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Monday, June 13, 2022

No place like home

A mongrel flag: Tampa!

When someone asks me where I come from, how I answer depends on my mood.  If I'm tired, I just say "Tampa." (Puzzled looks)  "Floride?"  If I'm up for a chat it's some variation of the following....

My father was born in Marietta, Ohio and grew up in St. Mary's, WV.  My mom was born and raised in Sutton, Surrey, England.  She became a US citizen when I was 4.  Ethnically, I'm painfully WASPish.

Places I've lived:

Born: Tampa, Florida, 1970 (MacDill AFB)

Oxford, England

Mobile, Alabama

Honolulu, Hawaii

Sumter, South Carolina 

Naples, Italy

Tampa (again) and DeLand, Florida, 1981-1992

Arlington, Virginia

Tampa (and again)

Zaragosa, Mexico

Tampa (yet again)

Edgewood, Albuquerque, and Jemez Springs, New Mexico

Ithaca, New York

Toulouse, Aucamville, and Verdun-sur-Garonne, France, 2002-Present

7 states and 4 countries.  Woof!

Places I've visited/lived:

England (1+ year)

Italy (3 years)

Israel (2 weeks)

Jordan (5 days)

Egypt (3 days)

Netherlands (1 week)

Mexico (1+ year)

Guatemala (3+ months)

Belize (5 days)

France (20 years)

Switzerland (3 days)

Canada (3 days)

Spain (3+ months)

Portugal (3 weeks)

Greece (10 days)

Andorra (several hiking expeditions)

Argentina (20 days), 

Uruguay (4 days)

Brazil (10 days), 

Morocco (7 days)

Germany (36 days)

Slovenia (1 day)

Czech Republic (1 day)

Austria (2 days)

Belgium (4 days), 

Luxembourg (2 days)

Ireland (3 days)

27 countries.  A fraction of what some of my friends have managed, but still pretty diverse.

My ancestry:

English, Dutch, Irish

Me ex-wife is from Argentina and has Spanish, Italian, and Quechua ancestry.

My kids were born in France and like the entire nuclear family are trilingual:  English, French, Spanish.  I always speak English with the kids and with their mother they speak French, and then Spanish.  Dinner is like a session of the UN.

They identify as French, Argentine, and American, in no particular order (though my son spent a year in Minneapolis and dreams of living in the States).  They are Third Culture Kids (TCK), as am I.  I recognize the benefits and challenges of "TCK-hood" described by researchers, and learning about TCK characteristics did a lot to alleviate some anxiety I felt about the challenges I'd faced as a teenager adjusting to life in the "normal" world.

I am also an existential migrant.  That is to say, my decision to move abroad was not for economic or political reasons, but

a chosen attempt to express something fundamental about existence by leaving [my] homeland and becoming a foreigner.

I believe my desire to live abroad results from moving back to the US after living in Italy.  This was the first time I'd lived off-base or in a community not dominated by military families.  I was 11, on the cusp of adolescence, and found myself woefully out of touch with "civilian life" and the cultural norms of American pre-teens.  I dreamed of returning to Europe, and finally did, at age 32.

I'm 51 and have lived 25 years outside the US, and the Toulouse area of France is by far the place I've lived the longest.  Whatever reservations I have about life in the US come honestly, courtesy of my dad's service to Uncle Sam.  The unforeseen consequences of military life.  You sometimes see things a little differently.  Objectively, I can't say.  But certainly differently....   

Flag-waving and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance make me feel weird.  Am I American?  White?  Anglophone?  All of the above and none of the above?  Identities shift and overlap.  Am I unpatriotic or anti-nationalist?  

American exceptionalism....globalism.... world citizenship....Jizz-boots on the spooge-tip?

My mother and sister still live in Tampa, but I have as many close relatives in London as anywhere else.

I shall probably live in Europe for the rest of my life.  Barring expulsion or some other unforeseen circumstances.  I am resolutely American.  But I'm something else, as well.

Where am I from?  Many places really.  Call me a cracker, a gringo, a foreigner....but I cringe every time my ex calls me a "Yanqui!"  Ridiculous?  Yep.  

The American South.  The south of France.  Southern Italy.  South England.  Perhaps the one constant across my peregrinations is being a "southerner" to some degree.  And a provincial.  A provincial cosmopolitan.  Or a cosmopolitan provincial.  Some words, basically.  I've barely left my house in four years.  All that moving and now I find my couch to the fridge is about all I can muster.  

20 years from now, when I live in Benin, or Vietnam, or Ethiopia, I'll look back on this sedentary period and wonder just WTF happened.  I'll reflect on it at the end of the month while I'm in Germany.

No real point to all this except to question what we really mean when we speak about who we are, and where we're from.  More and more people have trouble answering the second question and don't identify where they're from as who they are.  I find that encouraging.

