Reading Day 3
Citation - Constructing citations on the streets of AjaccioXK #fiction, #ajaccio, #wordgames, #exoticism, #travels
I don’t know how Ajaccio became this thing for us, but it did. The day before our arrival we constantly talked about it. Together we fantasized over seeing its silhouette for the first time, and how it would feel visiting Napoleon’s birthplace. It started as a joke, and maybe it kept on being a joke all the time, but it felt more and more as something relating to something else. Because in the midst of all the jokes, such as when the prince with a twinkle in his eyes laughed ‘I’m going to Ajaccio to find inspirations on how to make the best of the Hashemite kingdom’, truly beautiful things were said, such as by Muhammed: ‘Why are we going to Ajaccio? To find the roots of our longing, to find a bed for our dreams and find peace in all our desires, that’s why we’re going to Ajaccio, to Ajaccio, Ajaccio.’ The prince was very fond of Eritrean coffee and the Eritrean coffee ceremony. He said he loved the spiciness, and that popcorn really works unsurprisingly well with coffee. Every evening we joined the prince in his beloved coffee ceremony, this was one of the core routines of the yacht, and the coffee turned quite often into something more Irish. This particular evening before we arrived in Ajaccio, when we all gathered at the deck, we started to play an association game: A children’s game, in which one person says one thing and the other says something associated with it and the third one says something associated with that, and so it goes on in an endless chain of associations. We decided to add a rule this evening before Ajaccio: Each association had to contain the name Ajaccio, preferably in the form ‘I’m (or We’re) going to Ajaccio to … or Ajaccio is …’ For instance: ‘Ajaccio, Ajaccio why have you abandoned me?’ (referring to the crucified Christ), ‘If Ajaccio can’t come to Napoleon then Napoleon has to come to Ajaccio?’ (referring to the chiasm about Muhammed and the mountain), or ‘He said he’s going back to find a simpler place and time, on the midnight train to Ajaccio’ (referring to the famous song by Gladys Knight and the Pips). After a while, the quotations we knew by heart started to become fewer and fewer, and more and more we started to refer to song lyrics and popular culture, which generally seems to get stuck in our memory easier than other things. We also started to mix these references more and more with our own ideas, words, and feelings; sort of quoting ourselves. And sometimes after something beautiful had been said, such as ‘I’ll find rest, where I breathe, I’ll find peace, where my heart beats, in Ajaccio, Ajaccio…’ someone would ask – ‘That’s lovely, who said that?’, whereby the one who said it would burst into a smile and say – ‘Oh, I just made that up.’
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