Nostalgia

Mmmm stupid o'clock. Hello again.

Nostalgia hits once more when the night is cool and quiet, with nothing but the stupid engine sounds of a motorcyclist who seems to have something to prove.

There was once a period of time in my life that I had similar emotions of sitting and facing the window, and just ruminating. Actually, that's not quite right---there are a few periods of time in my life that I do so.

I have a tendency to like to set up my machines in such a way that I face a window head on, especially if it is in a residence like when I was studying in the US for my PhD-turn-masters and was rooming with John. Part of the reason was security related---with my machines set the way I said, they are much closer to the wall, which makes it harder for a casual opportunist to actually see it from afar, having to instead come really close so that he/she can actually see what machine it was and decide if it was really worth the break and entering.

The other part is that I not-so-secretly enjoy looking out of the window when I can. Something about the intermingling of safety from being indoors and the expense of the outside that really appeals to me.

It's the same now even as I am spending much of my time in my room while on sabbatical, with a separate [foldable] table set up with Eileen-II on top, and the vertical monitor set up to the side for reading. One key difference is that I cannot really look out of the window during the day due to the excessive amounts of solar radiation that comes in---the blinds have to be down and covered.

But during the morning, and the late evening/night, the blinds are up, and I can enjoy whatever scenery I can see outside, even though it is significantly less diverse as the four seasons that I would witness while I was in the US.

Nostalgia. I miss the random hotpot parties that John and I pulled together during the winter months, grabbing some other friends over to share as well. It was always a blast---there was enough enoki mushrooms since we bought like four to six bunches of it, a much larger (but necessary!) quantity compared to what most people would purchase (and then complain of its inadequate amount), sliced meat and various meat balls were plentiful, as was the napa, an important staple for hotpot.

Then there was the curry that we made when YT sent the care package that included the instant curry sauces. And the other crazy food-based hijinks that John and I partook. And of course, the hikes and geocaching that we did in between the craziness that was grad school.

Man, thinking back, I miss all those fun moments. It's really different to be spending time cooped up indoors due to the pandemic. It's also really different to not have a close enough friend to go do crazy things with.

Digging deeper back into my undergraduate days, I still remember the random late night walks up Squirrel Hill to grab some stupid o'clock steaks, the late night walks about campus, the winter night watchings on Flagstaff Hill, that deep night adventure in Schenley Park, the annual countdowns in downtown Pittsburgh, random wanderings among Morewood Gardens and Wean Hall trying to get homework done in homework parties... the list goes on.

So many wonderful memories that I lived through, not as an observer, but as an active participant.

It had been nice rekindling lots of the old friendship with friends years after I have graduated with my annual returns to various parts of the US to visit. But I have not done so for quite a while now, the last being in 2018. From the looks of things, it might very well be the case that I won't be travelling out for a visit for quite some time to come too, partly because of the pandemic's nonsense, partly because of the changing attitudes within the US making me a bit more leery to travel, and partly because I am likely to not have as much disposable income soon if I choose to walk away from climbing the corporate ladder.

It's a bit like being given the ability to fly and see many wonderful things, only to realise that in the end, that ability was just temporary, and one is doomed to dwell as a surface crawler in the scum pond that one had always been in.

Nostalgia. This isn't the first entry titled such, and I very much like to re-cite what I wrote in the first eponymous entry said by Richard Rose, from After the Absolute by David Gold with Bart Marshall:

The most painful thing on Earth is a pleasant memory. This nostalgia that sometimes comes over us isn't an accident. It's a message. It has something to tell us. We're programmed to indulge in life, but this haunting nostalgia is a sublimal message from another plane... Touching it, you touch the Eternal.

Some fifteen or so years after I first came across that quote, I still agree with what it says, and more importantly, have a somewhat deeper appreciation of what it is trying to say. To me, it sort of conjures up an aspect that comprises the soul, that is, the ability to make memories, to retrieve them, to interpret them, and to project them, a sort of imbued timelessness to what is normally a very sequential perspective of causality.

Nostalgia. I think I will indulge a little in it tonight, thinking of happier times that had gone by. I'm just a little amused that it had taken me so long in my sabbatical to really start thinking back onto the good old times. In part, I need to thank John again---despite living much farther away from me now, it is his recent somewhat depressing shared image about a person looking at a missing person poster on that featured person stating that ``no one is missing you'' that triggered me to realise that there are indeed people and times that I miss.

Well, that's all I have for now. Till the next update.