Heart Stories

Love in times of cross-national flirtations and savage fixations: Creative writing pieces from you for you.

1-2-3

by Anonymous

The First Time:
“Fuck it”, she thinks, “He’s beautiful, and I should; it’s what normal people do”. Although she knows it’s not real—it’s a cliché from start to finish, but one she has convinced herself, for the time being, to follow through with. Lie back, think of England, three weeks away, and the man you’ve left there, so different to this one here. This one with his skin so much richer than your own translucence. (Chocolate and milk he had once said, and she had hated him for it, and herself for her literary snobbery. “Sabe leer” dice su carnet, and yet I judge him for an obvious metaphor in a second language).

The Second Time:
Ten minutes after the first and it’s worse and it’s wrong. Face down on the pillow, thinking of England, three weeks away, and the man she left there. Arse up in the air, white and huge, and every thrust magnified in ripples of fat acutely visible in the afternoon sun. (He works split shifts, seven days a week.) They stop; he leaves— “It’s not you, it’s me”, she tells him, which is both true and also fits with the cliché theme of the encounter: the clumsy, almost scripted flirtation, the stagemanaged elevator kiss, the veiled intercambio beginnings.

The Last Time:
In his room this time, the double bed squeaks lewdly; the curtain covers the window which looks only into the kitchen (also interior). The darkness is absolute and covers the stain she leaves on the sheets, the last of the blood that now comes consistently once again after those torturous six weeks six months ago. She lies back and thinks of England and now of Honduras, of distance, doubt and longing, of the condom wrapper on the floor which has nada que ver con ella, of the subjunctive clause in no quiero que te vayas. He turns her over and she thinks of England and of Honduras, of passports and fools, of how safe she feels, despite all that’s happened, when she sleeps next to him, and of that time four months back when he called her novia. But it’s wrong and it’s worse it’s not you, it’s not me, it’s us, and she knows that now as she leaves him sleeping and walks home in the six a.m. dawn.

Arrivederciaurevoir

by Jordi Corominas i Julián

Luca y Julien se conocieron por casualidad en una fiesta con DJ. Llegado el momento de la despedida no sabían muy bien qué decirse para cerrar el absurdo finiquito del adiós entre un erasmus y un diseñador gráfico residente en el Borne - ¡cómo no!

Recordaron su primer encuentro. El italiano llevaba una semana en Barcelona y lucía la típica sonrisa bobalicona de quien ha leído demasiadas guías turísticas y se deja llevar por la tendencia: Modernismo, la Sagrada Familia es preciosa, la Rambla es un encanto y Barcelona es el futuro, lo mejor. Su novia opinaba lo mismo. Su novia de toda la vida. Al cabo de una semana, mandaban los cánones de la vorágine Erasmus, cambió de nombre y nacionalidad. La nueva relación nació en un sarao de juergues y no se sabía muy bien hacia dónde seguiría. Ya dictaría sentencia el futuro.

Ahora sólo deseaba llegar a Roma y contar de mil maneras sus vivencias y visiones. Si alguien en Italia las recogiera, de aquí a mil años apreciaría su similitud con las de tantos otros compatriotas. Bella Barcellona!

Julien era un buen chico con otro tipo de lobotomía. Cansado de ser uno más en París, decidió apostar por Barcelona para rentabilizar su gran capacidad adquisitiva. Alquiló un apartamento en el centro, integrándose rápidamente en el Ghetto galo, donde conoció las justas personas cool necesarias en su búsqueda de trabajo audiovisual con buen sueldo y fiestas de la leche. Quería demostrar su maravilla, lo extraordinario de su existencia homologada de trapos caros desechables en dos días, tecnología de última generación y marihuana de calidad. Barcelona como meca y centro de operaciones. Viajar siempre y nunca. Ligar a destajo, que así hay menos preocupaciones. ¿La Sagrada Familia? Sirve para vender postales a los guiris.

Antes de darse el último abrazo con su pseudoamigo responde una llamada inglesa. Sí, sí, ningún problema. Tecnoarts LSD tendrá el producto listo para la semana que viene. Cool. De puta madre, afirma Luca. Hablan en un castellano mezcla de manual de escuela académica y callejera. Las voces del megáfono del Prat obligan a subir el tono de voz. Se miran a los ojos hasta que el italiano mira su reloj y decide que ha llegado el momento. Se abrazan, ríen, simulan afectación. El pie contacta con la escalera mecánica. Las puertas correderas a la vista. En el abismo que media entre ellos, el inconsciente sabe que no llegarán e-mails ni SMS: sólo muy de vez en cuando aflorarán recuerdos borrosos, nieblas de un pasado frenético por voluntad propia.

