Blue.

Nostalgia. Nostalgia. Yes, don't you know? It is a greek word. And we use it constantly without even knowing it. Maybe we are using it because we find this word quite charming, mesmerising, filled with both sadness & joy.

"Nost-algia" is the "algia" (the dolor, the illness) of the "nostos".

From illness comes suffering, physical or/and mental pain. But what does exactly mean nostos? Nostos is one of the key-words of the Odysseus. The nostos is the reason of all the lengendary trip. Nostos belongs to the words which appear periodically during the story & mean the deep desire of a return.

Nostos can only come from minds of people who spend their lives away from their homes like sailors and who want, one day, to come back home to find back their family, their home, their country. But the homecoming is not always easy... ask Ulysses.

Nostalgia is therefore the pain we feel when we deeply want to return to our home but we can't do it or with great difficulty. The Odysseus is the reference among poems about nostos, about the always delayed return. This is the reason why each time I read this word, the same image comes to my mind: Ulysses sobbing and crying on the shores of the Calypso's island, begging the nymph to let him go and set sail to come back home. And each time I hear it, this word, in a text or a poem, I think I hear on the sand, the infinite moaning, the complain of the sea with each and every wave saying when dying:

nostos... nostos..nostos...