The mossy ground imagery captures something essential about how oppressive functionality can feel. Swedish efficiency and American hyperindividualism are both exhausting in opposite ways - one demands you disappear into collective order, the other that you constantly perform uniqueness. Your description of those hospital-smelling forests and the basement laundry bureaucracies designed by Eichmann gets at why "everything works" can be its own kind of horror vacuii.
Thanks wonderffully writen and quite true on both Sweden and the hyperindivudalism in the US. My own take is in the winter you have to be south of the Alps best near the European bathtub.
The mossy ground imagery captures something essential about how oppressive functionality can feel. Swedish efficiency and American hyperindividualism are both exhausting in opposite ways - one demands you disappear into collective order, the other that you constantly perform uniqueness. Your description of those hospital-smelling forests and the basement laundry bureaucracies designed by Eichmann gets at why "everything works" can be its own kind of horror vacuii.
Thanks wonderffully writen and quite true on both Sweden and the hyperindivudalism in the US. My own take is in the winter you have to be south of the Alps best near the European bathtub.
Amazing writing as always. Puts me right there. Bravo.
I'm immobile but I'm fantasizing about the Southern bar "The Fog" and how pleasing to know it was there.
As always, a fascinating painting of the contrasting psyche of two nationalities, and of the peculiar atmosphere of Sweden. Beautiful.
Thank you for the kind words
Love refugees is nice. That’s me.