Nostalgia

I feel nostalgic. I guess that I have been feeling this way for a while now, but it really hit me when I was walking home from the grocery store this evening. I have always been fond of the word nostalgia. I like both of its meanings--its literal description of the pain associated with the desire to "return home" and its more typical usage to refer to a sentimental yearning for a return to some idealized past. I think that I feel both of these right now. I do very much wish that I could be home, but I think that my general desire to return to an earlier time is for the exact same reason that I want to hide at my parents' house. At this moment, I crave security because right nowI feel more unsure about things than I have in a long time. Yes, it is likely a result of the approaching graduation date. I will have my MA, and I do not know what I will do. I have been rejected by six of the seven Ph.D. programs that I applied to, and despite the e-mail from the final school letting me know that my application is "ranked highly and pending further consideration," I have no idea what an offer of admission would even mean. I wish that I could return to a point in my life where I felt confident. Surely no time has ever actually existed in my life, as I am an incredibly anxious and insecure person, but from this vantage point, it seems like every other point in my life was marked by some sort of certainty about where I was and what I was doing. And besides missing certainty, I find myself missing things. I am really interested in cataloging things and in making lists recently, and below is a list of things that I miss right now.

• Having a cat, and I really miss having Ernest
  
• My Fall '08, Spring '09, and Fall '09 English 101 Classes
• Various students from the Winter '09 and Winter '10 classes
• Interning for English 239
• Late nights in diners.
  
• Riding a 4-wheeler
• Long drives
• 2am trips to the grocery store.
• Picking flats and flats of raspberries and making jam.
• Listening to the BBC while driving home from my first fast food job.
  
• The comp tickets always on the table when my roommate Shayla was active in the local theatre.
• Singing Cher songs with Brandon
  
• The secret certainty I felt about being accepted to a Ph.D. program.
  
• Cooking large meals.
  
• Lady parties
• Being an undergraduate.
• Marcus
• Having someone to watch TV with.
• Listening to new music.
• Reading for pleasure regularly.
• Going to the movies.
• Taking photographs.
  
• Thunderstorms

Because I have been thinking about the past, memory, and nostalgia, I made a little play list (see below) of songs that deal with those issues in some way. It is not a good mix because the songs don't quite work together, but they have all been floating through my mind, and I guess that is sort of what memory is; it is in many ways the juxtaposition of random bits.