Stark as daylight, luminous and harsh in equal measure

 Truly, ignorance is bliss ... but at what price ...

Welcome home

Of course I'm happy to be home. Excited to see friends and family, and glad to find comfort in the familiar. But this time I also feel sad, that in some perhaps distinctly limited---but very concrete---sense this will soon no longer be home. Upset, angry even, because I feel like my home is being taken away from me---but really there is no reasonable or good target for this anger. Part of me is defiant---it doesn't matter, this will always be home; or: what does it matter? The world is my oyster---; part of me is already grieving over what it sees, rather overdramatically, as imminent exile.
Last evening I thought about the upcoming flight home and the words that would greet me as I passed through the immigration gantries at the end of that long journey. Never have those words felt so deeply charged, or provoked such conflicted ambivalence. I really felt like---still feel like---screaming and bawling and crying. It's not terribly reasonable, and when I've had time to calm down and actually reflect on it for a while it feels rather like making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, all that reasoned reflection doesn't make---hasn't made---this profound sense of loss go away.
Maybe I should just come to terms with that. That, no matter how I spin it, my identity---the narrative I have built of myself, of who I am and where I belong---will be---has been---fundamentally shaken. That I should not---cannot---simply pretend that things will carry on as before. That perhaps that identity wasn't nearly as solid or sturdy as I thought it was, and that I should rebuild a stronger one where the old one collapses. 

Part of a conversation I'm having with 2012 me

I believe that nation-states are legal fictions and artificial constructs, whose current shapes and peculiarities are but accidents of history. Lots of people---most people---would disagree, perhaps vehemently so. But that is only because of a lack of clear thought, often encouraged by politicians and regimes for reasons of their convenience.
Certainly there should be some sort of apparatus to give a coherent organization to society, and the modern nation-state, where it works, does this very well. But also we should recognize that nation-states, as such, are nothing more than conventions of convenience. Why should we get so worked up and excited about mere conventions? I don't understand.

Well as you quite rightly point out there is no one natural way of organising human society; what we have is, perhaps, not as good a solution as could ever exist, but it is what it is. Accidents of history and mere conventions by agreement they may well be, but the fact of their existence, the miracle, minor or less minor, that they have been conjured, willed, brought into existence, is surely worth something,
So, perhaps, these things are worth celebrating and worrying about. Though, also, it behooves us not to take them too seriously, for there are, ultimately, higher and more important things in this world than country. 

Where do you live now?

Singapore. Do you want a street address? Yes I do happen to be studying here now, and for that purpose I'm staying at this other address about an hour from here. How long will I be here? Five years (four and a half more, I guess.) What are my plans after graduation? I intend to find a job in my home country. Which is? See above. I know that's not entirely true and you probably have an inkling that that's not entirely true, and I know that you know and you probably know that I know and here I think the chain of mutual knowledge might break down. But we will mention none of this. Because you're only a CBP officer, and that's as far as you need to know, and the subtleties of what a home country is and what it means to inhabit a place are entirely irrelevant to the purely bureaucratic concern of border control, and there are twenty people behind me in the line waiting to clear the border so why don't we end this conversation right here and let's all go back to our merry business. Next!

In before the tsunami

Home is where the heart is. It's the people, the things, the places you care about---all of them, not just any one of them. (Clearly these aspects can be independent of one another, but oftentimes it makes little sense to think about them in isolation.)
So don't be so worried about not having a roof over your head here where you think home is. As long as you continue to engage with the place in a meaningful way, as long as you continue to care, these will be mere logistical details. They matter, but they can be overcome.
And, now, welcome to Michigan. Tuesday morning will be a fun time.

Day 5: Welcome to your new home

Whee ...

Day 4

 "This is a nice place. We plan to be here for the rest of our lives."

Day -2

My parents actually liked the area around Central Park enough to consider (in the loose sense of that verb) living in New York. Hm.

You are what you are

You'll go where you go and carry your long and fragmented history with you wherever you go. And you will learn to be at peace with that and draw strength from it and see it as a source of support, not a weakness to be overcome. Others have done it. You have done it. You might change a little in the process, but why are you so afraid of that? Let those changes happen. You'll be fine.

