In other words

The Boxers, sculpture by Keith Haring, Berlin, 1987

Ever since I was a child, I’ve belonged only to my words. I don’t have a country, a specific culture. If I didn’t write, if I didn’t work with words, I wouldn’t feel that I’m present on the earth”

Jhumpa Lahiri, In other words

I deeply relate to these words by Lahiri. As a writer, I consider words to be my only home and my only country. Yet I also feel writing to be a realm beyond realms, the only country where all need of a country can become useless and obsolete. Writing can truly be a transnational dimension where such dubious, potentially dangerous concepts as “national boundaries”, “patriotism”, and “fatherland” may be dismantled and replaced by geographical, as well as physical and spiritual, fluidity.