Who Am I where

Stockholm, Sweden

The process of traveler's disorientation begins...

 

A 16-hour flight from New York City to Sweden's capital under clear blue skies and surrounded by evergreen trees. From one metropolitan seacoast to another of castle and cottage heritage, architecture. A mechanical space-time portal leaves us bodies on the streets. 

     Note(s) to self: A city's sprawling, spilling layout across island archipelagos will numb your backpacker's back pain. In the summer, when the sun sets around 11pm, the chill will return to numb your feet. In the morning, discomfort will be disguised by sensory distractions once again. 

 

For the first night, we asked a bakery shop for leftover baked goods. When we returned during closing, they presented us a big plastic bag of multigrain bread and another of sandwiches. We shared the consumption of the gifts for days, distributing to locals scrounging through the garbage. I forgot to photograph the free-goodies.  

     Note(s) to self: You lack tangible traces of evidence of edible waste meant to be abandoned in the trash bins of northern Europe. Now, no one will believe you. Besides, you are just a beggar. "Forget our trash, you will be forgotten, too." 

Tired, smiling, because I have a lot of free bread in my bag.

During the next few days, Virgile played didgeridoo and busked on the popular pedestrian shopping road, Drottningattan. When I was not looking for a new (used) backpack (mine was broken), I joined along. 

Stockholm Busking Report: Enough Swedish kronos in bills and coins acquired to avoid conversion of US monetary values until arrival into Denmark. The budget of buskers and beggars officially secured by the paper-filled pockets of pedestrian consumers, who, at the forced encounter of two traveling didgeridooers playing through a tube, spill out excess pity in the form of pennies. 

A typical scene in Gamla Stan (or any Island of Tourist Shops):
A man with a cowboy hat resting on a bench,
a boy with hat that spins,
his stroller,
his father asking him if he wants in,
and his mother licking an ice cream cone

Ah, how exhilarating, the fabric of reality! From tree wood and rock stone to iron copper steel,
from horse trails to train tracks, from bridges to automobile highways, and look!
Just look afar, at the suspended beam --- it looks like this city is still in construction.  

Overall, we camped in four different city parks throughout Stockholm. Sweden's Allemansrätten [All Man's Right] law protects freeloaders from prosecution for exercising the right to primitive camping on open land as long as nothing is disturbed or destroyed. Next to live deer, rabbits, trains, and a free concert on a hill overlooking the cityscape, we settled in private pockets of green --- 

      --- Rulebreaking righteouseekers find freedom from where what ever boundaries obstacle temporary feelings of transcendent fullness: this land is my land, this land is your land, this land is whose? <WHOSE LAND DO I OCCUPY BEHIND THESE BARS?>

 

      Note(s) to i-self(you)i: 

I have no guidebook. I have no maps. I have no affiliation to any tourist company. I am a stranger who is here. What does that make 'me'? I wonder about this distinction between travelers and tourists. [FYI: Reclaming Travel and Overcoming Tourism]. 

"Tourists travel to watch in fascination the scenery and people they choose to ignore at home." Pay for the paved path to paradise, pay for the packaged souvenirs to Papa, pay for purple pajamas that say "I WAS HERE (AND I LOVED IT)"; nothing is too valuable for your senses to consume, nothing too banal for your desires to crave, nothing is something when you pay too : EAT THE MOUNTAINSCAPE, HEAR THE SMELLS OF SWEAT, LICK THE FACE ---

"Travelers voyage to another world outside the bubble of relations you(I) have imaginatively constructed around (you)rself." (you)I AM A STRANGER...CAN'T HEAR YOU(I)...SORRY WE'RE BREAKING UP...

...already, so soon, the trip began to disintegrate and disentangle the 'me' forever lodged in so much surrounding lunacy...