Away From England

 Sad, sad days, politically.

As Mrs Theresa May has announced the date of the official UK demand to leave the European Union, Wednesday March 29, who's looking at the past eight decades wondering how we just got there?

What about peace on our continent? What about our future in these times of multiplied dangers and irrational decisions?

What about wondering what would be best for British citizens? What about the history of Scotland and the future of the Scots? Will they really be safer on their own, far away, isolated in Northern Europe? When would they even be able to leave the United Kingdom and when to enter the EU? I can't believe no one in Westminster is worried about ending so miserably 400 years of common history!

Sad days for England.

Yet, I miss my other country. I miss it very much.

It's springtime. The weather is a bit grey in Paris, and when it's grey, I always feel I'd rather be on the other side of the channel. I miss my friends, I miss the language, the culture, I miss my people there.

In Brussels, too many officials are reacting as if the break-up was of no importance at all, as if the other 27 European countries were going to be fin on their own. As if the past hundred years had not happen... The UK is our greatest ally. The European Union has no meaning for me if our main goals are not peace and less poverty for all. If the richest get separate ways, if the past wounds of terrible wars cannot make us feel closer, then it's completely pointless.

I think of the people over there in Britain, in Northern Ireland, who's future is uncertain, who won't be able to travel so easily in our continent, to come and work here, to come and enrich us. It's a sad time for all of us.

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I'll come to England soon, I think. Just like I came a few days after the referendum. Because my whole youth and my whole life has been growing under the umbrella of British culture, it was always the mirror horizon, the nearest foreign land, the closest and the further away.

We will have to find a new way to live together. To stand together still.

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London, Shoreditch, picture by myself, different directions...

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The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. 

John Donne

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Just a song to finish...

Massive Attack - 'Live With Me' 

(Alternative Version)