcoming Monday and it ignites my curiosity in so many different topics. Thank you for writing :)
I love your thoughts on nostalgia. One of my favorite lines from a book goes, "Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, 'Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.'" I love this because I think it encapsulates the ways in which we view and internalize experiences, how hard it is sometimes to explain these feelings or experiences to others, and the desire to return to those moments and places. (The book is Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger, btw. :) )
wow that water hike looks absolutely beautiful and i completely vicariously know what that feels like, to be confined by nature and nothing else matters or exists and then a nice lunch afterwards.
lol soft rocks
omg i have ruined a pair of sneakers by throwing them in the washing machine so either i did it wrong or ymmv
Hey Haley, this newsletter reminded me of favourite Oulipo writer, Georges Perec. You probably know of him already. His whole work revolves around exactly what you're talking about here: he felt a deep need to document (and classify) every minute detail of daily life, as if trying to preserve his own memory(-ies) alive, or as if attempting to delay the passage of time. I often feel the same way too. With both of you. You could say it is just neurotic; you could say it's fear of death; I will say it's the human condition.
But let us be positive -- I know for a fact that we can control it, naturally if we stop trying to control it... Ha.
I wish I could just pause time in my happiest moments too. And just relive those days, all 24 hours of them, whenever I'm feeling down. I have those same feelings when I don't want a day that was amazing to end, but I've come to realize that I have the power to make more of those days happen! As long as the people you want o spend it with are available to do so, you can plan that same exact trip again, or do something different together. What you do today, effects your tomorrow, so plan more awesome experiences with friends and family every single month, and it'll still make a good year :)
Greta Gerwig got me hooked on Joan Didion when she talked about "presentiment of loss" from Didion's Essay "On Keeping a Notebook" in an interview for her film Ladybird.
"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss."
If you haven't read it I really recommend it! It touches on what Avi calls "emotional truth" and it serves that weird love for writing about writing.
I guess that presentiment of loss is part of nostalgia or a version of it. I feel it in general and for me it is not specific to these times. It feels like whenever I am really happy, at some point I step back and while standing a little bit off to the side I watch my friends and family laugh and ask myself how they can't see that this feeling of happiness will soon be over again. I miss it before it's over. I guess it is a form of being in the moment but an eerie version of it. Everyone else seems to be able to be in the moment "the right way", kind of like Didion describes her daughter: Their experiences not reflected (as they are happening) through lenses of thought, past, future and fear but their whole body immersed in it seemingly with nothing before it and nothing after, just the now.
But there are things I am actually afraid to forget and I feel guilty about forgetting. There are things I have already forgotten probably as a coping mechanism but I know some things are missing and I want them back! Maybe now that I am older I could handle them better? Surely not all of it was bad! Those tiny specks of goodness inbetween the bad: lost! And probably some things got lost just because they were neither good nor bad. Still, as much as I like the idea of remembering anything and everything (when and if I want to), as a hopeless overthinker I'd probably go mad haha
Also: That thought about soft rocks!! Omg so good!
I also feel like I compulsively count past days and am constantly trying to keeping track of memories, moments, stressed about forgetting. Do you have the app Timehop? basically it shows you everything you posted online on that day in past years. It's wonderful and terrible makes me feel like I can keep my head on straight sometimes. Helps with the "yes this happened on this day and I know that because it was the day before this thing, that all happened during this one time, and I was wearing that skirt, and you that shirt"
I discovered only recently after I watched her read an excerpt on YouTube in support of the global environmental group Extinction Rebellion: https://youtu.be/FvzxEVuyDsQ
It’s about climate change but I mention it here because of strong parallels between the two crises.
Haley thanks again for making Sundays more complete with your reflexions and perspectives. I really enjoyed it.
I relate so much with this desparate need of remembering EVERYTHING. Every little thing that I learn, every feeling, every sensation that I have in order to make it all meaningfull, and yes, that need sometimes getting in the way of completely enjoying the moment. Or I would say- making me enjoy it in a different way- not necessarily worse. I think Its kind a feeling of regret or a little anger in those beautiful moments being exactly that- moments. They wont come back, and with time they start feeling like different recolections in our memory. We dont know if after trying to remember them so much we start changing them a little bit. We dont know if we are romanticizing them or they really happened like that.
One thing I learn (and constantly try not to forget because, at least to me, it gives me so much peace of mind) is that life is a recollection of experiences that are important and matter to us, but after all life is an uneventfull subject. The joy, the calm that maybe that experience brought to you - in the long run constitutes your life- and how your state of mind functioned from that beautiful momet on. So maybe in the long run, you would not be able to remember every aspect, dialog or feeling of the trip.- and although the fear of that moment being with time just one day on your life- what you lived would have been a fundamental step in your life.
