https://1000words.eu www.1000words.eu Sun, 01 Dec 2024 22:13:12 +0000 https://1000words.eu en https://1000words.eu/home-2 Sun, 01 Dec 2024 22:13:12 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/home-2 https://1000words.eu/Amena-Awad Sat, 09 Dec 2017 18:50:43 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Amena-Awad 19 June 2050 Tallinn, Estonia. When my son Wael was a kid, he thought a tent was home and long bus trips to places he didn’t know were a regular thing everyone did. He thought that hospitals were places people spoke weird languages, as this was the only time he ever saw anyone who was actually from the places that we were always occupying temporarily. Wael was seeking fun and people to play with, whereas I was seeking asylum. We were Syrian refugees, or asylum seekers as some called us. Yet, all we were seeking was a resolution: a resolution to our life in transition, so that we could make plans for tomorrow.After spending months of lingering in Turkish and Greek refugee camps, the E.U. decision makers assigned us to a country which we had never heard of before. In the end, Estonia it was, where we had to settle and make our plans. They moved us to Polva, a tiny city with no experience of having outsiders like us. Soon after moving, we immediately faced the harsh contrast between our expectations and reality. It was nothing like we imagined and at such moments of facing your naivety, you feel stupid. You make yourself believe in things that do not exist and you live with the consequences of those beliefs. My husband’s seeking for another life did not stop though. He wanted to move to Germany, to France, to America and eventually back to Syria. I, on the other hand, had stopped believing in a better future for myself and only cared for the future of my children which I thought could be better in Tallinn. Now Tallinn is where I have lived more than half of my life . My children grew up here and my husband is buried here. I was a music teacher in Syria up until I was 24, and I have been a hair-dresser in Tallinn all the rest of my life. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/02f220c384b09197901c4e5b5f81f25c22355c7a1cea76e42033374611f29e80/faces_half10.jpg" data-mid="8163888" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/02f220c384b09197901c4e5b5f81f25c22355c7a1cea76e42033374611f29e80/faces_half10.jpg" /> Wael works with me as well as his younger brother and the shop keeps all of us busy, together and surviving. Things have changed a lot though. We were the first immigrants in Estonia but over the years, many others have joined us. In the 30s it was the Sudanese who escaped from the water crisis. In the 40s there was a flow of Indonesians whose cities were flooded. Finally, it was the Burmese who escaped from landslides and poverty. They were villagers, miners, shopkeepers and teachers, people from all walks of life, who decided to look for a new beginning elsewhere. As the first immigrants, the Syrians were welcomed with curiosity and a pride of “Estonian hospitality”. However, each time a new wave of migration emerged, the hospitality was replaced with irritation and disturbance.All the immigrants are concentrated around the same areas: neighborhoods with big buildings, outside the center, which I can say is one of the few things that has not changed over the years. I always felt that we populate these buildings side by side but without any real contact, leading parallel lives within each of the rooms we occupy. What do I have anything to share with these people anyways? Wael, on the other hand, is different. He grew up with them. When my son Wael was in his teens he told me one day that I should wear a headscarf and I should not be standing outside for too much while he was hanging out with his friends. He thought fear and anger was part of his life – this is what replaced his search for fun and people to play with. He thought he had become a man, and that this what a man does as his friends told him. Behind the walls of the apartments where we lived, there were people that were whispering such things to him. People I had never wanted to be side by side with, yet my son thought of as friends. Today, Wael is 35 years old. He wants to move back to Syria and take me there with himself. “Syra is calling its children” he says. That is how they are fooling him. How can I go to that place after so many years? What would be the things waiting for this woman back in Syria, who has made so many sacrifices to be away from it? I stayed here only for Wael and his brother and tolerated everything and everyone so that they could belong to a place which they wouldn’t need to walk away from. Now, he looks for the same place that his father always kept on looking for and which I had gave up searching for, early in life. He believes his search for completeness will be answered there in Syria. What he does not know is that when Syria broke into a million pieces, our souls were scattered all around the globe where we thought there was hope. Our generation has only lived to see that there was no hope, really, at least not for us. Syria let all of us down. I don’t miss a single bit of it. I swear I don’t. That is why I will not share my son with her, like I shared my hopes before. Amena Awad THE SOIL I FORGOT ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); https://1000words.eu/You-can-tell-us-from-whom-you-want-to-read Tue, 19 Dec 2017 09:40:42 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/You-can-tell-us-from-whom-you-want-to-read You can tell us from whom you want to read. . If you want to read a story from someone you know (or yourself) writen in 2050, tell use about the person. Thein Than Myo’s letter (LINK) is about the end of Jade, a precious natural resource in Myanmar, which will happen in the next 20 years. Roos Van der Bie’s letter (LINK) takes place in a Europe that travels by train instead of planes. It is a future prediction that trains will replace planes because there is no way to fly without burning fossil fuels and it may just be much cheaper to use trains. Letters of Letters from 2050 are all based on a real trend or future predictions like these and you can share similar information with us to inspire a letter. What is the future prediction or speculation that you know of and would like to read about in someone’s daily life in the future? We will write it and send it to you. #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe to Letters from 2050 mailing list: Name: E-mail: Message: Send your message https://1000words.eu/You-can-inspire-a-letter Tue, 19 Dec 2017 09:40:39 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/You-can-inspire-a-letter You can inspire a letter. Droughts in middle east? Gay movements in Beijing? Robots replacing human labour? Tell what you would like to read about and receive a letter based on what you shared. Would you like a 2050 dated letter from someone you know (including yourself)? Describe us the person and we send a letter written by him or her in 2050. #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe to Letters from 2050 mailing list: Name: E-mail: Message: Send your message https://1000words.eu/Marlow-Ma Fri, 16 Feb 2018 13:25:58 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Marlow-Ma 4 June 2050 Beijing, China. My fortune and fame. I suppose those are the things you are most interested in hearing about. I will tell you a bit about how I built up all what I have. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/204eddf79016e959f8695c6ce0e11c9fadff60eb78671aaeb77e523523f7c088/faces_half6.jpg" data-mid="11354643" border="0" data-scale="88" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/204eddf79016e959f8695c6ce0e11c9fadff60eb78671aaeb77e523523f7c088/faces_half6.jpg" /> However, this story cannot be told without mentioning the things that happened in Beijing throughout my lifetime. 40 years ago, Beijing was a very polluted place. Every once in a while, smog would settle in unexpectedly and you wouldn’t see a thing around you. You would inhale the dirt that was coming from factories burning coal. This was the setting of Beijing in which, as a young man, I have started discovering my talents and I have put them into good use. I started running many enterprises in the nightlife scene of Beijing and making good money. It all started by organizing drag show in Beijing. I did the LGBT Center gala years ago. Reaching out to people, attracting them to the events was the easy part, the difficulty was in getting permissions, breaking the norms and preconceptions. It was a difficult time just to be gay in Beijing, let alone demanding to change things. On the other hand, there was big money in the pink business and that helped. In fact, during the times of economic development, anything helping growth was accepted. A factory or a nightclub was always welcome as long as it kept the things moving. Beijing kept on changing. It was the 20s when the city started opening up parks at various locations in order to get rid of the polluted air by creating ventilation corridors. One after another, large areas were confiscated by the city, demolishing works took place and they turned them into parks. A lot of people had to be relocated on the process, the city had to clean its lungs, yet it worked and the air of the city started moving and we no longer have the smoggy days anymore. Besides, the parks of Beijing are its coolest features today. Go there on a sunny day, you’ll see gays and straight people, from Myanmar to Japan, mixed together and having a good time. They come here to experience the freedom that they could not experience anywhere else in Asia. At the mean time, I have kept on doing what I do the best and provided events, bars and clubs for LGBT community to enjoy themselves and be present in the city. If all of these are normalized today for our community, it is thanks to continuous fight we had to make in order to make these places reality. It was not uncommon, to hear hate crimes and discrimination targeting gay people in Beijing. We would wake up into dirt and smoggy days. There was no escape from this mess, we had to inhale it until we have cleaned it. Today, it is common amongst the people who have been living in Beijing as long as I do and who have inhaled the polluted air for as long as I have done, to have a specific form of lung cancer. I am no exception. Anyone roughly at my age in Beijing, turns out to have a similar story. We all thought that coal and oil, manufacturing and growth, were things of the old world. Yet, they were hidden in the most discrete of places: within our lungs. Marlow Ma THE BEIJING IN ME ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); https://1000words.eu/Erik-Tersrich Sat, 09 Dec 2017 18:50:46 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Erik-Tersrich 10 April 2050 Rotterdam, The Netherlands. I have always enjoyed a cup of coffee by the window of my living room in the mornings, looking out at the Rotterdamers passing by. Not any more. