Member-only story
Looking At The Past To Live In A Better Future
Curiosity rarely makes friends with nostalgia.
Two things happened today that inspired these lines. Firstly, I started reading a novel set on a Mediterranean island in the first third of the 20th century. The realistic mundanity of the prose, in contrast with the eccentricity of the characters driving the narrative, made Corfu sound like a real place that sounded fantastical in my mind. Secondly, my dad told me about this recipe my grandmother — and her mother before that — used to cook and which I do not recall having ever tasted. I thought about how sad it is not to be able to enjoy the many recipes that we inevitably lose with every generation.
By now, I have read several accounts of day-to-day life in Europe in the early 20th century. Before that, I had listened avidly to my grandparents as they described their childhood. There was always a level of dissonance between what they recounted and what I could imagine. For instance, I have only seen quiet beaches in cold latitudes. I cannot witness a tranquil Mediterranean fishing village any more than I can imagine a floating city on the rings of Saturn. They are both out of this world, my world. Whenever I read about such past yet recent times, I find myself looking for images of those worlds, so impossibly close, so irrevocably far. I like words more than…