FLASH
Shkruar nga Veton Surroi
The killing of the day in Albania is the routine of a society where the state does not have the monopoly of force; if there is a social contract, then it would be for the state to mind its own business and the groups that have economic strength and the culture of killing to continue with their own business.
About Albania, the news of the murder of the day and Kosovo, the routine news about the Mitrovica Bridge, about the price of the chaise longue in Albania that managed to become top news this summer, the balance between power and economic forces and violence and how the word can help "stretcher"
1.
"Shezlongu" was one of the most popular words in the Albanian language during this summer in Albania, Kosovo and all over social networks; was a global phenomenon of the Albanian language. I have no empirical evidence, but it seems to me that "lounger" (with the sub-variant "lounger") will have been a more popular concept than, for example, in Albania "today a citizen was killed (wounded) with a firearm... ” or “why (can't) the Mitrovica Bridge be opened”... Maybe it was my bias, but the fact that the "loungers" have become more expensive - especially in the South, and this will have caused less people on the beach - than the killing (wounding) of the day in Tirana, Elbasan or any other place in Albania or the message of this embassy and the reaction of this official regarding the right time for the opening of the Mitrovica bridge; right time as a calendar concept, security analysis or right alignment of the stars, those of the horoscope and those of geopolitics.
2.
If the chaise longue is raised on the news about the murder of the day in Albania or the elaboration about the Mitrovica Bridge, maybe that is why it is built on both. To the normal skin of the Albanian citizen, this does not leave the impression of anything extraordinary. Likewise, it is routine to hear about the Mitrovica bridge as a daily problem (after the news about the war in Ukraine and Gaza, it seems as if the most important point on the globe is the Mitrovica bridge) as far as 25-year-old Kosovar youth, born after at the end of the war, they already know what the bridge looks like, even though it is closed, even though it should be opened soon, and the tonnage of the trucks that can cross, how many meters they can cross before they encounter the pedestrian area, and so on , but they don't know why the health and education system can't be better regulated, why more than three quarters of high school students don't understand the text they read?
The killing of the day in Albania is the routine of a society where the state does not have the monopoly of force; if there is a social contract, then it would be for the state to mind its own business and the groups that have economic strength and the culture of killing to continue with their own business.
The Mitrovica Bridge is the routine of a society that lives in an unfinished conflict, and in its inability to end the conflict, it has become the ground with the Euro-Atlantic community. A bridge that over time has frozen and faded its metaphorical (connection) and functional meaning (when the bridge is crossed, the road leads after a few meters to the pedestrian zone) has been erected as a symbol of the inability of a long negotiation process, a disease European politics.
3.
Thus, then it turns out that since the killing of the day is as routine as the Mitrovica Bridge (or something similar, such as car license plates), the deck chair enters the top list of problems. Or the chaise longue. Or the deckchair.
The identified problem was the increase in the price of the sunbed as a real fact and as a metaphor for the revolution that Albania is trying to make from being more or less the beach of Albanians, and in many places mainly Kosovars, to the desired projection of the "Maldives of Europe" ”, not even three hours away from London.
Here, it seems to me that the fundamental problem is no longer the price. The work of the price is dictated by the market and the market is regulated or deregulated to a large extent by the influence or lack of influence of the government. The price of the chaise longue will be as much as the lessor wants and as much as the lessee accepts within the market rules determined by the government. The nature of power was described above, in the balance between the state (the Party) and groups with economic strength and instruments of violence. And the price of the deckchair (and everything else) is, when the effects of global markets are excluded, a product of this balance.
4.
This chaise longue revolution is not the last. Someone had told me a long time ago that the word "chaise lounge" had come from the Chinese manufacturing company with the same name that had brought them to Albania. And, somehow it may sound so, Chinese, but the evolutionary (and revolutionary) history of the chaise longue seems to be different.
The etymology of the Russian word "chaise longue" that reached the reduced beaches of Albania together with the Soviet instructors of the communist revolution derives from the French word of the 16th century "chaisse longue", a long or extended chair, the one that enables the legs to be stretched. In the pronunciation of many other peoples, it took a form close to the one that reached Albania as chaise longue.
And, I would say that it will officially remain like this for a long time, as a "chaise lounge". Some things that the Soviet version of communism brought as "zbori" remained until the end of communism.
When the communist revolution went and with it "zbori", the lounger experienced its second revolution. What had been a long chair for the chosen few of this country was transformed into an object that could be at the service of the popular masses. And the popular masses in Albania, who do not have any great respect for the sound "ll" that belongs to the letter "l" written in foreign languages, brought the Russian-French chaise longue closer to chaise longue, and then to chaise longue, accepted by Konispoli in Worm.
Now it faces the third revolutionary challenge in these lands: what is the new balance that will be reached between the newly elected and the popular masses, those who Albanianized the long journey of the word from the noble French palaces to the Crimean vacation homes of the Soviet Political Bureau?
This challenge will include Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. The chaise longue is the tool he first began to use with patients, relaxing them as an initial prerequisite for attempting to access the subconscious.
In the 21st century, entering shezlong.com is not to buy a bed to take to the beach, but to make an appointment, physical or virtual, with the psychoanalyst.
5.
My wife, Blerta, with an outstanding sense of linguistic purity, gave me an idea that can help the new revolution of the "chaisse longue". Why not leave behind all the variants of l and ll, all the etymological stories. Why can't it be called "stretcher"?
Perhaps the proper tourism revolution could first begin, as every beginning was, from the word.
Lini një Përgjigje