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/204eddf79016e959f8695c6ce0e11c9fadff60eb78671aaeb77e523523f7c088/faces_half6.jpg" data-mid="8164720" border="0" data-scale="88" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/204eddf79016e959f8695c6ce0e11c9fadff60eb78671aaeb77e523523f7c088/faces_half6.jpg" />Since the municipality regenerated my street - more room for pedestrians, more “tiny” parking spaces for new, smaller cars and with lots and lots of street furniture of different colors, shapes and uses – my eyes ach as I stare out. There used to be a unity in the street. It was flat, true, but it had a character. There was an order and rhythm to the streets of Rotterdam. There was a limited palette of materials and everything came together nicely with fine details. This was Statenweg, with the beautiful Blijdorp station at the end of it, almost as the final touch to the orderly composition of the street. I don’t understand, seriously, why every single piece of furniture now, has to have a different look and form? Nowadays, you use the plastic everyone recycles, 3d print it and it is the cheapest option. So they make each thing unique. You pay a little for the material, you don’t pay for CO2 tax and municipality goes for such schemes in the low-key projects. Because of that, my street can’t just look normal anymore but like a zoo of street furniture because everything can be uniquely produced! Anybody going down Binnenrotte would have a similar feeling. Starting with Blaak station, there,was once an openness in the city’s texture here, a celebration of calmness and distance. Now it’s an amalgamation of the kinds of energy generating sport fields for the types of sports nobody else in the world other than Rotterdammers engage in. Combined with a jungle of vegetation, it is your worst nightmare. They place these energy generating surface materials and turn everywhere in the city into sports fields and of course without the addition of “diversity” story, it would not be complete. Oh no, not in Rotterdam. “Each species from another ecosystem, each sport from another continent”. Fine, but what happened to the idea of a calm row of trees in the street? What happened to some soccer field in a park, which is where it belongs? Why do we need to celebrate diversity on each and every corner? The whole point of this place was that it was not really “a place”. That was the nice thing about it. Twice a week there would be an open market and other than that, the bars and restaurants on both sides would make some crowd, that’s all. No jungle, no masses playing weird sports on top of each other. Just a place where you could walk in peace. The moment you think you have had enough of Binnenrotte there is something even more disquieting: Markthal… When the building was built, I was at the beginning of my career as an architect. Back then I thought that the building was a nice addition to the experience of the city, to be able to find a lot of nice food under a vault shaped ceiling with colorful artwork depicting food. Well, it turned out that the building was also at the beginning of its career… When they realized that Rotterdamers are not willing to waste money on expensive food just because you could buy it in a cool space, at least not as much as tourists do, they “upgraded” the building to “the finest augmented reality experience of Europe” aiming to attract tourists. They replaced the artwork panels with augmented reality panels that appear different to each individual inside the Markthal, without using glasses or anything. Next level stuff. The tourists started flowing in, to see the panels doing all kinds of stuff, entertaining them with images related to whatever the heck they are eating.&nbsp; So they eat strawberries as if they are surrounded by strawberry fields and they eat pizza as if they are in an Italian setting and all that kind of crap. Boy, they love it. The building no longer has anything to do with me – or anyone from the city – all I see are tourists inside, mouths full, looking orgasmic. They think they have “seen” the Rotterdammers’ Markthal whereas all we see is it’s ugly, grey ceiling panels, entertaining tourists. That’s what Markthal is for us today. Once, I worked on a building, on Schiedamsedijk, further down Coolsingel. We built a residential tower, looking at Maas. It has simple aesthetics, well-made details and a serene, normal beauty. When I think of it, it is life that takes place in it: authentic, everyday life. It does not aim to entertain anybody and it does not have the need or aim to represent Rotterdam. Perhaps, that’s why it is the most Rotterdammer thing ever. We need more of these things in our city: simple, nicely made residential towers, representing every day ordinariness. You think it’s banal? You can always go to Markthal. I’d rather stay around my tower. Erik TersrichPOSTCARDS