It’s a day out for me from my usual routine. Where I go, what I do, whom I meet; these things are all thrown into the air, today, as I do the thing that Situationism calls for: wander. Drift, so to speak. Going where the going takes you. Like this:
I learned some new vocabulary words yesterday: abstract, in Vietnamese. I met someone who understands what that is and that that is a thing, and she told me the word. In these ways, out and about, I pick up on things. Like where certain roads end and others begin. I start, stop, start stop, and at variegated and particular moments, pause for a while like I’m doing now, today at the cafe where the people are nice to their customers because, as I just learned, they are paid to be.
I don’t know how I feel about this. I’m having a nice conversation up until that point. ‘It’s my job.’ Okay, thanks, but it’s emotional labor and I don’t want to hold you to that. So I’ll cut it short and write a blog post about this place I’m on. It’s a new place. A place I don’t know. That’s exciting, when you’re on the road, here in Vietnam, a home away from home (Cambodia), away from home (??). The most accurate picture of home I guess for me, would be:
Drift and the Nomad was a conversation party that I had once in Copenhagen with two guys who were like, Um. Thanks but. I don’t understand this. What is the point of it?
‘Drifting doesn’t have a point, that is the point.’
‘So you came here from Cambodia?’ (them).
‘Yes.’
‘To do what?’
‘Drift.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That’s okay. You don’t have to.’
[Curtain]