At Social Text, Anna Gurton-Wachter Travels Physically, Psychically

At Social Text, a journal-text from poet and publisher Anna Gurton-Wachter, who has been told, she tells us, that "Brussels is the new Berlin, what Berlin was twenty years ago." Gurton-Wachter goes on to chronicle her own travels there, and in Paris. An excerpt:

I am sitting on the train now in Paris remembering the salt bath, remembering being in Brussels. When I’m asked what Brussels is like will I repeat: In Brussels the artists can still afford to be artists? Now here in Paris all around me there are conversations happening that I do not understand. Occasionally people like to sprinkle in English words and they function like sudden sparks of clues. It sounds to me like this:

Words words words language words words language “daily life” words words words language words “day to day” words words language words speech acts happening words “problematic” words language words “get over it” words language words

And on and on.

Suddenly one of the people next to me on the train turns to me and says,

–You are truly a cruel person.
–I know. Even more than you are already thinking.

A sudden break from the words and language and speech acts to tell me intimately, on the crowded train, in my own understandable language that I am cruel. I’m not sure really why I just pictured that happening and then told you it happened as if it really happened. I start to miss having people to talk to, no matter what they might say...

Read the entire piece at Social Text.