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What constitutes here? What does it mean when one says, “Here I am.” What is this here actually referring to? It can be a state of mind—tuned in, attentive, and aware of what is being said or happening around you. It can also be a certain place, space, or time. It is the place you are right this moment, it is where you are from, and it is where you live. Here is a simple concept, no reason to question it.
What happens when the here you are familiar with (ie: America) no longer exists and a different here takes its place (ie: Europia)? Specifically, here was once Washington, DC, USA, and now it is Amsterdam, NL. Except I do not feel like here is fully and completely Amsterdam yet. When I was in my little apartment in Cleveland Park, I was here. Washington, DC was here. It had replaced the suburbs of Maryland, it had replaced Baltimore, and it had become my home. There was no question. I was comfortable, at home, and existing here. Presently, here is not so easy to define. I may live here, in Amsterdam, but I am not from here. I am from there, which used to be my here. Now the here that I once knew and wouldn’t think twice about is gone. Here, Amsterdam, is new, filled with cloudy days, pushy drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. I may be living here at this very moment, but it is only a superficial relationship—where here is not necessarily the same as the here that I am used to.
The idea of here is more of-the-moment these days rather than attached to a specific place. It is a fuzzy concept. I often slip-up in casual conversations, forgetting to say there when referring to my life back in DC because it was just such a given that it was here for so many years. “It’s like how we have it here, I mean there,” I sometimes say by accident. So, here is still referring to DC by mistake, but most of the time, here is Amsterdam, my new home. It is these times when I slip-up, these in-between heres that make me pause for a moment to think. Can there be two heres or does one here inevitably replace the other? Is here just a state of mind or does it always have to refer to a physical place?
For now, this idea of here has come in the form of culture shock. Whereas I could definitively say “I like it here” back in DC, I cannot say that about the new here that is Amsterdam. It is different, there is much to get used to, much to question, and I am not ready to make any conclusions yet. According to my father, all Zen-like, this idea of here does not matter as long as you “stay safe and work hard.” Then you can be anywhere, perpetually in a state of here because it is more a mind-set than a physical place. He is undoubtedly referring to his own no-turning-back move from China to the US back in the 80s and understands that this indefinite and transitory idea of here is a difficult but important thing to experience. It is something that I have not been able to fathom in a perpetual state of comfort back in Washington, DC. Now I think about and notice it regularly, I question what it means to be here right now and appreciate it as a “comfortably uncomfortable” state of being.
On a recent trip to Rotterdam, I watched the movie Thank You For Smoking at a collective space called ROT(T)TERDAM with a comic book store, gallery, and burger café. Coincidentally, the movie is set in Washington, DC and the Cleveland Park metro stop makes a cameo appearance. It was a comfortable stand-in for where here used to be, so comfortable that through the course of the movie I began to forget that I was watching an American movie alongside Europeans. It was only after hearing a smirk come from behind me in response to a line in the movie that goes, “Now if people smoke in the movies, they are either psychos or European,” that I was suddenly reminded again of my whereabouts. While watching the movie up to that point, since it was in English, I had reverted to movie-watching mode, settled in and immersed. I could have been anywhere in the world. After hearing the smirk, I was jolted out of my comfort zone, reminded that these were not fellow Americans, but fellow Europeans. The smirk acknowledged the dig that the American actor was making towards Europeans and was not just a smirk of laughter at the punch-line. The difference in smirks is slight, but it attested to the fact that I was not in the here that I thought I was, but in a new here, where perceptions of American popular culture are not the same. The Europeans must have seen the establishing shots of the Washington Monument, Capitol Building and White House as novel—where Obama lives and where the American government makes its terrible decisions. I saw these shots as home and began to feel nostalgic.
Superficially, everyone was in a drafty gallery space with a tiny space heater watching the same movie. Just like how superficially, I blend in as an Amsterdamer when I am on my bike cycling to the studio or market. For the 1.5 hours of the movie or the 10 minutes on my bike, everyone, including me, is in a collective state of here. We are doing the same thing at the same time, but that is all. These moments are only brief and superficial. They do not define what finally accepting and living here (in Amsterdam) can really mean. They are activities that someone visiting for a week can experience and are unfortunately the easiest things to talk about when asked how things are going or what I have been doing. It is moments that go deeper than what appears on the surface that start to define the difference between the old and new here. These moments may be the “vibe” of a place, a slight difference in perception—as exemplified by the smirk during the movie—or just an ephemeral feeling. It is hard to explain because most of the time they are not so easily pin-pointed, but these are the times when I question what here actually means, which is something that I did not do before. Perhaps this questioning is only the first step in a long process towards finding my own way to assimilate and feel comfortable.
I have learned so far that having two heres to refer to makes them compete with each other, like a pro-con list with the same number of entries. Finding a comfortable in-between point is not easy. Especially when the other here in question is a Dutch one, since the first thing to being Dutch is to be absolutely sure that you are Dutch—assimilated, normal, and like everyone else. (Just as an example, carrying a Sigg around with me everywhere makes me “not normal.”) Therefore, instead of trying to define here as a physical place, where differences and similarities exist only on a superficial level, all I can do at this point is to track moments when here is not definitive, but liminal. These moments when here is no longer attached to a specific place, such as DC or Amsterdam, but is just a feeling of being comfortable in the place that I presently am, and nothing more. It is these moments, when I am no longer conscious about where I am—when here just becomes where I am at the moment—that I am searching for. These are the moments when here just is, moments that do not need to be thought about twice and cannot be forced—they just happen. When they do, I actually feel like I live here.
Congrats Ding!
February 13, 2011 8:28 pm