Saudade

"Saudade" is a word I learned in Portuguese that doesn't have an easy translation into English. It is the remembering with longing or imagining with longing. It is wanting but not having. But not a discontent that is bitter or demanding. more like a sweet memory of something that is gone from reality but remains-- in the haunting half-phrase of a tune that arises like a vapor in your mind. It is a fragrance you only vaguely recognize. Its like when the deer pauses in the meadow, bathed in golden light, and flicks its ears, and looks for something, then returns to her grazing. i awaken some mornings, with that sense that there was something I am supposed to remember, something important that eludes my conscious mind, that tugs persistently at the edges of my brain. I can't make out if it is an image, a word, a feeling, ---something. Like Dali's "persistence of memory" it warps out of recognition, hanging from the table beside my bed, behind the netting that veils my bed. It is a stranger I think I know, who attracts me. but no one I know. A face I cannot see.
It is sweet, but not altogether happy. It is sad, but not full of sorrow. It is an empty place, like a missing tooth, that has become familiar. Hollow,hallowed.