A wee rant

"Just cause you feel it, it doesn't mean it's there," sings Thom Yorke. Moving to a new home is always tricky; but moving to a different country, especially your home country (ironically enough) -- and I feel like ending this sentence with a sigh, that's all. One, at least I, feels unfit for the new/old environment. I guess it's to do with the conflict that is inherent in the idea one makes of the old that is the hardest part. It's old, but it's new at the same time. The country's changed, you've changed, and your ideas about that country have also changed somehow, and the ideas that your relatives and friends who stayed in that country have about you are probably quite conflicting as well.

The quotation above is there because it helps me to put into words the demon-thought of not belonging, of thinking that just because one thing went wrong (or a few small things), everything around me is about to collapse in this new-old-home-foreign country that I used to call home when I was younger (much younger!). But since I moved away from this country for the first time, it's never felt like home again. At least, not the type of "home" I used to think of then. So, back to Thom Yorke. I guess it's about fighting against a stream of thoughts that are supposedly there to protect you from, god-knows-what, the new, the unknown, but which do not help one in the least to move forward. I've lived experiences abroad for the past 4 years which just seem not to translate here. Hence the paradox of it all, being your writer both a translation practitioner and wanna-be theoretician. This is the current state of unreality I'm in, trying to figure out where I fit in in this bloody place. Fighting my demon-thoughts. But is everything at a loss for a pilgrim of the world? (I just refuse to use the cliché expression "globetrotter", I prefer something more... spiritual, if I may say. Because it's not about the superficiality of sightseeing everywhere, but about a range of life-changing experiences as well as about the development and appropriation of new rituals.)

There it goes. This is so not my blogging style. I've ended up writing in the voice of "I". Oh well. Perhaps that was just what I needed. So there we go, a very selfish and egocentric post for once.