Exile

Heureux qui, loin des cours, dans un lieu solitaire,

se prescrit à soi-même un exil volontaire

E. Rostand

Comment faire un monde

où il n'y aurait plus d'exil?

Clopin, Notre Dame de Paris

++

I don't know where to start, actually. Where do you start when you bring something back from the dead? I mean, I haven't been doing any voodoo stuff since I'm here – I mean this blog. It's been dying since a year, since I got back from hell (feel free to imagine which country I mean by hell: Russia, Japan, North (oops - South) Korea, Hong Kong, Chile, Argentina?). I am not proud to say I even put it in stand-by and hid it from search machines, when I was applying for jobs (does point #5 ring a bell to anybody?). But the days of boredom are over, dear readers: I'm back! Let's start by saying that I'll try to be less bitchy and less “I'm cool, you suck”. It was funny for a while, but hey, I need to sound a bit more serious, somewhat more professional... Having said that, count on me to keep the racist jokes and condescending remarks coming!

I've left Berlin and France respectively a month and 2 weeks ago (which incidentally happen to be the last time I cleaned my ears), landed correctly in Cape Verde and, basically, everything is fine. I do not regret my decision of leaving Berlin & Europe – although tears still wet my eyes whenever I think about the people I left. I've been thinking – I can not see myself settling down. I mean, ever. The other day, I though about Cape Verde, how nice life can be here, and about the future in general. I was picturing myself living here for a while, for a few years... Then it hit me: just for a few years. After that I'll be off to some other place. Some force coming from above would strike me and force me into exile, just as it did for Berlin. There must be a word for that kind of people... Gypsy? Roma? I prefer the term dromonaniac, it's slightly more PC and doesn't imply begging and stealing (did I mention this blog runs for the Peace Nobel Price, category “fighting stereotypes”?).

So I left home for the 2^nd time in my life... As if I did something wrong in a previous life and the current me had to pay the price. Hey, I'm not complaining, ok? The exile I chose isn't in anyway comparable to the exile people living in devastated regions are forced into (caused by wars, droughts or natural catastrophes). I'm blessed with 2 European passports, the good to fluent knowledge of 4 languages (5 if you count yiddish) and the intention of working in tourism – making me able to work basically anywhere. So I count my blessings, thank you.

Nonetheless, I'll still have this feeling inside me, probably the same need, the same necessity that makes salmons swim upstream or lemmings jump off cliffs (google it, it's quite weird)... We just have to keep going. S'arrêter, c'est la mort.

Of course, life is what happens when you're busy making plans: perhaps I'll find the will to fight THE FORCE and stay forever.

Or come back home.

Or start a windsurf company in Dubai... By the way I hear the beaches in Croatia are amazing... 

Claire