If a Tree Falls . . .

Rough Weather, Nostalgia and Change

We had quite the storm on Monday night, Tuesday morning here in the South. Curtains of rain, wind ( I hope my atonal wind chimes didn’t drive my neighbor crazy!) and thunder. I finally gave up on sleep and schlepped out to my leather chair in the front room to read a book. About 5:30 I heard a really weird rustling crumping noise, then thunder five seconds later. I’d never heard thunder announced with a different noise, but figured I’d learn what happened in the morning light.

Yowza. One of our beautiful neighborhood trees snapped in half, leaving a rather poignant message to the winds and storm. The tree gave Mother Nature the bird! Hah!

Upsetting, but this happens to hardwoods in the South with our horrible humidity throughout the year. This one was so lovely, with twisted branches, leaves of green in March that fell in little bursts of brown in autumn, then those great hand-like exposed boughs in winter. I will miss him.

Here’s a photo I took back in early October that I included in a German vs. American walk substack. I was enchanted with the fairytale possibilities. My pragmatic husband took a look and said that tree is ROTTEN. I hate it when he’s right. Especially when it means I’ve lost a beautiful friend who gave me shade on my morning walks.

ANYWAY - if you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve been wrestling with nostalgia, sehnsucht, and just a basic malaise after retiring. Suddenly, at 61, I have thoughts that I didn’t have at 60 while I was working. I’m the same person, but now that I have more time to think, it’s pretty much all my brain wants to do. I’ve had some success in training it to behave with Vedic meditation twice a day, but the nasty little puppy still wants to whine around 2 or 3 a.m. every other night or so and mourn good times gone, friends lost, opportunities missed. Ack, as Bill the Cat would say.

And today I stumbled upon such a rare gift in my email inbox. I would just quote it in its’ entirety, but this is just Part One - entitled Nostalgia As Soul's Compass: Retrieving Wholeness From the Fraying Edges of Time by Demi Pietchell, writer of The Starfire Codes. The whole thing is perfect, please click the link because I can’t do it justice with just a few outtakes. (And go back in a few days to check for the next one!)

Revisiting Lost Anchors Across Time's Ocean

Passing a childhood home where we once found harbor stirs pangs of remembrance and grief. That house remains as physical anchor, yet the safety, love, or pain - and more often, a combinations in varying degrees - that it represented now lives solely as an artifact in memory's corridors. Here stands a tangible demonstration of the years unfurling since we last belonged here. We engage temporarily in a kind of time travel in our minds, sensing the people we used to be and other versions of the people we used to interact with in ghostly echoes reaching through temporal veils. The mind knows we cannot truly go back, though the heart still yearns for the restoration of the feeling of refuge of this known sacred space, if just for a moment. But the patina of memory exists only in imprints within the consciousness of those who once frequented the space or called it home.

Beyond singular dwellings, many other sacred spaces fall to the forward march of time, discontinuing the threads once binding our temporal landscape. Beloved restaurants, first apartments, the old school building holding resonance of coming-of-age milestones passed - when they become demolished or otherwise transformed by time and circumstance, our past identities fracture away from us as our external anchors disintegrate.

Losing communal spaces that once engraved soulful signatures severs legacy. Within those rooms, the alchemy of our specific convergence with intimates inside four walls for a finite passage of time wrote itself upon our spirits in ink. To witness these former sacred meeting grounds dissolving reflects the relinquishing of connections of former versions of the self that had been dependent upon singular coordinates of time and space. While new generations will forge their own meaningful gatherings and assemblies, we permanently lose the extraordinary magic once kindled by that particular combination of souls and setting. We relive them only in bittersweet flashes of memory, our souls pining to reconnect with what once was.

It hurts to acknowledge the inherent ephemerality of circumstantial phenomenon, even as we harvest essential lessons about embracing change as part of a fundamentally transient and impermanent life. By consciously integrating the insight distilled from this nostalgic grief, we fortify ourselves for the future’s unknown road, framed by the certainty of change.

Yes, yes, yes, this is exactly what I needed, an acknowledgment of what I’ve been feeling but couldn’t describe. Even though it’s universal, you feel like you are the ONLY ONE who’s ever been this sad when you’re in the middle of the process.

When our most meaningful songs from the past find their way into the present - whether by choice or surprise - our mind retrieves the associated narrative identity arc almost involuntarily. We don’t need to force it. We are transported almost instantaneously, experiencing vivid recall of the era's defining emotions, sensations, faces, and milestones attached to that music. Music succeeds in generating this visceral recall because it engages our senses in a multidimensional way unlike any other prompt. The combined stimulation of sound, lyrics, rhythm and personal memory enables a full immersion into richly layered recollections from the past.