I hope I made myself clear in this comment since english is not my first language. I must say as well that the comment section of this newsletter has became in itself so beutiful with all the comments!
Wowza, where to start. First of all, thanks for documenting your hike. It’s silly that I didn’t even know that type of beauty existed and now it’s on my bucket list. Second of all (I hate I started the list with this, as I always forget to notate my points halfway through and still don’t quite understand the formal language when you get mid list. Seventh of all? Seems weird.) Anywho. I really enjoyed your perspective of being someone who is obsessed with remembering things. I’ve never thought of it like that, but I’m quite the opposite. I prefer to forget most things. There are whole times in my young life I literally don’t remember happened. I’m sure it’s coping mechanism that could be worked out in therapy, but I think it contributes to how much I love starting over. I love moving (not packing). I love renting so I can pick up and do whatever I want really. I love purging. My closet, my pantry, things I own (not my face thank god). I love finishing a tv series even if I don’t like it cause I’m done and now I’ve got the anticipation of a new series. I also prefer to feel my nostalgia than remember it. I’m very into music. I can put a song and feel a very nostalgic feeling but it doesn’t often come as a crisp memory, but a fuzzy feeling that washes over my brain as if you just gave me an IV drip of serotonin. When I say dream, I do so in more of blurry shapes and feelings of something new, something different. The pandemic been a real mental exercise for me. I can’t get out of the cycle of... “feeling for the future” and I’m just exhausted. I wish I could be more present in the present.
You know nostalgia was once thought to be such a dysfunctional emotion that it was considered an actual disorder. One from which I suffer constantly, it would seem - I'm nostalgic for EVERYTHING, even things I've never personally experienced, even the present moment; I completely understand your sense of loss even before something has actually ended. The worst is when you try to recreate something later on, trying to recapture that feeling by going through the same motions, but it's never ever the same.
Related: have you ever heard the term solastalgia? It's essentially a feeling of nostalgia for a place you never left, but the place itself has changed. I'm actually from Denver (now in upstate NY) and I felt solastalgia HARD as the hordes started moving to Denver years ago and everything became expensive, overcrowded, different (it's actually a little painful to read about you - or anyone - being in Denver because I miss it so much). Favorite restaurants closed and areas gentrified and tech bros clogged the bars and mountain trails became like a circus. I know it's a little ridiculous for me to be so angry about it, because change is inevitable and people are free to move as they please but...god I miss the city and the mountains they way they used to be. I felt solastalgia so deeply I literally couldn't be there anymore. Of course, now I'm just nostalgic for it in a different way....what was my point again? Anyway, you should look it up.
This is so spot on - I feel like I’m fighting and making up with nostalgia on a daily basis. One thing that I’ve done for the past three years now is a One Second Every Day video (You could do this manually, but that’d be a lot of work, and there’s a great app for it). It started when this guy realized he couldn’t remember the details of what he’d done yesterday, a week before, a month before, much less a year before. For the past three years, I’ve taken a video (almost) every day, and I usually try to wait until the year’s cycle is complete to then set it to music and watch it all. In a few days I’ll finish my most recent one, which captures my first year in New York since moving here last August. It always makes me cry to watch these, but it’s also pretty wonderful and has honestly helped me remember so many days where small beautiful moments and memories would ordinarily have slipped away. Highly recommend it!
"Us joking about the idea that rocks are actually soft, but tense up when you step on them"--I love this lol. And I love this newsletter. Thanks for writing and sharing!
I'm the same with feeling nostalgic for something while living it <3 I think you'd enjoy this https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/arts/design/virus-design-objects.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
Dear Haley, your newsletter is an absolute boost of life motivation and inspiration. It's what gets me through the Sunday blues (or the mean reds), it distracts me from my anxiety of the upcoming Monday and it ignites my curiosity in so many different topics. Thank you for writing :)
I love your thoughts on nostalgia. One of my favorite lines from a book goes, "Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, 'Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.'" I love this because I think it encapsulates the ways in which we view and internalize experiences, how hard it is sometimes to explain these feelings or experiences to others, and the desire to return to those moments and places. (The book is Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger, btw. :) )
wow that water hike looks absolutely beautiful and i completely vicariously know what that feels like, to be confined by nature and nothing else matters or exists and then a nice lunch afterwards.
lol soft rocks
omg i have ruined a pair of sneakers by throwing them in the washing machine so either i did it wrong or ymmv
Hey Haley, this newsletter reminded me of favourite Oulipo writer, Georges Perec. You probably know of him already. His whole work revolves around exactly what you're talking about here: he felt a deep need to document (and classify) every minute detail of daily life, as if trying to preserve his own memory(-ies) alive, or as if attempting to delay the passage of time. I often feel the same way too. With both of you. You could say it is just neurotic; you could say it's fear of death; I will say it's the human condition.
