Time and Space.

Living abroad has taught me many things. Two years in China and nearly two years and counting in Colombia would certainly come with valuable cultural lessons, linguistic hurtles and gastronomic adventures. But more than that living abroad has taught me about where I come from, about who I really am and where I truly feel at home.

On a rainy afternoon, the first in months, I sit scrunched up, wedged between my bed and a side table that has become a comfortable spot for me and here sipping a latte I write. In many ways I am more American at this moment than I ever have been while in the United States. It is like being abroad gives me permission to really be American. When I am in my own country I am the traveler, the world wanderer, and therefore exotic, foreign, different and whether I am seen this way, exude this or am rebelling, it seems to be the general state of things. Yet, while abroad, there is very little I can do to mask where I am from. And here they have a vision of me well before I even speak. And no matter where else I have been or how un-American I feel in the states, here I am simply Americana. (and in China I was 老外 lǎo wài “foreign devil”). Do I crave the familiar, reminders of “home” the place I was born, is that why I seek out the familiar brands, find comfort in the luxury of imports, and behave more like the cliché I am beginning to resemble?

Living abroad has taught me two things about where I am from, and how significantly those things are intertwined with who I am. Time and space. These are such American concepts, so critical and essential to our way of life and you don’t realize it until you are out of our sphere. They are both so enforced that the idea that they are social constructs is impossible to fathom until you are drowning in a foreign cultural sea and these two fundamental elements like oxygen and gravity are removed.

Time and Space.
As upsetting as it is to be without the comforting structure these concepts provide in the north, I respect their absence or rather the alternative… not their absence. What is there in place of time?
What is there in the absence of space? There is closeness, contact and connection. In the US we have traded these things for personal space and individuality. We cling to these concepts of ourselves and have been raised in isolation to the point that we are uncomfortable with the most basic of human behaviors; Touch.
Time is another story all together. Of course time exists. We use it, measure it, we schedule; we double book. It is up, it is out; It heals all wounds. We save it; we waste it. It flies. It is money. We count on it, celebrate it and bemoan it. It can run out. It is good; it is bad. How could it not really exist at all? What a ridiculous question, of course it exists. It is tangible. We are ruled by it and consumed by it. We try to make the most of it.
Even In Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 186–190 (Macrone, 2007).

So if it is out of joint it must be real. And to guarantee this we tease and make fun of those who aren’t slaves to this concept we hold so dear, those who don’t sacrifice themselves to it, who don’t betray themselves to worship at the altar. It is unsettling both to be in such a heathen world, but also mostly because I am beginning to question my own faith. Have I been worshiping a false idol all these years? Am I misguided when I try, futilely, to convert the heathens? Am I the one who is mistaken? What have I missed or passed over, neglected in order to honor this age-old fiction?

I know I have been defending my bubble, my space, fiercely keeping tenderness, love and affection at bay. Threatened by the slightest touch, reading into it, all the taboos of a conservative, rigid and misguided pious premise that migrated across the ocean 300 years ago, I have pushed myself away from the life that could sustain me, now getting most of the fundamental contact we all need from my cat. Comforting and welcome as it is, there is a serious problem with this evasion of the problem.

Entonces, has living abroad been good for me, has it changed me? Come hold my hand and we can take a walk while I will tell you all about it.


Macrone, Michael. "The time is out of joint." Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Cader Company, 1990. eNotes.com. 2007. 25 Feb, 2010

* Since I make my students do this all the time, I figured I could serve as a good example. Jajaja.