Just a quick note about nostalgia. I was thinking about it earlier, making coffee.
In reviving this idea of an audio journal, I do a writing journal every day — I started counting the days from my first entry. Today was day 10,877. It started at the beginning of February in 1995. This is the first time I’ve done an audio journal.
I did it for about a week when I first got to Budapest last year. Then Thanksgiving came and went and I got sick, and I never revived it. And then — in the way that these things go — my scrutinizing mind told me: who the fuck cares, why are you doing that, don’t do it.
Then I went back and listened, and the content isn’t all that great — you’ll have seen for yourself by the time you get here. But as I reviewed those recordings, I started to get really nostalgic for that time. The Cimbalom köz apartment, my first flat when I got here a year ago. I just wanted to hit rewind and go back there.
The fact of the matter is, the entire time I was in that flat, I was racked with jet lag. I was going through all the friction you have to figure out when you’re starting life in a foreign country. Then I got sick, and that cold carried me all the way to when I moved out. Only three weeks in the flat, and not the most pleasant three weeks. But I have such a nostalgic affection for that time. I don’t really know why.
In one of the recordings, I heard myself making a cup of coffee with a little Nespresso machine. And I just — oh, that was so cool to have that. Makes me want to go out and get one, but that’s completely stupid, because it’s obviously not about the Nespresso machine.
And it made me think: my day-to-day life right now is good. But I do carry the anxieties that come with working for yourself — my overlord is my need to keep creating, to keep doing the work. I need to remind myself: I am going to feel nostalgic in a very short time, next year, about this very time. This November in my Váci Utca flat.
Look around. Take in the sensory detail. It’s a weird psychological thing. But it’s kind of nice. I would rather remember with love and affection the time in that flat than relive only what was challenging me at the time.
Bringing it back to where I started: if I crack my journal and go back and read an entry from a year ago in that flat, I’m probably not going to get the same kindle of nostalgia. I’ll try it, but I think reading a journal entry — while less immediate and less intimate than listening to your own voice describe what you’re seeing and feeling — yields a more direct remembrance of the difficulties. Writing, once it’s committed to the page, re-engages you with what was actually hard. Audio kindles the nostalgia differently. I really have to think about that.
OK. It’s 2:15. I worked for a while — paid work. I edited some pages of the novel. I’m about to get to the last three sections: Friday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday — those are the chapter headings. Saturday is really when it all happens, and it’ll probably be about fifty pages. Then I’ll write the epilogue.
In about an hour I’m going to go down to the film festival. Hungarian shorts, then a film called Crips — which is not about Los Angeles gangs; it’s a Hungarian film. And then a friend of mine from Kyiv, his wife’s film is playing at nine, which is past my bedtime, but I’m going to go.
Here’s to next year’s nostalgia today. Goodbye. I love you.