Al cabo de una horas, Fiumicino es una pequeña fiesta familiar. Todos abrazan al hijo pródigo. Julien fuma un cigarrillo con la luz apagada mientras la novia de su amigo tontea con un camarero en Berlín.

The Greatest Ever Guiris

by Paul Cannon

During his time as an Erasmus student in the Catalan capital, Dr. Olaf Jordbear-Knutssen (b. Aarhus, 1959) dedicated himself to an exhaustive statistical survey, documented in the groundbreaking work, Barcelona: A Statistical Review. In this book Knutssen made many startling discoveries. Measuring the frequency with which Catalans end phrases with a querulous 'eh?' the young Danish student counted 47,322 of them in one 10-hour stint in an Eixample cafeteria, afterwards attributing the tendency to ‘severe ODD (Opinion Decision Deficit)’. In one passage he wrote, ‘73% of adult Spanish males sound like women, whereas only 7% of Spanish females do. 95% of Spanish children, male or female, look like Harry Potter, and 81% of Catalans do not suffer from myopia despite spectacle usage. The average width of a Catalan spectacle frame is 2 centimetres, meaning a staggering total of 13% of longitudinal face-flesh is concealed (in 67% of cases) by black Giorgio Armani plastic and metal wire.’ The passages were accompanied by pornographic images taken by Jordbaer-Knutssen himself during his own sexual experiences. The work created quite a stir in his native Scandinavia and being a true guiri at heart, Knutssen returned to settle in Copenhagen in 2004. Each year he gives a lecture at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona.

A favourite haunt of Dr. Jordbaer-Knutssen’s was a little café on Calle Atawulf. The 8th Century Visigothic King was another prominent guiri. In 809, he kidnapped Galla Placidia, the holy Roman Emperor’s daughter, tied her by the hair to his horse’s tail and dragged her to Barcelona, raping her repeatedly along the way. When he reached Catalonia, he and Galla - in what seems an early case of Stockholm syndrome - got over their initial differences and married, living happily ever after. Atawulf was in the Don Simon/Los Cubos vein of guiriness, with a rousing beard, violent eyebrows and a penchant for destroying public property, as proved in recklessly destructive campaigns in the Mediterranean.

Atawulf’s only biographer to date was the infamous guiri writer, Ponche Caballero (a pseudonym, inspired by his favourite drink). A New Yorker, Caballero arrived as a young down-at-heel in the summer of 2000. In Letters From Plaza Reality, all about that first heady summer of 2000, Caballero begins:

Once upon a time, I was a guiri. I stayed in a hostel and met a ballerina, beautifully haunting and absolutely touchable, from Brussels. The ballerina was on holiday with her sister and a Mexican bullfighter. We ended up in Macarena, an Andalucian bar with ivy-like floral tiles creeping around the walls and framed photographs of Camaron, the famous flamenco-shrieker. The peroxide-blonde cleaning lady was La Macarena's chief attraction as far as I was concerned. She was not only a cleaning lady, but a flamenco singer of incredible range. Her band was made up of an old man with a ponytail and an anguished look and a guitar...a young man with a quiff and an anguished look and a guitar...and an old man with an anguished look, no guitar and only one tooth. I loved it all. I clapped my hands and shouted ‘olé’. Shit goddam, I was a real guiri. The best kind. The ignorant kind. These days, Macarena is no longer an Andalucian bar, but, despite still living here, I’m still a guiri. Oh yeah. Always will be. And now I’m the post-modern guiri. The knowing, self-deprecating guiri. These days I beat Catalans to the joke. ‘Hey, what the fuck do I know,’ I say, ‘I’m a guiri.’ Cue raucous laughter.

Caballero was inspired by the tatty hostels and dog shit streets. He lived and breathed the putrid underbelly of the Gótico, befriending the whores, the punk-urchins and their hollow eyes, the tin-whistlers and the carcasses of their pets, and Argentines. He was a notorious carouser, a buffoon intellectual. He bit into Barcelona and came away with a mouthful of dirty gristle.

