tizita

today zoe and i watched Gone With the Wind.  it was a home school move. a little bit of history, old southern culture and a lot of romance.  i hadn't seen it in years and i wasn't planning on watching all of it- just slipping in and out while i got other stuff done. but i couldn't resist....that rhett butler and that scarlet and all that intensity.

scarlet is such a picture of drama. always wanting what she can't have. holding on for ashely, although he's married, although his lovely wife is her dearest friend.  and only in the end- the very end, when ashely's wife dies, does she realize that ashely has never really loved her and that she actually loves rhett- but a day late and a dollar short- he's gone- and she's left again, wanting what it seems she can't have.  tragic.

as i'm reading 'cutting for stone' again, it made me think of the ethiopian word- tizita- it's a type of music or song- about memory and love and loss- memory mixed with regret- nostalgia- perhaps best described as longing.

"The longing in tizita is without resolution, since the possibility of restoration or return is always thwarted." (Dag Woubshet)

i guess that is how it is in the great love stories.  not the more recent hollywood-feel-good-happy-ending ones- but the poignant ones that leave you wondering- leave you torn- like 'gone with the wind' or 'casablanca'.  desire and honor and passion and respect- all competing.

you can feel so intensely that longing- that rick is left with in casablaca- and that ilsa takes with her on the plane with laszlo.  knowing it will never be satisfied- holding on somewhere to what was- a beautiful little agony.

tizita is not just about romantic love, or for people. it can be for a place, a season in life, a beautiful moment- that has past- that is lost only because time has moved on.

i get it.  the tizita resonates with me.  i'm super nostalgic. i enjoy the complexity of our emotions.  and i savor my memories.  i revisit them- i pay attention to creating them.  i try to imprint the little pieces that make a moment.  the feeling of sun on my left arm resting on the edge of the car door while driving, the layered coolness of sand in the morning-slightly damp, and the soft whistling sound it makes as it squeaks under bare feet.  the outdoor smell of my children's hair when they come inside from playing.  the choice of someones words.  the view from the top of a hill in san francisco that i saw everyday after dropping zoe at school- and the path home from there.  because you don't always know what you'll be longing for- until it's gone.

so i take those things and sometimes i lie awake at night and i remember.  i drive back from her school and try to recall all the bits- the color of the houses- the street signs- where the trolley crossed. i go back to other countries- or seasons or days or even seconds.  the more you take in the more you have to take you back. 

reflective nostalgia- love and loss and longing-in some ways the 'tizita' is the art of life- the deep joy tinged with sorrow, with passage, with the unavoidable linearity of our lives. so we say to those places and people and memories the first line of 'tizita':

tizitash zeweter wode ene eye metah
i can't help thinking about you.