Nobody's Land

Do you know a Nobody's Land? I mean, an actual place owned by not one person or institution whatever. Well, neither do I. Everything's about property nowadays. Even thinking… Ideas have an owner and must not be spread without his/her consent. All things and all places are labeled, sealed, stamped. Our own names idle around in sheets of paper as fast and as liberally as candies in Halloween night. Every tiny corner of the world has a sort of mark to establish someone’s ownership. People belong to people, for Christ's sake! (I wouldn't want to problematise the ownership of my dogs with no one, but people...)

Well, in a world where every particle belongs to somebody, what happens to those who feel they belong to nowhere at all? Where do they find a comfortable shelter? Occasionally, I feel oppressively like that; especially when surrounded by large crowds. (I hate feeling like cattle to take the ferryboat, for instance. I feel like running to the restroom, but even there the sense of belonging is dubious; there comes somebody knocking at the door with that undisturbed feeling of ownership.)

I can't think very well when I'm among dozens of people. It actually makes me sick! It's like whatever I'm thinking is just a link to what someone else is thinking at my side, as if we were all in some sort of invisible chain… I can’t really be myself – whatever it means – surrounded by multitudes of people, and the worst of it is that populations all over the globe only tend to grow and turn this phenomenon even more unbearable…

I may sound misanthropic, but it’s not at all that simple. Humankind isn’t altogether detestable; we’re a highly varied species. It doesn’t mean there are the good ones and the bad ones – that would be absolutely silly, infantile –, but that good and evil have their share in each one of us. And of course they’re subjective notions; they don’t mean the same for every mind. Good and evil are not even an adequate categorization of people, in my humble opinion. However, all things considered, we have as many different hearts and minds as we have faces. So, how could so many people belong to so few options of lands, of nations, of regions? We’re singular and cannot be satisfied with representations as limited as those determined by our nationalities, ethnicities or religions – just to give the most famous examples.

Is there, perchance, I wonder, a nobody’s land where those unbelonging ones would feel safe and complete? Does such completeness actually exist? Each day I’m more certain that it doesn’t. I’m many “mes” in only one body. My body cannot stretch as far as “myselves” can go… So, I need a nobody’s land to be able to breathe again. I need some place where uncertainty is the rule, where my mind can wander freely in order to find out the answers. I know I’ll have no definite answers, I’ve chosen this path. At the end of the day, I’m alone, we all are. But, you know, being alone is better than being blind. And I see so much ahead of me… A whole path of rocks and mountains to cross inside me. And not one permanent certainty, not one feeling of collective attachment able to resist the next ten years. My country is as faulty as any other, not brighter, not better, not prettier. I don’t love it – not even when the Soccer World Cup comes. My religion condemns me to universalism. Anything else is pure taste and, as such, purely ephemeral. As I said, I’m alone. Those whom I love will sooner or later blow in the wind, and so shall I. But that will be peace, I think. Now, I struggle. Now, I doubt. Now, I dream as many and as diversified dreams as dreamland can afford – and none of them is actually me. Who is “me”?

I’m not a writer – not yet, at least. I write by heart and have lots of characters; some of them nice, some not. I’m the best of them, I think. At least, the “I” of the previous sentences. This “I” is just one of them and may play a trick on anyone anytime… Just like The Joker. And, you know, you may be laughing or crying when it happens… You’ll never know.

This is Nobody’s Land, my land, your land, a forsaken land… Fare thee well!

Lady D.