One of Caballero’s chief inspirations was George Orwell, whose Homage to Catalonia was a guiri masterpiece. Now everyone knows about Plaça George Orwell and the security cameras and ‘isn’t it ironic because blah blah Big Brother etc.’ but few people know the real story behind it. The truth is the Guardia Urbana placed the cameras there at Orwell’s insistence.

Following a brief stint fighting on the side of the Socialist international brigades in the mid-thirties, Orwell returned to Britain and underwent a radical political overhaul in his mind. 1984 was intended to be a celebration of an all-seeing, all-knowing, high-security police state, which he dearly wished to be installed in power throughout Europe. He wrote to his Aunt Fanny: ‘During my time working for the BBC in the years following World War II, I had secret meetings with Falangist representatives, who proposed the naming of a Barcelona square in my honour. I insisted that such a square should be equipped with 24-hour surveillance equipment to keep an eye on the lowlife and human garbage collecting there to concoct socialist reform.’

1984 played a key role in the mental deterioration of one Agnes Woerfallen. More commonly known as ‘the Muntaner Murderess’, and undoubtedly one of the most infamous guiris ever to set foot in Barcelona, Woerfallen was a cleaning lady from Rotterdam. She married a Catalan waiter by the name of Enric Balcells and followed him back to his native Catalonia. Bored and increasingly depressed during her lover’s work hours, Woerfallen would spend the afternoon at home in their Muntaner apartment reading the works of Orwell, her favourite writer. Orwell’s fiction had such an effect on Woerfallen she became severely depressed about mankind’s prospects. One day she found herself helping an elderly lady home with her shopping bags. Once inside the pensioner’s flat, Woerfallen murdered her. Señora Almudena Maria Pons was the first victim of some 73 murders throughout the early 1980s. All of the victims were elderly ladies, strangled or stabbed in their homes, and then brutally raped.

Woerfallen’s psychosexual obsession with octagenarians was superbly captured in a bestselling biography by the Dutch criminal investigative journalist, Dirk van Konkersplitten. In Woerfallen: Diary of a Serial Cleaner, van Konkersplitten wrote:

By the slight glimmer of lamps in the dark, S. Núria painstakingly led Woerfallen through the pasillo and into a salon, which drew dust-spilled sunlight through a white plastic blind. The table, chairs and furnishings were all expensive relics of a bygone era. On a great pine cabinet stood a framed black and white photograph, faded around the edges, of a man with beautiful dark eyes, a narrow moustache and a slightly malevolent curl to his smile. In smaller frames on either side were colour portraits of a middle-aged woman, with the same dark eyes, and three different children; two girls and one boy. Woerfallen’s eyes paid no attention to these details. Her attention was consumed by something else. To the right of the cabinet hung a bright canvas of thick strokes depicting a riverside scene in the city of Girona. Gripping the railing of the bridge a man was staring into the water, captivated by something invisible. In the windows of the houses loomed shadowy forms and figures looking down at the man.
   ‘Excuse me, miss, but I must sit down. I am quite worn out.’ The old lady’s breathing was heavy and contracted in her armchair, its original green colour worn away and the hide shining through.
   ‘The shopping you might put away in the kitchen there.’ She pointed feebly at a door of frosted glass. ‘Of course, señora,’ said Woerfallen, though the milk, the biscuits, the tins, they all seemed of minor relevance now. She carried the bags through to the kitchen, where she turned on a gloomy striplight and slowly and absent-mindedly removed each item one by one and placed them on the marble chopping surface beside the gas rings of an ancient cooker. In a yellow plastic tub was the dull glint of an assortment of chopping knives, in many of which she saw a demented reflection of her face, each one round and pumped-up and eyeless. It was an unpleasant collage, a collection of eyeless round heads, moving in pink synchronicity on the blades. ‘How can this be me?’ she cried inwardly, and felt her skull shrinking in fear at the idea of it.

