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• • •
Dear James,
At the end of Carly Simon’s hit song, Anticipation, there is a refrain that repeats, “Stay right here because these are the good old days. These are the good old days.”
These lyrics capture the essence of a Stoic practice which I have titled present moment nostalgia. Typically, nostalgia is reserved for the past, a sentimental longing for a place or period or specific event. But what if we had nostalgia for the moment in which we are currently living. What if we looked across the kitchen at our partner chopping vegetables for Sunday dinner and said, “Remember when the afternoon sun dappled the kitchen and we were quietly making soup for family dinner.” Present time nostalgia enables us to appreciate the present moment in the present moment.
Today’s essay is dedicated to present moment nostalgia.
Check out my series on Stoicism on Substack or take my course on Stoic Meditations for free on Commune.
In love, include me,
Jeff
• • •
These Are the Good Old Days
It’s November in Paris. Cold, wet and raw. The sun plays hide and seek.
Schuyler and I hung our berets in the Marais over three decades ago when trudging up six flights was but a trifle. And here we are now, brood in tow, visiting our old stomping grounds, reliving our starry-eyed adolescence through Phoebe, our first born, who has stationed herself in a matchbox apartment in the 6th Arrondissement.
We have little plan. Racked with jet lag, we sleep late and walk the cobblestoned streets peripatetically, stopping regularly for espresso to refuel and warm our fingers.
We meander behind Notre Dame and over the Pont St. Louis that yokes the Ile de La Cité and the Ile St. Louis, the two eyots that bulge the Seine’s girth in the city’s middle. The great cathedral is in hibernation, scaffolded on every flank, crews painstakingly restoring it to its former glory, before the horrific fire of 2020 burned through its rafters.
The trees behind the great church are nearly bare of their leaves. Every ruthless gust coming off the Seine denudes them further, producing swirling mini-cyclones of scarlet and gold. To the north, the bridge spills out to the original Berthillon, arguably the best ice cream in Paris and, despite the chill, the girls clamor over to the curbside stand. To eat ice cream in the cold is to be young … or perhaps French.
Schuyler and I stop to watch a scruffy, Gauloise-smoking puppet-master manipulate his two marionettes. The elderly wooden couple dances to a Django Reinhardt gypsy tune. They sway and turn, turn and sway. The craggy-faced street artist is an alchemist of sorts, his dexterous manipulations render the hard-wooded marionettes supple and fluid. As the song concludes, the gentleman dramatically dips his lover, kisses her passionately, and then, spectacle over, she crumples to the ground. The man, once again rickety, wobbles over her, briefly staring down over her lifeless figure. Then he, too, collapses by her side. The small gallery claps in appreciation as the puppeteer smiles, pauses to relight his cigarette and prepares to reprise his show.
Swept away by the wistfulness of the moment, I reach out to interlock my fingers with Schuyler’s, our arms forming a bridge between the islets of our hearts.
I bring my lips softly to her ear, “I love you,” I whisper.
I profess this sort of honest affection sparingly. Perhaps the rarity of my heart’s admission assigns it greater consequence as Schuyler appears taken slightly aback. Her eyes well and she gives me that look. Head tilted to the right, chin slightly down, dewy eyes looking up to meet my own. In that one fleeting expression is every moment we’ve ever shared.
This look confirms her profound love for me, yet she is not the author of it. It emerges in and of itself, like a blossom opens. There is no contrivance to it, which is precisely why it’s so poignant. It’s like laughter; the moment we try to understand it, the experience ceases to be funny.
Trying to explain the sensation that infuses this moment, as I have attempted to here, is futile. The poets bid fruitlessly to solve an insoluble problem. The menu is not the food. The map, irrespective of the exquisite craftsmanship of the cartologist, is not the territory. Love cannot be explained. It must be felt.
As the cloud cover reasserts itself, arresting a truant ray of sun, Schuyler’s expression disappears as quickly as it came. I am reminded of this Blake verse:
“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
Every moment is here and gone in the blink of an eye, yet the ever-lasting present is infinite. Now is the only time it has ever been or will ever be. Memories and projections simply scaffold the cathedral of the present, creating a sense of psychological continuity that anchors the illusion of self.
Schuyler and I often refer to our year in Paris as the apex of our life. Of course, we were insouciant, young in love and limb, unshackled by the obligations of dull care. Don’t we all experience the sentimental yearning to return to some past period or irrecoverable condition? But, of course, nostalgia transliterates as the “pain of returning.” We desperately try to relive or forget the past while simultaneously projecting it into an imagined future. To be grateful is to grok that, like the Carly Simon refrain goes, “These are the good old days.” We are fools not to savor them.
Schuyler and I lean on the railing of the bridge. We gaze at the Seine, flowing like time below us, its ancient stone banks lined with the once-verdant skeletons of Bur Oaks, Cretan Maples and Lebanon Cedars.
Ever more naked, the trees undress, reticently letting go of their remaining leaves like seasoned parents. They don’t cling. Yet, even in the heart of the man with great equanimity, who finds beauty in life falling apart, who knows that nature promises a spring with every winter… even in this man’s heart, there is a clutch as the maple sheds its last leaf.
The girls return with their half-eaten cones and join us on the quai. They can sense our melancholy. Micah inquires as to our plans for the balance of the day. I play with her a little.
“Your mother and I are going down to the banks of the river and walk aimlessly with no intention of return.”
I figured this aspiration might seem macabre in a French noire way, but, Micah did not find it the least bit morbid, for, of course, she occupies the world of marionettes and eats ice cream in the cold and dances among the falling leaves. |