Meh

I feel like the ground has been pulled out from underneath my feet all over again. It really, really sucks.
But I guess this was bound to happen at some point, since you don't fundamentally agree on where home is. You can't have everything you want all the time, and whatever they propose to do is perfectly within their rights. They have already done a lot for you. Time to stop depending on them and face up to reality. 

From Bonfire and Housewarming

Why all that cheering over a destructive act? Anlamıyorum. And I wonder what those firemen think ... or the town thinks. That bonfire on New Year's Eve in Reykjavik I understood. This one ... well I guess I understand, just slightly less so. Shrug. Maybe it does matter to some (not insignificant number of) people. Maybe that's all that matters.

Another thought ... no-one ever teaches children (or you) about these things called cultural references or frames of reference, things that people take for granted and base their interactions off of ... but what if your upbringing gave you a framework and a set of norms which were both here and there, and hence neither here nor there? Then what?

Then you become a perpetual outsider, embraced neither hither nor yon. There is nothing to be done---you can abandoned your identity to conform to something more familiar (to others); or you can learn to become comfortable with being an outsider. Most people aren't hostile (though some are); they're just not as warm or accepting. But with enough time and effort, you'll find enough warmth to survive on. And then stoic resignation will see you through the rest.

Still Profoundly Lost

I'm not sure where I am anymore
Or where I'm going.
Or where I should be.
Or who I really am.
Or should be.
I'm not sure what I should stand for
and whether it's worth it anymore.
Every morning I wake up with a to-do list screaming at me.
So I start diligently going down that list.
And before I know it, it's late in the night again.
And time to sleep again, till the next morning and the next intense burst of stress.
And meanwhile, I seem to be drifting further and further into incoherence.
A bustling incoherence full of exciting possibilities which are pulling you in all sorts of different directions.
Which will end up getting you nowhere, if you don't navigate the currents wisely.
But how should I choose my course?
If I had a choice, what do I really want?
How much of a choice do I even really have?
I don't know.
I don't know anything at all.
Only the daily scramble and grind, and the tiny little bits of sunshine that graces the intervals in between once in a while.
What now?

Diaspora

It's a state of mind, the state of mind that comes with not being at home, with all the discomfort, unease and anxiety that entails. So even if the Promised Land is a political reality now, does it really mean the end of Diaspora? When it continues to be attacked and threatened on a daily basis, when the geopolitical basis for its existence is not at all stable? Could anyone really be at home in such a situation?

For Random "Frequent Flyer" Dent

What is this place?

Is it safe? Is it fun?

Oh, but it is!

What, are we leaving again already?

It is I

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus 

Redefining the Problem

If the circumstances required, you could very well do without a home. You only need one for familiarity and comfort. But if you can learn fast, adapt and make yourself comfortable wherever you go, you'd be good to go everywhere.
Is this an admission of defeat? Well, in a way. But only in the sense that adopting guerilla tactics in the face of overwhelming strength is an admission of defeat.

Here and Now

I'll never go home. Who told you I wasn't at home?

Everywhere and Nowhere

Nothing will ever deprive you of your home. Because your home is scattered far and wide, and you will find it reflected everywhere you look. Because it is not something so mutable and impermanent as a house or a city, much less a country, but an intricate tapestry of memories and relationships richer and more magnificent than anything history and geography, much less mere parochial nationalisms or politicians, can even conceive of.
So don't be sad. Because it really is only a formality. A pushing-around of a few inconsequential bits of paper. It can't affect the web that will hold you firm and rooted in the slightest, unless you choose to let it.

You are required to.

Do you have any idea how painful that was? But never mind. Even I didn't before it hit.

"Is it your country?"

Well, no. Because I don't have a country in the same palpable sense that you do. Countries are mere legal fictions; passports are only bureaucratic conveniences.
Home is other people. There isn't a place I call home. There are bits of home scattered around. Some places happen to have a slightly higher concentration of them, but that's all there is to it. It doesn't really make those places special in any (other) way.
At the moment, there happen to be some faint bits of home where you would rather not schedule any stopovers. But never mind. You'll never understand what I'm talking about.