How do my nostalgia and melancholy relate to bitterness?  Or are they more associated with boredom?  Or a combination of both?  

Actually, I’d guess, they’re related to the full panoply of emotions I’ve felt and to the spectrum of my personal experiences.  To all of my regrets and joys; a distillation of sorts, one perhaps diluted in the process, but perhaps, synergistically enhanced instead. 

A strange sort of brandy, part biological, part cognitive, part emotional and part spiritual. 

And what of that brandy’s residue?  The things seemingly forgotten but perhaps just hiding.  Hiding from me and from anyone and everyone, but perhaps, like a neurosis, rather than hiding are only in stasis, preparing to pounce unexpectedly, and to create an alternative version of the person I perceive as me.

Brandy, distilled wine, sometimes disguised as cognacs and armagnacs, but only when blended in France, albeit from grapes whose ancestors were once migrants in Chile.  Strange.  Sort of like my nostalgia and melancholy, all of them filtered through traces of bitterness, but spiced with joys and regrets.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.