On a cool autumn dusk in 2020, I ducked under a blackberry vine, hopped a spattering of mud, and emerged, finally, from a path between hedgerows.
The sea spread before me, a quilt of the patterns of the wind, and I was suddenly struck by profound desire. A desire for what, I was not sure.
A desire to be over there, perhaps, although I could not have said where over there was.
I was on the edge of the world, and I wanted to see beyond. It was a sort of nostalgia, but not for any real past. A nostalgia for the future, maybe, the future that can no longer be.
In fall 2021, I wrote my undergraduate dissertation about this feeling.
You can download it here: yearning.pdf.