Far from my fatherland I’ve dwelt Because my parents clearly felt That other nations we should reach, To them the gospel we should preach.
Thus sev’ral cultures I have known, And parts of each are now my own. I speak in more than just one tongue; A few I learned while I was young.
So diff’rent lands I could call Home, And sometimes it’s wher’er I roam. Still, Home can everywhere seem far, Except where other pilgrims are.
To my faith’s heroes I relate, And them I seek to imitate. For they were strangers in this place; In hope of heav’n they ran the race.
Ah, friends throughout the world I’ve made. Yet their goodbyes on me have weighed. Now often I just hope and pray That some close friends near me can stay.
Thus, there is loss, yet more is gained, For many mem’ries are retained. And, unlike many things we reap, Our memories we long can keep.
All this has made my skills expand, Let me the world more understand. And God my every trait can use For works He in advance did choose.
What lies ahead I do not know; To new frontiers I still may go. Yet always I will heed the call Of Him to whom I owe my all.
“The first year I came to this country, I swallowed down everything I had ever known and it slid down my throat into the darkness of secrets, or maybe just things nobody wanted to know. Either way I was empty, ready for the sunshine and breeze of this new world to wrap me up in a whirlwind strong enough to block out the rest. I should’ve known better, but somehow I still thought it would be that easy, that I would just keep my old secrets and build a new framework of identity and slide myself into it without losing too much. The first year I came to this country, I forgot everything I had ever learned and discovered a darkness of secrets inside of me big enough to block out the rest, but I lost too much.
In the end I found the pieces I needed, I dredged up my past and did not let it be forgotten. Instead I merged the old and the new together, weaving the different threads into a tangled mess of knots behind the scenes that nobody wanted to know about. I managed the chaos as carefully as walking on a black-night path except this time there was nobody to tell me how to do it with confidence and everybody was there to see when I tripped over the stump and landed in the thorns. Still, I wrapped my cloth around me like a bright mask or a new skin and when my new friends poked holes in it they discovered the whirling dances of a different country underneath, so they named me after my mix of colours and I blurred them all into something resembling stability. In the end I always knew that every story I told had holes and half-truths, but when I put them together they stacked into the pieces I needed to keep going so I held my chin high and taught myself confidence.
Sometimes, still, strangers ask questions. They see me and notice the blurred edges of my names, they catch glimpses of the holes in my skin and they wonder if I am really who they think I am. Mostly I reach into my jar of stories and I swirl the choices around and pick a truth to give them, something to cover up the things they don’t really want to know about. But sometimes I toss my head and laugh, unfurl the bright colours into a banner that declares – I am /never/ who you think I am – because I am not even who I think I am and I’m certainly not who I say I am and who am I anyway? Sometimes I spin in a dance they’ve never seen before and I tell them this too is me, sometimes I write them a poem full of foreign languages and can’t be bothered to interpret it. Sometimes, I am too much for them and I do not care because these are the pieces I need to make sure I don’t lose too much and the confusion of one stranger is a small price to pay for the gift of being complicated and confident.
You can’t catch me, I say, whirling away in a blur of secrets and stories colourful enough to block out the rest.
This year I met a stranger who tried. A stranger who chased after my trail of contradictions and picked up every half-truth I dropped along the way, came up to me with arms full of gathered pieces and told me – look I’ve found such a beautiful mess – as if the tangled knots of my underneath could ever be called beautiful. Messy, yes. I know my stories are messy, I know when my colours are spinning around me sometimes they stain the ground rainbow and I don’t know how to clean it up. But I held up the secrets I had hidden away in the darkness and discovered a mosaic of stained mess that even this country has chosen to name as art, and I wondered why it took a stranger to see that this too could be beautiful. Either way, I guess I was ready for the things nobody wanted to know to become the things I could choose to say, and I added them into my jar of stories imbued with every shred of confidence I have taught myself. After all, who else could show me how to wrap myself up in the sunshine and breeze of a new world without losing the pieces of my history that I needed, how to laugh at the edge of the night-dark and stand up to try again over and over until the blur of my stories swirled with confident colours? There was nobody there but me and the watching world.
