He said now he understands what I meant when I said I was nostalgic.
We walked through Washington Square Park and he was reminded of his college years and the memories for which he is now nostalgic for. He wants the past now because they are no longer attainable, and because the present is a bit sad- a sadness we both share, an emptiness for a love we both seek, which appears to be impossible to hold, touch, keep, retain.
He is now nostalgic.
I ask him to try and use his nostalgia as a source of creativity. Write a play, a short story, make a film out of it, I say because I wrote so much that it finally one day ended. All my papers became tainted with the word, and every word out of mouth sounded like it. I even tasted it in my meals.
And now I relate to my friend, who tells me he is suffering from nostalgia.
We continue to walk and eventually the park closes, and the garbage trucks interrupt our conversations, and our sentences become memories that one day we may be nostalgic for.

Like Jay Gatsby, some of us like to recreate the past. Though for Gatsby, it wasn’t just a recreation, but an inability to let go of the past. He thought he still had it — his old love, his old self, the way things used to be. Nothing and no one around him convinced him otherwise.
I often fall deep into the past. I have a natural tendency to do so. I like lingering there sometimes, for I find it hard to let go of the comfort it once had. The comfort that is now just bitter and irrelevant to my present.
It’s like finishing a cigarette and watching the last bit of it burn, the smoke that once entangled you now just a memory. This is the past. What you lost cannot be recreated, for it no longer has the power to come back to life in its original form. Even in writing, you cannot recreate the feeling. What you wrote yesterday will not feel the same the next day.
My obstacle everyday is to let things to. Lately, I have had to let people go too. That has been the hardest and most challenging task. I have been going on the roof of my apartment in Brooklyn on these last few summer evenings where the air is gradually getting cooler. I stand there, awed by so much beauty around me that my struggles appear minute and insignificant. I let my sadness, my thoughts and reflections drift into the open air where no one can hold or touch them. No one listens. No one talks back. I simply let them drift and disappear into the atmosphere.
And then, for a brief moment, my soul calms a bit. My mind rests, for just a savory moment. I breathe in the feeling of calm. I stretch out my arms up toward the sky, and I let them fall once again. What’s left now is the present — the smell of fall, the faint breeze that ends the summer heat, the notion that I am still here, still standing, still dreaming of a bigger life. I can create the present…
This is letting go.

I have been detached for a few days. I feel as though I have stepped out of my body. Before this state of detachment, I had incorporated my nostalgia so well that it had become an absolute part of my being. After 13 years, I suddenly no longer missed anything from my past. I even stopped writing and feared that I would not know how to write again.
It’s like the fear of forgetting how to drive if you stop for a long period of time. But once you are behind the wheel and your feet take their proper positions, and your body adjusts to the way the car feels, you realize you never forgot how to drive.
And fears are not real, just as loneliness is a state of mind. I am hoping to change my state of my mind. But it is this mind that drives everything, that allows me to reach well within me and feel. How do I stay intact if I stop feeling, if I let my mind go?

We found a coffee shop near the hotel. My father ordered a chicken sandwich, his favorite. Mom and I ordered coffee and bagels. I was still very nostalgic at this point. I began describing how I felt as I heard Iranian music, the way the lyrics ran through my bones, hurting each part of me, bringing me to violent sobs. I tried to explain that my sense of loss for Iran was so great that even in lyrics I related myself to it. That every line, every painful sentence felt as if it were written for me.
My parents listened, and I knew my words were hard to grasp. But unlike her usual “chera?” “why?” my mother listened and said nothing.
And then my father spoke.
He opened up about the years when he was alone in America, waiting for his family, wondering when they would come to him. He hid himself in the bathroom, banged his head against the wall until he cried because like my mother, my father does not cry. It’s been 13 years since my immigration, and this is the first time my father tells me his side of the story, his loneliness, his despair.
My mother and I both tear up. My father continues to speak, and I picture him alone and sick in a country that is not his. I imagine him, and remember that he told me a similar story many years ago when my mother was gone in Iran. This is my father. He does not often share his sorrows, and here he is telling me he suffered.
We bond through this revelation, and I cherish this moment, knowing full well I may not hear this story again. I reach out and hold my father’s wrinkled, dark-veined hands. This is my father.

I am home again in Fairfax. It is strange to call it “home,” for after months of infrequent visits, I hardly belong. I no longer have a room, and the house continues to change as my family moves in and out, as rooms transform and take on different patterns and colors. I cannot even find my spare clothes in what used to be my walk-in closet. My mother informs me that I can find my basket of clothes in my parents’ closet instead, hiding under shoe boxes and photo albums.
I am constantly reminded that I have left, and upon every visit, someone asks if I am going to return and stay for good. I continue to say no, displeased that I am asked because I hope that by now they would realize I am much better in New York.
But perhaps the hardest part about my short visit is seeing how quiet my father is. My father has always been a reserved man, but these days I hardly hear anything from him. I miss my father’s words. I ask him, rather dumbly, if he is okay. He looks at me quizzically and says, “Why wouldn’t I be?” to which I have no answer. He appears to be immune to everything around him. The worries and struggles that upset us do no bother him. In the car, he says nothing as my mother and I carry a conversation about my sadness and my struggles. I turn to look at my father, who is staring out the window, his sunglasses disabling me from reading his eyes.
Perhaps my father no longer needs to speak. Perhaps his needs are no longer satisfied by words. His silence bothers me, for I have no idea what he is thinking. Is it possible that he no longer wants anything from life?
This possibility not only saddens me, but it also frightens me, for I cannot imagine not wanting anything.