Nothing Works Out

 

Nothing works out. I feel like the defining way in which I think about myself is that I cannot belong. I am not from anywhere and they want me nowhere. There is a level of hyperbole in this. This is hardly the biggest tragedy. But I do feel immensely jealous of everyone who gets to be from somewhere, who gets to recognise a place as home, and have people tied to that place they can go back to.

As I stare into being forced to the first place I have enjoyed living in, I have to ask myself, ‘where to?’ Go back to where I came from? I literally cannot. Go back to where my parents are from? How is that going ‘back?’ The only thing I can say for sure is that wherever I end up, there will be no sense of ‘return’ in that journey. I will be going to another unfamiliar (if not unwelcoming) space, and be made to start from zero again.

I remember reading a James Baldwin book earlier this year which contained the sentence ‘There is a home for you to go back to, as long as you do not go there.’ It made me feel something. There are several places I can look at in this way: Kuwait, Patiala, Kasaragod, and soon, also the Netherlands.  

Nothing works out, there is nothing to look forward to.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Valour

  There is a sense of always running away. I think it is borne out of cowardice. I’m not sure where it comes from, but I’ve always known myself to be a coward. It’s not innate, of course. Nothing is innate. But it is ingrained. Choosing the path of least resistance is all I’ve been good for. It is almost an abuse of privilege to instrumentalize it almost exclusively in carving exits. A rare avenue where spending does not seem inherently excessive. Every room has a backdoor and I can avoid calling attention to myself. This obsession with not calling attention to myself leads to me creating narratives. I am the narrator, ‘observing’ the human condition. It is my lot to take account, making sure not to influence the story. Despite what I say I want, this sounds not unlike a most degenerate version of being the protagonist. No one is in control of a story like the narrator. Invisibility only enhances their agency. The story does not take shape but for their will. For a story as creat...
Read more

Nothing ever happens

  Since the start of the Ukraine war, ‘nothing ever happens’ has been a popular refrain used in memes online in a post-ironic reference to the complete failure of the ‘end of history’ theory. Fukuyama, of course, has long admitted a mistake on that front. ‘Nothing ever happens’ does seem to be the defining feature of my day-to-day. A quarter century of letting life just happen to me has brought me to a not disagreeable condition. A general feeling of unfulfillment, not uncommon amongst my generation, is little to complain about. Every day feels like a slog, but we zoomed past the new year into March in the blink of an eye. Everything is fleeting. I choose deliberate obfuscation in my articulation frustration. Everything is in the undercurrent; at best, it invites questions. I am unconvinced this isn’t bad writing, just as well then that no one actually reads it. I used to hate that quote ‘hell is other people’. I still hate it, but only because I think it is incomplete. Heaven ...
Read more

Masculin Feminin

  I watched Godard’s Masculin Feminin today. Paul is not good at anything he tries to do. He is not a good militant, he hates his job, he is not a good boyfriend, not a good a philosopher, is disillusioned with everything, and does not seem to have good relationships with anyone. His predicament does not appear radically different from anyone else’s in the movie. Even the movies he goes to watch with Madeleine seem to be sorry iterations of what he had built up in his head. There is nothing to look forward to and no love to receive. And yet there is something to envy. His comrade envies the infatuation Catherine has for him. Catherine envies Madeline for the love – inadequate and insincere as it is – she receives from Paul. There is something to Paul in his immediate surrounding that the audience knows better than to love or respect. The purposelessness of his life is accentuated in some part by the absurdity of his death. Narrated with little emotion by Catherine, Paul seems to ...
Read more