I’m looking at 3 questions during my residency at Fabrica about borders. You don’t have to take them literally – for instance you can interpret the word ‘visit’ widely, not just to mean visiting this site or the gallery. Please respond freely to the questions in the comment box below. (To leave a comment wordpress will ask for your email address as a spam precaution, if you have previously signed up for a blog wordpress recognises this and will ask you to login – if you have any trouble or do not want to use that email please log in using a pseudo email address.)
Where do you come from?
What’s the purpose of your visit?
Do you have anything to declare?
unquietborder 
Where do you come from? – The past
What’s the purpose of your visit? – I’m en route to the future
Do you have anything to declare? – No but the question, as always, makes me feel vaguely guilty
Where do you come from: this morning I come from the night
What’s the purpose of your visit: a good question, purpose has not been revealed
Do you have anything to declare: name, eye colour, height, a head full of songs
Where do you come from? I was born in Cyprus but I have never been back
What’s the purpose of your visit? I am still not sure of my purpose, I just get things done until I know better
Do you have anything to declare? I am aware that if I lived in another country or another time I may not be free to live my life as I do.
Where do you come from? convention
What is the purpose of your visit? to be myself
Do you have anything to declare? I’m very comfortable!
Where do you come from – My heritage is only half known, an ongoing puzzle
What is the purpose of your visit – to be a loving person
Do you have anything to declare – A mountain of childhood baggage
Where do you come from? Brighton. The Brighton of the past and the Brighton of the present.
What is the purpose of your visit? There is no purpose. That’s what makes the visit such a challenge.
Do you have anything to declare? Far more than I ever will.
Where do I come from ? A conventional white english middle class upbringing (public school and Oxbridge) which didn’t quite work.
What is the purpose of my visit ? This still seems to be a work in progress: this morning it was to get a couple of packs of Prozac from the doctor.
Do you have anything to declare ? Love for Susanne and our children and an unpleasantly cynical view of the human race.
Where do you come from? I heard Kinetica Bloco last night at QE Hall. A blast of brilliantly arranged drums and brass and steel drum with a theme of London classics, one of which was Lord Kitchener’s ‘London Is the place for Me’ another Ralph McTell’s ‘Streets of London’. Made me proud to say I come from London!
What’s the purpose of your visit? I’m replying to a Postcard that was once sent to me from Poland, a long time ago.
Do you have anything to declare? I’d like to declare – that anything is possible if we all just decide to do something all together.
Video games are good for kids as well as long as those games that are very edtaiuconal. It is important also that as a mother we just let our kids play video games during relaxing time.Azslyn Cole recently posted..
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I think that FriendFeed would be a better complement if you could filter out feeds that you get from other channels. For example, if I follow Alexander on Twitter, I don’t want to see his Tweets in his FriendFeed. It is just duplication for me. I would want to see everything else though.
I come from Hockneys East Riding but I don’t recall it ever looking that beautiful when I lived there. I left it in a flurry of new beginnings without so much as a second glance and I feel regret at my carelessness.
Every time I think ‘ah, that’s what I am here for’ it turns out, it wasn’t. I am still trying to find out. It leads to adventures but is confusing all at the same time.
Declare is a great word isn’t it – grand and bold… how to do it justice? I find myself being timid in its presence…
I come through a darkening tunnel, leaving behind those without wheels, without the means to pay a toll; the Kentish Men, the Men of Kent.
The border dividing us from Essex going underneath the great river.
I come to see where Roman soldiers built Othona.
To read aloud a poet’s words by candelight in the 6th Century chapel of Saint Cedd;
and outside by the sea wall with the sea’s wailing.
I declare there are three savages in the boot.
I declare collusion in the false pretences that the vast estuary of the Blackwater
bears much, if any, resemblance to Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
I declare I love the Third Quartet.
gerryco
I love this.
You write so honltsey about this. Thanks for sharing!
Where do you come from? Over the Severn and keep straight on till you come to a bay at the edge of the world.
What’s the purpose of your visit? To find a better life.
Do you have anything to declare? Mostly I feel I belong here. My links with there grow ever more tenuous.
Skąd pochodzisz?
Z Europy Wschodniej, Dolnego Sląska – “Ziem Odzyskanych”. Z miejsca zaludnionego przez ludzi łamanych przez historię, a jednak ciągle walczących o lepsze. Lepsze jutro, lepsze Ty, lepsze ja. Pochodzę z rodziny, w której kobiety umiały w imię tego lepszego zostawić wszystko. Pochodzę także z rodziny na wskros robotniczej, o czym, mimo swojego wykształcenia, nie zapominam.
