If intention is part of foreignness, then it follows that uncovering some of the roots of a particular intention can shed light on the phenomenon of foreignness. Further, if intention is not just a conscious action, and is also a result of habit patterns formed over time (perhaps unknowingly), then it follows that past intentions can be connected to habits formed in the past, which in this case I will call the habits of being foreign. To start then on uncovering my habit of foreignness, I grew up in two places that were quite different, and during my "formative years" never quite fully immersed myself in either. From the ages of 4 until 13 I spent every weekend and the summers on a farm just outside of a small Wisconsin town named Mineral Point where my father lived. During the week, Monday through Friday, I would go to school on the West side of Madison, where my mother lived. They were located an hour's drive apart in Southwest Wisconsin. Once I got into high school, my Dad rented a house in Madison, and I began to develop some continuity, but that's another story. And of course there are more details of this arrangement, and also, I should note, my brother also moved on the same schedule (my sister not as much), but I cannot speak for their experiences. All said, part of the intention that underlies my current foreignness was built through the normalization of a liminal existence, one where I traveled regularly between two different worlds and developed two different ways of living.
Specifically, Mineral Point was the world of my father. It was (and still is) a small town, 2,500 people, famous for being the first European settlement in Wisconsin, and since the 20th Century, somewhat of a bohemian enclave known for pottery and tourism. My father worked in town at the power company, but lived on a Christmas tree farm that we all maintained. Coming to Mineral Point was not just a rural and small town experience, which I suppose could be thought about politically or sociologically, but was also the experience of being the son of my father. This experience contrasted with being the son of my mother: different households and different rules and expectations. In Madison I went to school and did homework, played on the old black and white Apple computer, or with transformers. I had friends from school but rarely had the chance to spend time with them on the weekends. My mom or Jerry cooked dinner and I had to do the dishes. In Mineral Point, I played with G.I. Joes and owned a rifle. I took piano lessons and went to Church. On Friday nights my Dad would often go by the Farm and Fleet on our way to the farm and usually we'd stop at Hardee's or Pizza Hut. My dad would put us to work every weekend, either doing something with the trees or some building project on the house or barn, or some other manual task.There is so much to say about both of these worlds, but the main point here is that I couldn't settle into either place, or set of parental expectations, for a prolonged spell of time.
I don't bring this up as an expose of my childhood (I did plenty of that in my old blog), or to paint myself as someone who was a miserable kid, which I was not. I am very glad to have had the experiences I had, especially those in Mineral Point, and further, had, and still have, a loving family that takes care of me. Smiley face emoji. I bring this up because the habit pattern of not fully being in a place due to the ever looming presence of impending change, both in terms of context and identity, seems to me a crucial piece of what my version of being foreign is. That is, of being a person who is not completely of the world they are in, a person at a slight remove; an other. And though I have tried to work against this habit or rhythm (see Derrida) by learning ways to be a part of groups/tribes, I have also come to accept that being on neither team is a set of relations that I am comfortable inhabiting. This has served me in multiple ways, the most obvious being that as a writer, being neither here nor there is a stance that can lead to novel perspectives. It's also served me as a teacher working with students who don't fit neatly into class cliques, and as someone who has worked with many "foreigners" in the States in terms of relating to the experience of fully belonging to a place (though whether or not my experiences are equivalent is another question). All said, this historical explanation was an attempt to reveal some of my intentions complicit in my assumptions and experiences of being foreign, though intentions is too conscious of a word, implying agency. Of course I don't have much of an immediate choice in the matter of how I experience the world.
