what is cold?

ok, i have never wanted to really write anything about weather
but this weather has prompted me to
because its damned cold

now, i have been in the south where weather is despised
all through the newspapers and television
they treat it as if they can change it

the forecast are very disappointing
always talking its cold and or freezing
and when it is warm, they love it.

i have been up in iqaluit and pang for the past year
and people don't or rarely complain about it
and actually they rarely look forward to the warmness

and its cold up here now and its expected
actually they are appreciative of it
because they know that the cold is good for them

good for the community and good for the land
it will allow the hunters to travel wide and far
and they actually want it to last long because
the ice will thicken up and means the hunting
season is going to be longer

and the cold has made me think
about the past and imagine how it would have felt
in caribou skins and would be complain?

what is cold to you?

Hey Yu And Du Marier Regular please

i haven't made fun of myself in a while or laugh at myself. so here it goes:

Hey Yu.

i arrived to Ottawa the month before and started working a project with Nunavut Sivuniksavut and helped out in anyways I can. the students at NS have an annual performance at the Winterlude Festivities and this was that time. Ottawa had a huge amount of snow and it kept snowing that month. Like said, i came from the north just a month before, so I had a nice yarn hat that i still wear and nice leather mitts that i also still wear. i had just gotten my eyeglasses.

the student were performing and i went to the back of the audience because i had seen the shows over and over again by that time, so i didn't need to watch them drumming and throat singing. I went to the back and stood. People walked by me and gave me that interesting look every-time they passed. I tried to stay away from people and smoke my cigarette.

this white man, came up to me and looked at me like he knew me. He smiled and he said, "hey you!"
i said, "hey, not a bad performance huh?!?!" thinking that he is just being nice and thinking he just wants to talk. He smiled at me and said, "yes, very nice performance, i've seen them throat sing twice now, did you hear them?"
i said, "Yes, all day too." He looked kinda surprised when i said that.

a lady went up to him and she was obviously enjoying the cultural show the students were putting on. the white man said to the lady as soon as she walked up to us, "Look its Yu, he's out here too."
The lady looked embarrassed and said, "that is not Yu. He looks like one of the student."

that is when i realized that the man had been calling me Yu, like some Chinese name and I thought he said "Hey you", not "hey Yu" as he had said it. He thought i was some Chinese dude named Yu and he said he was sorry. i said it was alright. And he had the guts to say, "you guys all look the same anyways." I almost got offended but i figured i got a good story out of and smiled them goodbye.


DuMarier Regular please?

It was 5:00PM, i was anxious to get home and eat my shawarma. First, i had a long day and it was wet outside as it had been snowing all day and i had to take the bus. i searched through my pockets for a cigarette, to get my nicotine fix. Nothing!

there is a corner store just a few feet from the bus stop, so i went in. but just before i went in, i saw the bus i was to take, the #95. so i hurried in and i was the only customer and in a hurried voice i said "duMarier Regular please?"

The cashier was an asian man and he looked at me with a confused, small eyes look and said right away, "Sorry I'm not chinese!"
i had to think quick, why did he just say that? then i realized that in my hurried voice and my good looking chinese looks, i had fooled the man to thinking that i was chinese when i asked for "dumarierregularplease?" He thought i was speaking chinese.

i got embarrassed and said in a slow monotone voice: DU MARIER REGULAR PLEASE?
and he gave me the pack and i left the door and stepped on to my bus, the #95.

The Happy Beggar

The story is from 2009

this is just a story, not true, some are from my experience and some are made up:

Have you realized the people who have the greatest sense of humour are usually people whose had it the toughest in life?

I have an easy life. I grew up in a nourishing and supportive family. I was never hungry, i always had something to eat. I never got abused. never seen my parents drinking. they bought me the greatest gifts, year after year. every single day, i was told that i am loved! i finished high school and went on school trips to places like Scotland. I had a snowmobile most of the time. Heck, I've had rifles since i was five years old. I have a life that is devoid of struggles, i have the most loving family this world had to offer. I can talk to my father like he is my best friend. simply put, I am loved and i've never really had it hard.

Remember my story and how easy i've had it! Remember?