As a calling card, Woerfallen would leave strands of rotten cabbage in her victim’s mouths, an allusion to Orwell’s use of cabbage as a symbol for the decay of civilisation. The police staked out every grocery in the Muntaner area, and were alerted to all cabbage transactions by shop assistants. On May 8, 1987, they hit the jackpot in a Caprabo store. A plump lady who had just brought a damaged cabbage, was seen offering to help an elderly lady with her shopping. Plainclothes policemen followed Woerfallen and her intended victim home. Once they were sure the murder had been committed the police broke down the door and made an arrest. Woerfallen was convicted of all 79 murders, and sent to a top-security women’s prison in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, where she would still be languishing in the middle of a life sentence had she not entered into correspondence with the British conceptual artist, James Falcon.

Falcon (b. Kinver, Staffordshire, 1965) was the darling of the burgeoning Poble Nou school of Art, centred on an okupa studio-commune on Calle Badajoz. During his Barcelona period Falcon honed his peculiar brand of suicide installation art. Falcon desperately wanted to use Woerfallen in his next piece. She gave her consent, the prison viewed it as a great public relations exercise and so a one-off exhibition was held within its walls. The piece showed Woerfallen with her wrists slit, bleeding into a bath full of cabbage. It wowed the critics, propelling the artist into the ranks of the greatest ever guiris.

Period. Fullstop.

by Rebecca Goldie

The corner of Avinyó and Cervantes. Morning time. The sunlight glinted off the cheap, shiny tables on the empty terrace, and a scorching chair burnt into the back of her legs. He sat there opposite her — a big Dutch boy, so young and new, ready for the army, hanging out in Europe before it was time to serve the Queen, etc. She, a new Barcelona resident, not exactly grown up but a bit older and a tad wiser, sipped at her obligatory coffee — after all, he had come all the way back from Madrid to celebrate her birthday with her. Mind you, she hadn’t asked him to. She looked at his big face, chubby like a cake and she wondered if he was a virgin (they’d never talked about SEX). She didn’t want to be mean; he liked her and she knew it, but he was an irritating boy, hanging on like a puppy...and thus from the murky boredom rose Havoc; a desire to throw a mouse out among the elephants.

—What noise do you think a period would make if it made a noise?
—Errrrm...
—Hmm, I think it would go something like this (slowly rolling her tongue out of her mouth) bleouh...bleouh
—Er...yeah.
He looked uncomfortable. What fun! she thought.
—I’m on my period now, she boasted and rolled her tongue, bleouh...bleouh. And advanced:
—Have you ever had sex with a girl on her period?
—Yy...nn....ye...no.
Bewilderment. Pink cake face. Hehehee!
—No!? Hrmph, so typical of a man, she mock retorted.
—Well...uh...I would... its just...um...you know...
The backs of her legs were stuck to the chair; she peeled her skin from the metal, skimmed her fingers over the horizontal grooves imprinted on the back of her thighs and added,
—Yeah, know what you mean…too slidy, can’t feel anything, stinks! It’s better up the arse, and matter-of-factly, that’s my solution.

Exhausted, puzzled and astonished by this new side to the girl he thought he knew and unsure where to take the conversation, he defused the situation by beat-boxing “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa. The only people there, they sat in silence as the beats and whine of his little diversion filled the new space between them.

Broken Drum

by Simon Friel

“What do you want from life?”

“Another Mojito”, I said, and tried to kiss her. She pulled away, laughed, and told me to go to the bar then, if life was so simple.

She was a witch. She knew about the hidden powers of nature; how to make up brews and concoctions that could cure baldness, impotence, broken hearts and money problems. She was also an architect.

Stupidity is often endearing to a girl. Despite the rejected kiss and my inability to rise to her philosophical challenging, I woke up the next morning with her number on the table next to the sofa where I had passed out.

We met in Café Flamingo three days later. Martina walked into the bar as I remembered her — small, blonde, cute and stern. Within 5 minutes, her phone rang and she asked if I wouldn’t mind if her Swedish flatmate came to join us. Blow out.

Martina and her friend spoke together in German while I hung awkwardly on the black leather stool, neither standing nor sitting. Her friend left to go to the bathroom and she smiled at me for the first time since we had met and explained how the girl’s boyfriend had just broken up with her, so she couldn’t turn her down when she had asked if they could meet.

I carried my confusion onto the football pitch later, scored three goals, kicked an opponent in the back and was sent off.

Two days later, I called Martina. The Swede answered the phone and said Martina couldn’t speak as she had lost her voice. Fucking bitch.

