Waking up

I am flying back to the Outpost tomorrow. I am really looking forward to going back home, but not the place surrounding its walls. This time the Home City really got me, this time it appeared real: less idyllic but closer to my dreams than before, less charming and accessible but vibrant — and you know that ‘vibrant’ is the word — or, at least, one of them — for us. Sometimes, spring being here, it would even occasionally look gloriously urban (in this light of its) and oh so boisée.

This feeling of sly ambivalence oozing inside me while not even making a clear presence of any sort is certainly accentuated by the light and troubled nap I took in my childhood bedroom, after lunch alcohol and the company of withering parents, in their modest flat exposed to neighbours’ laughs, baby screams and slamming doors and cupboards. I woke up from it into the dying light of spring dusk.

Epiphanies

Many years ago, I walked from my parents’ home in the Home City to the old gasworks. Back then the gasworks was being redeveloped as a multi-purpose space. There was an anti-EU gig taking place in its yard, I only went there hoping to find Jorge, bored and disoriented. What I found was Jod’s smile in the crowd.

Last Wednesday, I walked from my parents’ home in the Home City to the old gasworks. The whole area is in the process of rapid gentrification, its up-and-coming label already growing old, with a metro station under construction and with poor immigrants in the process of being chased out of the once destitute neighbourhood. I only went there to join Jod for a couple of drinks in one of the many bars. What I felt on my way there was the firm realisation that, if not in London, it is Home City I would like to live in. 

Hung up

When we first came to the Outpost we were assigned a phone number previously used by ‘honey’, also known as ‘my mother’ (i.e. ‘darling’). We would be rung up by a number of male characters who would sound disoriented at the sound of Jod’s voice and would timidly apologise to me, although many more would just slam the receiver down. Pizza delivery places we phoned up would run reverse searches on our number and give us a woman’s name and an address a long way from here. We had these details corrected a call centre at a time.

Then times changed, although not the number. A couple of years ago, a “public opinion research group” phoned us. I was asked about my favourite crisps and tortilla chips. Since then, they all followed suit. Every time the phone rings and it’s someone we do not know, it is usually someone calling us for an opinion poll, a survey, a market research project and so on. The best was in March 2004.

“Hello, sir, I am from XXX and I would like to take up a few moments of your time.”
“…”
“Have you decided how you will vote in the April 24th referendum?”
“No, because I do not vote.”
“Ok then, ‘no’.”
“No, no: it’s not that I have not decided yet, it’s rather that I do not vote.”
“Why?”
“Because I am not a Principality citizen.”
“Ok, but, still, have you decided what you will vote in the referendum?”
“No, because I am not a citizen of the Principality.”
“…”
“I am not eligible to vote in the referendum. I cannot vote”
“Ah, ok, thank you very much. Goodbye.”

A few minutes ago I participated in a phone survey on garden furniture. Someone who knows about these things told us I have had my phone number distributed among the local companies for occupying a very particular niche…

Incidentally, a Compatrido newcomer whose surname means ‘Poofster’ in the local lingo (he does not know yet — I cannot bear to tell him) commented that people stare here. They do. We used to comment on this a lot, too, but we have stopped noticing being stared at. Maybe we stare, too.

Angry

I am full of anger at Jod's employer who yesterday found it suitable to accompany (misguidedly) cautioning her against talking politics in class with personal insults ("you are one of those who never caught a whiff back in 1992, while people like me were going door-to-door, struggling for the nation"), with the usual idiotic invectives and with a behaviour towards Jod as if she were some sort of minion of hers (has your employer ever addressed you thus: "how dare you speak…"?).

I am burning with powerless anger because we were (rightly) advised not to 'make any fuss about it', as they have the connections and the power to make Jod's future professional life difficult. At least all this happened during a meeting Jod independently arranged in order to tender her resignation from that place. I am still wondering where those half-literate, half-competent (Outposter) 'bosses' draw their cockiness from, if not from being sheltered within sicilian-style social networks and from blinding ignorance.

But then, a pleasant surprise was waiting for us on behalf of our landlords in the evening. I also found this very balanced review article.