I am living in an environment that produces immense amount of prosperity and possess-able materials. I live in an environment that produces building materials and they keep on building. Since i have moved to the city, new buildings have been going up every year. I pass by people who wear expensive clothes and can afford Mercedes' and Land rovers and even Hummers. I walk and talk to people who own million dollar buildings. i know people in the city that will die a nice death on a bed beside their families and loved ones. They will afford a $3000 tombstone with a very self-supporting epitaph:
Here lies John Doe
He never heard of Death Row
He never lifted a hoe
He always wanted more
and he'll keep getting more
even if god never kept a score!

remember the environment? You can throw money in this town and it can support thousands of people. the money can buy thousand of cup-o-noodle soups, thousands of slices of bread, thousands of mmm, mmm, mm, so good Campbell's soups, thousands of shoes and boots, thousands of mitts and canada goose down jackets for all the needy this city has made suffer.

I am not very rich right now, actually, it is hard right now but I have it much better than most people in the city.

Yesterday, i received a cheque for $9.75. I cashed it and it turned out to be cash. i stepped out of the bank and there he was. Sitting and leaning on to a newspaper stand, with a black blanket around his shoulders, he smiled and laughed. He laughed and said, "I've actually taught you when you were in grade three, i have made you lunch when you were hanging out with my son, i have given you pepsi and now look at you, wearing a "Pang hat" with Sony headphones, mitts that your mother made and that jacket probably cost you $200, you even have a MEC backpack."

He laughed some more. I didn't get what was funny.

He proceeded, "I am asking for a cigarette from qallunaat and they give me looks like i soiled myself. some don't even look at me. I ask for pennies and nickels. I take anything, even food that they didn't finish. But its funny because I never thought, 15 years ago when i taught you in grade three, that i would be asking for money from you!"

He gave a small chuckle and coughed out phlegm like a 40 year smoker of Players Light. The wrinkles in his face had gotten more defined since the summer. Begging for pennies and nickels is more stressful than fighting in a war, aging day by day like its been month and months.

i laughed with him, not because i thought it was funny, but because i could tell he needed someone to laugh with him. An Eskimo laugh is worth nothing when it is done alone, so i had to glorify his laugh and laugh with him.

My father told me: "give what you can. You make all that money down south and you see people who ask for money all the time, give some whenever you can, okay?!?!?!"

The $9.75 cheque. I could have bought two lunches, maybe three from Giant Tiger. I could have spent it on my skinny little ass and have a nice shawarma.

i gave him my $9.75 and i told him, "get whatever you want with this money, go get some beer, heck, if you get a quarter, you can buy a gram of weed. go buy yourself some coffee. go buy yourself some candy. go buy what you can with this."

He laughed and i laughed with him and he said: I'll buy coffee for other Inuit that are a block away. I'm not going to spend your money on booze or drugs, i'll do that with qalunaat money, but I am going buy coffee. Thank you. Aakkuluk."

He shook my hand and got up and fixed the black blanket around his shoulders. I could hear him walking down with a smile on his face and he laughed again and said, "I'm poor Inuk"

Taxi Drivers and Cultures

I wrote this back in January 2009.

My father is at
the Larga Baffin
for a check up
for his fucked up
frozen foot.
My mother: The worrier
But she's one hell of a Warrior

"Go see us!" she demanded
"don't make it like the
last time, didn't show up!"
I took
a cab
just before, i had
stubbed my toe on a stone slab


First Driver
as i am really nervous
because it might cost
me more than 20 bucks
first driver
"Hi sir, Where to?"
"1863 Russell Road please,
my parents are there."
I want to
say: Lucky bastard,
too bad the buses are on strike.

I ask
"busy night, you know,
without the buses and all the
snow?"
He says
"pretty busy, good for business."
He lectures me
on the union's demand
and the city's stand!
He is from Ethiopia
in his
40's
Came to canada in the
60's.

My father says
he loves me
tells me
"take care of yourself
and others."
My mother
kuniks me
like a mother should
the sound of,
of her sucking-air-nostrils
are amazingly
soothing and loving

My Second Driver
"Hey buddy, where you goin'?"
take me
home where things
are like the
back of my hands.
44 St. Helene
where i know
the comfortable and the stable
where no sick people are.
He drives and asks
"What's in the box?"
I have food of
seal, char and caribou.

He In An Instant
becomes interested
and he tells me:
"You In-You-It,
so peaceful
never
kills each other.

