A. Colin Wright

Who Am I? Who Are You?

2011-08-15T13:40:32-04:00

Do you get tired of reading authors' long biographies on book jackets? Or are you simply not interested in reading endlessly of others' accomplishments? When it comes down to it, wouldn't you rather read about your own?

All of us want to be the centre of attention, which is particularly true of performers and other celebrities, as an actor friend of mine said recently. But here I'll resist the temptation of writing about myself -- you'll learn enough about me in further articles I plan to write anyway. Instead, I'll invite you to tell me, mentally at least, about you.

Which isn't necessarily easy. We all play different roles according to the situations in which we find ourselves. Our personalities are hopelessly split, which I've tried to illustrate in the photograph accompanying this article. You can probably figure out a few things from it about myself, but can you provide a similar photo for yourself?

Of course, you've probably at some time had to write a curriculum vitae (my, doesn't that sound grand!) for job applications, listing such things as career accomplishments, academic degrees or other awards, and your general qualifications and experience for the job in question. Or you might be applying for a grant or some other kind of cash award: you'll have noticed that CVs differ according to their purpose. For most, your age and native language (and perhaps others too) are important. You may have to list any publications, your place of residence, or even your current family. Most of you should be able to do this relatively easily.

But that isn't quite what I mean. What is it that most defines you? In other words, who are you, really? Can you, in a short space, tell me about your very essence? If you had to do this in one short sentence, what exactly would you say? There are so many possibilities for you to think of. What are you interests, your sports, or hobbies? What do you read, and what are your favourite books, newspapers, etc.? Do you believe in God or a similar force outside yourself -- and is religion important to you at all? If so, which? Are you interested in science, or can at least appreciate a scientific approach to life? How interested are you in politics: are you left wing, right wing, or centrist, or do you even care? How much influence do you think you personally have in your country or in the world? How important for you is the environment? How important is money or the lack of it in your life? Are you an extrovert or introvert, or at times one and at times the other? Have you a sense of humour, and can you apply it to your own shortcomings?

I'll ask in my next article who are your heroes and antiheroes. But would this really help to define you, or would it rather express who you'd like to be? In other words what are your aspirations? Answers to all of these questions can obviously tell you, and me, a large number of facts about yourself. And yet...

Have we by now found your essence? What about your secrets -- those things you're ashamed about and would never admit to others (except, perhaps to a psychologist)? Enjoyment, even, of your own shame and despair, as has been illustrated in the writings of Dostoevsky and Freud? Is your greatest desire for someone to love you, or, coming back to being the centre of attention, are you more interested in having others admire you? What are you addictions? Alcohol? Drugs? Gambling? Sex? Cell phones and computers, online games -- all of which are an important factor for today's youth in particular? Personal secrets, I think, come closest to revealing who you really are. Please think about them.

So in this article I've tried to avoid talking about myself. You'll find more about me in future articles, or if you're too impatient for that (and secretly I hope you are) you can always look me up on the web.

Next time then: Who are your (anti)heroes?

Sardinia: Then and Now

2011-07-26T11:05:46-04:00

When I went to Sardinia in 1962 it wasn't yet a tourist destination, and now I consider myself fortunate to have lived there before the tourists started arriving. I had gone from my native England to the northern city of Sassari to teach English, and Sardinia was special, exotic even. For all my problems and complaints at the time, I still feel I know it better than travelers there today.

It was the restrictive "southern mentality" that most depressed me. I naturally hoped to find a Sard girlfriend, but that turned out to be impossible in a society where women always had to be chaperoned and young couples were unable to go out together unless they were engaged -- and even then they risked having a father or brother standing at their wedding with a shotgun to make sure of it!

In the evenings, when I sometimes went to the movies, the city seemed deserted, for the only women on the street were wives with their husbands. Men, of course, normally went with prostitutes, who had been moved a few years previously into an abandoned monastery -- with cells now serving a different purpose.

Most of southern Italy was similar, but the Sards were proud of being different from "il continente" and the island had an atmosphere of its own. Sard is a language only distantly related to Italian, although it has so many dialects that people from different villages are often forced to speak Italian to be understood.

This was the case in Sassari, where I found a pensione with students studying at the university. Two of them, a brother and sister, came from the infamous "bandit village" of Orgosolo, and they invited me to their home, assuring me that visitors would be quite safe. (In fact an English couple were shot there shortly afterwards: a case of mistaken identity.) Their mother, I discovered, had been murdered as a result of the family vendettas that were endemic in Orgosolo. Once guilty of murder there was no choice for the perpetrator except to become a bandit and take refuge in the "sopramonte," the mountains of the interior.

The area was considered so dangerous that the day I visited with some friends the bus was accompanied by a motorcycle escort of carabinieri, the national police. We went up into the mountains too -- escorted by carabinieri from the local garrison.

All that has changed. While once I complained of the strict sexual mores, I was nevertheless shocked when I returned in 2004 to see young people kissing in public, which would have been unheard of in the 60s. Now that the new ways have become generally accepted, Sardinia has become ordinary: beautiful but no longer unique. Or is this no more on my part than nostalgia for a life that was, frankly, somewhat squalid?