Jaki jest cel mojej wizyty? Ciągle ten sam – przekraczanie swoich granic: społecznych, osobowsci, biologii.
Co mam cos do oclenia? Cos na sumieniu? Cos do deklaracji? Mam walizkę pytań i wątpliwosci.
Where do I come from? The earth, stars ans sky.
Where am I going? Towards my full potential, ever-growing towards the sun,
What do I have to declare? I declare everything. I’m wide open, nothing to hide.
I come from inside
The purpose of my visit is to connect
All I have to declare is what I have mined in my mind
I come from a amazing roller-coaster ride
To explore and see and experience new things
Yes, are you interested?
Yes!
Where do I come from? I come from some beautiful place in the Universe.
What’s the purpose of my visit? To connect and be touched by life.
What do I have to declare? Is that this question frightens me and makes me contract inside.
I come from the crowd of women standing behind each of us, gossiping about work, the boss, neighbours, illness, exhaustion and whether you can glue a handle back onto a jug. Sometimes I forget them, but not for long.
My purpose is to write, grow vegetables, earn enough to survive, have friends, listen to my children and my mother. Sometimes I think it should be more complicated, more ambitious so I remind myself why I gave up that job years ago, with nothing to go to.
Why is that third question so nerve-wracking? Is it associated with authority and injustice? I declare green – raspberry shoots on old wood, the first beech leaves hovering in a copse. Green in my rucksack, green on my shoes. It’s hard to know what else to declare – in a CV, an interview, to a stranger. Perhaps the most important is how I might declare it….admitting I know so little, I’ve done so little. Rather than wanting to conquer.
a) I come from a place of not quite belonging.
b) To find a gap in the perimeter fences.
c). No. I am travelling light.
‘boken [103]The thing is that WI teachers generally understand and accept the cuts in pensions and healthcare. What they are protesting is the neutering of the collective bargaining rigges.Rtharding the “stream of cash” – it moved from my non-existent pension plan to the bottom line of my employer, as well as to the Chinese government. I’d actually appreciate it being reverted.
Where do you come from? sounds
What’s the purpose of your visit? words
Do you have anything to declare? language
Por muito que nos esaemneprros, por muito que digamos, por muito que nos indignamos, etc., só conseguiremos ser livres e autónomos quando sairmos da UE, até lá, será Bruxelas a ditar o nosso destino.
Where do you come from? My mother and her three strong sisters; my father and his evasions. My husband and his brown eyes. My children and their journeys without maps.
What’s the purpose of your visit? To sing even if I don’t know the words.
Do you have anything to declare? When I walk by the sea I I understand why sonnets may not be enough.
Where do you come from? After I came round, my memory of what came before was wiped clean. Anything I venture to suggest would be idle supposition. I am aware that I must be lost in whatever this place is.
What’s the purpose of your visit? This question causes me great anxiety. Kurt Vonnegut famously said: “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.” I like that, but my feeling is that it may be more troubling and terrible than that. Sometimes I’ve considered I may be wired up as some sort of exaltation machine. To be honest, my main purpose at present is to find the way out.
Do you have anything to declare? I try not to. But some things leak out inadvertantly.
this exhalation machine idea is really scary…
Exaltation machine, even. It is scary, yes.
Where do you come from? Near here via far away and back again. It has made feel very grounded and attached to my current home because I know what I miss when I’m away.
What’s the purpose of your visit? I don’t know!
Do you have anything to declare? I’m rarely at a lose for something to declare. Always with passion, always with certainty but always different.
Where do you come from?
Hamburg, the world, my mum´s womb, out of bed, from a long journey
What’s the purpose of your visit?
Breathing sea air, meeting other travelers, exploring, making someone happy…
Do you have anything to declare?
A lot of feelings and some imprints on my mind, some good ones and some bad ones.
I come from a land of make believe and wish to tell a story. At this time however i have nothing to say. Be patient.
There is no rush, except the sound of water over stones on the shore.
Where do you come from? I come from the sun and the sea!
What’s the purpose of your visit? The purpose of my visit is to go beyond my personal limits and live my life’s potential.
Do you have anything to declare? my life
I come from heaven, the stars, and the most beautiful line of loving ancestors that anyone could imagine.
