XXI (Returning: Part 2)

I write this in my sister's study in Washington DC, which is actually more of a toy room with a seldom used computer off to the side. Before I came here I had visions of writing this post at the airplane terminal in Madison, or Detroit, or maybe on the airplane itself, like the last post. But I decided not to bring my computer, and instead revised my vision to include this prelude, an exposition of decision making processes. Or in other words, a description of my writing process as an exercise in remembering, using a notebook and a few notes to plan what I will write, or simply reminding myself of the kernel of a thought of keep myself from forgetting. Like an egg in incubation, I try to keep the thought alive until I can find a space and time to hatch it. Part of this process then is to protect the idea, a protection that presumes a kind of stasis, as if the idea and the impulse to write the idea will not change. Of course somehow and some way it does change, but it's hard to say what this holding on does to it as I will either completely forget what it was supposed to be in the first place or when I finally sit down to write it, whatever does end up getting written replaces its memory. Returning to what then I don't know as I sit here and write, but I manage to hold onto something of the idea, even if that something is only the impulse to keep writing. And now that I've written this I have to set this post on hold, as I need to leave back to Madison in an hour.

The impulse then is a counter-point to the idea that being in the States is similar to being in China. It's been two weeks and of the time I've been back home in Wisconsin the experience is different than being in Shanghai or Ann Arbor or D.C. "Home is where one starts from." says T.S. Eliot but there is nothing like settling into the oldest grooves known, and thus I'd draw a distinction between being somewhere other than home, regardless of language and culture. I felt as "foreign" at the conference in Ann Arbor as being at a conference in Shantou China though everyone spoke English, I could read the warnings on the elevator, and I knew pretty much what to expect from the experience of entering a Walgreen's. It's also possible that everything feels a bit distanced when you're severely jet lagged but that's another story. Yesterday my mom and I went out to the horse farm where she keeps Theo, and as we stood there at the base of a valley looking up at the broadly sloping Wisconsin hills, it's hard for me to imagine feeling "at home" in any landscape other than southern Wisconsin. I lived for six years in California and every time I flew back to either Oakland or San Francisco (depending on which tickets were cheapest), I would ask myself why I chose to live in a place I didn't belong to; its air and hills still novel. Thus it was not just an idea, but I could feel this unbelonging in my person.

It is difficult to write about being home. I'm tempted to say its the opposite of being foreign, but I suspect it is just another point on the spectrum. I am also tempted to write about difference, about the things that stand out between here and there; the people in Chicago walk faster than those in Shanghai, that Americans are bigger, that their traffic flows move en masse without stopping and starting as quickly as the flows in China, and the trains and their stations in the States are old and slow and falling apart. There are less smokers here, more blondes and more diversity. There is more variety of bikes and beer, though there seems to be just as many super high end cars and Starbucks. I can understand what people are saying here but I'm not sure its particularly interesting and I'd probably just rather read my book or escape into my phone. In Wisconsin there are more bugs than there are in Kunshan, more birds and houses. More blue sky and the air is without question clean. All said, it is too easy to view these contrasts as competition rather than difference, and my noticing drifts into value-laden judgment. More importantly for my purposes though, I'm not sure these kinds of comparisons gets at the phenomenon of being foreign. Regardless of the details then there is something that remains of my old impulses born of habit and conjured by place. Returning to what then I don't know but it is easy to fall back into old grooves at home or in writing. I head back to China in a few days.