And now for a slightly frivolous ramble…
Before my trip to the States, Paul-my-love and I took a trip to Paris, which was lovely. I always get slightly nervous when travelling to places I've wanted to visit for a long time; there's always a chance that they will tragically fail to measure up to my idea of them. This was not the case with Paris however – the entire experience was fantastic (apart from the confiscation of my coffee at Eurostar check-in) and, as we trained it back to London under cloudy skies, sharing a table for four with an English businessman obliviously occupying my window seat and inhaling and exhaling somewhat maniacally, a new, if slightly silly, idea occurred to me. Perhaps life is just better on continents. As soon as the idea took root, examples of island-oddities flooded my brain:
- Prison islands: Elba, Alcatraz, Riker's Island, Guantanamo Bay, Australia (initially anyway)
- Island of Jersey: home of recently discovered murders
- Block island: sole preserve of 16th century English (this being an interesting, not messed up, oddity)
- Three Mile Island: home of a nuclear power plant located near my parents' house which nearly suffered a meltdown in the 1970s
- The British Isles: 2 millennia of political and religious upheaval
- The Hawaiian island of Molokai, which began as a leper colony
- Iceland, Antigua, Manhattan: financial crisis much?
- An unnamed barrier island off the coast of Topsail, NC; essentially a strip of beach on which some adventurous families constructed elaborate beach houses, only to have them destroyed by a storm shortly thereafter
Literature and lyrics further support the idea:
- "A rock feels no pain and an island never cries." – Paul Simon, who, incidentally, spent significant time recording and performing in the UK with Art Garfunkel in the 1960s.
- "Island life is living from a cup of broken dreams." – A contemporary assessment from English singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn (whose album is beautiful, by the way).
- "No man is an island, entire of himself." – A bit obvious, but there's no quarrelling with John Donne.
This is too much evidence to dismiss as merely the ramblings of a train-rattled mind. The reoccurring theme throughout all of this seems to be that islands are exclusive places; they seem to breed insularity. Look at Britain's skeptical attitude towards Europe for much of its history. There's something about sharing a common land mass that forces an element of teamwork and perhaps, because ingress and egress has historically been easier, a higher level of tolerance. It's very difficult to seal off the outside world on a continent: witness the Berlin wall as an attempt. With an island, there's no need for barbed wire and sentries; the sea does it for you. Are Continentals and Islanders destined to be at odds? Can we ever live happily on each other's turf? Could this theory explain my tumultuous relationship with the UK?
Of course what it doesn't explain is Paul, an islander happily at home in continental surrounds, particularly those containing mountains.
But then, this post makes no claim to authenticity or accuracy and was only ever a frivolous ramble.