But I remembered
the first murder in
the city of Politicians
in a place Inuit
Eskimos call: Little Nunavut
on January 1, 2009
4 AM, a roommate
kills his
Other Inuit roommate
and i don't
have the gut to say:

The first in the city
to die a viloent
death: In-You-It

My Second Driver
tells me that
Me with my culture
of my own have been
so peaceful and don't kill

But i know,
In-You-It:
Not so peaceful
violent deaths are
deathly common.

My Second Driver
Ethiopian of 36 years
Came to canada
nation of leaves
for school

He likes our talk
gives me $5.00 discount
but i feel bad
because i didn't
tell him
the truth
Of My Not So
Peaceful and Loving
Culture!

A brown man's burden

take heed if you are brown
or if your ancestors were brown
if you know the word imperialism
colonialism, disenfranchisement
for you have been the marvel of
the white man, especially if
you are a woman, take heed

you have a huge burden for the world
teach thee about global warming
climate change is your weapon
demand devolution because
its easier and less blood than
a revolution and the theory of
evolution is useable in this case

take heed if you are brown
you have a huge burden to teach thee world
of poor housing, of social welfare
of your land claim, your "precious" culture
you are the hunter and gatherer
you know first hand of sustainability
which the rest of the world knows
very little about, it is your burden to
teach the rest, the civilized world

take heed if you are brown
you have a huge burden to teach thee world
of your sewing skills, of your hunting skills
for you are the last of the last
to make your own clothing and please
be aware of globalization, you might be
able to use it to your advantage

you have a burden to teach
that war is not the answer
the democracy might not work all the time
that you are frugal with everything
you sure know how to spend money
you can shop at wal-mart for 6 hours straight
you have mastered the capitalist system

if you are brown, you have burden
to light a qulliq on a opening ceremony
to a cut a ribbon with an ulu
to tell stories of your wretched childhood
to eat country foods raw and cooked

oh well, you might as well go on living your life
it will make a bigger difference to the world
a proper person and a careful person
never makes history
only people that have been desperate
and willing to be different,
will change the world.

go on, i have absolve you of your burden

the staple diets

despite all that news about
the food prices and the freight
costs and all that talk by the government
about nutrition north and
all that news anyways

from what i see and from the people that
need it the most, it hasn't made a dent
the most cheapest food still available
is not really nutritious and you can't really
expect elders and unilingual residents
to order and what are the chances of getting a
VISA or Mastercard and who do they call?

i mean, the more i think about it
when the people that we claim to respect the most
are elders and the most we want to help are
inuit and the majority of this territory are
these people, this program is designed for
rich or richer folks to have an easier life
not for those not so well off, like a lot of inuit

and didn't they say it was to save some money?
for who? harper? leona? eva? me, tommy?
the post office? northern?

these things never work for the people that need
it the most, which are people that live in this community
and the other 25 or so that are scattered up here
and those people are not the teachers, bureaucrats
nurses or administrators or the people that can order and
have Mastercards or VISA's

you know, people still go shopping at northern
or the co-op or whatever grocery store and they still
sell expensive shit and the cheapest are the not so
healthy foods.

for food to be healthy, i think it has to be fresh
unless they are willing to send food from california
the next day or costa rican banana's the day next
but that would be too healthy for inuit, right?
canned food this and canned food that is the cheapest form of
veggies around here, so our meaning for healthy food
has to be redefined and refined

if i were the all powerful leader like leona and eva and harper is,
i would:
lower the gas prices for hunters only with snowmobiles and boats
not to your car or your truck
i would lower the prices of ammunition and not require a license
if you show me a frost bitten cheek or a weather beaten face
i would subsidize hunting implements such as ropes
wood for your qamutik, sleeping bags, and of course tea
would be free it you show me a map of your hunting grounds
i would lower the prices of naphtha only if you can prove you are
going hunting and you got the trust of your community
i would fund community freezers and pay hunters to
bring in their catch to the freezer
i would pay a hunter to be a mentor to a 14 year old boy
i would lower the prices of threads and needles
and fur and provide caribou and seal skins at cheap prices
for seamstresses and i would take 14 year old girls
put them in a room with their female elders and take their make-ups away
and put patterns and ulu's in their hands and they would get paid for it
and don't you think snowmobiles and boats and outboards are
way too expensive? who can afford them?