The following day I composed myself and sent an SMS wishing her a speedy recovery.

No reply.

At home I vented my frustration on Esteve. The flat was a fucking mess: cockroaches crawled over my face while I slept, there were no doors on my bedroom, the toilet didn’t flush and he had left plates in the sink from the last time he had been gracious enough to put in an appearance at the flat we theoretically shared. “Calm down”, he said, “let’s have a few drinks and we can sort everything out mañana”.

I bought beers and a bottle of whisky from the supermarket while he started on dinner. Drinking delayed the eating of the food and Esteve restrained me from punching the neighbour when he came banging at the door to complain about the noise. My mobile shivered against my leg — “What is your address?”

Fuck me. Beers, a full bottle of whisky, no food, a flat full of rage and a reply. Martina and the Swede came accompanied by a third girl I didn’t know. The entrance to our building resembled a crack den more than a hospitable abode, and the girls wouldn’t come up alone. Esteve went down to walk them up while I threw water on my face to chase away the alcohol.

The third girl was Norwegian and in love with Esteve by the time they had got to the front door.

Martina was lovely and mute, her voice truly gone.

I was a wild, stupid fool and sought solace and distraction in choosing a CD from the collection that filled our wooden bookcase. Primal Scream, empty. Guero, Empty. Daydream Nation, empty.

On my haunches in front of the bookcase I felt the strength going in my legs. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a black stool just behind me. I fell back softly to its weight, and my head hit the floor with a solid thud. The large, black plastic bin bag that was to be my chair clung pathetically to my face as I tried to figure out my mistake.

I was down.

The world was loud and spinning in Mallorquin, Norwegian and Swedish laughter.

Germany was silent.

BAD BOYS ARE OUT - NARCISSISTS ARE IN.

by Virginia Fontana

Turn the light out and come in, or leave it on and go out, but put something between us. When you are close and I can see the greed in your eyes, I shut myself behind a silent film. When you are far and I lie dreaming in the dark, the you that is not you taunts me with his nearness.

Línia vermella, a dos quarts de quatre: he strokes a pock-marked face with myopic eyes. His tongue protrudes like a dog's, but it is still between her lips. Fifteen years on the earth, and he has just learned how to stop time.

Through cobblestone alleys she wended her way, arriving inevitably at the gothic temple of a plaça. The light was long, and the worshippers were frozen in pools of their own shadow. She came to the edge of the fountain and leaned like a child over the edge, her savage visage haloed in the blue-black water by beer cans and saturated cigarettes. A face, or a Picasso, or an alien suddenly appeared next to her idol, rippling in time with the Virgin and the wind, and then melted slowly towards the stone basin and away. She hiccupped but didn't turn around.

Your strength is in your curiosity, and your casual nudity, and your quick return to humor. If you want to walk with me it should be lightly, sometimes through my world, and sometimes through yours.

Ecstasy

by Rebecca Tantony

Do you remember when we first met
in the winter, outside?
We changed into icicles.
And I must admit I lied,
a little,
well a lot,
when I claimed that I was hot and lent you my shivering skin.

Even though it led to a conversation about the cold and the vast evening.
You chewed your lip and fed me tablets,
and asked if I could dine
on the meal that was your mouth-
apparently men ask you all the time.
You said

or read, somewhere

that the heavens seemed to shriek and weep as you kissed my mouth,
bit into my words as I lost the ability to muster sound
and the music and the cold weaved within the ground
and carried us away until we danced towards the fire
as huddling lifeless people sat combusting with desire.

You breathed hot air in unison with them all,
as you held intensely onto your catch.
I caught the moon winking in humour
and I caught you winking back.

Secretly
and quietly
I battled and begged for eternity to stay and last,
and before long,
eight centuries had gone and past.

An elusive sun began to rise.

I really saw you then,
with enlarged ecstatic eyes.
I had stumbled on an angel,
a creature holy and divine.
Your hands were soft and eager
and melted like ice into mine.
Your wings were lovely specimens.
Feathery and fine.

Your hair was black and endless,
and your touch made me feel ill.
Although I could be sick forever,
if that were the way illness would continually feel.
We collapsed together in appreciation,
or it could have been blurry affection.
And I drank an ocean of water,
laughing at my distorted reflection.

Until mermaids, seashells and mornings crept out of my nose.

