Sunday, August 26, 2012
"If everyone saw himself as a citizen of the world rather than of his town, city or country, the world would be a more peaceful, better place where success in all forms is abundant and available to all."
- in A Gift to My Children , Jim Rogers
And it dawned on me in my friend's flat in Paris, overlooking Bastille. While she was taking a shower and I was supposedly checking my emails in a lazy Saturday afternoon..
I realized that I no longer have a country to call it my own.
Where are you from ? the Crepe maker guy asked me the other day :"California," I replied and he broke into a song about California...
Some guy tried to get into an argument with me over Capitalism to which I replied :" I have no problem with socialism, its just fine with me..."
"What about the nuclear Iran?" they ask and I respond :" Donno, havent been there in ages. Don't care anymore.."
Europe is part of the old world, the world that I once came from, and U.S is the NEW WORLD .
I used to pine for the old world and its ways and now after all these years it just seem as foreign and irrelevant as cooked pig's blood to me...
French will never mix blue cheese and avacado together in a salad and if you ask them why they will tell you:" Well nobody has ever done it.."
Portuguese will not have sausage for breakfast, because I suppose it has never been a tradition to have sausage for breakfast..
When I was a kid I was shocked at the sight of my half German half Iranian friends putting ice in their morning teas to cool it down? Nobody ever did such a thing to tea in the old country...
The new world does not have a lot of structures in place, everything is welcome here. You can do as you please, as long as its marketable to the whole world and can be sold and if the past is any indication ANYTHING can be sold if the marketing is right.
I suppose I stand somewhere in between, well versed in traditions of both world but not hell bent on following any of them religiously..
Paris, Lisbon, Lima, Saigon, Phnom Penh, San Francisco, Cairo, New York.
At the end of the day, a country is just a concept ( at least to me )and nothing more...