if i were that all powerful leader, educated people would have
maximum wages because uneducated people already have maximum wages by default
its just equality right?
as an all powerful leader who has all that money to play around with
i would increase the power of HTO's and those women's auxiliary groups
because they are the ones that actually really care for inuit and
the culture that we are so desperate to save, they are living it
when was the last time a government saved a language?
when was the last time a government cared for people?
when was the last time a government hunted for my parents or yours?
when was the last time a government paid for your food with good intentions?
when was the last time a government actually helped people for the better?

now

when was the last time a hunter provided for you? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a seamstress sewed you an amauti? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a hunter died trying to provide food? pretty recent, i bet
when was the last time a mother kept a culture going by drying skins? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a mother saved you money by cooking seal? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a father showed you animal tracks? today and even yesterday

which bring staple diets?
government or a hunter or a seamstress?

hannah montana called

i just can't get enough of her witty remarks
she acts three sometimes but her mouth is old
and the way she uses inuktitut is amazing
uses her qii quu qaa's very well
and can sing and remember songs she heard on the radio

my father is the maker of all this
has instilled in her the love of books and reading
and in the mornings she'll go up to me with
a book in hand and ask:
angakutaa uqalimaarluu?
"uncle-who-is-tall do you want to read with me?"

its hard to say no to her. and when i am reading
she goes up to me and asks me what i am reading
with a genuine interest. and the time i came in
i told her i got books and she literally tried opening my
bags to see what books i brought with excitement

when she is alone, she'll break out into a song
old songs from the past that my father sang to her
songs that my generation hardly knows
and she'll sing songs that she's heard from the radio

sometimes she spontaneously break out dancing
and then she'll be the clown on the floor
making funny body movements and funny faces
entertaining herself and the whole family

when me and father were teaching her a new song
she smiled at us and said:
inngikaqpaaluuvisi ataata angakutaalu
"you really now how to sing, father and uncle"
she even got up on stage during christmas concerts
and sang and read to the whole community

just the other day, she had taken my cell phone
from the room and was pretending to call and be on the phone
and she went up to her aunt, my sister and said
"ilinnu hannah montana uqaalaaju"
its for you, it's hannah montana
and we all laughed and giggled and she appreciated it

she is so generous and willing to share all the time
and just now when i am writing this, she had two
pieces of snack and she asked me if i want some from her
and she does this every single day to all sorts of people
and she says thanks you to every visiter
and she usually starts a statement by saying
"oh" as if she just remembered something

she brings all the unhappiness to its knees
she takes sadness out of people as if by magic
she brings laughter to strangers and family
she takes despair and breaks it to smithereens

i think children have the touch of god
and i am thankful that she is here for all of us

and i don't mind if hannah montana calls once in a while

the black dot in front of me

hahahaha
it starts with a laughter
because i don't know how else
to start this poem

i was walking from my grandfather's
place
11:30 in the evening
after a whole day
of visiting

and as i walked to my parent's
place
on the road, right below the runway
where the road starts climbing
and the light dims

i saw a black dot in front
of me
moving.

at first i thought i was
hallucinating,
or just seeing things
but i had to look harder
and there really was a black dot
moving in front of me

i don't believe in a lot of things
but this thing kind of
freaked,
creeped and
startled me

and then the black dot
moving in front of me
turned sideways:

it was a mutt
the classic inuit community
black dog,
descendant from some
husky and some short legged dog

from a distance,
because it was so short,
it didn't seem to have legs
just a black dog
that seemed to move
without legs

and i felt silly
as i walked to my parent's place
and smiled to myself

Introducing the new Inuk

you know, you are not very special?
you have no special genes that
make you survive the cold!

your history like anywhere
in the world is connected to
some form of colonialism.

nothing very special about us
just because the ladies can make
an unusual sound with their damn throats
does not make us any different.

