The Trip
Show me your wound you damn developed land! I’ve been here for more than six months now and still haven’t seen any kind of devious things on the streets of Stockholm – except for drunken people hitting or abusing each other, but those things are just thrown in the “normal/common archives”. It is the kind of “perfection” that disturbs and makes you start doubting your own ways, except when the will of fucking every other girl that walks by you leads your mind elsewhere – specially if you come from a so called undeveloped-third world-country, or if you saw your girl making out with another guy naked in a sauna… I thought I had pride enough.
I woke up alone and thought it would be perfect to get a joint somewhere, inhale and laugh about everything. But where to find it? I’ve never even felt the smell of pot since I’ve got here. I’ve been asking some people about where could I find it but nobody knows… Once I saw a girl rolling up a joint, I went straight to her just to find out that she was rolling natural tobacco because she “didn’t like to smoke industrialized cigarettes”. I thought: - Fuck me! They cannot be so damn perfect! It all made me realise that I wasn’t looking only for a simple joint. I was in some way wanting to turn into a parasite and swim in a just found infected juicy wound, finding a rotten hole in a perfect skin desert; like the press does: they seek and seek until they find it and suck it dry. We need wounds to exist, to point out. It may stuff their pockets with money but I still haven’t understood where it benefits me. Maybe it brings company to my misery: “Misery loves company”, isn’t that so? And probably they also share its company with me.
Breakfast didn’t seem so appealing so I skipped it and hit the streets. Went to the subway, it arrived, I glanced at a nice girl through the window, hopped in and found my seat near her; I got off at the central station and we kept on being strangers. Wandered around like waiting for God to come down and put out a cigarette in my eye. Walked by a bum whose face itself looked like a wound… and it didn’t please me at all, God had come for him instead and, at the same time, slapped me in the face. I tried to trace where in my ex-girl’s body that guy had laid his hands on, then thought: - Can this man be more miserable than I am? ; felt bad with the answer. Things start tracking a tortuous way when one feels miserable but doesn’t feel the right to.
To wander around with no destination, no real purpose, may seem pretty sad, not more sad than to have the illusion that there really is a destination or purpose though. I went on a wandering trance - when your brain is reached by a million thoughts at the same time and it only results in nothing; a brain floating in the ocean, being eaten by seagulls and shoals of different fish. I found myself in the middle of the town when I “woke up”, at the central square called Sergels Torg.
I had been there before. A lot of people, stores all around, immigrant-looking men leaning against the concrete pillars doing nothing, the Culture House on the other side, the entrance to the central subway station – where it all started… Wait!! immigrant-looking men leaning against the concrete pillars doing nothing?! I felt ashamed of how prejudiced my conclusion was, but at the same time I smelled pus, I felt the wound could be there! The men were standing, leaning against the pillars, sometimes talking to each other, sometimes to other people. That’s what I had seen so far. I decided to go inside the Burger King which they stood by and my stomach agreed. I asked for one of those meaningless meals and sat down at the window seat facing them, facing their moves.
A man sat right outside my window eating his meal, wearing sunglasses. Other men were standing, walking, a bit further. One of them, wearing a dark sweater with a jacket at 2pm of Sweden’s 22 degrees summer, looking at every direction compulsively – like a rat - came to the man eating… they small-talked and “the rat” came inside towards another man wearing sport clothes and with a five year old kid aside. After a few words Ratman vanished away in the middle of the crowd. Daddy stood in the line, got a snack for his boy and told him to go sit. Ratman showed up again with all his nervousness exploding, glancing all over like a spinning machine gun, and more and more like a rat… Took something from inside his sweater – I couldn’t tell what it was – gave to Daddy who gave him something in return, I supposed it was money, called for his kid and left. Soon, Ratman was also gone. The man eating at the table in front of my window finished his meal and went further ahead, joining the others.
I heard a weird sound. It was my stomach. I paid all my attention to the surroundings, my hamburger had two bites. But fuck it! I had found a wound in the very middle of this city, in the very middle of the “perfectness” desert! I couldn’t be wrong, it was just a matter of time for me to shove my fingers in it! So I finished my meal went straight out towards the man in sunglasses (Ratman had disappeared) and asked:
- Are you selling something?
He asked back - What do you want?
- Do you have any weed?
- Man, weed is really hard to find around here. I got some hash.
Hashish. Extracted from marijuana and more potent; everything flowing with such smoothness, in such harmony, so legitimate… Like an organ of the state… It got me thinking: maybe it all could be a peculiar way through which Sweden keeps it chill, based on that if the busting becomes harsher the dealing, instead of decreasing, would become more and more aggressive to keep on existing. At the same time the country can be titled a “no-drugs state” avoiding much controversy, or not.
