Friday 23 March 2001

Pic of the day: Here is a photo of my brother's kids. Tee hee.

I wanna go home

Everyone is a bit tired, I think. The boys are a bit grumpy, and the patience is wearing a bit thin everywhere. My brother is not exactly full of energy either, if I may speak honestly. I believe this past time has been more taxing emotionally for those who lived in the middle of it.

I was very much Mama's boy when I was a child, but it is an awfully long time since I was a child. I moved pretty far away when I was 15. Oh, I've been home on the farm often since. Each summer for several years. I moved home for a few months after I dropped out of school, before I got a low-paid job in the public service sector. Well, I think now that it may be a public disservice more than anything. But such is the mind of this people, that they suffer needless rules and restrictions and taxes because they feel that their neighbors deserve them. And there are always more neighbors than there are people, such is nature. So, I am at your disservice. Albeit more indirectly these days.

All of my brothers moved quite a bit away at some time or other of their lives. But all of them came back, to some degree at least. My oldest brother cannot come visit his childhood home on a whim, but that is because of the bad roads more than anything else. He lives in the same general part of the province, unlike me who live in a whole other part of the country. Only I, Mama's little boy, left everything so completely behind. Why? Weren't we all raised the same way?

***

The episode yesterday evening is part of the answer. I started to like it here, but the allergies drove me away. Or at least they drove me half crazy: I had to wear a big mask, warm and itchy in the summer, making me look like a martian monster or something. And even so, my eyes and nose were running each evening. But then again, my oldest brother is no farmer either. In fact he has a more rare and urban job than I have, and he still lives reasonably nearby and work in the unofficial city of the area.

There was another thing. I look at the youngest of the two boys here and remember my own childhood of being afraid, being bossed and bullied. I got an insight in that time, that humans were not intrinsically good. They were like goats, only more capable. In fact, I found goat kids far better company than human kids. The goats were more innocent. (And they were smaller than me, of course.) The grown goats were very like humans, fighting for food but also for respect. Goats will pick a fight for no other reason than to establish their position in the herd. Humans do the same, but when they grow up they become very circumspect in doing so. As children, the similarity is striking. And bashing and kicking.

I don't need to be reminded of those years of darkness, and the horrible truths I was unable to face then. I have faced them later, and then chosen to look another way.

***

I like and respect my father, my brothers and my sisters-in-law. They are good people who anyone should be proud to know. But even so, I feel now the restlessness nibbling at the corners of my mind. I look forward to getting home. To live my own life. To sleep in my own oversized bed, to buy my own chocolate, to use my own phone. And above all, I look forward to no longer seeing my nephew boss and bully his smaller brother. I guess it's quite moderate by human standards, but it still makes me want to shake him like a rat. It really ticks me off to see people pick on those who are smaller than them - for the simple reason that it used to be me who was smaller and was picked on. I don't like to be reminded of that. Oh, did I just say that a minute ago?

Tomorrow morning the boat is going for Bergen, and at 23 (11PM) in the night the train goes for the south coast again. It will be a long trip, I'll be home at Sunday noon at best. More than a day and a night. (So tomorrow's entry is bound to be severely delayed at best.) Hopefully I shall not need to make this trip again in a long, long time.

(If I find out how to teleport from one place to another without going the distance, I'll probably drop by more often.)