because some of us can eat and make
fermented walrus meat or any meat
is not a hallmark of civilization

i think we over romanticize
ourselves: the heroic hunter
the hard working sewing mother

as if we are the lost true people
the pure and noble eskimo
saving the world from
environmental destruction

i read once in a book
by a respectable anthropologist
friends with inuit who are not
going to agree with this poem

where he said, inuit had lot's of free time
out of the hours in a week about 1 day was
spent hunting and the rest was leisure

so much for the hard working eskimo of the past?
but what they meant by being busy
when elders say so, is they occupied their
minds with anything and everything not just hard work

and they probably fucked a lot too
practising infanticide, preferring
boys over girls. it was not always
this picture we learn from school

and we should accept these realities about our past
and not be ashamed of them just because
the white world think its barbaric and crude

sure we have a lot of human incapabilities
i don't even want to call them issues
but we should accept these too and stop trying
to fix everything about our world

i like the little inadequacies such as drunks
on a saturday afternoon and the person
not afraid to smoke that weed on the streets
or the the old man that shoots snot out of his nostrils

or the old woman rudely yelling
at his grandchild and ridiculing the young
saying "when i was young...."

and shit... we survived but we also starved
even though there is a lot of animals up there
we have not always been so successful

even to this day we are shamed
when people asks us if we have a religion
and we say, no we are christians

i am glad we are christians but our beliefs
are different from all the rest, our own views
in a myriad other views of christ

we hunt with high powered rifles
some of us go willy-nilly with our bullets
and get offended because national geographic
wrote a piece about narwhal hunting in a negative light

oh and our language, it doesn't even have swear words
but you have never been scolded so hard
by your mother that it still hurts to this day

and look at us showcasing all that culture
being so serious about on stage,
acting like erika badhu the world performer

but how come i never see a person eccentric enough
to say i am going to write that novel
going to be that crazy person
living in a shack with his type writer

and its always the opposites of the two,
either rich or poor and right and wrong
and religious or non-religious
inuk or non-inuk. we never leave room for the middle

and whats this modernization talk?
what the fuck is modern anyways?
our fathers grew up before people went to the damn moon,
no tv, no internet and look at him now:
living in the modern world and we respect him because
he is an elder, a relic of the past?
would he like that?

and the land claims we all signed huh?
so proud huh? nunavut huh? 1.14 billion?
article 23? NWMB? NIRB? all so good right?

did you know that we sold our rights for $500 million?
not 1.14 billion, the rest was just interests.
does that not shame you, over a 5000 year culture sold for
a price of some ship. the USA has nuclear ships worth more than that
and still we are so proud.

oh i know what you are going to say
"at least we have something, better than nothing"

whatever! we really sold our souls to INAC, NTI, QIA
the two KIA's, corporations are fighting over a mountain
in north baffin and all in the name of owning our 19%
ownership of land in nunavut?

china is probably saying, we can sell better
than the canadians and we'd say no to them
because we are so proud to live in a free country

i am not sure if our view of ourselves
is based on reality anymore
and we've become so accommodating
and accepting that we forget our dignity
in the name of catching up to the rest of the world

so here is the new inuk:
living in a dog house with three other inuit
carving and drawing to make a living
the house beside our dog house is occupied by
a man wearing a tie and suit with a seal skin vest
with carvings and drawings by us on his walls
you can hear music of ayaya's and throat singing
as he writes our history, the noble eskimo
long forgotten and adored by the rest

let's just stop kidding ourselves please!!!

the ᕆ in montreal

walking on saint laurent
a few blocks long
pavement everywhere
quiet and long
one two or three people
passed by

carrying a poster
of a half naked lady

feeling pretty damn good
and have been all day
the beatles, the clash, ratatat,
bob dylan, charles bukowski,
me first and the gimme gimmes,
and mos def
have been my
companions all day

wearing leather mitts
given to me by my mother

all the buildings are more
interesting, older and
hold more tradition
and the churches are everywhere
and a few dog shits
along some of the the
some-dark-streets

with my freshly laundered
jeans and shirt and my
boxing day sale jacket

alone and a guy asks for a light
as if he knew i smoke
"merci monsieur"
"your welcome buddy"
maybe i should have learned french?
and i light one with him and walk again
one block after a line up
for a club

most people don't know i have
nail clippers in my left pocket

as the clash comes on
i can hear people laughing
having fun and enjoying the time
and i think this city is
one of the best
makes me want to write
even play the guitar

is it the fur on the coats
or the high heels of the girls?

