Reading Day 1
Every Commonality is a Wave formXK #fiction, #aristocracy, #persianpoetry, #exoticism, #Paris
Paris / Le Jules Verne I was in Paris to celebrate my grandfather’s 70th birthday. One of my uncles had decided to fly in relatives and family members from close and far, which for most visitors to this very lavish birthday party meant either a convenient flight from Scandinavia, or an exhausting time-zone crossing flight from New England, in North America. The birthday party had become the perfect disguise for a week-long family reunion which would culminate in my uncle renting the whole Le Jules Verne restaurant in the Eiffel tower. I sighed when I heard of my uncle’s plan, I was not at all surprised, rather relieved, because— if you knew my uncle, you would know that it could have been much worse. He might say things such as ‘only the best is best for The best’, while stressing the last of the two definite articles and gesticulating with his open palm, like a conductor over his orchestra. I couldn’t wait, I say this with the most bitter irony, to hear his speech in this Michelin starred restaurant named after a mediocre adventure nove list writing for men, who find refuge imagining that they’re traveling around the globe in 80 days, or going to the moon (aka men who struggles with a midlife crisis). Despair was inevitable. I started to self medicate with tea made of St John’s wort as soon as I heard about my uncle’s plan. My aunt was just as enthusiastic as my uncle, and had started to organize the performative aspect of the dinner; her idea was that each branch of the family would contribute with something: a speech, a song, a collective dance, playing the restaurants piano or a violin or any other instruments of any sort that secretly could be smuggled into the restaurant, so that grandpa would have no opportunity to figure out what was in the making. Grandpa / Rumi Poor dear grandpa, he hated all kinds of public displays of wealth. His mother was the last heiress to the small nobel family of Night and Day [Natt och Dag], and since the Scandinavian laws of nobility only recognized men as legitimate reproducers of a nobel bloodline, the poetic and ancient name of Night and Day saw its last day in her. According to grandpa she hated all kinds of public displays, not only of wealth, but also of affections and opinions; to put it in his own words – she would even make a Victorian priest feel ashamed. He grew up in the compounds of the nordic embassies in Berlin, and one year before he started his studies at Harvard, he received, probably thanks to his fathers contacts, a minor internship position at the Swedish embassy in Teheran. In Iran he fell in love with the poetry of
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