It was announced the other day that Kalachi and Leicester are to be twinned after a protracted period of courting from representatives of both towns.
Kalachi, a remote village in northern Kazakhstan, can be reached
by traversing a barren steppe and is 300 miles away from the capital
Astana. Since 2013, a mysterious ailment
has struck the village, a ‘sleeping sickness’ which has incurred over 150 reported
cases of people literally falling asleep or at times succumbing to comatose states lasting several days.
Similarly in Leicester over recent months, the townspeople
have intermittently fallen victim to states of severe mental fatigue and
delusions. They have excavated a
long-dead monarch, lain him in state and paraded his casket through the streets
in a fit of bizarre obeisance before consigning his earthly remains to rest
again.
By succumbing to, and venerating, a figure beyond salient
comprehension, they seek the museumification of the present. By establishing possession over this symbol of the past they
forge psychological connections with a history that can only ever elude them
and render more tangible the notion that collective society, and their
individual lives in tandem, are in some meaningful way progressing along a
navigable meridian of national heritage.
When the present reaches a critical mass of disassociation
and malaise, it is very common for people to swoon into a reverie of
retrospective obsession, abandoning the perceived illusion of the quotidian for distracting hallucinations of the past.
In Kalachi, many have blamed the sickness on mystical
forces, others as a strange symptom of mass hysteria. Others point to carbon monoxide poisoning, or
radiation from a disused Soviet-era uranium mine for more rational
explanations. In Leicester, ingrained
deference and age-old memories echo through the city, refusing to be silent; who
knows whether or not they will continue to emanate from beneath the concrete of a
long-stay car park.
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