Nostalgia

To feel nostalgic or not to feel nostalgic

I have been to places for the last time without even thinking about it. Places I only visited once. Places that are insignificant enough to leave behind without getting emotional about.
But some places are connected to me personally. Maybe the place is connected to my childhood. Maybe some significant event took place there. Whatever the reason, visiting that place for the last time will not go by unnoticed. It will occupy my mind in a very specific way. I get into a certain mood. Call it nostalgia or melancholy.

The last visit

I have always found this fascinating. That feeling of nostalgia. Standing there and thinking about the fact that you will never visit this place again. Should you perform some kind of ritual? Should you take something with you as a souvenir? Should you somehow say goodbye to this place? If so, how?

I have some vivid memories of moments like that, somehow stuck in my memory forever. In one of those memories, I am standing in the middle of a stage. The last performance of the last play I will ever perform there has finished. The audience is gone. The stage is a mess of scattered props. I already changed out of my costume. I look around, thinking about the fact that I will never perform here again. It’s sad obviously. It kind of feels like saying goodbye to a friend. But there is also a feeling that this is somehow the end of one chapter of my life and the beginning of another one. I will still act. Of course I will. But it will happen on another stage, in another place. I think this moment was so powerful because this memory is of the place where I once started acting. This is the place I took my first steps on stage as a little boy of eight years old. Many plays happened after that first one. I acted in a lot of different places, but this place always remained special to me.

I had the same feeling when we visited an apartment near the sea for the last time. I had been there a lot during my childhood. But the building was going to be sold. We visited it one last time. At one point during our visit, my brother stood near one of the windows, looking outside at the sea. There was something about the way he stood there. Pensive and sad. It was melancholy personified. The feeling of being there for the last time left a big impression on all of us. I tried to capture this moment with my camera.

The technical stuff

Camera: Canon EOS 100 D
Lens: Canon 50mm 1.8 STM
Exposure: 1/160s @ f1.8, ISO 100
Natural light through the windows