whatever it is seems artistic
and the people just know
and the best part is:
it rubs off of them
even if you are not artistic
makes you want to be

and

after all

leaonard cohen, mordechai richler,
arcade fire, the best hockey team,
romeo dallaire, lousie dudek, naomi klein,
ryan larkin, irving layton,
yann martel, sam roberts,

and other

writers and poets and artists and athletes
were born in this city

philosophical work through the hands

i have met beautiful and experienced people from all sort of humanity. I think instead of saying we are part of this race and that race too much, we should say i am part of humanity. Because in the end, you are just a human who does human bodily functions: eat, cry, fart, puke, breathe and shit. We are just so simple.

anyways, one of the bodily functioning humans that i met was an elder from rankin inlet. this was a time when i went to a meeting in arviat. the meetings were a week long and i was one of those young people they invited. the whole meetings were all day long, trying to think of ways where we can incorporate inuit values and beliefs into the modern educational system in nunavut. they tried with good intentions. and these meetings were all theory or thought processed meetings and it got to be tiring.

on our last day, i talked to the wise elder from rankin and he invited me to his house when i pass through rankin on my way back to ottawa. so on my way back, i went and visited the elder and i invited a colleague to go along with me so we can talk to the elder. we arrived and went to the place of the elder.

when we entered his place, it wasn't very inuk of him. what i mean by that is that when you visit an elder they offer you tea and introduce you to their household. but the elder didn't do any of that and he very flatly told us to sit and led us to his dining table. we sat down and i could tell my colleague got nervous and it felt like he was going to lecture us and tell us what and what not to do. but that was not the case.

when we sat down, he said he is going to go get something and we waited and he came back. he had this traditional pouch made out of arctic char skin. it was ingenious, just the head cut off and the whole pouch was dried and inside this pouch were all traditional hand tools. hand drills, little saws, and so on, all used by inuit in the past before electric tools.

he started talking that he had made those tools for him and to tell people what their purposes were. and he talked about our meetings in arviat and how we wanted students to learn what it is to have values and beliefs and to use those values in our lives. the arviat meetings, like i said, were all theoretical and this elder realized something was missing and he wanted a message to bring to us.

he said: people think working with hands is a lower form of job and we try to teach students all about thinking and how to process thoughts and how to write about those thoughts. there is something missing in all of them. he pointed to his tools again and said: these, when you are working with them, your brain starts working in a different way. people think to work with tools is a menial job, but i am telling you, these are more theory than work. when you work with these, you think about your family, your reactions to people, your relationships with people, your relationship with the world. you think and think and in the end, without ever thinking you were thinking, you have thought about the world, your place in the world. in arviat we were trying to think of ways to teach students how to do these things, but we missed crucial point, we are thinking beings and it doesn't stop.

i was astounded. here this elder is, never read socrates, plato, rousseau, jung, engels, or that other german philosopher and he was beating them in their own game. and he achieved this by explaining that to work with hands is just as philosophical as thinking and we had missed this point in arviat. he suggested that we work with our hands a little more. as if trying not to think is more creative than trying to be a thinker. he wanted something real and he wanted to apply the real world to a superficial world.

after that, he became more "elderish" and offered us tea and introduced his household. he smiled and became very cordial.

that was more than five years ago and i remember the visit like it happened yesterday.

Books and Me

Me, i am, therefore they say i am

Books, they are, and what beauty they can be

my whole goal when i first entered the plane
was to visit bookstores - used and new
and of course which i did
on the same hour that i came in, chapters was there for me
consoling me and telling me
"how much i missed your money, Tommy"

I walked through those doors
like in was a bat out of hell
like i was the angel with news to god
and i went straight into those
sections of poetry and talked and flattered
Bukowski because i told him
"i have been wanting to see you so badly, listen to your bullshit"

the next day, another bookstore
and whatever they say about used bookstores
i believe in people who sell books
they are the people that keep this knowledge
world keep going round and round
and i went dizzy
and the bookstore keep woke me up and took my hand and said
"my child, take it easy, there are many of us, keep grounded my child"

and now on a monday noon, i write
because i am fairly happy
more than happy i think, whatever that is
don't feel like going home and i am still happy
homesickness is a word i hardly use
and i don't remember when i used it in a sentence
but there is no word for missing books
other than missing books
maybe
"booksickness"

i am glad that books are there and certain friends are there
nothing better than a good friend is someone
who openly can talk about books, not just praising authors either
who detest writers who can say
"the ideas there are so boring, so modern"

have you been nostalgic for something
you have never been through
for a thing you have never seen
experienced, for something you are not likely to be?