The purpose of my visit is to love well and change the face of art forever.
I have to declare that ultimately, truth and love are all that matter.
I come from Italy
I came for love
I have love to declare, and an added longing for my land. The eternal struggle between the place I live and the place I am from, the call of a strong country, like a siren call, which binds me to it
I come from somewhere deep and mysterious where the spirit is free and hearts are joyful, where learning and knowledge are given freely and freedom brings beautiful creativity and depth ….. that place where I am known and unknown, loved, held and fully acceptable not judged…… I got a little battered in this current life, but the learning and shaping will bring a wise and sensual vessel to be of great worth here and wherever I go next……
My purpose is that those who I encounter and who encounter me are richer and more sure of their worth and value through our meeting.
Don’t assume all you see is all I am….. there is so much more
Apocalypse Now is a great film. Another movie that bears rewatching is “Paths of Glory”, Ku#2&ckib8r17;s WWI epic. While the general view is that it is an anti-war film, in reality, it is an anti-democracy movie. The reason the French launch their suicidal attack on the Germans is because the military is pressured by newspapers and politicians, who were in turn pressured by ‘The People.’
Where do you come from? My zygote
What’s the purpose of your visit? Physiology
Do you have anything to declare? A hundred trillion cells (that’s 100,000,000,000,000 cells, approx, in my body – and yours)
Here. I come from here. I went away and now I’m back.
Purpose is a bipolar friend.
I loved her but I had to give her up.
Yes, I have a great deal to say.
I like to disagree.
I like to evoke.
I declare my heritage as a bard.
I come from a sea of memories, which sometimes crashes into a sea of secrets, or the other way round, and sometimes they co-exist quietly.
The purpose of my visit is partly quite ordinary – stepping over borders here & there, sitting on fences, walking to & from the same places without looking where I’m going…
And partly it’s extraordinary – my legs sometimes spreadeagled across Poland & England, a bit of France & Belgium too, and now across Germany, my mind searing through catholic heterosexual dogma reaching into anti-war, lesbian pools of thought.
I declare that the secrets I’ve inherited have taken me to a surprising place, beyond tragedy, despite bogs of depression.
Half your age plus 7 is an inisneettrg rule… I rather like it.It really isn’t a good thing for child molestation though. No wonder all my cousins were after me…
Where do you come from? Up North, just off the M62, The Moors. I come
from an in between place – somewhere between one place and another.
What’s the purpose of your visit? I came here to go to college in 1984
and never felt the need to leave.
Do you have anything to declare? I love Brighton but I’m still
fascinated by the bits in between.
Where do I come from? Who knows? I’m tempted to say ‘seafoam and stardust’ but that would be sooooo OTT
What’s the purpose of your visit? I’ll let you know when I’ve worked it out. No, seriously though, it’s to learn about love.
Have you anything to declare? Loads of baggage, you know how it is.
I like OTT
Where do you come from? I come from bringing the cows in every other evening and teaching the calves to drink milk from a bucket.
What’s the purpose of your visit? To look at the nape of her neck
Have you anything to declare? The nape of her neck is astonishingly beautiful
Aw! these answers are taking my breath away.
Where do you come from: Viscous near-boundlessness, viscous near-boundedness.
What’s the purpose of your visit. No purpose. I have no function. You have no function. It is wonderful.
Have you anything to declare. Lust and kindness.
Where do I come from? Within.
Purpose of your visit – to explore the outer world.
Have you anything to declare. Confusion, learning, still searching.
Hi dear dear Maria,
I come from a mother who doesn’t know her worth in the city that care forgot.
My purpose is to locate myself in the family of things and maintain that garden.
I declare my uncertainty about my purpose.
Where do I come from?
I come from a single heartbeat on a tiny island. I come from 17 inches of premature human that fought and gambled against the odds to use my lungs. I come from a lifetime of salt, of boats, of sea and simple people.
What is the purpose of my visit?
To escape. I am always running away… unlike that premature baby, I didn’t fight. I crossed the sea upon a boat and left the salt behind for city.
Do I have anything to declare?
A child of the sea has much turmoil, a constant inner squall…although luckily water is always moving and flowing away. There is always an escape when you are controlled by the tide.
I have to wonder, though, if it was actually braver to leave it all behind. I think of the differences of my homeland and that tiny baby, the battles I have since won alone every single day in a new, unchartered concrete ocean. I have forged my own paths here, like a river grinding down a mountain.
