Last night I was sitting on the couch, reading my book, cat in my lap. I got to the last page, and much like the first few pages of the book, it made me cry. (Cat was not impressed.) I made myself stop, got up and fussed around with bedtime routines, then came back and read the last page again. I didn’t cry the second time around, but I struggled with packing it into my bag to return to the library.
On my way to the library today, I was walking down the hall, fumbling through the last few pages, trying to imprint the book’s conclusion in my mind.
(You know what’s funny about this? The book got recalled two weeks ago, and being miss cheap, I did some quick calculations and figured it was cheaper for me to pay the late fees than to buy the e-book. I didn’t want the hardback haunting me when it came time to move. Little did I know: late fees are double when someone’s recalled the book. And little did I know, I want that book on my shelf after all.)
I am longing for that book, turning in circles, wondering what to do next.
On Friday night, I went downtown to meet my friend. The subways had stopped because it sounded like someone had jumped (turns out someone got shot), so I walked the last leg of the trip. When I got there, we talked about how regular – and how awful – it is that people jump. What is someone feeling in those last moments; how do they get to the point where they involved so many others in that decision? This time of year is particularly bad, it seems, for loneliness and longing.
Longing might have an indirect target: “I wish I had someone”. Longing might have a more direct target: “I want that person”. We all long for something. Right now, I’m hoping my mother made peanut butter cups for Christmas, but I also hope she doesn’t read this and then think she has to make them before I get home. (Don’t do it, mom. Get some rest.)
You see, longing is a complicated thing. This weekend all of my plans got cancelled and I sat alone on Saturday night watching White Christmas. How great, to be sitting alone and watching White Christmas, I thought – a movie that others might think I’ve watched too many times (I was tempted to watch it twice when it started up again immediately after finishing) (Also, how much longing is in that movie?! Rosemary and Bing getting their wires all crossed; ex-army men longing for the good times; sheesh, the title song is “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know”). At the same time, I have noticed all week that there are no signs of Christmas in my place (15 new bottles of wine aside); somehow decorating seemed like a useless exercise when only the cat would have been witness to it. White Christmas now elicits other complicated feelings surrounding my family, and I feel a little guilty for watching it after reading my uncle’s article about his uncle Ted, who fought in the war:
“In his last letter home, Ted tells of the joy he received when he found 11 letters waiting for him in camp. But his happiness soon gave way to tears:
‘Isn’t it funny how in the quiet of evening, especially, one becomes very sentimental. I will tell you this Mum because I know you will understand. I have just been crying like a baby for the first time since I left Canada…For Christmas the only thing I ask is I won’t have to spend my fourth one away from home. Besides that, I ask God that you will all be waiting for me when I come home.’
… A few weeks later, on Nov. 26, a telegram arrived at the Clarke farm two miles from Parkside. Ted and his crew were missing in action and presumed dead following a bombing raid over Stuttgart, Germany. The telegram gave the date the plane went down. It was the night my grandmother heard Ted calling to her in her sleep…
My grandmother always hated Bing Crosby’s White Christmas because it reminded her of one of the last letters she received from Ted. The song had just come out and he told her they were playing it a lot on the radio.”
Sometimes we long for a feeling, a simpler time, or to be back where we created a memory that made us happy. What happens over the long term, though, is we conveniently erase the bad components of most memories, so that only the easier-to-remember bits are left. That’s the natural way of dealing with loss, breakups, being torn away from home, is it not? To remember only the good.
Other times, longing is for that which we do not yet have. A similar thing happens here, where we imagine the best of a person or situation, because why tarnish longing with unpleasantness? When I think about returning home, I immediately long for Toronto – even when I’m standing in 45-degree heat waiting for the bus with a crowd of jerks – because Toronto is so cool! Where else could you stand waiting for the bus with a crowd of jerks in 45-degree heat? I ask myself.
If we didn’t have longing, then how boring would life be? If we just got what we wanted when we wanted it, we wouldn’t have the same satisfaction as if we had yearned for it.
So yes, popular songs are built on this, on desire, on fantasy, on what we want but cannot have. Someone says the thing you are thinking, in such a beautiful way.
I was teasing my friend last week. “Your favourite songs are all about longing,” I said. He got that distinctly uncomfortable, but conceding, smile when I said it. He’d prefer I discuss his favourite songs in facts and statistics, but hey, I gotta tell the truth. He once gave me a copy of this song, and it became one of my favourites:
I’ve been kinda jokey through this – probably a slightly defensive way of dealing with harder to articulate feelings. So I’ll leave with the sentiment from my book that I tried to memorize, but did not: she was warm and content, but longed to feel what she really wanted, what was buried away. Don’t we all have that, just a little bit?
And a song that says the same sentiment quite nicely:
