in ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, Deleuze and Guattari
Os lugares não são mais do que o conjunto das pessoas que nele habitam. As experiências vividas são um reflexo das pessoas com as quais foram partilhadas. Mais do que os lugares e as fotos bonitas, o que fica das viagens são as pessoas com quem nos cruzamos e estabelecemos contacto.
Quando eu cheguei a Londres conheci a Kate. Ela é Americana. Ela gosta de coisas que eu normalmente associo à América. Ela tem posições políticas diferentes das minhas. Ela tem um sentido de humor demasiado afiado para o gosto de muita gente. Ela faz-me rir mais do que ninguém nesta cidade imensa. Ela trás-me pequeno-almoço a casa naquelas manhãs em que ela sabe que não consegui dormir ou que não estou com muita vontade de enfrentar o mundo exterior. Ela sabe como foi o meu dia só pelo tom da minha voz quando atendo o telefone.
Enfim… A Kate tornou-se como uma irmã nesta cidade imensa.
Quando vou trabalhar as pessoas correm , olham para o chão, parecem cansadas. Eu também faço por vezes parte desse grupo. Aliás, muitos são os dias em entro no metro já de livro aberto e que saio dele antes de marcar a página aonde fiquei. Mas quando regresso a casa é diferente. Aí sinto-me cansada, apetece-me dormir - então fico observando os vizinhos. Entretenho-me com os risos altos daqueles que regressam a casa depois duma boa noite passada nos copos. Por vezes alguém comenta alto como a loira sentada ao meu lado é linda. É verdade, ela é mesmo muito bonita. E então sorrio. Porque aqui, partilha-se muito pouco.
Se eu não tivesse conhecido a Kate também muita da minha partilha se tornaria partilha à distância. Mas como conheci a Kate, amanhã quero ser eu a bater à porta do prédio em frente com o café e os bolos na mão.
Quero poder sorrir e dizer: Parabéns Kate!
When I arrived in London I met Kate. She is American. She likes things that I mostly linked with America. She has different political views from mine. She has a sharp sense of humour. Too sharp for a lot of people. She makes me laugh like no one else does. She brings me cappucino in those mornings she knows I did not get enought sleep or that I do not feel like facing the outside world. She knows how my day was just by the tone of my voice when I answer the phone.
Kate became like a sister in this ‘long’ city.
When I go to work people run, they keep their eyes down, they look tired. Sometimes I am also part of this group of people. Often I already have my book open by the time I catch the tube and also leave it before I had the chance to mark the page where I left it. But when I am coming back home is different. By then I feel tired. I feel like sleeping. So usually I will just watch what is around me. I will listen to the loud laugh of those ones returning home after a drinking night out. Sometimes someone will make a loud comment on how beautiful the blonde sitting right next to me is. It is true, she is very pretty. And then I smile. Because over here, people do not share enough.
If I had not met Kate most of my sharing would have to be a ‘long distance’ sharing. But as I met Kate, tomorrow I want to be the one knocking on the door of the opposite building with the coffee and the cakes in my hands.
I want to smile and say: Happy Birthday Kate!
I felt alienated. I felt alienated not because I was in a unconfortable position to interact with the other or I could not establish a relationship with the other due to a lack of common ground. I felt alienated just because at that time my interests were others that did not lay in the surrounding reality. I shut down the paths of normal communication - I stopped reading the papers, watching TV and even listening to the radio. I cancelled the contract with my internet provider. I stopped (for that period of time) being interested in Politics, History and even in Sports, so what before had seemed a easy way to keep a link with the outside world (and by this I mean, outside of my own room), suddenly felt like it was no longer necessary.
Alienation is not a matter of conscious choice. It is not like I chose to not be interested or to have a interaction with what surrounds me. Alienation could easily happen over a period of heavy creative creation where the inner world feels wide enough to keep ourselves busy. Alienation could also be an insconcious reaction to external contexts.
I travelled for few months with a small backpack - and over that period of time I felt free. Often, on those days, I felt that freedom had to be linked with the lack of physical possesions that hold us to a place. Happiness had to lay somewhere around the experience of not having ties to places, to things, to people. I talk in the past tense bacause I feel that those moments were moments of transition between a place and another.
I wonder for how long are we able to carry on, moving around without that need of ties. Do we choose consciously to be tied to a place? To have certain responsabilities that will not allow us, without a huge feeling of guilt of parting - of catching the next train or plane, or even ferry to the next town or country.
This I consider as an allienation of my previous physical world.
However while I was traveling I also felt other sort of alienation. The one probably felt more often across society. I will try to call it a ’sight alienation’ - what you do not see does not affect you.
I was on the other side of the sea from where the place I usually call home is. Week after week I felt as I was loosing touch with what was the place I would eventually go back to. This lost of contact was not by any means linked with a lack of means of communication. If I had spent three other months travelling I would not have probably came back.
How could I be interested in what was happening so far away from me? It simply did not affect me or my daily routine. Why should I care with what mum was doing when I was in bed due to time differences?
Of course one can say that this lack of interest is linked with the distance, with the inability to establish direct contact or to create a common ground of understanding.
I found very hard to agree with such arguments. The context I was feeling alienated from had been my home for all of my life. I read the news every day, but I started to read them as an outsider - as an spectator.
I wonder if these is the same sort of experience we establish with what we watch in a television. We are mere spectators. My space is different of the other’s space. I am in the mountains the other is in the desert.
Is the physical location the key factor for alienation at different levels? Is the four side polign the key element, either in the format of a television, computer screen or even the frame of a window?