But still, I’m scared of going back. The borders are too high, too wide. I have become an adult who is used to the unknown. I’m not willing to be trapped within a heartbeat upon a tiny island again.
Alnitzaam-iaformaakon found, problem solved, thanks!
Reply before my mind has time to process alternative answers …. reply with the immediacy of thoughts arriving, gathering, linking before I can think again…..
Where do I come from?:
from out there and in here, from today and yesterday; from my memories of places and people, here and not here; from my thoughts, that drift and meander through the landscape of my mind connecting ideas, stories, words, observations, experiences and conversations; from continuing to remember to reach out, from experiencing loss and abandonment as well as shared love and much warmth.
Purpose of my visit:
to think and swim, read, walk and talk, create and absorb, share and care, and to look ….really look…..and appreciate. .
Do I have anything to declare:
I have stepped across the border of hesitation. .
i admire your boldness in going for it & not getting lost in the alternative answers
I feel like you could probably teach a class on how to make a great blog. This is facasttin! I have to say, what really got me was your design. You certainly know how to make your blog more than just a rant about an issue. Youve made it possible for people to connect. Good for you, because not that many people know what theyre doing.
Where do I come from? A part of south London that’s now associated only with a racist murder. But for me it was the 160 bus, arcades, rugby club discos, ryvitas and photobooths.
What’s the purpose of your visit? To look, listen and lay down more layers which I hope will feed me in old age.
Do I have anything to declare? I’d rather let someone else do that while I try to make witty comments in the background.
There is no foreground without a background..
Super. Pai mai intai astept si eu vreo luna, sa rezolve bug-urile care or sa apara, inevitabil:), si apoi o sa-l folosesc pentru un nou prte0co̷i; acu tre sa caut o tema SEO friendly gratuita eventual
Where do I come from: The 70s, 80s really, from Leeds, from here to there.
What’s the purpose of your visit? To time travel to the future
Do I have anything to declare? I can’t time travel but that hasn’t stopped me trying.
never give up trying
Where do you come from? — A semi-detached past.
What’s the purpose of your visit? — To prolong the pleasure of feeling as if I’ve just arrived for as long as possible.
Do you have anything to declare? — I am one of those who saunter through the Green Zone with the vague premonition that this time they’ll find something on me.
I’m sure you will be much too quick for them!
Where do you come from? From Ostia Lido, a seaside quarter of Rome.
What’s the purpose of your visit? Still finding out the reason of my visit.
Do you have anything to declare?I am who I was and I don’t know who I’ll be
me neither!
I come from the earth and trees, not far from the estuary of mud flats and solitary birds
my purpose was to explore other places and many people, to move away, to move on
i declare nothing on demand, everything if I choose
Where do you come from? Two mismatched people, big skies and hot summers.
What’s the purpose of your visit? To carve a jack-knife path between my source and the sea, and then wear it smooth with footsteps.
Do you have anything to declare? Anxiety, insomnia, gratitude, and solidarity with Palestine!
Naomi is too modest to say but it may interest other readers of this page to know she is also currently keeping a fascinating ship’s log (blog) of her own as she crosses borders from Kurdistan to Israel-Palestine, check out: http://www.naomifoyle.com
Where do you come from?
An island, a dusty city and a rainy one
What’s the purpose of your visit?
Leisure, as I tell them at the airport.
Do you have anything to declare?
A tendency to greet birds verbally
I hope the birds answer. I’m sure they do in fact.
I come from fear.
I am here to love.
I declare myself to be free.
Succinctly put, ukulelly! Right on the money!
Where do you come from?
What’s the purpose of your visit?
Do you have anything to declare?
I come from beyond the further river, the one whose many beds are twisted like a plait, from the vast green of birdsong and frogsong, where a thousand thousand geese can rest in a gangling stopover, from miles of boardwalk over swampy peat between restless, birdless, dangerous reeds. I come running across the boards, pulling on the ropes of tiny ferries, thumping up the wooden steps of lookout towers. Now I come, prosaically, by coach.
I declare no kitties, no (american) dream dog. But here are nests and nests and nests of storks still sitting, warming, waiting. Here are tomatoes to plant in the sliver of sunshine by the fence, little cups of coffee bright with lemon peel to drink, cleaning and painting, sorting and sorting, all waiting to be done.
The visit is still in the future.
Wow! I could hear those geese in a rush of air!
