Nostalgia and progress

Source: Independent.ie

We need our memories of those fine times with our families. Knowing where we come from is good. My grandfather died at twenty-eight from diabetes. No insulin. His oldest daughter, my aunt, lived four years in an iron lung after contracting polio in 1953. I like progress even if it means Game Boys, Facebook and tattoos. The only things that don’t go out of style are honesty and integrity, and I hope those are with us into infinity. At least, that’s my take on it.

~ Jackie Weger 

Mrs. Lot

Credit: Mark A. Wilson

There has to be something said for Lot’s
wife, for looking back, not moving on, for,
in other words, nostalgia, that onetwo
threefourfivesixseveneightnine letter
dirty word, when even Jesus for whom
she serves as reminder says to remember
her, and why else if he didn’t mean what
he said, understanding, of course, women
apt to cling to their homes, not having
in those days much else to cling to—and
what if they clung—like Lot’s poor wife whose
name we don’t even know to recall, she
having to pull up stakes and get out
just because some men liked other men, that
being none of her affair, beside which
she’d never liked Uncle Abraham’s loose
foot she swore he was born with, and so
she has long gazed back on the past which she
couldn’t put back any more than a pulled
tooth, for which crime she stands changed to a briny
pillar, still turned toward her yesterdays and
her God who surrounds her on all sides—right,
left, front, and back—her sad but salty stare.

~ Vassar Miller

Mrs. Lot

Credit: Mark A. Wilson

There has to be something said for Lot’s
wife, for looking back, not moving on, for,
in other words, nostalgia, that onetwo
threefourfivesixseveneightnine letter
dirty word, when even Jesus for whom
she serves as reminder says to remember
her, and why else if he didn’t mean what
he said, understanding, of course, women
apt to cling to their homes, not having
in those days much else to cling to—and
what if they clung—like Lot’s poor wife whose
name we don’t even know to recall, she
having to pull up stakes and get out
just because some men liked other men, that
being none of her affair, beside which
she’d never liked Uncle Abraham’s loose
foot she swore he was born with, and so
she has long gazed back on the past which she
couldn’t put back any more than a pulled
tooth, for which crime she stands changed to a briny
pillar, still turned toward her yesterdays and
her God who surrounds her on all sides—right,
left, front, and back—her sad but salty stare.

~ Vassar Miller

Quote on countering nostalgia

Source: Facebook/Favim

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don’t think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time. 

~ Art Buchwald

Quote on countering nostalgia

Source: Facebook/Favim

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don’t think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time. 

~ Art Buchwald

The Garden Buddha

Credit: Laughing Buddha from midatlanticpeony.org

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distance—always

the same bountiful smile upon his portly face.
Why don’t I share his one-minded happiness?
The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia,
filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia

and yearning. He’s laughing at me, isn’t he?
The seasons wheeling despite my photographs
and notes, my desire to make them pause.
Is that the lesson? That stasis, this holding on,

is not life? Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry,
its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter;
the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers
exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.

~ Peter Pereira

The Garden Buddha

Credit: Laughing Buddha from midatlanticpeony.org

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distance—always

the same bountiful smile upon his portly face.
Why don’t I share his one-minded happiness?
The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia,
filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia

and yearning. He’s laughing at me, isn’t he?
The seasons wheeling despite my photographs
and notes, my desire to make them pause.
Is that the lesson? That stasis, this holding on,

is not life? Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry,
its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter;
the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers
exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.

~ Peter Pereira