I moved from San Francisco to London - materialistic times require mental decompression.
I have been exploded in the face by innumerable instances of Difference. Differences here and there, of everything. In other words, the concept of differentiation has been hitting me with a symbolic violence like I'm a war victim.
An invasion has been overflowing me with the constancy of a daily rain, the constancy of a World War II bombing, a repetitive trick (I almost wrote: a mental rape) of an everyday life that refuses to resemble a far-away not-so-long-ago place and time.
The couple identity/difference and its spectrum are piercing rays through banal normality. This newly refreshed sensitivity, echoing old feelings, reminded or showed me some aspects of the conceptual echosystem of Difference: the subject and identity, the mirroring effects of difference: subject/object, sub-sub, o/o, going perhaps towards orthodox psychoanalysis.
My personal feelings are: an unknowledgeable amount of noises and mirages, a wealth of illusions, passing before my eyes, as I breathe along, all with an exclusive ordinariness. What Difference is to me: the passing of past attempts to recognize and master particular idioms, forms or being, into different ones that are so close yet so far. Going back to square one and re-discovering flavors. Yet so close. A set of modifications that impose themselves with the irrelevance of a chewing-gum flavor. Yet not just one flavor, but a million coming to all senses, beyond mere distraction.
(Thinking of explorators of the past, at least I know I'm around human beings, and I know I have means to survive, whereas past explorers doubted both crucial statements when venturing inside new territories.)
This relocation, and this feeling of being a blind victim repeatedly shot by the assassins of Habit, the Delicious Snipers Against The Same, has placed me in a situation of enjoyment. Something similar to being a tourist, although deeper, as allied with the feelings of potential citizenship, the sensation of being "one of them", the feeling that one needs to go into a process of becoming united, the feeling of needing to care for a nation.
Without having good reading material (materialistic times require mental decompression), my main best thought was about wondering why this exaltation exists. Why would a change of trees and street maps, architecture and bread shapes be enough to create and sustain such an enjoyment? At first I thought it could be like the strange excitement of watching fire or waves, but no, it's sort of the opposite, watching waves refers to the expected repetitive regeneration of a single recursive pattern, whereas travels usually (well, at least mine) point to the unexpected one-time change of myriads of either repetitive or non-repetitive singular patterns. (for instance: repetitive patterns: faces, the way each smile, or rather for London, do not smile; and singular patterns: a new ticketing method for transports, the new symbols on the coins).
So the experience is different, but I was getting somewhere.
And then there was something deeper.
My dreams changed. I had nightmares of a different kind, perhaps not fear because of fear, but because of the altogether indescribable strangeness of those dreams. The dreams had reached a very new ground, yet reminiscent of some childhood feelings, a je-ne-sais-quoi that is not small, an untitled sensation that occurred multiple times. So I realized, the secret inspiration of travels, it's just that: because we are brains with sense and muscles, the subconscious is only about that. And the change of senses is enough to excite it at core, as the practice of different games with different partners suffice to entirely refresh us, and we always are children wanting to play games.
So without regards to an existing condition of itself, the subconscious knows, without morals or any knowledge of its worth, that different outside conditions will be enough. It knows and desires it, and then I suppose some will desire it more than others, just like anything else. Travels are like milkshakes.
I remember a documentary about Sarajevo, where it said that people were dancing in the ruins. There is no escape from lightness of the heart, the elegant compositions of flickering details that compose us. Materialistic times require mental decompression.
In a way, that's all the last weeks were worth, a dubious observation of the naturalism of the subconscious.
Yet there is something deeper, to be found.
2 comments:
what a beautiful stream of thought. do you read or admire antonin artaud? your writing reminds me of his, the rhythm and language - the violence and horror of being estranged from sanity because of the innate quality of vision - the way you see things, the way you experience things and then relate to them. so amazing.
i love that travel - and extended "travel" where you can really get to know a place's character on a day-to-day level with time to reflect, not just a whirlwind tour bus type of "vacation" - unearths a deep strangeness inside of me that is utterly delightful - a place of peace - of being in a strange place with the "same" body the same "self" and yet feeling completely different at the same time. a beautiful, transformative experience.
Linda: I haven't read Antonin Artaud, a few pages only, but I was impressed by a video/TV interview he did in the 50's, as he was quite old. I'll always remember his voice, his way of speaking. I found geniuses or high intellectuals to have remarkable voices and remember being in awe from hearing Albert Camus, Marcel Pagnol, George Steiner,... on the radio, or TV. Noam Chomsky for instance, has an amazingly soft tone, that feels like he can keep it in the middle of a storm, and softly modulates, way beyond self-confidence of the spoken words. Opera singers have a transformed voice as well, due to practice. Musicians often have musical voices. I want to learn to speak like Louis Jouvet You probably don't know him, he was a famous theater and cinema actor in the 30-50', you should google him and see his movies.
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