I've been immersed in post-colonial literature all week, which isn't very special since I'm usually moving through the stuff for my own reasons. But tonight I found an old James Baldwin essay that I'd always skipped over in the past. Reading it over tonight I finally understand just what he meant...
Nothing Personal (1964)
"...Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or one woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And, this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed.
What a journey this life is! dependent, entirely, on things unseen. If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, air lanes, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win."
– James Baldwin
2 comments:
Wow I understand this completely.
I'm on exchange in Europe this year. Since before I can even remember I've wanted to come here, because I felt as if there was something missing in my life. Just before I left Australia I fell in love with a friend of five years.
If there's just one thing that my experience here has taught me, it's that it's the people that make the place. It doesn't matter where I am - wherever the people I love the most are; that's my home, and that's where I belong.
Yeh I understand this as well
great insight that I think people would agree with especially those who know the feelings outlined and addressed in the essay above.
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