THE WESTWARD TRAVERSE Entry 2: Meditations on Place

I like to travel. I like to explore and fill my heart with experiences, my head with thoughts, and my journal with good art. Clique way to start a blog post, I know.

But place.

Think of place. Your childhood home or your first kiss. What about that apartment of yours with mold you didn’t realize was there.

Place has a way with memories. It connects our senses to form experience and flirts with us through nostalgia.

_________

I was born in China. This city outside of Wuhan. When I was born it was this tiny city, or at least thats what my parents say, when I finally visited, it wasn’t small anymore. I could probably find the exact name of the city, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. I have no memories of that place. Even after visiting my old orphanage; that place, that China, doesn’t feel like mine.

I just finished this piece by Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors. It’s entitled, A Slow Boat to China. I won’t spoil it, even if there isn’t much to spoil. All I’ll say is that the narrator’s China, the one he’s created, isn’t China. At least not the China I visited. His China never had a “one child policy”. His China never causes the diaspora of thousands of children. I write this without distain, just honesty. The Chinese adoptees in the US today play an integral part in US-Chinese relations. The “one child policy” portrayal in the US hugely impacting the general opinion toward China today.

Despite that, the narrator in A Slow Boat to China and I have one big thing in common. My “China” also isn’t China. My China is whitewashed Chinese food and cheaply made red lanterns. Potstickers made from those pre-made wrappers and heritage camp. My China is a watered down, commodified version of China. And the worse part, I don’t know if the China I visited is the China I want to be mine. It’s not that I love the China that is mine, it’s that I don’t know if the China we all know is mine to claim.

Diaspora.

It’s a loaded word now. After my yearly obligatory consideration of my adoption and the return from Israel. Diaspora and place.

In Israel, we’d walk out into the desert to look at some archeological find. My teacher would point to a verse in the book full of “holy texts”. The texts that most of Judaism is based on. He’d point at a verse and then down at the ground. His eyes alit with excitement. “This is the place this book is referencing.” He’d gesture to emphasis the point. The kids around me would all ooh and ahh. And me.

I felt nothing. No connection to place and my religious identity. Nothing. I’d stare at my teacher, sweat appearing against his neck, my fellow classmates, flocking to the shrinking shade. The sun, climbing steadily higher in the sky. And the ground. Some slabs maybe, mostly sand and dirt, and dust.

I couldn’t make myself feel anything, even if I wanted to. Desperately.

I think I wanted the same thing in China. I stared out at the orphanage. Stood at the gate, and again, nothing.

In that way, I have only ever known the absence of home. I dance in the liminal space. Culture, gender, age, and race. It all feels like I’ve got one foot out the door, and another stuck in tar.

Place.

Place.

Place.

Before moving to Boulder I had never moved once in my life. I have since moved five times.

Place.

Place.

Place.

I never know how to respond when people ask where I’m from.

Place.

Place.

Place.

People always stare when I travel with my parents. It took me years to understand why they sometimes got asked so many questions at customs.

Place.

Place.

Place.

Even now, I have no problem living out of a suitcase. It often takes me months to unpack once we return home. I can’t tell if it’s because I don’t care or because I can’t let go.

Place.

Place.

I can make anywhere work. I sleep through everything and don’t mind traveling light.

Place.

It’s not that everywhere I go is home.

It’s that everywhere I go I take with me– and each time, I feel just a bit more whole.