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Some people couldn’t access the blog for technical reasons. Here are their answers.
From Jouni Inkala in Finland
I come from the very first Sea (just like all life on Earth)
to meet my lovely friend Maria.
I have got my thoughts, my breathing and my heart which is beating.
Luckily nobody has to declare them yet.
From Maggie Sawkins in Southsea
I come from a place of uncertainty. I am crossing a border into a place that has yet to find its name. I declare that when I think of what is being carried I imagine it soulless like a stone. This is my defence. A stone cannot haunt your dreams.
Where do you come from?
I do not know, it may be too precious to know
What’s the purpose of your visit?
I do not know, or I may not act as myself
Do you have anything to declare?
Only that I have crossed borders and have been stripped bare. I am only who I am, looking for my country.
Where do you come from? Canada
What’s the purpose of your visit? To live
Do you have anything to declare? Life is lived best when thinking positively
Definitely! Yes.
Where do you come from?
Whenever I feel like a coherent answer presents its self, my opinion changes.
What’s the purpose of your visit?
To struggle to find answers in a practice which prospects are as transient as my previous answer.
Do you have anything to declare?
Never leave anything unsaid
I agree though Etel Adnan says:
“Poetry reaches the unsaid and leaves it unsaid.”
(But I think she means unsaid in a different way perhaps.)
I come from… playing in a puddle by the back gate where raindrops make bubbles… and from my ancestors (Flitcham, Great Crosby, Limerick, Thessaloniki, Mytilene, Constantinople, Venelles………
The purpose of my visit: to bear witness to what has been and what is; to love in great measure; to pass on what I have learnt…
I declare… that it is enough to be: “Behold the lilies of the fields…”
Good to remember that as we dash (sic, see blog 5!) around, trying to ‘do’ all the time!
Where do I come from? Romania…or everywhere…
The purpose of my visit? A special invitation from the blog’s author…or I’m still trying/hoping to find out, someday…experimenting, learning or just plainly enjoying this journey…
Do I have anything to declare? Should I?…or it’s a beautiful, beautiful day…
Thank you Silvia in Romania! it’s a beautiful day here too!
Another answer from Kate Foley in Holland at http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/katefoleypage.html
Where do I come from? I like Maria’s crustacean analogy – identity as accretion. Back when I was in my 60’s I discovered I had a mother alive and kicking in San Francisco – but lacking a literal identity before that, over a life-time, I’ve accreted one. I tend to trust those little laid down grains of my own experience, which of course include fossil mistakes and missed-opportunities, as well as small, marine shell snippets of pride and accomplishment, more than I do the skinny paper dossier that contains the official record of my ‘identity’. Although as one born under the sign of the crab I carry my house on my back, I’ve learned to share it, literally with a loving woman and as a poet with a wider world.
Purpose? Visit? I thought I was a resident. Do I have to go back? Where? More to the point, when? In those past their x3 score years and 10, this question may cause an attack of what, if you were posh, you might call ontological anxiety! Back to the crab image. I wasn’t sent with a purpose but I hope I’m accreting one, slowly. I think, so far as I can see round the cantilever of my shell, it is about love and poetry.
Anything to declare? Depends who’s asking! The short answer is love and poetry. The long – well, you can pull those two out like a concertina to include …you name it.
Where do I come from? I like Maria’s crustacean analogy – identity as accretion. Back when I was in my 60’s I discovered I had a mother alive and kicking in San Francisco – but lacking a literal identity before that, over a life-time, I’ve accreted one. I tend to trust those little laid down grains of my own experience, which of course include fossil mistakes and missed-opportunities, as well as small, marine shell snippets of pride and accomplishment, more than I do the skinny paper dossier that contains the official record of my ‘identity’. Although as one born under the sign of the crab I carry my house on my back, I’ve learned to share it, literally with a loving woman and as a poet with a wider world.
Purpose? Visit? I thought I was a resident. Do I have to go back? Where? More to the point, when? In those past their x3 score years and 10, this question may cause an attack of what, if you were posh, you might call ontological anxiety! Back to the crab image. I wasn’t sent with a purpose but I hope I’m accreting one, slowly. I think, so far as I can see round the cantilever of my shell, it is about love and poetry.
Anything to declare? Depends who’s asking! The short answer is love and poetry. The long – well, you can pull those two out like a concertina to include …you name it.
i
Love the marine shell snippets of pride!
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