But let us be positive -- I know for a fact that we can control it, naturally if we stop trying to control it... Ha.
All my best, Danai
I wish I could just pause time in my happiest moments too. And just relive those days, all 24 hours of them, whenever I'm feeling down. I have those same feelings when I don't want a day that was amazing to end, but I've come to realize that I have the power to make more of those days happen! As long as the people you want o spend it with are available to do so, you can plan that same exact trip again, or do something different together. What you do today, effects your tomorrow, so plan more awesome experiences with friends and family every single month, and it'll still make a good year :)
1. August is also my favorite! I think my subconscious relates to the narrator of the song.
2. Charles Rogers lived in our apartment before us! I've got to watch Search Party.
Greta Gerwig got me hooked on Joan Didion when she talked about "presentiment of loss" from Didion's Essay "On Keeping a Notebook" in an interview for her film Ladybird.
"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss."
If you haven't read it I really recommend it! It touches on what Avi calls "emotional truth" and it serves that weird love for writing about writing.
I guess that presentiment of loss is part of nostalgia or a version of it. I feel it in general and for me it is not specific to these times. It feels like whenever I am really happy, at some point I step back and while standing a little bit off to the side I watch my friends and family laugh and ask myself how they can't see that this feeling of happiness will soon be over again. I miss it before it's over. I guess it is a form of being in the moment but an eerie version of it. Everyone else seems to be able to be in the moment "the right way", kind of like Didion describes her daughter: Their experiences not reflected (as they are happening) through lenses of thought, past, future and fear but their whole body immersed in it seemingly with nothing before it and nothing after, just the now.
But there are things I am actually afraid to forget and I feel guilty about forgetting. There are things I have already forgotten probably as a coping mechanism but I know some things are missing and I want them back! Maybe now that I am older I could handle them better? Surely not all of it was bad! Those tiny specks of goodness inbetween the bad: lost! And probably some things got lost just because they were neither good nor bad. Still, as much as I like the idea of remembering anything and everything (when and if I want to), as a hopeless overthinker I'd probably go mad haha
Also: That thought about soft rocks!! Omg so good!
Thank you so much for the insightful newsletter and there is this sad song, called Limerence, that I felt I should share: https://open.spotify.com/track/7KWhn1J1ALqw2grLMgZoy7?si=l5CXTsYYSbKOFGMdshM8FQ
I also feel like I compulsively count past days and am constantly trying to keeping track of memories, moments, stressed about forgetting. Do you have the app Timehop? basically it shows you everything you posted online on that day in past years. It's wonderful and terrible makes me feel like I can keep my head on straight sometimes. Helps with the "yes this happened on this day and I know that because it was the day before this thing, that all happened during this one time, and I was wearing that skirt, and you that shirt"
Your separate mentions of melancholy and Zadie Smith took me back to "Elegy for a Country's Seasons," another 2014 essay by Smith published in the New York Review of Books: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/03/elegy-countrys-seasons/
I discovered only recently after I watched her read an excerpt on YouTube in support of the global environmental group Extinction Rebellion: https://youtu.be/FvzxEVuyDsQ
It’s about climate change but I mention it here because of strong parallels between the two crises.
Haley thanks again for making Sundays more complete with your reflexions and perspectives. I really enjoyed it.
I relate so much with this desparate need of remembering EVERYTHING. Every little thing that I learn, every feeling, every sensation that I have in order to make it all meaningfull, and yes, that need sometimes getting in the way of completely enjoying the moment. Or I would say- making me enjoy it in a different way- not necessarily worse. I think Its kind a feeling of regret or a little anger in those beautiful moments being exactly that- moments. They wont come back, and with time they start feeling like different recolections in our memory. We dont know if after trying to remember them so much we start changing them a little bit. We dont know if we are romanticizing them or they really happened like that.
One thing I learn (and constantly try not to forget because, at least to me, it gives me so much peace of mind) is that life is a recollection of experiences that are important and matter to us, but after all life is an uneventfull subject. The joy, the calm that maybe that experience brought to you - in the long run constitutes your life- and how your state of mind functioned from that beautiful momet on. So maybe in the long run, you would not be able to remember every aspect, dialog or feeling of the trip.- and although the fear of that moment being with time just one day on your life- what you lived would have been a fundamental step in your life.
I hope I made myself clear in this comment since english is not my first language. I must say as well that the comment section of this newsletter has became in itself so beutiful with all the comments!