Is it possible to fall in love with a hhmmm…  a word?  Oh yes, that sure is possible. I do know now. It happened to me. We never met before. Never heard of each other before. Until I was listening to music on youtube and it was love at first sight. There it was and I immediately had to know more about it. It’s the title of an album of Thievery Corporation, their music I have played for many hours since we live on Ibiza. I appreciate this music a lot. A nice blend of triphop, dub reggea, acid jazz, Brazilian bossa nova. Their last album totally breathes the meaning of the word I just fell in love with: Saudade.

We’re heading to the last days of the year 2015. I don’t know but for me always a vague period of year. Counting the days and thinking: Come on, go ahead, let’s finish it off, chop chop!, on the one hand. Oh no, almost another year gone, what have I done with this year, it’s all going to fast for me, before we know we’re all old, so please stay, on the other hand. Looks like I just having a serious love-hate relationship with this time of year.

I realize that these mixed feelings are a deep feeling of nostalgia. This actually all started when we lost our dad in December 1999. now 16 years ago. This week  when I discovered this album and listened to it on youtube it exactly summarized my December-melancholic-feeling: Saudade.

What does it say?

“Saudade is a Portuguese and Galician word for a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which has been lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never really return. It was once described as “the love that remains” or “the love that stays” after someone is gone.”

 

I think I never have read such a beautiful word and meaning ever before. It has a certain softness, fragile but not weak, that says to me:  It’s all good. Because the love remains. How many years will pass, it doesn’t matter. The many December months I will experience..The love will always stay. It’s about finding strength in vulnerable moments. It’s about me. It’s about you. It’s about life.

It’s about love.

Saudade.