Gabriella’s Reviews > A Small Place > Status Update
Gabriella
is on page 19 of 81
“...every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives—most natives in the world—are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go.”
— Jan 18, 2021 07:18AM
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Gabriella’s Previous Updates
Gabriella
is on page 34 of 81
“To the people in a small place, the division of Time into the Past, the Present, and the Future does not exist. An event that occurred one hundred years ago might be as vivid to them as if it were happening at this very moment.”
— Apr 26, 2025 10:49AM
Gabriella
is on page 16 of 81
“But some natives…cannot go anywhere…They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live…so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.”
— Apr 25, 2025 04:24PM
Gabriella
is on page 41 of 81
Finally, she gets my genealogy-loving self together:
"As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors hold sway, no documentation of complex civilizations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you."
— Jan 18, 2021 07:31AM
"As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors hold sway, no documentation of complex civilizations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you."
Gabriella
is on page 41 of 81
I have to quote this whole passage bc Y'ALL:
"Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, *were* capital, like bales of cotton in sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of."
— Jan 18, 2021 07:30AM
"Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, *were* capital, like bales of cotton in sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of."
Gabriella
is on page 41 of 81
“...as you observe the debacle in which I now exist, the utter ruin that I say is my life, perhaps you are remembering you always felt people like me cannot run things...people like me cannot really think in abstractions, people like me cannot be objective, we make everything so personal. You forget your part in the whole set up, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions...and all the laws mysteriously favor you."
— Jan 18, 2021 07:27AM