Life's ups and downs, you might say.

And were it not for you I’d surely die

I completely fail to understand why Lucky Jim are not hugely popular and how come they are not massively critically acclaimed by now, also given the fame the similar in spirit Anthony and the Johnsons (rightly so) and Coldplay (incomprehensibly so) have achieved. Their sole CD was impossible to find in the UK ("Lucky Gym, mate? Never heard of them…") and it was finally detected in New York as a UK import on offer for $9! O the disgrace. Their wonderful melodies and downplayed orchestrations combined with Gordon Graham's wry but soulful singing have stolen our hearts away, anyway.

In true blog fashion, let me quote from my favourite song on the CD, 'My soul is on fire':

I saw you coming through my waves of joy
Rode through the night with you
My souls envoy
And were it not for you I'd surely die

We went to the theatre on Monday, an experimental avant-garde piece of work unassumingly titled 'Nocturnal Emission', a combination of modern dance, acrobatics, a fan, a hose, poetry and "… and Juliet", a monologue by a surviving Juliet years after Romeo's overdose. As before, "if it had opened in English in London or New York, the world would have been raving the following day". Rarely have I seen experimenting and pushing the envelope deliver that much on both the esthetic and the emotive plane.

Because on a Monday (theatres are closed on Mondays), the audience consisted of basically us two and actors, some of them local celebrities, too. I took with me part of the soundtrack (in my head, that is), an extract from the chaotic, haunting and furious Faust Cantata by Alfred Schnittke.

In the name of?

Scandal in the Outpost, scandal at last. A newspaper puts online and distributes to TV networks a clear video of cops viciously beating up two youths, one of them handcuffed and on the ground. Furore ensues, the number of police brutality allegations skyrockets and the person who shot the video refuses to testify, as she/he is too scared. Of course, all that is good clean fun: it was Outpost cops but it could be LA law-enforcers, it could be Italian cops in anti-G8 protests in Genova, it could be Royal Army lads in Basra, or Abu Ghraib / Guantanamo military training-through-light-entertainment (do you need links for these ones?). So, no worries here: police brutality will not set the Principality apart from the civilised nations of this world.

Still, in this vicious cabaret, there are at least four details — you know, where the devil usually is in — that give the couleur locale: first, the suggestion mouthed by government goons that the publicisation of the video was done to harm the Caretaker and his government; second, the rumour that one of the youths’ father claimed the beating was “no big deal” (remember, Outposters are non-confrontational ad nauseam, especially if it is authority they must confront); furthermore, the candid complaint by the Chief of the Police that instead of going to the papers the anonymous video whistleblower should hand the tape to the police (and secure torching for his car and reconstruction surgery for his jaw); finally: the Minister of Justice’s claim that he has not seen the video (available online) because his office computer screen is not compatible! They should seriously start paying for spin doctors by now.

As yet, nobody has been arrested and nobody has resigned. Naturally.

The scandal came as a fitting afterword to a chat I had with Zapata last week. At some point he said to me:

Most Principality politicians either used to belong to the late Prince-Archbishop’s militia or to the late Fascist Warlord’s. Political life in the Outpost is mainly a balancing act between the two factions.

Hence authority is to be taken very seriously here.

The City

People have complained that the Capital is not like I portray it here, that is rundown, grotesque and derelict. The(ir) real problem is, and in that I agree with pH, that I focus mainly on the Old City — which features all the above qualities as well as pockets of both oddity and beauty, because the urban conglomerate around it strikes me as horrifically bland and, in fact, outright hideous. Actually, the 'New City' is, in many ways, even more desolate than the old part: ratée is the word that describes it best, I think. This is also the reason I was so happy for the early morning fog we got on Friday morning (18 hours ago, as gmail is informing me): it masked the incongruous background and made streets and buildings feel dreamy and fluid.

Below you will find some more pictures from the Old City, unfogged.

Eclipse

The 27th March eclipse was well visible here, but only a 95% one. It is amazing that, even at the very moment of 95% coverage, there was so much sunlight. Still, it was dimmer and had a watery quality, as Phil noticed. It also cast strange shadows, slightly frayed at the edges.