I posted Tampa's flag above because it attempts to represent the city's diverse heritage:  Spain, England, Italy, and America.  Very much like my own family.  In fact, the Centro Asturiano de Tampa was co-founded by a man named Faya, and my wife is a Faya, with Asturian ancestors.  Faya is a rare name, and the guy may well be a distant cousin.  The flag meshes nicely with my own family tree's tangled roots, but damn, it is a godawful mess, innit?

Short of any fascist imagery to untangle this week, I dipped my toes into my genealogy, which is now just a collection of names and dates and places.  I'm hoping to turn all that data into a narrative, and as the blog is where I come to set down my thoughts and get things straight, I expect to do a lot of genealogical ruminations in the coming months.

5 generations of my family lived and died on the same farm in Ohio until dad broke the chain by running off to Vietnam.  And I've been running ever since.  And Vietnam is definitely on my list of places to go before I shrug off my mortal coil.

My biggest regret about the circumstances and choices of my life is the lack of roots in a specific place.  Was it Wolfe who said you can never go home again?  In my case, that's sometimes painfully true.  A nomadic life has its benefits, but it's a trade off, and just once I'd like to stroll down Main Street and wave to distant family and neighbors going back generations.  It's like being nostalgic for something I never experienced.

Maybe the grass is simply greener than wherever it is one happens to be at the moment....

14 comments:

  1. This is a great post. And yes, Tampa's flag is a terrific funny mess.

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    1. Thanks! I was worried it was too self-indulgent. Tampa's flag is weird in every way, the overall pennant shape, the colors, the forms....are you a Tampanian? What do you think about the push to change the flag?

      I used to be all for it but something about the excessiveness of the damn thing has endeared me to it. Even though it is, imho, pretty fugly. :)

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    2. No, not too self-indulgent, it is simply great. And I am not Tampanian, so I have no authority to think about changing Tampa's flag. Maybe it is the kind of thing that is so unexpected in a flag that it becomes uniquely good. By the way, I am Portuguese and our flag, which is the Republican flag, is also a mess. I'd like my country to have something simpler and more related to the flags we had in the past.

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    3. The Portuguese flag is busy, but for me it works. I think the colors are really nice and the astrolabe is unique. Is the current flag something adopted after Salazar was deposed?

      One of my best friends here is Portuguese. He's from near Lisbon. I've been there with him on 3 or 4 occasions. It has changed so much!

      What city are you from?

      And thanks again for your supportive words.

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    4. Hi Daurade, I'm from many places. My dad was an army officer, and the nomadic spirit started there, moving from place to place trough former Portuguese Africa. And I also think the grass is greener somewhere else), but I spent most of my life in Lisbon. The Portuguese flag was designed by the republicans and adopted after the fall of monarchy in 1910, surprisingly, Salazar kept it. I also like some symbols in it, but I don't like the colors. As a country of fishermen, I think we should have the blue. Anyway I am glad that you think red and green works.

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    5. So you were in several ex-colonies? Sounds cool. I hear in general the relationship between Portugal and the ex-colonies is pretty good, or at least better than Dance and the Maghreb.

      I'm going to research the pre-Republican flag. I know nothing of it's history. Does the flag have a name? Like the US flag is "Old Glory" or "the Stars and Stripes."

      And curious, how did you come to this post? We're you searching for TCK-related stuff? I guess you're a TCK as well.

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  2. You are right, in different ways we tend to love the former colonies and their people, especially Timor; we really love Timor.
    Portuguese flag is sometimes called the "verde rubra" (green and red) or "bandeira das quinas" (flag of the coins or corners, meaning the elements in the coat of arms).
    At the time of choosing the republican flag there were some really crazy proposals. You can check them by searching: "museu.presidencia.pt/pt/conhecer/simbolos-nacionais/bandeira-nacional". The former portuguese flags are also interesting: google "A Bandeira Nacional através dos tempos | Pg - Portugal glorioso".
    And I forgot to say that I am a subscriber of the mythical "Laws of Silence". I especially enjoyed the very old posts about pyramids. Enjoyed also the recent "Putin's Rasputin: Encounters with Fascism and the Occult". The graphics and photos in the blog are always interesting.

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    1. I like "bandeira das quinas" ("bandera de las esquinas"). Haha, Portuguese says those four words in three and with 5 fewer letters. A more efficient language!

      I looked at the Presidential Museum site. I like the one from 1910: "Proposta de bandeira nacional - projeto de reconciliação nacional 1910." Like some entry for Lisbon Dada?

      Was there a Dada movement in Portugal? Was Pessoa into any of the avant-garde conceptual stuff?

      The explanation on the "Portugal glorioso" site about the evolution of the different elements is really good and well-explained.

      In my unsolicited opinion, I think flags should always be rectangular, with only 3, maybe 4 major colors. Portugal's flag has 5 colors and I have doubts about the white in the shield. But it works for me anyway. Despite the many colors and forms, it's a pretty harmonious whole.

