Today I watched this YouTube video of Yi-Fu Li about "a sense of place". I was aware of this term when Kelly Merks, Virtual Expats podcast's most recent guest, but I did not realize where the phrase, or who the phrase came from. Listening to Li's many examples of American ideas of rootedness and place has me thinking about my own placelessness. Or is it placelessness? In my geographically plentiful life I used to vacilate between a longing for one place and a sense of being able to call every place my "home." I would like to tell you that I have resolved this indecision but what has happened instead is that I have stopped thinking in this false dichotomic way. I do want a home, a culture that I feel comfy and supported in AND I do have one, but it is not a geographic place. It is in the intersection of people like me who dont have one geographic place: in our collective placelessness I feel this comfort, this support, this sometimes spoken and sometimes not spoken understanding of the complications of this point of view. Of this life. Of this lack of land as the very definition of "home." Today I also listened to the Big and White podcast, where two American women chat about their time in Nepal @bigandwhitepodcast . This episode was about things that do NOT change when you move abroad. And a strong part was on not blaming your host country for things. Our place is not the problem, nor the solution. I love this kind of expat wisdom. It applies to all of us really but expats have a louder version of these issues due to our physical displacement, unplacement, replacement. (Displacement has such a negative connotation that I wanted to play with it some, what do you think?) So thanks to eveyone who keeps reminding me that not every expat conundrum needs a solution and not every person needs a place, one place, to make them whole. #asenseofplace #YiFuLi #placelessness #place #expat #geopat #home @wearexpats (at ROMA - città eterna) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxfppS0BfSE/?igshid=1hjt5h2bpbxex
