Things being then as they are I felt the need to make a portrait of Europe before it dissapears.
I couldn't do it in English, so I was intending to learn French, then Esperanto, but Tokipona had the advantage of being easier.
And it's simplicity makes far more convenient to cover such a large subject.
It was going to start in England and drift across twentieth century Europe into the Soviet Union towards central Asia.
Then the whole thing would take place in Trieste in tribute to James Joyce.
But Zurich being another city where James Joyce lived and worked and being a much more boring place serves as a more effective canvas.
The geography of Zurich pervades the work but quite peripherally, four residents of Zurich however play a much more recognisable role in proceedings.
These are Huldrych Zwingli, Richard Wagner, Hugo Ball and most importantly James Joyce.
Other inhabitants I could have included are Lenin, Jung and Max Frisch, but I feel their essence is present without it having to have been consciously added, as James Joyce said; "In the particular is contained the universal".
And in the particular of a cross section of Zurich related thinking men, I felt came close to containing the particular of European history in general and in that particular a certain type of human yearning.