Seven years ago, a Danish girl named Elizabeth wrote beautifully about being a "world child":
be a world child
form a circle
- Radiohead, Street SpiritWhen I write a book one day, it will be about me. And my flatmate. And many other people I know that are spread around the world. And about the world being the projection of a human being. About losing roots and growing feet. About souls searching the world for a spot best suited, and not merely adapted to a random environment.
Over a bottle of wine this evening my flatmate, who's brought up in Seattle, and I discussed the issue of being torn between countries and thus must belong to a third culture that we haven't found a satisfactory term for yet. We refer to "the others" as "The Danes" while we talk about this. We discussed the fact that people like us naturally cluster into groups, wherever we are. Our natural environment is mobile and usually found at International Cafés. We believe that we have developed a sense that enables us to detect people like us from a mile away. We can tell who they are by their way of moving, by what they say. By their quiet, understanding nods as opposed to impressed expressions when we talk about where we've been. We discussed that when someone leaves, we don't miss them any more in that heart-aching way when they're sleeping in a different house than when they're thousands of miles away. We grew out of it as children. We don't worry about whether we'll ever see them again if they do move away. We know that if we're meant to be in each other's presence someday, we will be. We share a secret about the real size of the world... We think we're special. And privileged. But we hate to brag about it.
Oh, whatever. We just finished a bottle of wine.
[Wednesday, April 17, 2002; 11:07 PM]
Her weblog "Brunch" at elizabeth.sweetie.dk disappeared years ago, but fortunately thanks to the Internet Archive this beautiful post still somehow exists.
