Wednesday, October 5, 2011

A bundle of issues and a vivid discomfort.

A record of Swedish adventures might be coming or might be not. The scary thing is that my trip to Sweden was exactly what I had expected it to be - an Eureka moment. And it generally doesn't happen to me that things go the way that I expect. So I'm freaked out. And look like a bundle of issues at the moment.

I was writing a travel journal/scrapbook along the way and now I'm really glad that I did that. I might share some of it in the upcoming posts.

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09/17/11
Right now I'm sitting in Galärparken.I wish I could say how I feel about Stockholm. It is one of the most beautiful places I've been to. It's most beautiful in the rain, it makes you feel just like when you're taking a ferry and stare far away at the ocean all the time. I understand why my mom loved it so much and I could live here; I think I could adjust easily. The only thing is that Stockholm makes me feel so lonesome. Or maybe, Stockholm makes me feel so real that I feel loneliness I try to hide otherwise. Still, I don't want to meet anybody and I don't want anybody to see me. I wish the city was all mine, but with people around. I want the city to live but it scares me that my presence changes it. Maybe it's weird but I don't want to be a part of the city. I want to be just an observer. The most observant one who doesn't need to be bothered by other people. To look at how people act but not to interact with them. It feels a lot like insanity. Maybe I don't like people at all? My God says that people will know us by the fact that we love them. So is not liking brothers and sisters a sin? God said that you don't hide the light but expose it to the world. Am I a light at all if I want to be hidden so desperately?

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" (...) It is hard to see clearly or to think straight in the company of other people. Not only do I feel self-conscious but the perceptions that are necessary to writing are difficult to manage when someone close by is thinking out loud. I am diverted, but  it is discovery, not diversion, that I seek. What is required is the lucidity of loneliness to capture that vision, which, however banal, seems in my private mood to be special and worthy of interest. There is something in feeling abject that quickens my mind and makes it intensely receptive to fugitive impressions. Later these impressions might be refuted or deleted, but they might also be verified and refined; and in any case I had the satisfaction of finishing the business alone. Travel is not a vacation, and it is often the opposite of a rest. "Have a nice time", people said to me at my send-off at South Station, Medford. It was not precisely what I had hoped for. I craved a little risk, some danger, an untoward event, a vivid discomfort, an experience of my own company, and in a modest way the romance of solitude (...)."    from "The Old Patagonian Express" by Paul Theroux

***

This is exactly how I feel. I don't feel like mister Paul Theroux and I would easily become friends (he'd easily see how dumb I am, objectively speaking of course; I would see that coming) but still he managed to grasp everything I would not be able to express in words. I do feel a vivid discomfort. After a while you spend in your own company, romancing with solitude, you suddenly see tools to straighten the curves and clear the blurs. Except for that you're too unsettled to be able to either grasp your life and use the tools you saw in the rainy streets of Stockholm, or just do the next thing. So you just don't do anything. And start thinking what it is that you want. And then you're too tired thinking, so you read a great deal of Maureen Johnson and John Green. And it makes you feel depressed because you come to a realization that you'll never be Colin Singleton.

Song of the day: The National - I'm Afraid Of Everyone

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