inspiration

H has a summer house near the sea. I stayed there some years ago when I went to visit in June. But the place has much changed since, in fact I would argue that it has ceased being a flat and converted into what I have deemed an ethnographic museum.

As H reminds me, we are not normal. we are like a pair of vampires, seemingly living within normal society and yet we never belong to it. H is one of the few people with whom I don’t constantly feel like a freak, but that says more about me than the rest of the world. We meet one of H's friends, a nice local boy who is highly educated and has a well paid job at a time when much of the country is unemployed. yet, he has no passport. he thinks we are utterly mad for living the way we do, in and out of airports and suitcase. he cant imagine that this is simply how we are, how we were raised. I am sure that he cannot believe that sane people sit around and plot ways into puntland or holidays in Juba, when sane people are going to the beach. but some of us do. H has been to more places than I have, every country in the word to be exact, and unlike me, he has taken to collecting kitsh souvenirs. I almost never buy anything anywhere I go. I take loads of photographs, I think mainly out of an irrational paranoia that if I don’t photograph everything I will surely forget it all, but I have never been much of a shopper. there never seemed any point most souvenirs are rubbish and look tacky the moment you get home. H however has taken a different approach, he has chosen to celebrate the sheer tackiness of such souvenirs, sticking them all over his flat, with the most ridiculous ones given prominence, and the result is sheer genius, It Is truly an ethnographic display, capturing the most diverse and random spots on the planet. It is Inspiring. so much so that It makes me want to go out and buy the most stereotypic Item I can get my hands on. amazing stuff.