Instead of anything substantial, a brief personal essay about living in a foreign country
▣ I have never been able to settle on a homeland for myself. My father lives a short distance from the place in Saskatchewan that his ancestors homesteaded; my mother has returned to Vancouver Island, where her people worked in the coal mines. They were raised in military families, just like me, and were both born in foreign countries. Maybe they desired roots. I never lived in those places. The place of my birth is not important; I never lived there, either. I say I am from Vancouver because it is a city large enough to be recognized. I went to university there. I am most at home on the Prairies, but I cannot imagine returning. ▭ I have to admit that I have no loyalty to the country of my citizenship. I have not seen it in more than a decade. Since becoming an adult, I have never spent time there without plotting my exit. ▭ I have lived in Tokyo longer than I have lived anywhere else. It is where my ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■. ■■ ■■■■ ■■ ■ ■■■■ ■■■■■■, without any intervention on my part. If I do not file the correct paperwork, if my taxes are sent in late, or if my dossier crosses the desk of a bureaucrat in a bad mood, I could be removed. It’s not my homeland. ▭ I have only thought of this in recent years. I’ve given up. I will be rootless. ▣
▣ Even if I would not compare my struggle to theirs, I wonder if I can claim to have become like the immigrant fathers that I knew in my youth, trying in vain to hold onto something of the old world. They were not preparing their children for a return to the homeland. They wanted to make sure that their descendants could honor their ancestors. They wanted something from their own past to be passed forward. They still resented the way that their new wider world perceived them. ▭ I think of all the immigrant narratives that I was raised on in Canadian schools. They were intended to foster empathy in us, or to help us understand the experiences of people that might appear unlike us. They did that, but they also turned out to be preparations for my next life. ▭ I think of the scene at the end of "Red Rose is Paging You," where Chu T’ien-wen has her aging narrator contemplating a descent into senility. His wife and his eldest son are learning Japanese. His son speaks Americanized English learned at a Montessori kindergarten. Long before Alzheimer's claims his mind, the languages spoken by his family will have become incomprehensible to him. ▣
▣ I speak to friends back home. No matter how desperate they become, I never advise them to leave the places they were born. I tell them that they should move to Nipawin or North Battleford, put a downpayment on a mobile home, get a steady job, and marry the sweetest girl that they can find. ▭ I realize that they might be happier if they left. They envy me. I have told them enough about my life to give an impression of ease and adventure. Their happiness would be temporary. Very few of them, I believe, could hold on long enough to build what I have built. This is nothing significant, and I did it in the clean, safe cities of East Asia, rather than wilder, less forgiving places, but it took some effort and a degree of pain. If you start off without money, it takes some talent and fortitude. Speaking most practically, it is helpful to speak several languages. ▭ None of the young men I’m talking about fit the profile of people that could survive decades away from home. I could offer some advice to those that do fit the profile. I doubt they would need it. They might not really have a choice, either. The people most suited to disappearing to a foreign country are also the people least likely to be able to settle down at home. ▣
▣ I think of the tombstones of foreigners buried in Yantai and Yokohama. It is good to think of yourself as being one in a long line of adventurers. I am sure the immigrant fathers I knew as a boy occasionally thought of themselves in the same way, no matter how pedestrian their lives had become. They took chances, too, after all. ▣
▣ I think of other long term expatriates I have known… I’m not sure what they have in common. ▭ I always think of a line that was attributed by a friend to Donald Richie, who lived and died a short distance from my own home in Tokyo, about how the type of person drawn to the kind of voluntary exile that he went into, were those that wanted to make external, palpable some alienation that they felt. He was, if the lines actually came from him, which I have never been able to confirm, speaking as a homosexual man. ▭ I wonder if so many foreigners with racist beliefs are drawn to live in East Asia not because they can live in tidy ethnostates but because they have a perverse desire to experience for themselves the mild sting of prejudice. Maybe it is because they wish to demonstrate correct model minority behavior. ▭ I apologize for stereotyping the East Asian expatriate. ▣
▣ I believe it is preferable to go native to some extent. This is the lesson of Donald Richie. My American friends that plan to die in Beijing become happier when they no longer bother following college sports or looking at real estate in their hometown. There are limits. I have a friend whose children in Japan speak English only at an elementary level; they do not speak his own native language. ▭ Even if it is possible, it is important not to try to lose yourself. ▣
▣ I heard someone once describe long term self-exile as being akin to stepping out of history. This is something to consider, although I am not sure yet what it means. ▣