Saudade, the Unknown Longing
Saudade has no direct English counterpart and is not fully definable for English speakers. It is a sad state of intense longing for someone or something absent. Saudade is often expressed in literature and music as a melancholy yearning, a robust and persistent longing or desire, especially for something unattainable. The following comprises dreams, poems, experiences, and stories people have told me about their lives. It tries to put Saudade into words.
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They met in a star-crossed collision of worlds. It was a moment when life decided to change the rules and catch its victims off guard. The possible seemed out of reach at that collision, but the impossible was real. It was an unbearably magical time, a time when all dreams appeared to be within their grasp. They were never sure how this happened or why it happened. But they were changed into different people because of this star-crossed collision, this ever-so-happy tragic coincidence amid the disorder of the cosmos.
She was not a conformist. She had an argument for everything. She had arrived at this moment both damaged and very strong. She was wit, charm, brilliance, and a touch of vulnerability, all mixed in a beautiful package, as a good god must have intended in its creation. This, her unbearable alchemist’s brew of life, drew him in. Her alchemy had the force of a black hole but the brilliance of powerful and uplifting light. Being with her was a deep drink of bracingly, refreshing life in the tepid stew of mere existence. She was what poets longed for, but never found. When she spoke, the dreams became real, and the real became illusion. And the dreams were often all too real. More real than the most vivid of his mundane inner thoughts. In her vortex, the doubters believed, and the believers became agnostic.
He could never forget that day when she came to him grinning excitedly; she had a plan, as usual. That plan was to leave the sinking ship of their lives and flee to another city. “We will find joy there,” she said. “We will find the truth, and we will be free.” She brought out a beautifully colored map of this “holy place,” as her finger traced that city’s sectors; he felt it impossible not to believe. Like a foreboding prick of pain in his brain, her hope became a full-blown hemorrhage, and the story grew into a reality. He could see it, taste it, feel it. It was to be their story and would be no one else’s. They would live in a flat above a bakery, they would read interesting literature, they would find bohemian jobs, and they would be free.
Supplied with her laughter, wit, beauty, and hope, they cast themselves in a lifeboat and rowed away from the wreckage of their sinking lives. She rejoiced in the journey, and they threw themselves on the new shore, believing in the hope and freedom of the dream. And, for a brief shining moment, they stood watching as the fireworks brought in the new year, the new world, and they were safe! The dream was absolute! In champagne-sated joy, they celebrated life. There was joy, there was peace. There was love.
But all love brings hurt and loss; once a person decides to love, they have set themselves on the path of loss and pain. They can love the girl, the boy, the dream, and the hope, but they are set on a course that will ultimately end, usually with little warning. All things die in this world — no matter how beautiful — they die. So, to not hurt means to have never loved. At each moment, we must decide whether to love or avoid the hurt.
Soon, it was clear that the beautiful girl with the dream needed something else — her dream and her freedom. She wanted to stay and needed to go. Though the illusion was real, for a time, it failed, and no amount of love could save it.
Desperate to keep the dream alive, they read articles about how this dream could work. These articles told them about others who had made their lives work. Those articles said it could be done. But those articles were also an illusion. They were someone else’s life, not theirs. Dream killers are impervious to the alchemist’s power. The killer of dreams is the kryptonite of creeping time and reality, the magic no longer worked.
He saw this. He let his heart die a little. He could not make the magic work. Her dream had freed them for a time; her dream was his escape. Her dream had become theirs. But it was her dream, and the dream eventually failed. As love died, hearts screamed, agony knew no bounds, and prayers fell dead upon the void. Love longed to fly but had no wings.
What do we do, those of us who follow love into the abyss? What do we do when the magic is not enough? Do we spend our time regretting the damage? Do we flail ourselves upon the shores of our failure and lament how love fled? Do we give ourselves to darkness and wish we had not been born?
We can. But we should, instead, rejoice in the beauty of the moments in which we have bathed in the sun of that love’s dream. It is better to remember the warmth of the sunlit street cafes, the Negronis, the smiles, the laughter, and the captured music of the magical moments in time. Better we rejoice that though love may flee, it never leaves. Even when the dream has passed, we are changed for the better by its beauty. Do not regret the bookshops, the cafes, the smoke, the games of chess, and the quiet, hopeful evenings when the dreams were real. Also, do not regret the loss of those moments when everything was possible and nothing could fail. Instead, find sweetness in the picture of the lake’s quiet shores on a sunny day when life was a storm from Hades, but you were safe on your bench. Do not find regret in that which added so much beauty to your life. Even if for a brief moment. In that moment, you, a hopeless beast, were a companion to beauty and love.
And that must be enough, for time never quits its march toward darkness.
We are told by the poets that Marc Antony stood on his balcony alone the night before his death. He looked at the sea of reality colliding upon the shores of his illusion. But he did not lament his impending death or the loss of Cleopatra. Instead, he heard spectral music and the sound of joy and dancing — his memories. He chose not to regret what life had given him: love, joy, and many happy moments. With Antony in mind, another poet said, go boldly to the window, drink it in. Accept this gift, this joy, this memory of love. The future is not ours to know, but the past is always ours to keep. And if we can take upon ourselves the freedom of the burden of love and loss, then we may be fortunate enough to find a warm fire to sit by when we grow old and full of years. Taking the book that is our heart and memories, we can still dance among the stars with the love that fled and nurture our joy no matter what the darkness brings.