FROM ROTTERDAM ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); https://1000words.eu/Thein-Than-Myo Fri, 08 Dec 2017 19:00:22 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Thein-Than-Myo 22 July 2050 Hpakant, Myanmar. “Of all the hairs on the heads of the jade industry, only one strand is Burmese. The rest are all Chinese,” an old man that I once knew used to say. Does this apply to my hair too? And does it change anything if my hair is all Chinese or Burmese? The Chinese caused much suffering and harm to Myanmar, my country. Around here, mountains and hills existed once. Then, the Chinese bosses employed us and we started digging all around, one mine after another. They reclaimed our land by force and controlled our people in order to be rich. It was them who extracted all the jade and exploited years of our lives. If all was not for them, we could be very rich. I was going to be very rich. Yet, it did not happen. Each time it rained some of the mountains were gone and they took some of us with them. I have lost many people I knew to a landslide. First, you hear a noise and the earth starts crumbling, then you see the ground moving as if in frenzy; rapidly and unavoidably. You know what is happening and you know you are dependent on God’s will. You feel really small at those moments. After it was all over, we usually did not even know who was under the earth; we just knew we were less. This is how we lost our lives and our mountains. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9808c00ba4a0071220aa32e1e6982de102992bd7509bcee7aed62d54e4ec10e3/faces_half4.jpg" data-mid="8165238" border="0" data-scale="71" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/9808c00ba4a0071220aa32e1e6982de102992bd7509bcee7aed62d54e4ec10e3/faces_half4.jpg" /> In fact, the large holes you see across the landscape were once busy with people. They would be running up and down, searching, carrying, falling and then getting up. At nights, they would go to their homes and start dreaming, imagining, fantasizing. They were jade-miners, heroin addicts, HIV positives with similar dreams and beliefs. Everybody knew someone who knew someone who was getting rich and prosperous from the jade hills. That’s why they all were ready to try “again”. In the end, none of us got rich, except the ones who got a gun to their hands because, as it turned out, it was not about who had extracted the jade stones from the ground, it was about who controlled the mines, and even that only lasted ‘til they were killed by the Chinese. The jade ran out more than a decade ago. Since then, we are surrounded by emptiness. There is no jade, no Chinese, no dreams. The mountains vanished over time, and the youth has migrated to far lands, mostly to China – to the source of all the evil. I did not leave Hpakant, my home town. I stayed, like all the other elderly around. We harvest cassava and sugar cane, we still have the strength to do that, but things are not as they used to be. Water is scarce and that affects us the most. It is the Chinese who are drying up our rivers and harming our agriculture, we all know that. They have scientists and engineers who control the water with only a button. They push it and our water is gone. Also, earth is not the earth of my youth, it is dry and not as fertile. Yet, we keep working and manage to survive in this last period of our lives. Chinese people have always controlled the world and our country. They destroyed our soil and exploited our people. They gave heroin to the Burmese for years, in order to damage our country and use our resources. Today, they are exploiting our children. Of course they do, because that is how they all get rich. I am here, in Hpakant. There are no mountains anymore and there is no youth either. My hands are with me though: to work the soil, to make a living, waiting for the time to pass. I am here for the moment, although no one realizes and no one listens. Thein Than MyoTHE SINFUL WITHIN ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); https://1000words.eu/Sidney-Coss Sat, 09 Dec 2017 18:50:30 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Sidney-Coss 2 March 2050 Michigan, USA. I never had any children because I have never been free. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2302977066664c9d5490610634e6f38ce3a0a58e656ef12429383c2006bee92f/faces_half2.jpg" data-mid="8164936" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/2302977066664c9d5490610634e6f38ce3a0a58e656ef12429383c2006bee92f/faces_half2.jpg" /> My story is not any different from any other one of my generation. We have spent an entire life being unsynchronized between what we had to do and what we could actually do. After I graduated from college, I could not find a job when I should have already been working. By the time I finally did manage to get a job and wanted to pay off my student debts, I could barely afford to pay the interest. When I wanted to save so that I could plan for tomorrow, there was nothing to do that with. So, I never was in a position to be able to think and plan for a child. It's not something I wanted, to be just paying interest on my loans and it has prevented me from building my future in Owosso, Michigan over the 25 years since my graduation. On the other hand, lots of things have changed