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Existence is not much good without Essence

What do you do on your last day anywhere? What can you do if you’re not sure you’ll ever be back? At my age I’m faced with that dilemma more and more. Not to seem too Sartrean or anything, but it is what it is. He says that ‘existence precedes essence’: you cannot make something of your life, if you don’t even exist. But surely the choices run out after a while.

 You can’t live forever, but that’s not the point; I suspect that essence is more of a quality thing, than a quantity. It’s what you did, or thought in those moments of enjoyment, that probably count as essence.

I’m presently resting after an exhausting day exploring Saskatoon and the Meewasin Trail along the South Saskatchewan River (Meewasin, in a simplistic translation from the Cree language, means something like ‘it is beautiful’). It is my last day here and I’ve tried not to waste it. But can one ever get enough of beauty? Will my memories ever be able to recreate those last few moments on the trail? And if I’m never able to return, will the fatigue I feel now, and the few photographs I attempted on my phone become simply what I did once, and then something else came along that I also liked…?

Memories about places convey feelings, don’t they? I mean, why else do we have them? Even if I manage to return to Saskatoon one day, it must needs be a different me: much like stepping in the same river twice, is like stepping in a different river each time. Time moves on; memories fade or disappear entirely; so what I’m feeling now – the pleasant exhaustion, the exhilaration of walking on the high wooden railroad bridge across the river, the feeling of being lost in Saskatoon as I searched for a decent place to eat, or the inability to fully understand the directions of the GPS on my phone- all these things will never repeat themselves in the same way that my first time of experiencing them did.

I’m not complaining, you understand; it’s just that I’m already beginning to miss what I’ve just done: it’s a type of nostalgia, I suppose. In fact it reminds me a bit of an essay I wrote back in 2019 about saudade: the untranslatable Portuguese word for ‘the presence of absence’.[i]

 Admittedly I was writing about the recollections of a patient of mine who was able to remember the joy her newborn baby had brought her before he died after a month or so. Her grief -and mine- was obviously immeasurably more than what I’m now feeling about leaving Saskatoon, and yet, if you’ll forgive me, there is a distant similarity that feels vaguely familiar…

I was quoting the words of Michael Amoruso, a visiting assistant professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and I don’t mean to suggest that my feelings now are in any way similar to what my patient was feeling, but still: ‘Though painful, the sting of saudades is a reminder of a good that came before.’ It is, in other words, the ‘desire for the beloved thing, made painful by its absence.’

Remembering and talking about it -and even writing about the loss- is a way of healing, I think. And no, it doesn’t replace the loss, but it is a reminder that there will be good memories that will surely survive the grief.

When I was much younger, I was both a paraglider and rock climber; I loved those sports because of how they made me feel. Now I have vertigo and balance issues, but the thrill of my memories of those adventures, now impossible to perform again, revisited me on walking high above the river across that railway bridge today: saudade I suppose. There was no danger like with paragliding or climbing: there was a fenced wooden walkway separating me from the tracks, but still… what if a heavy, huge noisy train that would no doubt make the bridge tremble with its weight began to cross the bridge when I was nowhere near the end…? I mean it must be safe, or access to the walkway would have been sealed, but still…

And letting myself wander along the sidewalks of the city paying no attention to the direction was a thrill I sometimes crave. The only thing I began to realize was that the Avenues ran roughly parallel to the river that so defines Saskatoon; the Streets on the other hand pointed toward the river. So I could pretend I was enjoying the sense of being lost, and yet realize I wasn’t. Not really saudade, I suppose -only pretend-saudade maybe, but still it’s what I’ll remember about Saskatoon: safe danger.

Even on the Meewasin Trail that I so enjoyed exploring, I did not risk becoming lost. Much like with the Saskatoon streets (okay, at least the ones close to the river) where ‘lost’ only meant there were buildings between me and the river; on the trail, usually only trees and bushes separated me from the water.

The Trail runs over 105km along both sides of the river, winding under the bridges, and through parks and natural areas. And, access points are found throughout the city, with maps and interpretive signage along the route. The only real worry was getting carried away with the beauty and forgetting that getting back to my lodge when I became tired, still meant turning around and getting even more tired on the return journey.

Returning exhausted, though, was a reminder of the sublime feeling along the trail that came before and rekindled on the way back. Is that memory saudade in miniature? A beloved journey  soon to be made painful by its absence?

There are just so many things about my visit to Saskatoon that already make me sad that I must leave. But nostalgia -if the experience does not qualify as saudade– is a bittersweet emotional experience. It mixes the warm joy of a fond memory with the sharp pain of knowing that the past is gone… for now, at any rate…

[i] https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2019/06/19/saudade-considered/

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