Jonas, the most charming man who ever rode a fixie, visited with us the past couple of days. We spend a couple of days sightseeing Gothenburg and a couple of nights sightseeing bars. As it turns out I don’t really know this city as well as I ought to considering the six years I’ve done here. It’s odd what you find out when you’re a tourist in your own city. For example: It is very difficult to find a totally dark place where you can observe the stars, even if you go out of the city.
As a kid I remember staring up at the night sky, feeling both awe at the vastness of the universe and an aching sense of unfairness that I might not get to go out into space and travel between stars. The books I’d read and the movies I’d seen had made the sensation of space exploration so vivid in my mind that I could almost sense the hum of engines under my feet and taste the stale, reconditioned air.
The sense of loss was not about privilege lost; It wasn’t parents or class or education that was holding me back, but rather our limited technological development, and as such this acts as a great equaliser: We have but to look up to recognise the inconsequence of our own wishes – or least some of them – and there’s something liberating about it. It might remind us of the limits of human experience, but just as death is malleable, these limits are material and not absolute.
The emotion I experience looking at the stars is sadness at not getting to go, but also a brazen defiance, a reassurance: If only I could live long enough, it would have been me.