So I built my secrets into a mosaic, turned the tapestry of my stories upside down and inside out to show the chaos, stacked my names into the holes of my half-truths and called it brave. Beautiful. A new kind of confident, a bold dance in the middle of the street with eyes flashing and feet stomping and hands clapping rhythms they learned somewhere far away and long ago, somewhere I cannot return but will not forget.
I’m not a line, I say these days. I’m a circle, looping back into myself like a repeating eight of infinity, an endless beautiful mess.”
There was no funeral. No flowers. No ceremony. No one had died. No weeping or wailing. Just in my heart. I can’t… But I did anyway, and nobody knew I couldn’t. I don’t want to… But nobody else said they didn’t.
So I put down my panic and picked up my luggage and got on the plane.
There was no funeral.
By Alex Graham James
A Response
“I can’t. But I did anyway, and nobody knew I couldn’t.” Isn’t that the summary of every goodbye I have lived through? How many times have I done the impossible, entered into the unimaginable simply because I must? The human spirit is resilient, determined to live, capable of withstanding much. All the same, every time I do something I can’t, I lose myself. Piece by piece I’m losing myself, trails of bloody footprints in my wake.
No words or imagery could ever be enough to capture it, and I’ve spent my whole life searching for how to explain something that is inexplicable. The sacrifice of innocence, the absolute helplessness of a child, the depth of the ache bound up inside my knowledge. Too much knowledge, too much logic, and I cut myself off from the relief of grief, thinking I hadn’t earned it. Wasn’t good enough for it. Isn’t everyone good enough for grief?
What keeps you here I ask my heart Stranger in a strange land, so white, so clean
These fields in June, she laughs Your red-stained fingers A taste of heaven beneath each leaf And this sky expansive and clear
I wonder why, my heart, you hold Steady on small delights after Months of sifting memories Under grey skies Testing each day as we Walk out into this not-all-bad But still foreign place
I am young, says she – A child who races, explores, Finds beauty even here And welcomes the new, trusting Inviting sweet existence even Within this space of not belonging
I hold out for Simple Wonders; Encounters with the Presence
Crouched amongst the rows I ponder this Sifting through the too-soon and the already-past I find it. The ripest, the reddest berry Welcomes me into the perfect balance Proves to me that Yes, child, even here, even you, Have abundant peace. The taste and texture of now.
By Bree Becker, a third culture kid from Rwanda and Kenya who now lives in Oregon, USA.
I come from new names of old lands, Oceans, islands, continents, Snow and sand.
Between the blood spilled for selfish reasons, the crucifixion of sheep as camouflage for our fears; Home…
The place I come from …
Sometimes its people disappear with the wind, Its shape shifts from blinks to tears And whenever it does so it turns me into a foreign, again.
That’s how I get lost; how I get home; simply to leave again.
I come from seashells, different smells, Tastes, colors, Fetishes in the spotlight, the holy of brothels!
Where I come from… I sleep naked, covered by 3 blankets, waking up sweaty. I wear boots at the beach, Slippers at parties and I’m barefoot in the streets. Never ugly, nor pretty, the eccentric, the exotic Neither usual, nor repugnant, yet intriguing, deceiving.
The place I come from is a loop, a pattern in space, not very different from here, quite similar actually! It feels good to be back for the first time; Again.
Caught his eye Walking in the mid day heat In Bhaktapur.
Faraway – – look
Both of us a little like strangers, Though he was born here In his dusty gem encased by mountains Cradled in the mist
He’d since Seen the sea in Spain & there gaining a new life Lost some of the old
the cold mornings when he’d run laps around the pokhari with the other boys. One was always fastest – ran two times around before he could finish one.
We sit at its side now, smoking our cigarettes, & I can’t tell how he feels when he says that the children playing in the streets Are foreign to him now.