"We have to leave," you tell me bitterly
and it's normally me who goes."

So you leave, softly standing aside,
carefully stepping with miniscule footsteps
so to not stand on my deflating pride.

And as you go, I notice you turn around
and look at me in harm.
Painfully dragging memories
of my mouth and embracing arms.

It's strange, you know
you didn't seem aware that you had claimed something new
what once hung lifeless from my body
was now a part of you.

My arms had left their sockets,
and now smothered you with protection,
holding on in a gentle tenderness
and fear of further rejection.

And I sat and watched you leave
with fewer limbs than I had before.
As your feathers floated away in madness,
and you
left burning patterns across the floor.

La Ciudad de la Tristeza

by Rafael Monroy González

Esa tarde Mariela salió a caminar contra todas sus fuerzas que la arrastraban al sofá con vistas a la ciudad gris y mojada. Pero ya había pasado muchos días en ese estado –como vegetando, le había dicho su compañera de piso–, de la cama a la cocina, de la cocina al ordenador a recorrer todos los chats de la ciudad, mirando las flores en las macetas del balcón. ¿Cómo podían mantenerse enteras si hacía días que no dejaba de llover? Parecían tan frágiles. Pero ahí estaban.

Es curioso –pensaba– que a veces con poco arreglo te sientas tan bien: media coleta, unos jeans y el abrigo negro. Hoy a lo mejor alguien se fija en ti – se ilusionó. Y así salió Mariela, coqueta, por la calle con su sonrisa franca, sin esquivar los ojos de los chicos. Llegó al ventanal de un café y se vio reflejada. Sin vergüenza se detuvo y se arregló el flequillo frente a la barra que estaba pegada al cristal, pero en ese momento salió una columna de vapor de agua de la rejilla que estaba entre el suelo y el edificio y le nubló el reflejo de su imagen. Pegó un salto de susto y luego se alejó riéndose. “Eso te pasa por vanidosa”, se dijo en voz alta y enfiló hacia la Rambla.

Detrás de la ventana había un hombre joven, flaco, desmejorado por el tiempo y el cigarro, que miraba con impaciencia hacia afuera e intentaba concentrarse en el periódico gratuito del día. Se encontraría con alguien a quien no conocía y, al percibir con el rabillo del ojo una silueta, se giró excitado pensando que su cita a ciegas lo había reconocido. Pero el corazón le volvió a su sitio cuando sólo vio vapor y un abrigo negro que se alejaba a saltitos del ventanal. No significaba nada: rose74 le había dicho que llevaría un abrigo rojo y él a ella que estaría pegado a la ventana con dos cafés sin terminar. Esa tarde no apareció ni un solo abrigo rojo por el café de la barra hacia la calle.

Julien pagó los dos cafés, y él y Mariela se cruzaron entre el tumulto y la eterna alegría de la Rambla, con los rostros desencajados y la mirada apagada entre turistas, niños con globos y seguidores de equipos de fútbol cantando tonadas en inglés. Los dos pensaron que estaban solos.

The Back of Her Diary

by Mitch Smith

A memory reappears;
Falls from shelf where it was stored; improperly
Slow motion smash, cracks opening slowly
Leaking its truth
over the beetle black bitumen of the Ramblas

Feathers floats down freely
cradles head in hands and mutters over the waste
Feathers chastises her brother
while she draws circles absentminded on the back of her diary

Slipshod shoes
Kicked off; discarded amongst the bottles and garbage to go out
Socks balled waiting for washing machine feeding
Feathers bills pile up,
Mouldering, unopened, amongst the dust bunnies
And loose change
Her brother pilfers the twenty cents
For cheap beers and filter tips

Sunny D stained rug covers candlestick burn
Prayer flags flutter amongst
Incense smog and blowflies
As Feathers empties her cenicero streetward
And apologises to the earth

Feathers brother comes home with bruised eye
And split lip
Screaming and raging and searching for his knife
She sits him down, steaming mug in his fist
And hides her cutlery

Sunday evening light streaming through smoke-stained windows
Front terrace cracked and weeded
Junk mail and metros, piled, rotting
Home to old sales and snails

Feathers liked the needle more than the prick
Spent her inheritance on bad camera and worse friends
As the drugs became harder her touch became softer
Til she dissolved from my life, and from the world at large