It's another one of those early saudade mornings at "Riverbend" when this haunting, beautiful ache comes on. It’s more than nostalgia. It’s more than grief. It’s the ache for a moment you once lived, or perhaps only dreamed of. Something that touched you deeply. Have you ever felt saudade for a person, a place, or a time that left a permanent mark on your heart?
Philosophers have likened saudade to a kind of spiritual homesickness - not just for people or places, but for a part of ourselves we left behind. It reminds us that to love deeply is also to long deeply. And that longing is saudade. It's the kind of sadness that reminds you ... you have lived.
The German language has a word which comes close, "Sehnsucht", but not quite. Have you ever felt saudade for a person, a place, or a time that left a permanent mark on you? Have you ever missed someone or something so deeply that it feels more like a presence than an absence? If you have never experienced this sweet and painful feeling, then you presumably have never lived and loved --- or you are an accountant.
I've just finished my first cup of tea of the day and bitten off the head of a Cadbury Marshmellow Santa, which is as close as I will get this year to Christmas and as close as I will get to biting off somebody's head.
I shall savour that sausade feeling a little longer before the Friday morning garbage truck rumbles down the lane and before a certain person reminds me that sausade doesn't cook the bacon and eggs.
