An ocean away, but the recurrence of age-old mental tics continues.
They recur here, in San Francisco; even as I hoped they would be left behind in crisis-torn, chilly Europe.
Europe as we know it is set to splinter apart at any moment, that much is inevitable. It is the banks, this time, and those with some sort of knowledge hold out no hope. Nations seem to exist at an almost-permanent crossroads, tipping one way or the other, and the promise made that this hiatus is the last one before glory, before the coming-together of ambitious historicised plans. Hold your nerve, Europeans: the day is near.
I recur in San Francisco, existing at the last crossroads before glory, but the day remains as far away as ever. How many millions of souls have expired without ever crossing the last hiatus, and given up out of sheer disappointment?
Here, the nervous foreigner is not to be understood, and exists as a perpetual outsider. Even the food conspires against him, bursting apart like a bomb. Uncomprehending and unsteady, I take the form of a human but have the essence of something else; something less.
A person removed once; removed twice. Once from the species, and the second time from all that is famIliar.
This is what it is like to be mad - to travel to an English-speaking country, and to emit garbled and incomprehensible streams of rubbish. To your own ears, it makes sense to ask for a specific coffee, at a listed, fixed price, but the look of astonishment tells you the request has not been understood.
Astonishment's half-life turns to pity, and stabilises at disgust. Fucking stupid Englishman, weighed-down by ancient and obsolete values. No wonder your continent's wheezing its death-rattle if this is the sort of citizen it turns out.
Sylvia Plath had it right all along, in her clear, North American tones. How ironic that I should think of you just as your homeland accentuates the banality and churlishness of the tourist.
You can never escape the bell jar, not even for a moment. Its canopy is too enormous and too heavy to lift, and the attempt leads to exhaustion. You can never escape, and so you might as well go back to England - as sad as ever, but at least able to speak there.
