Hiraeth

a vocab word that refers to a particularly human longing.

A spiritual longing for a home which maybe never was. Nostalgia for ancient places to which we cannot return. It is the echo of the lost places of our soul’s past and our grief for them. It’s in the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It is nowhere and it is everywhere.

I was struck by this vocab word today because of how it feeds into other things I’ve covered and Zuko’s-Mused upon in some previous personal essays already. The part of this particular definition (I yoinked it from memeland online; sorry I have no credit for it) that struck me the most, and makes this more distinct from the other similar feels and words is the ‘nowhere and everywhere’ bit. Nowhere and everywhere is the powerful part, methinks.

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This term may be more in the vein of like, people who feel like they’re Vikings or descendants of Cleopatra, or forest witches or cottage core adherents and such—it’s a longing for a romanticized Olde Tyme that is what makes people get Viking tattoos or Roman study or do Renaissance Festivals. It’s a past time that people use as a pastime (!) that never existed but is a passion now. Which makes me muse: Does my passion for Shakespeare tie into Hiraeth? I must contemplate this. I’ll get back to you.

This sort of longing nostalgia fantasy can lead to racism and sexism, of course—if you’re a terrible person, your longing for a way of life that never was can include things like keeping your wives in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, or non-white people ‘knowing their place’ …ugh, I feel like vomiting just after having typed that. Yuck. I gotta go rinse out my mouth and wash my hands, just a sec… But I’m not wrong, am I? There’s been a lot of discourse recently over the tradwife phenomenon, for example, that’s kind of an influencer trend these days, and I have to think that it’s because of this poignant concept of hiraeth. Wanting a long past way of life that never was really that way.

When I see this vocab word, though, I think of the ways that I personally feel this particular type of longing. For me, it’s for and from a much more recent and palpable past, that also maybe never was, to be fair, and that I certainly can’t go back to. I’ve written about and from and through some similar sentiments in other essays, like in It Takes A Village Coffee Shop, when I wax rhapsodic about The Birdhouse and what it meant to me:

The Birdhouse was not one of those cheap, claustrophobic and grim cubicles—it had multiple windows and vaulted ceilings with big skylights. So it felt bigger than it was, and had a plethora of natural light. The previous dozen years I’d been living in a townhouse in sort-of-suburb Gunbarrel, which was about a half hour away from central Boulder by bus, and across from an eerie prairie that was undeveloped open space. You could often spy an eagle scoping out the fields for mice, and coyotes could regularly be heard howling code at each other, too far off to see. I had been so isolated from my hometown there in that remote place with my gaslighting husband, and now that I was alone in the Birdhouse, a short walk away from the bustling Boulder downtown, I felt like I’d been freed from prison. Because I pretty much had been. 

One of the last comfy evenings I spent in The Birdhouse. Pictured: Friend Emily Flake on a live talk show via streaming, prosecco, soft velvety blanket. Steampunk mini tarot cards. Fireplace and locksmith education practice tools. Looks like I’m partially packed to move.

I talk about an adjacent mood (and even the term ‘hiraeth’) in another vocab word piece, Kenopsia:

The adjectives used in the above definition [of Kenopsia] are: ‘eerie’, and ‘forlorn’. I’d add ‘melancholic’ to those. There’s something aching and sad about witnessing these emptinesses, and almost a longing for a refilling of the space we see. I’ve been noticing a lot of memes constructed around the word Hiraeth, too, which is a sort of similar idea—that of a longing for something bygone, or that maybe never was. A home that we can never return to or that maybe never existed, but still fills us with nostalgic longing. We’re all feeling this viral strain of sadness I think, in the wake of being isolated for so long during lockdown, and still afraid.

My partner is suffering from a hiraeth-like sad nostalgia about his kids ‘leaving him’ just by growing up. They’re not really gone yet (college is coming for the oldest in a year), but to Partner, they already are. He misses the babies they were and the way he used to relate to them. They’re not the same people anymore, at 17 and 14 years old. Of course he knows very well that that’s a good thing, a glorious thing, and they are extraordinary people still, but even so it makes him sad and he longs for those fun littles that he loves so much, even as he continues to love the company of the fine young men they’ve become. 

Speaking of The Birdhouse:  I don’t like Boulder nearly as much these days. I do still like to visit, but more rarely, and I’m always much happier to get back home. I used to feel the exact opposite: I’d love my multiple days a week when I taught over at Auraria campus in Downtown Denver, dug the urban vibe, liked to hang after someplace cool and biggish citylike before getting on the long transit home. But then I would always feel myself unclench once I finally got home. Now, it’s absolutely the other way ‘round. I plan long days in Boulder now so I get everything done in one trip that I need to, and won’t have to go back for a while.*

*Blue Dime Cabaret’s shows at Boulder’s DV8 Distillery are one exception, as we do have regular shows there monthly. But that feels way different: on the one hand, DV8 is out East and isn’t in the center or even North of Boulder which are the areas I used to frequent when a resident. And it’s not far enough East to be Gunbarrel, which was where I lived with my controlling first husband. It’s its own little pod. That, along with the fact that I only go to that one place for shows and don’t venture out anywhere else in Boulder after (or even before), feels sort of lifted free of the Boulder experience, if that makes sense. It feels like a different place altogether, and not one that causes any sentiments like hiraeth.

Another shot of the Birdhouse, this time of some flowers that were bestowed upon us at Blue Dime Cabaret by a superfan, at one of our first performance series at Boulder’s Fringe Fest. Another past era long gone, just before the pandemic made everything different.

You can’t go back home. Or if you can technically, it won’t be the same at all, and can’t feed you in the same way. What’s the benefit of nostalgia? Is there any?

‘Our grief for th[ose places]’ also strikes me with emotion. I definitely feel something akin to grief for The Birdhouse, but it was absolutely the right time to leave it, to move on. And what do I think I’d do now? Attempt to get on its waiting list and try and get in and pay for it again? That would be ridiculous, not to mention a drain on precious resources that are needed for other things, right now. It’s not the same life; I’m not the same person, that needed and benefited from that place. So maybe I should be feeling something warmer than grief, more like gratitude, about The Birdhouse. There’s no going back, and that’s actually great. Because look where I am now.