BLACK CLOUD SPEAKS

—Chief Poetic Justice Warrior of the C-of-C-C.

Sehnsucht is the old German word for a yearning that runs deeper than memory —

a longing not just for something lost, but for something perhaps never quite possessed in the first place.

It’s homesickness for a place you’ve never been,

love for a face you’ve never seen,

an ache sharper than reason, and older than regret.

It’s the soul’s way of remembering —

dimly —

that there’s something more real than the dim room we’ve been living in.

A brighter country glimpsed from across the ocean of habit and years.

“Philosophy is really homesickness — the urge to be at home everywhere.”

—Novalis

“All the longing and love of the world is rooted in the feeling of being at home in the infinite.”

—Goethe

You don’t have it now.

Maybe you never did.

Maybe you were too busy trying to find the bathroom to notice the cathedral you stumbled into.

But at least you have this song,

this slow blue ache that pools under the ribs,

this hint that what you long for isn’t fully gone —

just hidden,

just postponed.

And if it aches — good.

The ache is the proof you are still awake.

Still reaching.

Still tuned to the music of a home you were born knowing, even if you never quite find it here.

A song half-heard is still better than silence.

And if all else fails —

well, at least you can blame the vending machine for eating your last dollar with a certain tragic nobility.