The stories of my life on a little island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea ... and my occasional adventures beyond these shores.

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Hiraeth

Sometimes I dream of a place where the sun is kind and the air is as soft as rose petals. It is a place where fat clouds roll in from the ocean and weep gentle tears on the land. Wild flowers grow in abundance here and the grass seems to shimmer with its own particular shade of green. There are gentle streams and jagged cliffs and valleys that cascade into the sea.
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The silence is broken by the shrill cry of the gulls and, on some days, the mist envelopes the land in a ghostly embrace. There are pretty harbours and ruined castles and an abundance of history and legends. And I would be at peace there. My soul would soar to the heavens and fly with the birds. My wandering heart would have found its home.
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And I often wake up from these dreams, in the stillness and darkness of the night, with a yearning for I know not what. Because sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own land. Like an exile  from some other other place or some other time. Because the sun is unforgiving here and the land is dry as a bone. All summer long I have searched in vain for a blade of grass or something that will remind me of the beauty of spring. And when I don’t find it? Well, I wish myself away. Over the sea and far away. Because although  I am here physically, totally grounded, with the weight of responsibility anchoring me down, that other part of me (my spirit self?) soars to that other place; that other place where the sun is kind and the air is sweet and the mist embraces the land.
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Hiraeth: a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return,a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.
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Don’t you just love Pinterest? It’s a great place for finding these weird and wonderful words that totally inspire me to create my own take on them. Hiraeth is a Welsh word (in Cornish it is hireth) so I won’t attempt to pronounce it, but you can hear how the Welsh say it here.

10 comments:

  1. Beautiful words, yours and Hiraeth! Thank you for the enjoyable reading
    Its good to have a word for that mysterious homesickness. A photograph will feel inspirational in a familiar way as if I miss a place I've never been. Now I understand what it is.

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    1. I love discovering new words and this one just felt so special.

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  2. I sometimes feel the same, just that I don't belong here and should be elsewhere, especially now in this season. Are we born on the wrong side of the planet ?

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    1. Haha, you should have been born somewhere in the sunny Mediterranean and I should have been born in chilly, cloudy Belgium.

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  3. THE BLADE OF GRASS WILL APPEAR............after the HEAT sails by!YOU and your island..............it's good to DREAM but you belong there.It is HOME.Plus, I think you are surrounded by a LOT of BEAUTY even if YOU forget that from time to time!.............xx

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    1. Hope it sails by fast Contessa :) I do like it here but sometimes I feel a desperate urge to get away.

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  4. I loved this post Loree and completely understand where you are coming from. Your words are heavy with emotion and a yearning. Your spirit self, your creative self, the traveller at heart. You have them all bundled up into one big beautiful package. Easy for me to say from afar and I also understand that feeling that can feel so powerful at times that you want to scream. It's a process, one step at a time. Dreaming and writing helps...until the next time. xx

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  5. I think all of us who dwell in places of nearly perpetual sun sometimes dream of soft, mist-filled countries. You express the dreaming feeling well...

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  6. Yes, hiraeth is a wonderful word, which I came across listening to Welsh songs (and trying successfully to pronounce them, Welsh isn't as bad as it looks!) Your photos are magical!

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  7. Stunning, stunning images - especially that last one. I love discovering new words and how they fit into the narrative of my life - even though I will probably not pronounce this one right, I do love it. Maybe we all yearn for a home we can't return to xx

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Thanks for stopping by. I read and appreciate every one of your comments. I will do my best to reply whenever I can.

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