How hard it is to escape from places! However carefully one goes, they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences, little rags and shreds of your very life.
Thus spoke Katherine Mansfield, and indeed, as a wanderer, I often ask myself: what will I take from this place? What of me will I leave behind?
Only a few days ago I was there among you, hiding in a house in Valletta, sitting out by the sea in Marsaxlokk eating bigilla, reading the newspapers in the sun, taking tea with relatives and clunking tumblers of scotch with old friends. Oh yes, I always take a piece of home with me when I leave, I become more local just by departing, but alas, this time, I was quite glad to leave, despite my love for the sea and the sky and the salty air. For the non-chattering classes just made too much political noise, and none of it had any air of dignity or intelligence to it. Instead it was antagonistic, bellicose and always negative - is there no Jack Sparrow to tell the pirates that one should never use a negative if one wants to get the booty? You can only slash when you're on board...
Where is progress? Where is the meltdown of difference that all modern societies should strive for? Seek and ye shall find - my foot!
I am sitting by a large bookshelf next to a fine window in a university town in southern Sweden. Outside the snow is falling, Leonard Cohen sings of the bird on a wire, and I am far away from it all now, enjoying the silence of Skåne.
The election fever, the nail-biting finish, the hysteria, the vulgar noise, the ridiculous behaviour of my fellow citizens in their scramble for right to govern is nothing but a foul memory, a dark chapter in a mediaeval schoolbook on bad manners. It saddens me so to say that I am glad to be away from it all, the absurd scaremongering, the myopic vision and severe lack of public goodwill just left me aghast. I hope I have brought none of it with me, I hope I have left nothing of me behind...
There is no dignity in how we have behaved, there is only school rallying, with exclusionist lobbying and exclusionist promise.
I am horrified that we continue to act this way, finger pointing as accusations fly, I cannot believe that no man is brave enough to stand up and shout: enough!
It is clear that in the absence of culture, high and low, in the absence of national pride that would normally be directed towards musicians, football clubs, progressive thinkers, wrestlers, artists, explorers and such like we can only express emotion through politics ‒ dirty rotten scoundrels the lot of us!
Meanwhile out there in the real world, the millions continue to experience the rise and fall of dreams and ambitions. London town, where I stepped in for 24 hours, continues to spin at an alarming rate, the dim sum Sundays filled with lunchtime tales of failure and success (and appetsers of chicken feet and pork buns!), the afternoons filled with taxi drivers' yarns, always spun with a lilt of exoticism (even if it is only an east of the river one) ‒ oh so many stories from so many places other than the sprawling conurbations where my people must live and die via partisan TV.
Of course the bourgeoisie everywhere are to blame; their aspirations of home ownership and car driving to the supermarket will be the ruin of us all, but there is space here for everyone to fail and succeed. Out here bad planning and overdevelopment is usually confined to a relatively controlled zone, allowing for the citizens to learn from their mistakes and endeavour to make amendments for their children's future.
Can you imagine that? Space to make mistakes, more space to make corrections, and intelligent citizens who admit error and a desire to improve. Outrageous, perhaps, but true.
Thus spoke Katherine Mansfield, and indeed, as a wanderer, I often ask myself: what will I take from this place? What of me will I leave behind?
Only a few days ago I was there among you, hiding in a house in Valletta, sitting out by the sea in Marsaxlokk eating bigilla, reading the newspapers in the sun, taking tea with relatives and clunking tumblers of scotch with old friends. Oh yes, I always take a piece of home with me when I leave, I become more local just by departing, but alas, this time, I was quite glad to leave, despite my love for the sea and the sky and the salty air. For the non-chattering classes just made too much political noise, and none of it had any air of dignity or intelligence to it. Instead it was antagonistic, bellicose and always negative - is there no Jack Sparrow to tell the pirates that one should never use a negative if one wants to get the booty? You can only slash when you're on board...
Where is progress? Where is the meltdown of difference that all modern societies should strive for? Seek and ye shall find - my foot!
I am sitting by a large bookshelf next to a fine window in a university town in southern Sweden. Outside the snow is falling, Leonard Cohen sings of the bird on a wire, and I am far away from it all now, enjoying the silence of Skåne.
The election fever, the nail-biting finish, the hysteria, the vulgar noise, the ridiculous behaviour of my fellow citizens in their scramble for right to govern is nothing but a foul memory, a dark chapter in a mediaeval schoolbook on bad manners. It saddens me so to say that I am glad to be away from it all, the absurd scaremongering, the myopic vision and severe lack of public goodwill just left me aghast. I hope I have brought none of it with me, I hope I have left nothing of me behind...
There is no dignity in how we have behaved, there is only school rallying, with exclusionist lobbying and exclusionist promise.
I am horrified that we continue to act this way, finger pointing as accusations fly, I cannot believe that no man is brave enough to stand up and shout: enough!
It is clear that in the absence of culture, high and low, in the absence of national pride that would normally be directed towards musicians, football clubs, progressive thinkers, wrestlers, artists, explorers and such like we can only express emotion through politics ‒ dirty rotten scoundrels the lot of us!
Meanwhile out there in the real world, the millions continue to experience the rise and fall of dreams and ambitions. London town, where I stepped in for 24 hours, continues to spin at an alarming rate, the dim sum Sundays filled with lunchtime tales of failure and success (and appetsers of chicken feet and pork buns!), the afternoons filled with taxi drivers' yarns, always spun with a lilt of exoticism (even if it is only an east of the river one) ‒ oh so many stories from so many places other than the sprawling conurbations where my people must live and die via partisan TV.
Of course the bourgeoisie everywhere are to blame; their aspirations of home ownership and car driving to the supermarket will be the ruin of us all, but there is space here for everyone to fail and succeed. Out here bad planning and overdevelopment is usually confined to a relatively controlled zone, allowing for the citizens to learn from their mistakes and endeavour to make amendments for their children's future.
Can you imagine that? Space to make mistakes, more space to make corrections, and intelligent citizens who admit error and a desire to improve. Outrageous, perhaps, but true.