the nation of nowhere

Something different today, yet I’ve a feeling readers of this bloglette will resonate with this excerpt. I do. I’ve always loved the wordsmithing of travel writer Jan Morris. This is from Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.


There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones. They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere, and I have come to think that its natural capital is Trieste.

~ Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Hmmmmm… see you there?

.

the shock of shining recognition

 

you had become used to it,
the exiled state

it kept you in the company of
your countrymen
it kept you contained and
secure within shared values

but one bright moment
was all it took
and you were exiled from exile

you landed in that longed-for
Light-land
home
alone and all-One

and the shock of shining recognition
cracked open the voice you never knew
was your own

the voice that calls itself
“heart whisperer”

 

– miriam louisa


Image: Morris Graves, Bird seeing the Light