I’m far from knowing much about the drug-dealing in this town or anywhere else. I’ve never read a single criminal novel. The point is: in despite of knowing that human nature stands for “not being perfect”, sometimes one may need a confirmation of that, maybe to not stand out as the rotten part, to know that the surroundings are as rotten might help. That wound smiled, that wound shone in my eyes and so I sucked it as hard as I could… I didn’t buy the hash but I got my trip anyways.
I woke up alone and thought it would be perfect to get a joint somewhere, inhale and laugh about everything. But where to find it? I’ve never even felt the smell of pot since I’ve got here. I’ve been asking some people about where could I find it but nobody knows… Once I saw a girl rolling up a joint, I went straight to her just to find out that she was rolling natural tobacco because she “didn’t like to smoke industrialized cigarettes”. I thought: - Fuck me! They cannot be so damn perfect! It all made me realise that I wasn’t looking only for a simple joint. I was in some way wanting to turn into a parasite and swim in a just found infected juicy wound, finding a rotten hole in a perfect skin desert; like the press does: they seek and seek until they find it and suck it dry. We need wounds to exist, to point out. It may stuff their pockets with money but I still haven’t understood where it benefits me. Maybe it brings company to my misery: “Misery loves company”, isn’t that so? And probably they also share its company with me.
Breakfast didn’t seem so appealing so I skipped it and hit the streets. Went to the subway, it arrived, I glanced at a nice girl through the window, hopped in and found my seat near her; I got off at the central station and we kept on being strangers. Wandered around like waiting for God to come down and put out a cigarette in my eye. Walked by a bum whose face itself looked like a wound… and it didn’t please me at all, God had come for him instead and, at the same time, slapped me in the face. I tried to trace where in my ex-girl’s body that guy had laid his hands on, then thought: - Can this man be more miserable than I am? ; felt bad with the answer. Things start tracking a tortuous way when one feels miserable but doesn’t feel the right to.
To wander around with no destination, no real purpose, may seem pretty sad, not more sad than to have the illusion that there really is a destination or purpose though. I went on a wandering trance - when your brain is reached by a million thoughts at the same time and it only results in nothing; a brain floating in the ocean, being eaten by seagulls and shoals of different fish. I found myself in the middle of the town when I “woke up”, at the central square called Sergels Torg.
I had been there before. A lot of people, stores all around, immigrant-looking men leaning against the concrete pillars doing nothing, the Culture House on the other side, the entrance to the central subway station – where it all started… Wait!! immigrant-looking men leaning against the concrete pillars doing nothing?! I felt ashamed of how prejudiced my conclusion was, but at the same time I smelled pus, I felt the wound could be there! The men were standing, leaning against the pillars, sometimes talking to each other, sometimes to other people. That’s what I had seen so far. I decided to go inside the Burger King which they stood by and my stomach agreed. I asked for one of those meaningless meals and sat down at the window seat facing them, facing their moves.
A man sat right outside my window eating his meal, wearing sunglasses. Other men were standing, walking, a bit further. One of them, wearing a dark sweater with a jacket at 2pm of Sweden’s 22 degrees summer, looking at every direction compulsively – like a rat - came to the man eating… they small-talked and “the rat” came inside towards another man wearing sport clothes and with a five year old kid aside. After a few words Ratman vanished away in the middle of the crowd. Daddy stood in the line, got a snack for his boy and told him to go sit. Ratman showed up again with all his nervousness exploding, glancing all over like a spinning machine gun, and more and more like a rat… Took something from inside his sweater – I couldn’t tell what it was – gave to Daddy who gave him something in return, I supposed it was money, called for his kid and left. Soon, Ratman was also gone. The man eating at the table in front of my window finished his meal and went further ahead, joining the others.
I heard a weird sound. It was my stomach. I paid all my attention to the surroundings, my hamburger had two bites. But fuck it! I had found a wound in the very middle of this city, in the very middle of the “perfectness” desert! I couldn’t be wrong, it was just a matter of time for me to shove my fingers in it! So I finished my meal went straight out towards the man in sunglasses (Ratman had disappeared) and asked:
- Are you selling something?
He asked back - What do you want?
- Do you have any weed?
- Man, weed is really hard to find around here. I got some hash.
Hashish. Extracted from marijuana and more potent; everything flowing with such smoothness, in such harmony, so legitimate… Like an organ of the state… It got me thinking: maybe it all could be a peculiar way through which Sweden keeps it chill, based on that if the busting becomes harsher the dealing, instead of decreasing, would become more and more aggressive to keep on existing. At the same time the country can be titled a “no-drugs state” avoiding much controversy, or not.
I’m far from knowing much about the drug-dealing in this town or anywhere else. I’ve never read a single criminal novel. The point is: in despite of knowing that human nature stands for “not being perfect”, sometimes one may need a confirmation of that, maybe to not stand out as the rotten part, to know that the surroundings are as rotten might help. That wound smiled, that wound shone in my eyes and so I sucked it as hard as I could… I didn’t buy the hash but I got my trip anyways.
Stockholm, Sweden
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så kul luigi!