Ist heute schon morgen?

Finding Ivan Krastev’s latest book in the mail had me thinking again about the times we are living in. What he calls “stay-at-home nationalism” has somehow made our memories even more valuable, how we can travel back in time to the coast in Croatia or New Jersey even as those lands remain inaccessible to an extent that not even the most fervent isolationist would have dreamt of.

When flying back to Umeå on Sunday night, I could somehow tell that it would be my last flight for a long time. While I still have not cancelled my tickets to Italy in December, it seems increasingly unlikely that the trip will happen as new curfews and lockdowns are being announced throughout the continent. Even as the prospects for a vaccine look brighter by the day, we are probably in for a long and dark winter.