(F)arewell

18 august 2008, thursday night

Dear Benjamin,

I believe it was Socrates who said one could never really leave his home town, for you cannot leave behind what you have incorporated. Wherever you travel, what troubles you will be your inevitable luggage. At least, Seneca attributes this wisdom to the Great Philosopher in one of his letters to Lucillius.
I like to think this is why I don't miss you and everything else I've abandoned - I finished my thesis on Benjamin's philosophy regarding translation yesterday at 3 AM and moved to London in the afternoon. Perhaps I didn't really leave everything my former life was about - family, friends, philosophy. But you know just as well as I that I just didn't get round to missing any of this. Who has time to think of the past while sweating the Ceilidh and meeting future friends from Russia, India, Mauritius, Kazakhstan and China? We both know I might not get round to missing you at all.

All this I could have thought up in the Netherlands, and actually I think I did. What surprises me is that, despite my resignation over being bereaved of everything familiar, I was very agitated when I found myself unable to access the internet. Not because I wanted to keep in touch with anyone in specific, not because there was some very important document I had to download. It's just that I had been chatting at the middle of the North Sea, but I could not check my freakin' e-mail from my own home with an actual wire between my neat netbook and the soddin' socket!

However, if I had enough time to be annoyed by the lack of internet, don't you agree I should also have reflected on the emptiness of my new life, without all the important f-words? Well, that's why this blog is dedicated to you, the most prominent person of the daily life I left behind, even though I can't post it yet.
After all, what is life without an f? That's right, such a life is a lie.

Love, Deborah