Chapter Ten — The Entity of Longing

It happened in the morning, when the ship passed close to a shore I did not know.

I stood on the deck and watched the strip of land spread out before us.

Small houses stood along the water, a narrow road wound between them, and a few boats were tied to a pier.

There was nothing extraordinary about that place.

And yet, I could not take my eyes off it.

There was something familiar in it.

I did not know the houses, nor the street, nor the people who lived there.

I had never been to that place.

But suddenly I felt longing.

The feeling surprised me.

How can one long for a place one has never been to?

Perhaps the shore reminded me of another place.

Perhaps of one of the distant mornings when I stood by the sea, in another period of my life.

And perhaps it was not the place I longed for, but something within me that awoke at the sight of it.

I leaned on the railing and went on watching the shore.

I thought about how longing does not always arrive when we think of a particular person or place.

Sometimes it appears precisely at a moment that seemingly has no connection to the past.

A familiar smell, an old melody, a word someone says.

And suddenly we are, for a moment, in an entirely different place.

⸻

I tried to imagine Longing as an entity I could converse with.

But I could not give it a face.

No clear voice rose in my imagination either.

It reminded me of a melody heard from another room.

One can recognize it, sometimes even be moved by it, without knowing exactly where it comes from.

"Why do you appear precisely when I am not looking for you?" I asked in my imagination.

"When would you want me to appear?" the distant melody replied.

I thought about the question.

"I do not know. Perhaps when I am ready."

"And do you think one can prepare for longing?"

"Sometimes yes. When I look at old photographs, for example, I know I might feel longing. But when I stand before a foreign shore, I do not expect it."

"Perhaps because it was not the shore itself that aroused the longing, but something it reminded you of."

"But I do not even know what."

"One does not always need to identify the memory at once in order to feel something connected to it."

I looked again at the houses on the shore.

I tried to recall whether I had ever seen a similar place.

Perhaps yes.

And perhaps the sight simply reminded me of a period when I was another person, even if I cannot point to a particular moment.

⸻

"Whom do we truly long for?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"When I long for a person who is not in my life, do I long only for them? Or also for who I was when they were part of it?"

The melody continued quietly.

"What do you feel when you remember such a person?"

I thought of people I loved.

Of conversations, of laughter, of small moments that at the time they happened seemed entirely ordinary.

"I long for things I will not be able to experience with them again," I said. "For their voice. For the way they said my name. Sometimes even for things that once annoyed me."

"And what else?"

"I also long for the feeling I had in their presence. For the way we knew each other. There are things that could be said only to them, because they knew exactly what I meant."

"So perhaps when a person is missing to you, the place you had in their life is also missing to you."

I was silent.

That sentence touched me.

There are people who know us in a certain period of our lives, and they are the only ones who remember us exactly as we were then.

When they are gone, sometimes it seems that part of that period also moves away.

"But I still remember," I said.

"True."

"And yet, it is different when there is no longer someone with whom to share the memory."

I had no simpler way to explain the feeling.

⸻

"There is something I find hard to understand," I said after a while.

"What is it?"

"Why do I sometimes long for things that were not especially good when they happened?"

"For example?"

"Periods that were busy, hard, or confusing. When I think of them today, sometimes I feel longing, even though I know I would not want to return to them as they were."

"And what do you remember of them?"

"Sometimes the people who were around me. Sometimes small moments of joy. Sometimes the feeling that everything was still open."

"So perhaps you do not long for the whole period, but for certain parts of it."

I thought about that.

Memory does not return the past to us in its entirety.

It returns moments.

We can recall one beautiful day out of a hard year, and feel for a moment as though the whole year was different.

"So perhaps longing sometimes misleads us," I said.

"It can be influenced by the way you remember. But does that make the feeling itself untrue?"

"No."

"So perhaps one should distinguish between what you feel and the story you tell yourself about the past."

I liked that distinction.

One can long for a certain period without forgetting the difficulties that were in it.

And one can love a memory without wanting to live it again.

⸻

The shore kept receding.

I could still see the houses, but the details grew blurred.

"There is a longing I understand even less," I said.

"Which one?"

"Longing for myself."

The words sounded strange to me even within my thoughts.

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes I remember the woman I was ten or twenty years ago. I think of the things she wanted, of the way she saw the world, of the confidence she had in certain things. And I feel longing toward her."

"Would you want to be her again?"

I did not answer at once.

"Not exactly. There are things in my life today that I would not give up. And there are also things I understand better now."

"So what do you long for?"

I thought about that.

"Perhaps for the feeling that I still had so many possibilities. For things that had not yet happened, for better and for worse."

"And did the woman you were then have no fears?"

"Of course she did."

"And do you remember those too?"

I smiled.

"Not always. Apparently it is easier for me to remember what was beautiful."

"And what would she think of you today?"

I looked toward the horizon.

That was a question I had not asked myself for a long time.

"I think she would be surprised," I said. "There are things I did that she would not have imagined at all. And there are things that happened to me that she would not have believed I could cope with."

