The Black Swan

I must record this here so I may perhaps write about it at a later date. Why do I not write about it now, you ask? It’s the infernal breezy feeling in my cerebrum.

This duration blindness in the middle-aged > exile is quite a widespread disease. Later, > when I decided to avoid the exile’s > obsession with his roots (exiles’ roots > penetrate their personalities a bit too > deeply), I studied exile literature > precisely > to avoid the traps of a consuming and > obsessive nostalgia. These exiles seemed > to have become prisoners of their memory > of idyllic origin—they sat together with > other > prisoners of the past and spoke about the > old country, and ate their traditional food > while some of their folk music played in the > background. They continuously ran > counterfactuals in their minds, generating > alternative scenarios that could have > happened and prevented these historical > ruptures, such as “if the Shah had not > named this incompetent man as prime > minister, we would still be there.” It was > as > if the historical rupture had a specific > cause, and that the catastrophe could have > been averted by removing that specific > cause. So I pumped every displaced > person I could find for information on their > behavior during exile. Almost all act in the > same way.

It goes without saying that this reminds me very distinctly of Vesna and her ilk.