I think nostalgia is a kind of sadness, a melancholy for things past. (And in this sadness we often find pleasure—a refuting of the idea that sadness is always negative.) I think nostalgia is an open door into a past life, experience, emotion. And just as a pianist more easily inhabits the emotional landscape of a piece once she has perfected its technicalities, so too do we become better at experiencing an emotion once we have practiced it, learned its nuances in our bodies, fine-tuned the production of its chemical concoction. Nostalgia is the re-experiencing of a known emotion: its power lies in the fact that it is an emotion with the undercurrent of the same emotion, the experience of which we have already practiced and perfected. This experience is textured with the sense of loss, the inescapable transience of all things.

 And what of love? Do we go on loving something, someone simply because we already have—that is, out of inertia & nostalgia? Isn’t love just a nostalgic longing, a mourning for the moment we first fell in love—a moment when the sun, the moon, the stars chanced upon an alignment they will never find again?

(Okay, let me be sensical. Nostalgia may explain half of love. The other half is that the object of our love continues to inspire & amuse us. And yes, I am using logic and numbers to explain emotions. This is how I make sense of things.)

Which is more powerful: love, or loss of love? We cannot remember physical pain. But the memory of an emotion is the emotion itself: the blade of nostalgia cuts through time to produce an experience as exact as if it were re-happening. The sadness we have experienced in the past will always be the same sadness. The door of nostalgia will always be there, waiting for a scent, a word, a thought to open it and let experiences of the past come crashing through.

Dear Office Manager,

It has come to my attention that our lovely office seems to have been infiltrated with uh, snackies. This is a gravely dangerous environment for those innocent people who lack a magical entity called “self-control.” I am not exactly sure what that is, or what it entails; I just know that I don’t have it, have been unable to find it on eBay or Craigslist, and therefore am in grave danger.

But! I have a proposal. Two actually, if you like to count:

1 – All snackies should be safely contained within a lockable vessel. This can be as simple as a cupboard with a combination lock on it. Those people who self-identify as exercising restraint in their eating habits can opt in to knowing the combination.

2 – In Lilo & Stitch, there is a huge machine/gun thingy that is fed Stitch’s DNA and is trained to shoot him.  This proposal entails ooh yes: a) acquiring said machine/gun thingy. I am sure it can either come out of our office supplies budget or one of our lovely engineers can concoct it; and b) having people who self-identify as threatened by the abundance of snackies in the kitchen offer DNA samples so they can be shot for their own safety.

            I understand that there is a danger of the victims coagulating into a group and choosing a member to sacrifice each day, thereby distracting the huge machine/gun thingy and escaping its protection. However, I also understand that the acquiring of a huge machine/gun thingy by our Company would earn us several points in the Bad Assery category.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I trust that you will find the best solution to ensure the continued safety of our staff.

Best regards,

Eva

Dear Cirque,

I had the remarkable experience of seeing Mystère in Las Vegas on the evening of March 19. Many, many aspects of the show were incredible; perhaps most notably the acrobalance duo and the unique bungee trapeze act. However, I regret to say that I wanted to murder the violinist at several points in the performance. In certain passages, I estimate that roughly half of the notes he hit were out of tune. It made me writhe uncomfortably in my seat as if I were being attacked by miniature hippopotami chomping on my eardrums. The pain he caused me was intense and visceral, and at its worse, rendered me unable to focus on the stellar acrobatic performances and visual pyrotechnics. I’m not usually a violent person, but after a while of listening to this poor violinist’s playing, I had intense urges to climb up into the rafters and break all the strings on his violin. I was absolutely perplexed that a show that quite clearly had so much money, talent, and production invested in it had a solo violinist that could not even hit notes on key. It seemed like a huge oversight.

To be diplomatic, I later realized that in first position, the violinist was able to hit his notes correctly and his tone was rather pleasant. Above first position, however, he was precarious as a paper umbrella in a whirlpool, and on top of that, sounded like he had a head cold as well. In conclusion, I thought Mystère was a fantastic show, but the violinist was a significant black mark in my experience, especially considering the caliber of talent for which Cirque is known.

Sincerely,

Eva Kalea

Dear friends,

We all know that pygmy camels are the greatest rage: you let one wander around the table, it amuses you, if you wish it so it can be dyed, hot pink maybe so you don’t lose it, or perhaps you want a color that more harmoniously collides with your interior decor, but anyway when you are thirsty you catch it and shove a straw into its hump and all is well, and even those little straws with the spears on the end, they give you great amusement and such satisfaction when they puncture the hump with a slight pop, spewing little droplets of pygmy camel blood & making the quenching of your thirst all the more satisfying. But friends! Please be careful. Should your camel be infected with HIV, or sorry I mean CIV, or encephalopathy, more colloquially known as mad camel’s disease, you could become ill—gravely and deliriously ill. So please, bring your camel to the nearest camel testing facility. For your safety. & for mine. I don’t wanna be driving down no road with a frieking mad camel in your sidecar. You know what I mean?

Love love love,

(warmly, & with many humps)

Mafia

Here is a poem for my sadness

In Chinese, when something is un-
fathomably far away—or nonsensically—
or misplaced,

we say they are in Spain. Madrid 
has a part of me: he is bewildered 
and full of nervous laughter. (and I

a disaster of madness 
& despair.) What is missing?
A misunderstanding. 

The transatlantic line is blurry,
the phone is dripping
in my hands. The cackle of static

answers thoughts I cannot shape 
into words. Something is in
-verted: it is me, a soft puddle. The cord

curls from my toes to my head on the floor. 
It is nearly 7. I wander upstairs, wrapped
in Brandon’s blanket, trailing sawdust 

& disappointment. What is missing?
The absence of touch.

it’s lying, love!

hence Shakespeare’s pun 
in the final couplet of sonnet 138:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

lay takes a direct object,
as in:
I shall lay you tonight 
on the empty beach
with the stars shimmering
and the jellyfish rotating
in their watery sockets.

or

lay the book
on the desk, you 
incompetent prick.
you are dumb
as an inverted hammer.

confusingly, lay is also
the past tense of lie:
i lay down yesterday
and never rose.
today
i am dead.

if one completely disregards traffic laws, as is my habit.

Me: Vit! I almost got run over on your bike!

Vit: You sound so happy…

Me: Yer a toilet.

MS (Miniature Sibling): I’m a what?

Me: a BATHROOM.

MS: *sits on me*

Me: you’re a kitchen! a kitchen!

On more significant matters:
Sex? crayons. Sex? crayons. Sex? crayons.

you can tell how I spend my time.