Tim Rich is a talented writer and always has a poignant word to get you thinking. This post on his blog, 66,000milesperhour resonates with the concept of No Fixed Abode. It's an excerpt about the notion of the Fourth World, from the author Jan Morris's Trieste, and the Meaning of Nowhere a city of perpetual wanderers that has changed hands and changed countries countless time. Trieste is a place that is at home everywhere and yet nowhere. Don't take my word for it, read Tim's full post.
From Trieste, by Jan Morris (Faber & Faber)
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There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own.
They are the lordly ones! They come in all colours.
They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists.
They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor.
They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists.
They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding.
When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically.
They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean.
They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion, or political correctness.
They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it.
It is the nation of nowhere.
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