Little Abysses

I am reading a novel by one of my favorite authors, Nicole Krauss. It's called Great House, and it is sweeping and melancholy. Or maybe it is not so much melancholy as nostalgic, bittersweet. Nostalgia is from the Greek roots nostos, meaning homecoming, and algos, meaning pain, or grief, the pairing of which makes me think of the kind of pain that is born of deep loving in the face of loss. We all lose our original sense of home at some point, and remember it with a deep and grieving love. That's what makes nostalgia a beautiful kind of sadness, because it's sense of loss is so intrinsically linked with our sense of rootedness and belonging. We can't really have one with out the other.

Anyhow, I wanted to share this passage, which lept out at me, and which maybe has something to do with nostalgia. These lines are spoken by an elderly man who has just lost his wife. They are sad, and perhaps even melancholy, but I find them beautiful too.

"There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not true. One learns to control and suppress it. But it doesn't lessen. It simply hides and concentrates itself in more discreet places. When one accidentally stubles into one of these abysses, the pain is spectacular. I find these little abysses everywhere now." (Great House, page 55)