      In general, any images on a flag should not be too finely-detailed, but more like a pictograph or icon that are clear from the distance from which they'll be seen.. The swastika or hammer and sickle work because they are simple and visually bold, like a cross, crescent, Star of David/Seal of Solomon, a rune, or maybe a star or sun. Astronomical phenomenon are always good.

      New Zealand's flag is pretty cool. Dump the Union Jack and it'd be better. Like the SC flag: palm tree and crescent moon.

      So you have been following my nonsense for some time now. Glad you enjoyed the Rasputin post. I want to try to address current events more and this occult stuff keeps popping up, the same patterns. Those pyramid posts were fun but there are no more to discover in Toulouse as far as I can tell.

      Are there any subjects or themes you'd like to see more about? I often just bounce off things I discover accidentally or things I've pondered for a long time. But an outside opinion or suggestion is always welcome. Thanks for reading and commenting, it's very rewarding!

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    2. My flag recommendations sound so didactic! Just what seems to work for me.

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    3. I agree with your flag recommendations, maybe you could design a set of new flags to sell to new countries or to countries in need of a new brand, the kind of thing you did with names for new music bands.
      That flag, "1910 reconciliação", I think is a joke, "a flag for all the tastes" (it also contains the fascio). And there was a kind of an obsession for the Phrygian cap in some proposals.
      Dada didn't resonate very much in Portugal. Pessoa was aware of it and wrote a poem in 1917 called "Saudade Dada". Almada Negreiros sometimes looked like Dada, but Futurism was more important between the young portuguese avant-garde. We have some late Dadaists like Mario Cesariny, but as almost always, especially in the visual Arts we were a peripheric country.
      Yes, it would be great if you could present your readers with more "current events" related themes, especially about these Russian thing that is concerning me to death. I think you know a lot more that is the esoteric/ocult around the actors, motivations, symbols and so on. But all the subjects are good! Keep sharing what you feel is good to share. I (we) thank you.

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    4. Daurade: Freelance Vexillologist? yeah I could tell the 1910 flag was ironic, but Dada loved jokes....

      Now that you mention it, true one doesn't think of Portugal when we speak of Modernism; I have never heard of Portuguese Dada or Surrealism. Somehow it makes sense Futurism would have been more important; I don't know why. Thinking of Futurism and Marinetti makes me wonder about Fascism and Portugal. I think I have my next topic. I'll try to find some new angles on the Russian/Ukraine conflict as well.

      I know Salazar was a dictator but not if he was specifically a "fascist". Wasn't he friendly with Franco? I neglected Portugal when I did my survey of fascism in Europe....gonna correct that oversight.

      Thx again Anon. Be well.

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  3. Exactly, I think the link is Marinetti. There was in 1917 a Portuguese magazine called "Portugal Futurista", with very interesting works, but the first number was the last.
    About Portuguese Fascism, even if it was a terrible regime, I think historians agree that it was a kind of a light fascism if compared with Italy and Germany. Salazar was deeply catholic, anti-Communist, nationalist, ruralist, stingy, etc., but he was not militarist. Portugal moto was: God, motherland and family. The joke translated it into the "3 Fs": "Fatima, Football and Fado". For a brief period we had the "blue-shirts" national-syndicalists, who were hard fascists, but Salazar never liked them precisely because they were too much for what he envisioned for Portugal. Pessoa (who was in his peculiar way a nationalist) said abou Salazar that he was made of sal (salt) and azar (bad luck), and when it rains only the bad luck remains.
    This is my last comment. Sorry for taking the comments for so much time.
    Now I am waiting for your next post.
    Best! Take care.

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    1. Been looking into the topic. I tend to work in spurts so it might take a while. I have started a post about the Blue Shirts in Portugal and Ireland. Some say they (the Irish) were fascists, some not. Salazar is an odd one. Fascistic but very critical of Fascism. Just a super conservative authoritarian. I want to do a thing about how the hard left and hard right meet. Like a lot of Marine Le Pen's supporters are ex-Communists. And there was a fascist party in France founded by ex-Communists. So I wanted to see if the ideology is secondary to the authoritarian impulse. Just a thirst for power and an ideology to differentiate oneself. Also want to work the band Laibach into it, because they seem to "get" the totalitarian aesthetic. Left or Right doesn't matter as much as the power itself. We'll see. But it might take a while.

      I was just watching "Peaky Blinders" and the character Thomas Shelby talks about the meeting of left and right. British fascist Oswald Mosley is a character he goes up against. The show really gets the aesthetics of Mosley correct.

      But don't apologize for taking my time. I appreciate it and it's been really productive. Glad to hear from you. Sorry this comment is so disjointed. Writing on my phone, which is a pain in the neck. Just curious, you have a good knowledge of art and history...are you an academic or just interested in history?

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    2. BTW, I got 2 PDFs from Academia about Fascism in Portugal....did you have a hand in sending those my way? Re-reading my Blueshirts post I feel hopelessly ignorant.

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