Wednesday, February 26, 2014

A drifter

Ever since I turned 20 I am stateless, a drifter who is looking for a homeland.

Looking back, I miss the aesthetics and standards of Stockholm, the options in London, the soul of Cork, the laxity of Gothenburg, the human warmth of Rome.

Yet from each of these places I escaped without ever having a doubt to reconsider the decision.

And I know the same will happen the day I leave Dublin.

I would have liked to identify with a nation or at least with a city but in each of those where I happened to live I ended up focusing on their defects which seemed to overwhelm the qualities.

The lack of soul of Stockholm, the dehumanization of London, the smallness of Cork, the structural limits of Gothenburg, the impossibility of Rome, the repetitiveness of Dublin.

It would be utopian to find a place with the Italian climate, the Swedish beauty, the simplicity of Irish life and the variants of London; if a city like that ever existed it wouldn’t last more than one day. 

An old principle says that if you stop trying to go for what you want you end up loving what you can have.


I hope it will never happen to me