"And would she be glad to meet you?"

I thought about that another moment.

"I hope so."

I did not want to add more.

⸻

"Are you always connected to loss?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

"Not necessarily. One can also long for a living person, who is far away. And one can long for a place we know we can return to."

"So what do all these situations have in common?"

"Absence, I suppose. Something important to us is not with us at this moment."

"And what about a person who is beside you, and yet you long for them?"

I looked at the water.

That possibility was familiar to me.

Sometimes people are in the same house, even in the same room, but the closeness that was between them has changed.

"That is perhaps one of the strangest longings," I said. "To long for someone who is right in front of you."

"What do you long for in such a case?"

"Perhaps for the bond that was between us. For the conversations there once were, for the feeling that we understood each other without effort."

"And can that closeness be restored?"

"Sometimes yes. Sometimes people manage to find a new way to each other. But sometimes they are no longer the same people, and the bond cannot return to what it was either."

"So perhaps there are longings that do not ask to bring a person back, but ask to understand what has changed."

I pondered that.

Not every longing is a request to return.

Sometimes it is only our way of acknowledging that something that was precious to us no longer exists in the same form.

⸻

"Tell me," I asked, "are you a good thing or a bad thing?"

"How did you feel when I appeared this morning?"

"A little sad, but also calm."

"And at other times?"

"Sometimes you hurt very much. There are longings that can accompany a person for years."

"And would you prefer not to feel them?"

I thought about the question.

There were moments when I would have been glad to set longing down, even for a short while.

But I did not want to give up the memories it carried with it.

"I think I would like to choose when you arrive," I said.

"And can you choose when you remember?"

"Not always."

"So perhaps you have no full control over me either."

"That is clear to me," I said. "But I would like to understand why sometimes you are pleasant and sometimes almost unbearable."

"Perhaps because not every absence is like another. And you too are not always in the same place in your life."

I thought about that.

The same memory can arouse a smile in me one day and tears on another.

Sometimes I feel grateful for what was.

And sometimes all I manage to feel is the lack.

Both things can exist together.

⸻

"There is another kind of longing I want to ask about," I said.

"I am listening."

"Can one long for something that has not yet happened?"

"For example?"

"For a place I have never been to. For a person I have not yet met. For a different life I might have lived."

"And are you sure that is longing?"

"No. Perhaps it is yearning."

"What is the difference between them, in your eyes?"

I thought for a moment.

"Longing is usually connected to something that was. Yearning can also be for something we hope will be."

"And is it always easy to distinguish between them?"

"No. Especially when I long for a possibility that did not come to pass."

I remembered decisions I had made over the years.

Roads I chose and those I did not.

Sometimes we think of other lives we could have had had we chosen differently.

We do not know whether they would have been better.

We do not even know what they would have looked like.

And yet, one can feel a small pang when thinking of them.

"So perhaps one can long also for what never was," I said. "Not because we remember it, but because we are able to imagine it."

"Possibly."

"But I do not want to spend my life longing for all the possibilities I did not choose."

"And what do you want?"

"To go on being curious about the possibilities still open before me."

I remembered the girl I imagined in the port city, the one who always wanted to see what was beyond the corner.

I smiled to myself.

⸻

When the shore already looked like a thin line on the horizon, I stayed standing on the deck.

I thought of all the things I long for.

Not only the people who are gone, but also places I left, periods that ended, small moments I did not know in real time that one day I would want to return to.

There are longings that appear almost every day.

Others can disappear for a long time, and then return following a smell, a photograph, or a melody.

"I once thought time would make you disappear," I said.

"And what do you think today?"

"That it changes you. At least in some of the cases."

"In what way?"

"There are things I once could not think of without great pain. Today I am able to remember them also with a smile."

"And does that mean they are less important to you?"

"No. Not at all."

I looked at the water.

"Perhaps precisely because they are still important, I am glad I can sometimes remember them without the pain filling the whole place."

The imagined melody continued in the background.

I was not sure whether I was still conversing with Longing, or simply listening to my thoughts.

⸻

The wind strengthened, and a few passengers who were on the deck began to go back inside.

I stayed a little longer.

The shore had already disappeared entirely.

I thought about how that place, which I did not know and probably will not see again, had managed to arouse so many memories in me.

Perhaps that is why I love to travel.

Not only to see new places, but also because sometimes they return to me parts of myself I had not thought about for a long time.

"You will come back," I said to Longing.

"Probably," the melody replied.

"And I will not always be glad to meet you."

"I know."

"But I also do not want to stop feeling."

I heard no answer.

I stood another moment facing the water, and let the thoughts sink.

When I turned to go back inside, the image of the small shore we had passed rose in me again.

The houses, the narrow road, the boats tied to the pier.

I did not know why precisely that sight had touched me.

Perhaps one day I will understand.

And perhaps it will remain only a memory of one morning in the heart of the sea, in which I longed for something I could not give a name to.

I went down from the deck.

The melody accompanied me a while longer, and then weakened on its own.

Continue to Chapter Eleven: The Entity of Change

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.