I know what it means to be lonely. Is there something you want to tell me?

I thought about how I choose my entry titles yesterday, how it harkens back to the halcyon days of yore of songfics. I hadn't  even thought of songfics in literally eons. Just me have it, okay?! Just lemme have this thing that amuses me. (Also amusing that the title is taken from Stars lyrics, because generally I think they're trash, but I digress.)

The above photo is from Gilroy Gardens. It makes me nostalgic, even though I was just there. Time is so weird. It can at once feel like things just happened, and that they also feel far away, or even never happened. It's kind of remarkable that your brain (or maybe this is just my brain) does this. 

It was absolutely incredible how much nostalgia I had experienced at Gilroy Gardens, when  I never previously been. I know there is a word for everything, and it turns out that there is a word for this sensation!: Fernweh.

Apparently, this phenomenon is more prevalent in green spaces, which would make sense from  perhaps an evolutionary standpoint. Gilroy Gardens did not remind me of anything in particular that I had ever seen in my real life-- even some of the moving waters at Disneyland are not as opulent as the ones at Gilroy Gardens. The fake lakes and waterfalls remind me of things that I would want to see in my dreams, perhaps. They really were soothing vistas to take in, and I find myself going back again and again to look at the photos because the visuals are so soothing to look at.

Just look at that magnificence. It just does something to my heart. Is that weird? Even if it is, I don't care if it is.

Generally speaking, I try to not be nostalgic, because I think if we spend too much time being nostalgic, we will never actually get to live. I used to be more nostalgic when I was younger, high school age and early college. I am less nostalgic now, maybe because everything behind me in my life is just sad and I am moving towards a happier future. I can't be nostalgic about grade school because I was being stalked and bullied maliciously. I can't be nostalgic about middle school because I was still being stalked and bullied maliciously. I can't be nostalgic about high school because my grandfather died, I was on incompatible psych meds, I was forced to stay in school even though I was being bullied, etc. I can see how people who had happy childhoods and school experiences would want to look back fondly on these things and want to relive them.  For me it just reminds me that I am moving farther away from these few things that weren't terrible in a sea of what was mostly fucking terrible.

For whatever reason, I get nostalgic over music from eras that I never lived through, and more nostalgic about places that I have never been. For example, City Pop music makes me incredibly nostalgic. Images of Japan from the 1980's makes me incredibly nostalgic. Where does this even come from? I'd like to think that there is something to past lives and all that. I've never been to Japan!

Sometimes I get flashes of a feeling, like I had been there before. Yes, it could be somewhere I drove past before, but that's not what I mean. Like I had actually been there at some point, even if I never had stepped foot outside there. Missing something that has never happened and has never existed.

I am just glad that this is just MY brain and that these phenomena  are not singular to me. It's interesting that some people's brains think that everyone thinks the way that they do and this is the only and correct way of viewing, while others think that no one else in the world is like them (because they are wrong, broken, and defective). "I don't understand something, meaning NO ONE else does!" 

I am glad that the sensation of Fernweh isn't just my brain being broken, but getting because of artificial waterfalls is admittedly corny.