By Poppy Reed
saudade
/saʊˈdɑːdə/
noun
- (especially with reference to songs or poetry) a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.
I am often caught in saudade. Never having heard this word before, I now feel like something has shifted, and I share it with you now. A Portuguese sentiment, an untranslatable word. But I think in its bleakness a sense of solace can be found, and, paradoxically, an understanding.
I feel it in the folkish melody that lingers long after the old busker on the bridge has finished playing, it is the sound of a lover’s breath that echoes in your ears long after they’re gone, it lives in the spaces in between. It acts as a tender reminder of what is lost, but somehow will remain in the fabric of your mind. New faces remind me of old ones, I am often stuck in past time.
The children are shrieking in the playground opposite my window, and suddenly I’m there. This longing and yearning for something I once had is consuming. But it’s more than just missing something. What I miss can never return to me, this is the melodramatic melancholy of it all. Saudade.
It feels like the timid sorrow that blooms in moments of small joys. I feel love and I rejoice in the remembrance of these memories, and slowly I begin to enjoy the dance I have in these spaces between time.
The way that the wind sifted through my hair that one specific day last year, and the beep…beep… beep of that Australian traffic light reminds me of this one 80s song I first heard a while ago. Now when I look above at the deep cerulean abyss, the sky suddenly morphs into the ocean and a wave comes crashing over me and I am engulfed in my own memory. Saudade.
Bittersweetness, a cold yearning intertwined with a warmth for what once was. Growing up can seem like a morbid experience, seasons fly by faster and each time they appear more and more fleeting. Life no longer feels infinite like it once did. My dog’s hair greys, and his eyes cloud over, people I know have died.
When I walk past the school now, I hear my little sisters giggling amongst the children in the playground and I am transported backwards again. My parents looking down on me, crawling and melting into my mother’s lap, being a part of someone else. Now as I stand alone, I feel precarious and on the verge of tipping over at all times. I often wish I had strings attached to me, so that I could be pulled in a direction without the need to decide on anything, a break from the endless crossroads of adulthood. As I grow older, I resent the uncertainty that comes with knowledge. The exuberance that I once felt waking up on a birthday, the moment just after you wake up when you feel blankness and opportunity used to spark a fire through my young bones. A moment of hope and anticipation, but increasingly that fire has put out, transforming into a black smog that hovers over my restless head.
I now welcome the whispers of saudade, I let her in and begin to worship her visits. As whilst I know what has gone cannot return, there is the relief that in my nostalgia I can be witness to these pockets of light again.