in between. Four different presidents have been in the office. We managed to go to Mars and come back. Age of flights ended, now there are trains to everywhere. Droughts all around the world have forced many people to migrate. We have seen the great rice crisis and overcame it all together. We are no longer living based on oil and gas. None of this happened in Owosso though, except for on the screens we use to watch the news. Owosso is like the periphery of the world where nothing ever changes. Same houses, same shops and same people. Nothing has changed in my life either: same job, same debt, same struggle. When I was in my teens, my mother voted for change twice; one was promised by Obama, the other by Trump in 2010s. It never happened. However, as a young girl, all these stories about a better tomorrow created the feeling of “something is on the horizon and when it happens, our lives are going to change forever”. Sometimes I think that the never-ending expectancy of change is what has damaged me more than the actual lack of change. Maybe, this is it: expect nothing and nothing changes. Life keeps happening according to its own rhythm and we should all just accept it. Future has never existed for the people who are so much in debt to the past. Sidney Coss “TOMORROW” IS NOT EVENLY DISPERSED ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); https://1000words.eu/Roos-van-der-Bie Fri, 08 Dec 2017 19:00:22 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Roos-van-der-Bie 12 January 2050 Den Bosch, The Netherlands. Upon arrival to Amsterdam Centraal, one immediately feels energized. Nothing beats the feeling of going under the ground at the station, floor by floor, then taking a train and setting out to see something new. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/23df3eab6796b9f55c8b72079cf51ee5243765f916a4b428df24600b2a4a10d3/faces_half3.jpg" data-mid="8165505" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/23df3eab6796b9f55c8b72079cf51ee5243765f916a4b428df24600b2a4a10d3/faces_half3.jpg" />Wednesday afternoons, we meet with my husband at the station. He is usually a little bit earlier than myself. Me, slightly troubled by the guilt of being late, I give him kiss to apologize and we start walking. He walks with big steps, a little in haste as usual, and I accompany him in silence. We quickly pass entrance floor and -1, where there are local trains. As we pass -2, which is for flight-connected trains, I feel slightly envious of the people going overseas. At -3, there are platforms for trains carrying no passengers, only the captured CO2 from the trains. I tend to slow down, gazing towards the escalators going up and down, machines moving around boxes of CO2 rapidly and in perfect synchronization. I feel something I don’t know how to name, but it feels peaceful. There, everything feels in its right place… “Come on!” my husband usually says, slightly worried, “We don’t have time” I move on to catch up with him. We arrive to -4, where there are international trains within the continent. Our train is there; we get in and start moving in no time. In 2046, we bought a 5 year weekend Spanish package from RyanExperience. My husband used to work for an energy company and when he was made redundant he wanted to take a break and live on the global basic income he was offered. He had lots of time and did not really know what he wanted to do with it. I am working for 3 days a week like many of my colleagues so it seemed like a good deal, fitting in with both of our schedules. We have 160 days in a year that we can use to travel and stay in one of the countless locations across the whole of Spain. RyanExperience trains take on average 45 minutes to get to Spain. It takes a little more with some companies and a little bit less with some others and there is a direct train every half an hour from the station, so it is convenient. Next year, they will stop all the remaining flights within Europe and then there will be even more trains to Spain. He loves it there. He can walk in the streets, in the forests, in the beaches and camps tirelessly and I, too, enjoy so much keeping up with him, to the best of my ability. First 2 years that was what we did, walking step by step every little corner of the country. After a while we only started going to Alicante. The RyanExperience houses there are not concentrated in a new development like they usually are, but rather dispersed at the center amongst a number of buildings. That is what we like about it, and the city is just a great place to be regularly. I think after 2 years, we had missed that regularity a bit. That is common amongst many people who subscribe to such experience packages. Almost everyone I knew with an experience package ends up going to the same place after a while. We are no exception. We usually go back to the Netherlands on Saturday evenings to spend the Sunday back home. He starts getting prepared right after the dinner, collecting his things, organizing neatly in his bag. It is a very calming moment for me to watch him. He knows what he has to do and does it appropriately and rigorously, and in a way so lovingly. Watching him packing stimulates a familiar feeling in me: everything in its right place. At that very moment, while I’m busy with such thoughts, he will ask: “Are you ready?” I will pull myself together and say: “I have just decided, that, maybe… I’m not ready. I don’t want to be back now.” “What?” He will ask puzzled. “You want to stay for one more day? Don’t you see that I have been getting prepared?” “I want to spend some time here, alone.” “Oh, you mean you want me to go alone?” “Yes.” Sometimes, when my mind is busy with other thoughts, words come out of my mouth without me consciously thinking about them and yet, when giving it a second thought I realize how accurately they convey what I wanted to say and how effortlessly they do so. Soon after he hears my answers, he will leave furiously and bewildered. When he is gone, it will be the first time I take the time and openly look for what it is that I am missing. When did we end up choosing this lifestyle? Where is this place that I am looking for where everything is in its right place? I can not recall when we actually decided to choose this but I remember the advertisement of the package and the way it seem to respond so closely to the personal longings I had at that time. What were those longings about and what has happened to them now? I know that I have the answers inside of me and I need to look for them, but I also know that the hardest thing in life is to be honest with one’s self. Roos van der Bie TRAIN TICKETS TO ELSEWHERE ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); https://1000words.eu/Jim-Steele Fri, 08 Dec 2017 19:00:26 +0000 www.1000words.eu https://1000words.eu/Jim-Steele 12 augustus 2050 Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Amsterdam-Noord is a place where people have at least one addiction and I am no exception. <img width="591" height="1181" width_o="591" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9ea465ef5b5da57a4283136107f338e6967a3e79a1d77657c3f6a72a34ba2c6c/faces_half12.jpg" data-mid="8189173" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/591/i/9ea465ef5b5da57a4283136107f338e6967a3e79a1d77657c3f6a72a34ba2c6c/faces_half12.jpg" /> Don’t get me wrong, addictions are welcome here, people understand one another. In the end, that is what comes with idleness. It all happened after Amsterdam Noord became part of the Global Neighbourhoods Network of energy industry. I am going to tell you that I sort of knew it was going to happen, but you probably won’t believe me. But I did. I mean, if you were working for an energy company in the 30s, you would know it, because everyone was talking about it. Only, no one knew how hilarious it was going to get after that. You know, each time there was an environmental disaster anywhere around the world, energy companies made a big fuss. Well, they sort of were big deals, all these people losing their homes and everything. But our companies made the fuss in their own very particular way. Their idea was: if only energy companies could create a global energy grid, then we could a build a renewable energy system that would function continuously. So that when you don’t have wind at a certain place, you would have sun, when you don’t have sun you would have waves and that kind of thing. So, all these energy companies pushed for a special global status to make this happen. They wanted a global taxation scheme for themselves. And they got it. They wanted a global, independent employment policy. And they got it. They wanted a global residence permit for their people and got it. Well, when you have it all, and if you also do have your own properties in cities, then you sort of have your semi-independent neighborhoods. You didn’t have to ask for that. Back then, Amsterdam Noord had a lot of offices and houses that were built not so long ago, but they fell empty when the area lost its initial charm and freshness, and the city had a hard time filling them. So energy companies made a good deal on big areas of Noord. You know our CEO right? The guy is charming as hell and he is a terrific speaker. Except, he is a bit phony. Anyways, he told this globalization story and all, and they made these areas part of the global neighborhoods network. So the deal is, if you are working for one of the energy corporations, they assign you one of their housing developments here. If you are made redundant for any reason, you can still stay in the city, keep chilling and they will pay for a basic income as part of the universal basic income policy of energy companies. I mean, it is kind of cool I would say. I have been relying on it for the past 4 years. Well, not only me but also plenty of others and that’s the funny part. If you are in Amsterdam for a superficial experience as a tourist or expat, you stay in the center. You satisfy your appetite for cuteness and a globalized, cheesy atmosphere there. In Noord you find musicians, virtual reality gamers, porn addicts, underground clubs. In center you speak Dutch and English, in Noord you speak everything. Seriously. That’s hard-core globalization. All these employees who were made redundant had came here at some point in their career, and now just stuck here for the benefits. You can’t imagine how many traditional Indian dance clubs there are here for instance. It’s funny but it’s trending like hell. You have all these guys who are there all the damn time, with their costumes and all, completely addicted to this lifestyle of