Captain Nemo's Still My Hero

Every school ride on our blue bus lets me wander out of its cage. It is a time of adventure! The thirty minute journey from Stove, (my part of Sandwick) to the Knab, (this promontary at the South Mouth of Lerwick Harbour, where the Anderson High School has been standing since 1862) enables us to wake up, day dream or admire the breathtaking coastline from the comfort of wide windows. Whereas such bus is full of life, and by this I refer to the constant teenage joie de vivre, I must confess my iPod friend offers more than music. When I am not meandering around L'Esprit Nomade in print, I delve back into the depth of 20000 Lieues Sous Les Mers (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) straight from this electronic device. Monsieur Verne would definitely smile...

This window of freedom allows my heart to re-connect with the world.

When I don't turn our bus into the Nautilus, I follow the earth in motion: jig of our sea, flight of our gulls, ravens and geese between roadside and horizon; marvel at the rising sun over Mousa Isle - and believe me, it's a real cracker in winter! ...Draw the contour of every hill with my finger inside my head. Of course, and in another world (I am not using "ideal" here very consciously) I would favour walking it all... Yet if I could do this, school days might even shrink further, or I'd need headlight gear to go back home.

How I envy Captain Nemo. 
He's a pirate and role model at the same time! Now imagine if we too could really free ourselves from this artificial world. By artificial, I understand this money-driven world bubble in which we are kept in line... That of bankers, lawyers, politicians; simulacra of "established democracies" in which the very concept called culture has so little space. Interestingly enough, a friend made me aware of the Zeitgeist Mouvement as well as The Venus Project today. Our world is in search of answers. And if Kenneth White's Geopoetics Movement invites us to step outside the motorways of western thinking and walk the shore, hence reconnecting with the "real" world, Peter Joseph and Jacques Fresco both denounce this very artificial world. Furthermore, Fresco is one of those few 21st Century Verne: a futurist, visionary with down-to-earth arguments.
All three well worthy a google...



Oh, by the way, ice still prevails on 60N - the school's shut to pupils tomorrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui4r_QQpUAA&feature=related