Of the many things that I regret, two stand out. The major entertainment of the day, as elsewhere in Italy, was once the passegiata, when men and women -- chaperoned, of course, or with friends -- would parade up and down before dinner on Sassari's central square, the Piazza d'Italia. I was looking forward to this, for who knows, perhaps I might even meet someone who still knew me? Alas, the passeggiata no longer takes place, although friends (who now have cellphones) arrange to meet in the cafés instead.

I also tried to buy a bottle of Sardinian Silver: the wine made from the local vernaccia grape that I used symbolically for the title of my recent novel. But it too has disappeared, as has its counterpart, Sardinian Gold.

When I returned after an absence of 42 years, I naturally expected changes, but I was astonished by their magnitude. Where once were isolated beaches and empty fields one now finds crowded resorts, marinas with expensive yachts, and a proliferation of cafés and shops. This was particularly striking in Olbia, where a new, larger, town, has arisen alongside the old. There, as elsewhere, a huge new port has been built.

In Porto Torres too, where there used to be a single pier accommodating one small ship arriving once a day, there are large docks and a constant coming and going of car ferries. New freeways make travel easier, but there is a great deal more traffic. Sassari and Cagliari are large, modern cities (albeit still with their old towns), while Orgosolo is a rather ordinary village, known more for its painted murals than its previous atmosphere of fear and suspicion.

My novel Sardinian Silver is a work of fiction, but very much based on my experience of the island in 1962. It is, however, not an autobiography, and the characters I knew then are fictionalized. It gives a picture of a place that no longer exists, but with a quality of its own worth remembering.

The other thing I regret: farmers would often approach people then wanting to sell land, at incredibly cheap prices. Alas, I refused--and lost my one opportunity to make a great deal of money. For extracts from my novel see: http://www.sardiniansilver.com.

Love Travel? Do it at Someone Else's Expense

2011-07-09T18:41:06-04:00

It's easy enough to say get someone else to pay for your travel. But it depends first of all on who you are, starting with your age. Younger people have a number of different ways of getting someone else to pay. But why should anyone pay an older person to go travelling around the world, unless he or she has some special experience that makes it worth sharing with others?

If you are older, no longer having the same energy as when you were young is only the first of your problems. Young or old, it depends above all on who you are, and whether you are interesting as a person. Another question is how you will be travelling, since there are different ways, with advantages and disadvantages to all of them.

If you are in your "working years," the most obvious way is having a job that requires you to travel whereas, if you're retired, you have to rely on your past experience. In either case, it still depends on what kind of job we're talking about. Most of us haven't much of a choice here: it's what we've got!

A few people, of course, have high-profile jobs to start with, a recent example of which is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, now the subject of scandal. Used to travelling first-class, he would stay with his family in exorbitant hotel suites all over the world and own similarly expensive apartments. Fine for him, one might think, but with the disadvantage that he knew little of the real lives of most ordinary people.

Airline crew see a great deal of the world but with little time to explore it. So do those working on cruise ships, at least for places on or near the sea, but largely for tourist destinations where, for as long as the ship is in port, "real life" is crowded out. Or, like myself, you can lead travel groups, but again largely to places visited by tourists, seeing little of everyday life there.

More interesting are the possibilities for living abroad, but it still depends on where. Diplomats and army officers can get stuck in undesirable locations, where they have to work hard and may have little chance to travel. On the other hand, my son and daughter-in-law have been temporarily transferred to Geneva, and are thoroughly enjoying the opportunity for travel in Europe and skiing during the winter. I myself have taken advantage of university sabbaticals, in my native England and the South of France too, where we were free to explore Provence and neighbouring areas for almost a year.

University research itself provides possibilities of attending conferences and travelling to libraries. With my interest in languages, I have often travelled to the former USSR (living in Leningrad for a year as a graduate student) and modern Russia, leading tourist groups there too. I have been several times to East and West Berlin, both before and after the "Wall." I have travelled all over Canada and the States, although always one is limited by the time for the conference itself and the reading in libraries.

I have also taught Elderhostel courses for my university and I am now interested in taking courses in which I can speak my languages and participate in the cultural life of another country, although I would probably have to pay for this myself. Another way of getting involved in the life of the country--although here again you might have to raise the funds to cover your expenses -- is to volunteer your services, particularly if you happen to be a doctor, nurse, or even a veterinarian.

And then of course, if you are young you can take a year off and do odd jobs to support yourself: working, and then travelling between jobs. My older son saw most of New Zealand that way, travelling by bicycle and finally volunteering as crew on a yacht sailing to Tonga.

Similarly, when I was younger I worked during my university vacations in Switzerland as a tour guide in a hotel, and later went to teach English in Sardinia. Both experiences provided the basis for my novel, Sardinian Silver. I combined my knowledge of a tourist hotel with living in a pensione with students who spoke only Italian -- since their regional dialects of Sard were mutually incomprehensible.

Many of these characters went into that novel, combined imaginatively with some of my own experiences. It is not an autobiography, but at that time I certainly experienced something of everyday life on the island, which then was very different. Not having a car wasn't really a disadvantage, since instead a colleague and I tried hitchhiking. It was so unusual that it worked.