doing the dance and improving themselves and getting better. I mean, when you all don’t have much to do, you just kill time and find others to do that with. When you have everyone just killing time, that’s when it gets really funny. I am part of a basketball club for example. We don’t only play basketball but also get drunk as bastards after the games. It’s great fun, way better than getting drunk after working in the office. It’s not even the same drunkenness. Look, I don’t want you to think that I am a lazy person, nor I want you to think that I have moral issues with working. It is more, the loss of belief in what you are doing, and when you lose it, it is very difficult to get back on track, believe me. I mean, I had really invested a lot in my career thinking that it all is gonna be awesome. I guess. Well, I hardly can remember what I was thinking back then. Anyways, it didn’t happen as I imagined. I mean, I had a good career and all but it wasn’t mind-blowing. Then you go like “what the hell?”. So you discover all kinds of ways of just chilling. I forgot to tell you though; there are plenty of cool people around the neighborhood who do interesting stuff. I mean, there are music bands who squat some empty spaces --which there are plenty of-- and they just do music there. They’re great, really, and sometimes they just make small gigs at those places and all. I really appreciate those guys. So the other day I damn near called this old friend of mine to tell him to get a job in an energy company, make his way to their Amsterdam offices, find a way to get kicked out, then we could make music here for the rest of our lives like we used to at our high school in Colorado.It’s crazy all the things people do when they have all this time and have lost their belief in the system. Now you are going to ask which system I’m talking about and I won’t be able to give you an eloquent story of what it is, but there is one. Really. Anyways, down the main street you can find many Virtual Reality cafes where people of all ages role-play creatures of different kinds in a virtual environment with their VR glasses on. They are there all day, completely addicted to it. By the way, I don’t like playing. I like watching, that’s my thing. Next to it there are day-discos. Look, you have to understand that when you are in this idleness mode, you kind of go for whatever. I was in one of those discos the other day, I saw people dancing and squirting water out of their mouths to each other. They were probably in the virtual reality mode, I couldn’t see what they had but for God’s sake... You should have seen them. They were in hysterics the whole time, like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. There isn't any other disco in the world you can sit in for a long time without buying some liquor and getting drunk. We sometimes do it with Phil. He is a friend. Probably the craziest Swiss guy ever, but he doesn’t know it. He talks about his dreams all the time. I mean, not like his aspirations and wishes. He talks about different kind of dreams he sees every night and just tells everyone about them. Meet him in a bar, he’ll tell you what dream he dreamt the other night. Knowing that he wouldn’t ever shut up about them, one day, I gave him the idea of writing them down. Now, he is writing a book about them… And watching porn. Yeah, the guy is kind of addicted to porn, all day writing his dreams and in between watching porn. He says, he is trying to break free though. Last time I saw him, he told me the story of how he got into an argument with this neighborhood initiative below his apartment because he puked to the flowerpot outside. Well these guys are building stuff for the neighborhood. They do benches and shelves and flowerpots and all that kind of thing. They have all kinds of crazy tools you can imagine and they do these stuff all day. Only, if you touch them, they will eat you alive. You know they are a bit touchy these guys. They are nice and all, but touchy like hell. Anyways, poor Phil, apparently, was going home drunk and just puked in one of those pots and the guys went crazy. He kept on telling me that they are building stuff 24 hours a day and that the sounds drive him crazy. I tried to convince him that this doesn’t mean he should puke into their flowerpot, but it was practically impossible. I gotta tell you, though, people building furniture all the damn day would drive me mad too, but anyways that is how they are filling their time. I am probably the only normal guy in the whole place and that isn’t saying much. In fact, I don’t know what to think about all this stuff I just told you about. I guess it is a limbo situation that the system has created here and I wouldn’t be surprised if they just sweep all of us away at some point. Now you’re gonna ask again what system I’m talking about and I’ll tell you that it is the energy companies, municipalities, regulations, politicians and all doing things together, but not really “together” together. I guess. I told you, I don’t have a good story to tell you what it is. In the end, I think it is what keeps you busy, basically, and when we don’t have anyone telling us how we just occupy ourselves. Jim Steele CATCHER IN THE NOORD ︎ Index Next ︎ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));