There are many things on the ‘to do list’ when you arrive. Next to the obvious ones (a job, a place to live) accumulate the techonological (internet access, a bank account, a phone) and the administrative ones (registration in the necessary offices, behind which lurk forms, lines, fees, questions, complicated answers of the civil servants, waiting, waiting, coming back with more documents, signatures, copies, scraps of paper, plus some more waiting at the end).
So we are living in a different country. One can send us a letter or a fine, we are available on our mobile, we have come into being in the bank and on the tax-payers’ list. And yet we’re hanging in the air, unhooked, unattached to this new home, confirmed by stamps and welcoming letters from the National Insurance Office.
Then ‘settling in’ must be taking place somewhere else, in a different way. And it seems that when it comes to this we have been equipped with a natural instinct – before we finish unpacking, we start to weave a basket of habits around us. So in the moring a coffee, with milk, hot, cold, with a croissant, with butter, without it; not coffee, too unhealthy, then some camomille, a glass of juice, a cup of tea, a bowl of musli with milk, yogurt, with fruit, with honey; in the kitchen, on the bed, in front of the TV. It doesn’t matter. There it is, the first hook, on which we hang our morning lostness. It’s easy from here – through the route that we go to work, choosing favourtie views, soon to be admired cumpulsorily, like saying the morning prayer; the brand of milk we buy and then only drink on Sunday morning, a shop where we’ll soon be able to walk blindfolded; favourite cinema; cafeteria; a silly program on TV only on Saturdays at 2 o’clock; closing the blinds at night; shrimp in size 8, because sevens are too small and nines too expensive; language exchange almost always on the same day; even toilet paper always the same; just as the time to call family.
Button by button and clasp by clasp we get dressed in habits. Without them we would be somehow naked, would feel strange and stand out from the rest and attract the attention of the ones who have either already got hooked here, or have been hanging like this since birth. We’re doing them up and up, and it’s getting warmer, more secure and more settled.
But as we do up the clasps one by one we feel something like a corset limiting our lungs. Once we have done it up completely, we will once again be dreaming of nakedness, of our life undressed and unroutined, free from layers of habits. And this will be exactly the moment when, slightly frightened and out of breath, we will leave again, in search of a place that will not choke us with its buttons, hooks and clasps...
So we are living in a different country. One can send us a letter or a fine, we are available on our mobile, we have come into being in the bank and on the tax-payers’ list. And yet we’re hanging in the air, unhooked, unattached to this new home, confirmed by stamps and welcoming letters from the National Insurance Office.
Then ‘settling in’ must be taking place somewhere else, in a different way. And it seems that when it comes to this we have been equipped with a natural instinct – before we finish unpacking, we start to weave a basket of habits around us. So in the moring a coffee, with milk, hot, cold, with a croissant, with butter, without it; not coffee, too unhealthy, then some camomille, a glass of juice, a cup of tea, a bowl of musli with milk, yogurt, with fruit, with honey; in the kitchen, on the bed, in front of the TV. It doesn’t matter. There it is, the first hook, on which we hang our morning lostness. It’s easy from here – through the route that we go to work, choosing favourtie views, soon to be admired cumpulsorily, like saying the morning prayer; the brand of milk we buy and then only drink on Sunday morning, a shop where we’ll soon be able to walk blindfolded; favourite cinema; cafeteria; a silly program on TV only on Saturdays at 2 o’clock; closing the blinds at night; shrimp in size 8, because sevens are too small and nines too expensive; language exchange almost always on the same day; even toilet paper always the same; just as the time to call family.
Button by button and clasp by clasp we get dressed in habits. Without them we would be somehow naked, would feel strange and stand out from the rest and attract the attention of the ones who have either already got hooked here, or have been hanging like this since birth. We’re doing them up and up, and it’s getting warmer, more secure and more settled.
But as we do up the clasps one by one we feel something like a corset limiting our lungs. Once we have done it up completely, we will once again be dreaming of nakedness, of our life undressed and unroutined, free from layers of habits. And this will be exactly the moment when, slightly frightened and out of breath, we will leave again, in search of a place that will not choke us with its buttons, hooks and clasps...
1 comment:
Exactly. I'm feeling the same and fancy going somewhere where I've never been before...
Have a nice stay while putting on the new corset:)
Marti
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