Able was I ere I saw Essex
It's been suggested, rather snidely, that my Essex exile is entirely self-imposed; something voluntarily entered into and which I'm thus responsible for.
Of course, I'm far too fatalistic a thinker to accept this piece of naive psychologizing which rests upon the rational-moral fallacy of a free-willing subject exercising complete control over the course of actions and events.
But, however it came to pass, my Essex exile is an unfolding reality and a profoundly unpleasant one at that.
It's not that I feel banished from a beloved homeland - something that the Greeks regarded as a fate worse than death - so much as shut-out from a way of life which, limited as it was in opportunity and human contact, was nonetheless my own; i.e. a piece of chaos to which I'd given style.
It's not that I feel banished from a beloved homeland - something that the Greeks regarded as a fate worse than death - so much as shut-out from a way of life which, limited as it was in opportunity and human contact, was nonetheless my own; i.e. a piece of chaos to which I'd given style.
Thus my Essex exile is more a form of aesthetico-existential deprivation rather than geographical displacement. I do miss London: especially Soho. But mostly I miss the series of small habits, daily routines and rhythms that enabled a reassuring and necessary consistency and continuity of self (or at least the impression of such).
As Deleuze and Guattari note, even nomads happy to wander homelessly in that savage realm of dangerous knowledge outside the gate have to keep enough elements of subjectivity in order to be able to respond to the dominant reality when they wake up in the morning.
And so, as poets from Ovid to Oscar Wilde have discovered, exile isn't much fun or easy to bear if it involves a loss of soul and not merely a loss of familiar streets and favourite haunts.
As Deleuze and Guattari note, even nomads happy to wander homelessly in that savage realm of dangerous knowledge outside the gate have to keep enough elements of subjectivity in order to be able to respond to the dominant reality when they wake up in the morning.
And so, as poets from Ovid to Oscar Wilde have discovered, exile isn't much fun or easy to bear if it involves a loss of soul and not merely a loss of familiar streets and favourite haunts.
