Absence Makes the Heart Go Wander

I found this passage that I first read more than 4 years ago from one of my favorite books that Alice once told me she loved as well, though she didn't quite get through all of it because the library needed it back. Oh, Alice. I think you would be surprised how often something reminds me of you.

"La ausencia tenía efectos indelebles. Los rostros se desdibujaban en la borrosa sustancia de los recuerdos. A veces se preguntaba si aquellas personas habrían existido realmente. La nostalgia lograba cubrirlos de ropajes míticos y extraños. El tiempo tramposo ocultaba tras su neblina el pasado, lo rendía inexistente, lo asociaba en la mente a la imaginación o los sueños. El espacio que en una época ocupara {ellos}, se llenaba de otras imágenes, otras vivencias. Dejaban de compartir lo cotidiano, la materia prima de la vida. Era una pérdida, un hueco, un agujero negro tragándose la estrella {de ellos}, un mecanismo oscuro de la mente buscando proteger el corazón siempre fiel al dolor de la ausencia."

~La mujer habitada por Gioconda Belli

[English translation:]

"Absence has indelible effects. The faces undraw themselves in the fuzzy substance of memories. At times one asks oneself if those people had really existed. Nostalgia succeeds in covering them in mythical and strange clothing. Crooked time hides the past through a mist, rendering it inexistent, associating it in the mind with the imagination or dreams. The space that at one time occupied {them}, fills itself with other images, other lifetimes. It stops sharing the daily, the prime material of life. It is a loss, a hollow, a black hole swallowing the{ir} star, a dark mechanism of the mind searching to protect the always loyal heart from the pain of their absence."

~The Dwelling Woman By Gioconda Belli