The Curve of Lines

As an immigrant woman, I continually attempt to resolve, and sometimes dissolve, the separating lines of cultures that have shaped me and are shaping me.

For somebody like me who has lived half of her life in one country, and the second half in another one, does a dichotomy exist? Is there a "cultural schizophrenia" taking place somewhere in me?

I have a strong sense of self but I find myself searching at times for a sense of home. I miss my family. Where is home for me? Will I truly feel I belong somewhere again?

In spite of a strong sense of who I am, I sometimes find myself in culturally ambiguous situations. Where I see ordinary reality against my romantic illusions of what is home for me. I feel nostalgia for a homeland where I don't have to live and experience the gritty aggravations of everyday. And I am almost sure, the nostalgia reverses itself as soon as I start living there again.

When I come home to visit, my mother sometimes says, "America has become you". I then would remind her that since I was a young girl, she kept saying that my ways were too American, my thoughts and ideas too western. This is not a strange characteristic on my part. They sent us to American schools, ran by European nuns!

And our family traditions have always been a mix of Asian and Western values. Come to think of it, I have always been mixed, cross-cultural. A chopsuey!

Every place where I've lived at has become part of me. Manila, Los Angeles, Hawaii. America has become me- the landscapes, the people, their history joining with mine. But the Philippines will always live in me. And America. The hybrid of both places at once, which can only exist in imagination is definitely a "place". And maybe that "place" is my one true place, my imagination's permanent address.

It is a place where two separate countries have shaped most of my values, ambitions, sensibilities; where Jose Rizal and Hemmingway are friends; where Balagtas is courting Emily Dickinson with his poetry, and where Rumi is a beloved stranger.

Wherever it is I find myself "at home" with, I try to be resilient and compassionate in the face of change. Like a bamboo I need to bow to the winds sometimes, lest I break. And gently embrace new ways of doing things, while staying true to what I believe is right for me.

Looking back now, it seems fitting that all of cities I could have chosen to live in, I found myself in Los Angeles. It is a fitting external portrait of my then emerging, developing internal existence. It is a place where everything is subject to change, where even the land shifts, is not permanent. Many calls it a city of illusions; what you see is not necessarily what it is.

I was changing. I was growing. What kind of home for myself was I seeing there? Was it an illusion, or was it real?

A lot of people come to Los Angeles in search of their future, in spite of their past. Reinvent themselves. Form new identities. Make new names. Sometimes you can even purchase a new identity from somebody at the corner of Alvarado and Third. One can be an "instant American citizen" for 20-50 bucks!

It was in Los Angeles where I began to really know myself. It was there where I began creating a new meaning, however vague at times, for the cross-cultural life that I live. However, a sense of home, of belonging to a safe place, an anchor for roots, remains elusive. But at the end of the day, home for me is an arm that will hold my head while I sleep, a chest I can put my head on, knowing I am safe, and loved and accepted. No matter what.

I think this longing plays a big role on how I judge the kind of relationships I form with men. I search for a home, a sense of family within the relationships I form with them. Where there is total acceptance of everything that I am. Where I totally trust I belong to myself and to someone at the same time.

I think many people want what I want. But I think my desire comes from a deeper need for assimilation since I think there is a lot in me which feels separated from my original source of belonging. Sometimes, I need to cross the world to bridge some of these lines of separation.

At the end of the day, I tell myself I am home wherever I am. I am all the places I have lived at, all the people I have met and is meeting. Borders come up but are crossed. Some lines can be erased. New ones can be made and old ones reconnected.

"Dont scorn the one who travels many roads

in search of a home,

For in her bosom, she carries it all along".

journal entry 8-16-02