by Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House)
Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.
The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.
Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.
As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.
The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.
Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.
As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.
Nostalgia seems to be a trending theme in popular culture lately. Mad Men and Great Gatsby inspired dresses strolled down the runways in New York and Paris at last month's Fashion Weeks. Little House on the Prairie era skills such as canning, carpentry, and spinning are all the rage among hipsters. And the film the"The Artist" and and the transatlantic Downton Abbey craze, had viewers riveted to big and small screens alike.
One of my friends wrote about her yearning for "drawing room evenings" on her lovely blog. The idea of retiring to the drawing room after dinner for cards and conversation seems so much more edifying than my routine of late-- an episode of Midsomer Murders via Netflix on demand and a game of Monopoly on my Android tablet.
But even without the distractions of television and the internet, I wonder if I'd be any more present to the present? Would a Gaskell novel and a game of Whist in the evenings somehow make me more mindful? Is nostalgia truly a yearning for a simpler, more attentive life? Or would I just carry the same habit of inattention into the drawing room? Although I must say, I do think dressing for dinner would make all the difference in the world. . .
When/how do you feel nostalgic?
One of my friends wrote about her yearning for "drawing room evenings" on her lovely blog. The idea of retiring to the drawing room after dinner for cards and conversation seems so much more edifying than my routine of late-- an episode of Midsomer Murders via Netflix on demand and a game of Monopoly on my Android tablet.
But even without the distractions of television and the internet, I wonder if I'd be any more present to the present? Would a Gaskell novel and a game of Whist in the evenings somehow make me more mindful? Is nostalgia truly a yearning for a simpler, more attentive life? Or would I just carry the same habit of inattention into the drawing room? Although I must say, I do think dressing for dinner would make all the difference in the world. . .
When/how do you feel nostalgic?
No comments:
Post a Comment