“If I could find the proper words to make sense of history and be on the right side, I’d assemble them in a neat package, use them as bricks to build a structure in which to sit and liv”
By Dean Kerrison
An APWT Publication
If I could find the proper words to make sense of history and be on the right side, I’d assemble them in a neat package, use them as bricks to build a structure in which to sit and live, because that’s what we do, build armies, empires and arguments, in essays and on Facebook and Twitter threads, crushing the enemy with swords and guns and ad hominem rhetoric, then instead of following Ghenghis Khan’s horse to chew Eurasia, or swallow the saltwater splashing off Captain Cook’s ship, I’d wake up in Australia because that’s home even if it doesn’t feel like it or that the island was once someone else’s, opening Instagram and following an influencer living their best, perfect life in Bali or Thailand saying you could do that too in five easy steps because don’t you deserve the life you wanna live even at others’ expense? So I rent a villa while a whole family crams into a small room down the road, and maybe the injection of tourist money might offset the gentrification, but either way those locals sure ain’t leaving if they want to, but I could, again, so on the plane I watch the Korean film Parasite thinking if this system we’ve got ever changes it’ll end up in blood for everyone, again, as history always shows, but the Middle Kingdom is a different beast, I’m a ‘white monkey’ who must be outgoing and excited and ready to perform my special tricks because Chinese parents pay a lot of money for their kids to learn English, then at night I go for dinner in the Tibetan quarter, and sitting on a ledge on the street I’ll be approached by a man whose darker complexion suggests he’s from Tibet, wanting a photo with me and his little daughter, but I won’t have to play a character, this is genuine, in the city with the largest amount of his people outside of his homeland, but my ancestors didn’t cause that, despite invading his native soil over a hundred years ago, not my fault, I’d just be a dumb Australian far from home getting looked down on by a Chinese businessman stepping out of a Bentley, skipping to the front of a fine dining queue next-door to the family-operated restaurant I’ll soon meet other foreigners at, and when he turns back to me it’ll remind me of a night not long before, outside a club where I’d been talking to a local woman dressed to impress, and a Chinese guy walking past with his probably girlfriend, death-staring me, eyes saying stay away from Chinese girls, you’ve all taken enough, but I wouldn’t have realised that talking to women might amount to imperial conquering and the Third Opium War, but forward now to the Tibetan neighbourhood and the dark pupils of the Bentley dude are more assured, you don’t run the world anymore, your time’s already up, but I can still afford to have wings and fly across the globe, reaching the Caucasus I’ll meet an American who’s come for Peace Corps and stayed for US Aid, and I’ll ask if she’s here to save Georgia, for God knows how else you’re meant to get self-significance if not through altruism-masturbation, towards a country still standing thanks to its own resilience, surviving infinite invasions by the Russians and Turks and Persians and Byzantines and Arabs and of course Ghenghis Khan’s men, and obviously Georgia won’t survive the next chaotic millennium without the warm and fuzzy embrace of American ‘development assistance’, then I’ll wonder who I’ve ever saved, if there’s even one in seven billion, but the number of those damaged far outweighs those salvaged, then Georgians in a bar will see my long flowing mane and healthy facial hair and declare I’m Jesus, and I’ll go along with it because why the hell not, might as well pretend I’m a hero for a moment, until they ask about the bushfires in Australia but I won’t have the faintest clue what everyday Aussies are thinking and fearing and hoping as politicians wonder if only there were people here with tens of thousands of years’ knowledge of fire management on these lands, no, I’ll just be a drunk Jesus lookalike who’s paid for his wine because there’s no miracles in spreading your empire of one.
Dean Kerrison’s work often focuses on the (dis)connection of the outsider in a foreign place. He's previously had a playscript, fiction, nonfiction and poetry published in TEXT Journal, Meniscus, The Bangalore Review, The Lit Quarterly, Allegory Ridge, among various others. He’s working on his first novel as part of a PhD at Griffith University.
Banner image is by Jacob Owens and is downloaded from Unsplash.com