Hearing that shared mix tape from a first romance or road trip anthem instantly returns us to how it felt to be that version of self, embodying who that version was and how they walked through the world when this lyric, guitar solo, or harmonized chorus scored the backdrop. As the meaningful song plays, it triggers a cascade of memories that transport our awareness back through time. We become immersed in the vivid feelings and sensations of our former self from that era, temporarily overwriting our present reality with the emotional landscape of the past.

Yet the longer we linger there, the sharper the sting upon returning to modern terrain. We find embedded within those recordings the echoes of the carefree openness of youth that are often no longer accessible to the person we have become. As guitars fade and daily noise resumes, awareness returns to just how much living now separates us from the versions of ourselves who danced and cried to these tracks so long ago. While nostalgic songs gift brief access portals back through time, they also reveal just how far down river we have drifted, now standing on unknown alien emotional shorelines.

Yet within the realization that the present can never match that same innocence preserved in song, this experience also churns a seed, one that urges waking up to immediacy and receptivity right where we stand, offering the possibility of resurgent moments of meaning. As we age, we must cultivate new perspectives and wisdom in order to rediscover magic in the present. By planting seeds of wonder and meaning that blossom now, we can create comforting refuges - sources of beauty and recollection we will be able to revisit for nourishment when we are deeper into life's journey. We hold talismans in playlist form from lost eras pointing the way forward, immortalizing all that has passed irretrievably downstream.

Ooh, that ‘irretrievably downstream’ phrase does make the heart seize a bit.

I’m so weird - not only do I have my own memorable playlist with related memories, I also archive for other people! My youngest sister described a roadtrip in college and how all of them sang along to the song Tempted by Squeeze, and kept it on repeat. Whenever the damn thing comes on the radio, I see HER singing it at the top of her lungs It IS catchy. “I bought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a flannel for my face. Pyjamas, a hairbrush,
new shoes and a case, I said to my reflection let's get out of this pla-aa-ace.

But wait, there’s even more goodness.

When places, eras, and pivotal memories long ago deemed too emotionally charged to manage surge up unexpectedly in Technicolor, this signals the spontaneous return of a soul part still wandering in isolation seeking to integrate with the person we are becoming.

The intense pangs of melancholy, grief, or sentimentality often interpreted as painful during nostalgic surfacing contain powerful medicinal properties. Like a lost child returning home from the dark wood, these resurfacing soul aspects from our past harbinger essential insights, vitality, and belonging to our sense of being that cannot be forged through an existence devoid of meaning creation and narrative. Because the feelings that emerge are often painful, our reflex may be to turn away, but nostalgia, utilized in this manner, can grant safe passage for the processing and reintegration of these soul fragments.

I love the image of a lost child returning home. Picture it - the little girl with chubby legs and pigtails wandering through a hostile, dark wood with wicked, gnarled trees blotting out the sky, crying, stumbling, maybe even giving that droning hiccup every now and then to try to soothe her emotions. Then, suddenly, something looks familiar, maybe a tree shape or a streetlight at the end. The little girl gasps, then starts to move faster, with purpose, until finally she bursts free and runs up the stairs to safety. So me.

And still, no matter how diligently we strive to integrate insights over passing years, aging and impermanence force all to eventually reckon with the fleeting nature of the lives we are each currently inhabiting and the connections we have with those with whom we are somehow intertwined. As clocks wind down for those we love within the roles we are currently playing, nostalgic reminiscing ripens into tearful relief for having woven some strands of meaning, making our connections sacred amidst the greater mystery.

It is difficult to grasp the permanence of existence amidst the constant flux we inhabit. Yet timeless virtues exist and renew should we choose to anchor to them. Love, courage, devotion, and creativity leave ripples in their wake. The ideas we birth may resurface to ignite fresh insight in an unknown reader’s heart decades later. A tree, now fallen, offers its surrender to nourish future growth in the underbrush. Stars expire, yet their stardust amasses in new celestial forms.

My tree, on the inside, shows rot, softness, mildew, and some acorns hidden by our enterprising squirrels. I don’t think he was surprised when the wind brought an end to his upright days. Maybe it was even a bit of a relief - he must have been trembling and unsteady for a while. I just wish we could leave him right here to slowly degrade into the forest floor. But it’s not a forest, it’s a neighborhood lane, so tomorrow the workers will come and cart him away. But a part of him - even if just sawdust and roots - will remain and nourish the ground.

Though we will one day depart, what we create and share now echoes pieces of who we are that persist in this dimension over time. Our works bequeath traces of our essence to bless those who come after. Death reminds us that time is fleeting, awakening deep gratitude for the preciousness of life. By accepting impermanence, we distill meaning from each moment before it vanishes. Making the most of our finite days in this incarnation gives existence purpose and significance. Confronting mortality reveals the irreplaceable value of the present moment.

This one goes in the permanent bookmark file. I will read and re-read it when I have another dark night of the soul. Everything changes. This, too, will pass. Thank you, Starfire Codes.