I was biking home from visiting my father the evening before tonight. It was a nice evening, but for reasons I cannot explain the world seemed ominous.
Maybe something. I have no idea. My mother and two siblings are returning from 3 years in Sri Lanka on the 17th. I lived with them for six months there.
Saw a lot more hate and ignorance than my young mind was quite ready for, I guess. I worry for them, now that the conflict is peaking again. It all seems so unreal when you think back on it, my time there. I remember travelling the countryside with my then girlfriend, by bus. One morning my mother called in hysterics - the bus in the neighbouring village had been blown up. I remember the wake of Arthur C. Clarke. A write-up for another day. The view from Adam's Peak, when the clouds stretch on below you, like some endless sea, until the sun rises and the sea dissipates, and everything is just green for so far.
I have no idea how people can have that much violence in them, living in a place where Mother Nature seems to have dropped the big jar of Beauty into the dough, and not even bothered to fish it out again.
This is just a train of thought, forgive the incoherence.
There's a gang war going on where I live. I live in what is apparently now, the truly dangerous part of the city. Some guy was shot to death 150 meters from my street door last week. I hear travelling agencies are telling tourists to stay away from my neigbourhood.
Might be some of you Americans are used to this stuff - I am not. Denmark isn't like this. Except now it is. I joke to friends that maybe it will make me seem a little tougher by affiliation, living in the bad part of town, but really it just freaks me out. Violence, that is.
I was biking home and some graffiti on a wall caught my attention. On top of all the gang-initials and hip-hop related code that I can't decipher, with great red letters someone had written:
"Ka du ik godt prøve at redde verden?"
It's misspelled, or grossly abbreviated, and it is in Danish. Seemed so urgent. Desperate. It's hard to explain. It translates to:
"Won't you please try to save the world?"
I don't know why but it resonated with me. It seems like the world needs some saving lately. I've been feeling strange ever since. Called a friend to tell him I love him. Tried to call my Mom. I think it might be night in Sri Lanka. Or maybe early morning.