Response to Travelling Places....
Hi, All
My response to all your postings would have been too long to stick in the comments so here it is.
Glad everyone agrees that there are too many places to mention!
For those who left the old World for the Americas, there must have been a paramount desire to recreate their abandoned lives wherever they landed and made a new home. For they must have known deep down that it had been a one-way ticket.
And naming their new homestead after the one they left must have come as a natural progression. New Amsterdam, New York, etc...
Nowadays, for many of us who live in parts of the World other than our birthplaces, the subject of belonging remains a minefield.
The whole exercise was prompted by an exiled Chilean poet I heard a while ago on radio whose only wish when he died was to be buried in hometown.
That must have struck a chord with me because the first sentence of a will I made many moons ago was:
"I, Cream...,HEREBY REVOKE all former wills and testamentary dispositions at any time heretofore made by me.
I DESIRE that my body be buried in the public cemetary of my hometown of Cream City...under the old cypress tree if it still stands..."
Today I am not really that convinced that I should lumber my descendants' inheritance (if I happen to leave anything at all) with the enormous expense of ferrying my dead remains thousands of miles to a tiny town where I doubt many would remember me.
So I am working on a quick dispatch version.
My question of belonging seems to be slowly but surely becoming clearer if being intered back in the old country is no longer a primordial requirement to my present happiness...
I screamed and guess what?
6 Comments:
I sympathise with the need to return home if one is exiled. But in the end, it's so much money wasted. Wouldn't it be better if the money spent to return the dead be spent on educating one child, or helping one family? I don't know. It's what I would do, I guess.
GG, you are right! It is just human nature really that stirs up the feeling of nostalgia and the need to get back to the roots even in a wooden box.
I am glad I have seen the light and given up on the idea of being shipped back to the motherland when I peg out!
we really are global citizens- some of us are just more aware of that fact then others-
doesn't matter where we're born or die- its all the same- home is anywhere that you have people to love and who love your. for some that would be everywhere! (just not in barcelona or NY) ;)
Ale, it is funny but the truth is, because of the speed of communications these days, the world is now really a small place.
Because of Dcver's pigeons, snail mail, telegrams, fax, text, email, whatever next, humans have virtually broken down most borders.
Our next job is to work on tolerance.
As usual mankind acts the way we all tend to when left to our own devices: hard problems get saved for last!
Or just swept under the carpet...until they become to high to surmount without strife.
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