Exile and the Foreign Shore
January 20th, 2010
When an exile reaches the foreign shore, it is not an arrival, for only a return to the native shore can be an arrival for the exile, but neither is it a departure, for the departure was accomplished the moment that the exile left the shores of home. The foreign shore, therefore, is neither a coming nor a going. It is an eternal between, a place that is never here and a time that is never now.
We are all exiles in this way, however much we succeed in forgetting it. We are all out of place and out of time. We all inhabit this eternal between, exiles from home, haunting a foreign shore.
2 Responses to “Exile and the Foreign Shore”
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From Word to Word by Jeremy Luke Hill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
January 20th, 2010 at 10:21 am
Um, how do you figure, with the exception that we’re all immigrants.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Curtis,
I do not here intend the idea of exile in literal or physical ways, but as a metaphor for how we are always in exile from ourselves and from each other.