KAIDIE WOULD LIKE TO ABANDON NONDON FOR WINTERTHUR (FOR GOOD). OR, WE (WHOEVER WE ARE) SHOULD/COULD WRITE KAIDIE OFF (ALREADY).
Kaidie no longer travels alone, but has a new travel companion, called 'Mini', who has an untrustworthy and unstable personality, or is simply temperamental, but is essentially a nice guy (I guess. We will find out. Watch this space).
To make the effort to leave; to make the effort to go; to be transposed and disoriented; to have one’s routines upset (only to desperately attempt to construct new ones, but haha, the timeframe is too short to allow one to do that); to take temporary breaks from my (step)mother tongue; to feign ignorance since I do not understand, which is, no doubt, my own fault but ignorance is blissful yes the cliche is true, so perhaps I deliberately do not want to understand; to have to start somewhere and hence say ‘greuzi’ to the immigration officer; to hear variations of the german language, including subjective, rusty ones; to not mind embarrassing oneself in order to show that one attempts, that one is making an effort; to doze on/off and drool while semi-asleep/awake in the constant rhythm of the near-empty cheap bus on its way to the cheap airport but to feel extraordinarily happy, happy not of dreams of arriving at a destination (no, no one looks forward to arriving at that tragic, cheap airport – and when there, cancel and zone off by replaying in ones head the 2nd movement of Gould’s rendition of the Emperor’s Concerto again, and again, and again, until the gates are open for boarding), but happy at the act of travel itself, the same happiness when in the middle of a run that is neither fast nor slow neither breathless nor breathful, and to feel happy knowing that one is happy; to have a new travel companion of a digital navigator; to undergo the tedium of travelling with a travel companion; to undergo the tedium of travelling with a travel companion with conflicting interests; to run an imaginary race with the digital navigator and to win it, because I arrived in Winterthur and am acclimatising to it but poor ‘Mini’ (which is the name we have given the navigator, – do not inquire why ) is still looking for his bearings and attempting to locate the Winterthur satellites; to have conflicting plans with this new travel companion, because he prefers / needs outdoors while his user detests cold; to forge temporary bonds with fellow trippers; to eat not knowing if it’s breakfast/dinner, or if one is even hungry in the first place; to go across time zones, climates, cultural barriers, stereotypes; to be shocked; to be gratified (temporarily); to feel repulsion that one is reminded of one’s otherness, even though one has long moved on from the tedious identity/sexual/gender/cultural/racial/power politics, but if the other has not, should one grin and bear it or ignore it or re-question one’s identity from scratch, but why should I, since I have long addressed their problems but they have not theirs! so it is not my problem if they (still) see me in a certain way; to be excited by difference; to be excited by exotica; to be judged exotic (again); to be judged different (again); to be judged exotic and different and to be angry about it and wonder why one should feel anger; stop looking at me, stop looking at me thinking you know what I am; go ahead and look I have long worked through this; to be anonymous; to stand out; to not stand out; to stand out for the wrong/right reasons; to compare; to not compare; to not have preconceptions, to start afresh, to screw up, to have false starts, to try again; because otherwise why come/leave/go?
So I do love travelling. Travelling as a noun/end, as well as a process/methodology/tactic.
Look at the images taken of my studio in Winterthur. For the past 4 weeks I was reading and writing at my desk for 15 hours a day in Nondon (sleeping 6, and then using 3 for exercise, showering, eating, defecating). I could kill Kaidie from Nondon and start afresh here. I could live here and read and write for 15 hours a day.
Kaidie was conceived in an other residency, in Summer 2006 in my previous life, in the beautiful, beautiful fortress island of Suomenlinna at Helsinki. I did not plan it, but being away allowed me to create the Kaidie that I am living now, 3 years later. My current residency has also afforded me the critical distance to slaughter Kaidie.
Also, Swiss tap water tastes awfully delicious. Not Nondon tap water, no.
Top, middle, ground (plus kitchen and dining). I love the middle bit.
