王平常
文字让我的日子丰富起来
正文
The Extra Practice
It was late 2000 when Ms. Nelly Furtado’s first single hit airwaves worldwide with her ethnic vibes and folksy melody. Her scratchy vocals sang out:
“I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away. I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is.”
At the time I was doing a bit of flying myself. My family had just moved to another city and for the next five years I called Fremont, California ‘home’.
We were just about settled in our new house, a tall townhouse, built in a reminiscent style of the old adobe ranchos of the late Spanish settlers. The walls were sandpaper beige with neutral pink trim and curved clay roof tiles. The house faced a secluded small private street among its clone copies while my bedroom backed a rumbling street that never slept and consequentially, never could I. There was a lot to get used to.
A few days earlier my dad had taken me to check out my new school. We walked around the schoolyard and I peeked into classroom windows, where kids had put up posters about themselves. I focused on one, a smiling Curtis Davis who I learned liked pizza and recess but who was not too fond of homework.
These kids were like any other, but somehow I found myself intimidated. Their portraits of smiling smugness were a wall that blocked me out from their fuzzy and happy lives. I was the outsider, trespassing on their playground, poking around their classrooms, and bothering their blessed way of life.
Don’t get me wrong though, it wasn’t as if Fremont was some exclusive country club. This was all part of the process of moving. I was, at the age of 9, a veteran at this kind of thing having moved from Dortmund, my small German birthplace, to Texas and later to California, where I changed from city to city.
It was for this reason I was particularly taken with Ms. Furtado’s song when I first stumbled onto the music video on TV. From the moment I saw the camera pan from the lush open forests, down to Ms. Furtado, floating above the wild grass, I knew that I was a bird just like her; she was singing my life with her words.
Most importantly, her song had stirred a question within me into full fire. If, as her lyrics insinuate, your soul is where your home is, and knowing full well that, ‘home is where the heart is’, I did not have the slightest idea where either my soul or my heart was. Where was my home then? Had my heart been split into fragments to be shared? Was my soul rationed off to each house and community that had ever taken me in? I didn’t want to believe so. The question of my true home was eating away at me; Ms. Furtado was unintentionally killing me softly with her song.
I knew one thing though: I was tired of being a bird. I just wanted to stay in my snugly warm nest and never fly again. Yet every time I got comfortable, there were moments, gathered with my friends, where my mind would flutter briefly to remind myself that a mere two weeks ago I didn’t even know these people existed. The flutter would always come back unexpectedly: two months now, two years now.
Surely, if I was “home”, I would not be so resentful. I even asked a friend for help and to get a simple reply: “If you were dying, where would you want to be buried?”
I thought about it long and hard. Did I belong back in Germany, in a country I could scarcely remember with a language I’d long forgotten? How about Alameda, the small Californian coastal town with its strong stench of saltwater? Was it China, a country I had never even lived in but where my distant relatives were? Or Canada, my newest move? My wings were tired of these mental flights. Did it even matter where I’d be buried? I’d be dead anyway.
Whose right is it anyway to claim a piece of land, of dirt, worms, and trees, to be theirs? Their home, in their hearts, in their souls. It’s selfish. Land is land and places are places because of the people in them. The world turns and people turn with it and that is all I know. And I doubt anyone could claim they know any better. Everyone is a bird that takes the occasional flight, some with stronger wings than others. Blame the extra practice.
So leave me in peace Nelly Furtado. My wings need a break.
It was late 2000 when Ms. Nelly Furtado’s first single hit airwaves worldwide with her ethnic vibes and folksy melody. Her scratchy vocals sang out:
“I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away. I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is.”
At the time I was doing a bit of flying myself. My family had just moved to another city and for the next five years I called Fremont, California ‘home’.
We were just about settled in our new house, a tall townhouse, built in a reminiscent style of the old adobe ranchos of the late Spanish settlers. The walls were sandpaper beige with neutral pink trim and curved clay roof tiles. The house faced a secluded small private street among its clone copies while my bedroom backed a rumbling street that never slept and consequentially, never could I. There was a lot to get used to.
A few days earlier my dad had taken me to check out my new school. We walked around the schoolyard and I peeked into classroom windows, where kids had put up posters about themselves. I focused on one, a smiling Curtis Davis who I learned liked pizza and recess but who was not too fond of homework.
These kids were like any other, but somehow I found myself intimidated. Their portraits of smiling smugness were a wall that blocked me out from their fuzzy and happy lives. I was the outsider, trespassing on their playground, poking around their classrooms, and bothering their blessed way of life.
Don’t get me wrong though, it wasn’t as if Fremont was some exclusive country club. This was all part of the process of moving. I was, at the age of 9, a veteran at this kind of thing having moved from Dortmund, my small German birthplace, to Texas and later to California, where I changed from city to city.
It was for this reason I was particularly taken with Ms. Furtado’s song when I first stumbled onto the music video on TV. From the moment I saw the camera pan from the lush open forests, down to Ms. Furtado, floating above the wild grass, I knew that I was a bird just like her; she was singing my life with her words.
Most importantly, her song had stirred a question within me into full fire. If, as her lyrics insinuate, your soul is where your home is, and knowing full well that, ‘home is where the heart is’, I did not have the slightest idea where either my soul or my heart was. Where was my home then? Had my heart been split into fragments to be shared? Was my soul rationed off to each house and community that had ever taken me in? I didn’t want to believe so. The question of my true home was eating away at me; Ms. Furtado was unintentionally killing me softly with her song.
I knew one thing though: I was tired of being a bird. I just wanted to stay in my snugly warm nest and never fly again. Yet every time I got comfortable, there were moments, gathered with my friends, where my mind would flutter briefly to remind myself that a mere two weeks ago I didn’t even know these people existed. The flutter would always come back unexpectedly: two months now, two years now.
Surely, if I was “home”, I would not be so resentful. I even asked a friend for help and to get a simple reply: “If you were dying, where would you want to be buried?”
I thought about it long and hard. Did I belong back in Germany, in a country I could scarcely remember with a language I’d long forgotten? How about Alameda, the small Californian coastal town with its strong stench of saltwater? Was it China, a country I had never even lived in but where my distant relatives were? Or Canada, my newest move? My wings were tired of these mental flights. Did it even matter where I’d be buried? I’d be dead anyway.
Whose right is it anyway to claim a piece of land, of dirt, worms, and trees, to be theirs? Their home, in their hearts, in their souls. It’s selfish. Land is land and places are places because of the people in them. The world turns and people turn with it and that is all I know. And I doubt anyone could claim they know any better. Everyone is a bird that takes the occasional flight, some with stronger wings than others. Blame the extra practice.
So leave me in peace Nelly Furtado. My wings need a break.
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