I’m pissed off

_{[picture from Matylda Damięcka]}

It’s not the first time when I feel ashamed for my home country (I don’t even feel comfortable calling it home anymore). It’s not the first time when it makes me furious and uneasy. It’s not the first time when I know there’ll be people who’ll say I don’t have any rights to comment, since I emigrated with no plans of coming back. I’ve heard it all before: I got brainwashed by Western propaganda. I’m completely detached and I don’t know shit.

Well, I don’t know about that. In my personal experience, further perspective on things is usually the most useful. Being stuck in the middle, too close to the centre, quite naturally limits your perspective on the thing as a whole. It’s like on a Muse gig: you can’t see the whole stage and the amazing lights spectacle, if you’re standing in the middle of the first row, squeezed from each side, with eyes fixed on Matt playing his heart out. Sure, people in the upper tier can’t see all the little details you’re enjoying, but they do have a broader view of a show as a whole. If you want to get full perspective, you can make sure next time you come to see the show from different spot. But in the end, it doesn’t matter: we both went to the same gig, even if we experienced it differently. We both care about the band and their music.

I’ve tried both – first row and upper tier – and I’ve decided on sticking to the first row: that’s where I feel like I belong. Which doesn’t mean I’m going to automatically discard tier’s people’s perspective. Quite the opposite, I’d be interested to hear what their view is, so that we can paint a more accurate picture of the show as a whole, together.

But coming back to the main point: I’m pissed off and I came here to rant.   

Keep your mouth shut

I always thought I would win people’s hearts by staying (brutally) honest.

I’ve always been a fan of being open. Saying loudly what you think. But the older (and experienced) I get, the more I realize that sometimes it’s way better (and wiser) to stay quiet. Or, as my friend once put it: to poetically camouflage the truth.

Nameless people

Passing by the park, I heard him call his second dog twice, but she didn’t hear, so I told him it’s probably the wind – down the hill, where the dog was sniffing the grass, you can’t hear much. He smiled, thanked and asked if I was Dutch (‘cause, apparently, I sound Dutch, especially to older, British natives: he wasn’t the first one to assume so). He praised my language skills and complained about his inexistent ones: he was so unlike his wife, who speaks excellent French. The way he talked about their trip to Paris was telling me more than he would probably be comfortable sharing with a complete stranger. The spark in his eye, the pride in his voice, the smile that spread all over his face – they, French people, they took her for a native and only he, always so terrible with languages, gave her away with his thick, British accent! When I left him and his two golden dogs behind on the dump grass under the slowly darkening skies, I thought I want to grow old just like him. I want to be that content about going out with my dogs and chatting about my partner to pleasantly looking passers-by. I want my eyes to spark so bright and my voice to be so calm. So unlike it is now.