nostalgia

And it hit. Like clockwork. My yearly nostalgia for Europe... today in the form of Christmas in Antwerp (which ironically never even happened -- I was trapped in my room with a broken femur for the holidays). I'm longing to wander snow-covered, winding cobblestone streets and to drink genever in arcaded, candlelit underground brick cellars... Maybe Christmas in NYC and New Year's in DC will at least take care of the ill-advised snow craving.

To feel nostalgia today is particularly odd. This morning I was thinking about nostalgia quite clinically (or at least psychoanalytically) as I pondered Richard Pine's introduction to Creativity, Madness and Civilisation (2007). He points out that unheimlich really translates to "unhomely," relating it rather obliquely but intriguingly to nostalgia (Greek: nostos, the homeward journey; algos, pain). And here I am, feeling a nostalgia for an invented home, constructed in my own mind as a false memory, yet vivid enough to gravitate me towards a place that has no bearing on where I grew up. And I keep trying to critique the American carillon as nostalgic sonic mark of an invented European heritage. Maybe I'd do better if I could first sort myself out.