1…in search of a home

LGA, March 31. – Today is the last one of the glorious 4,230 days that I’ve been a New Yorker. I had landed in New York with two suitcases and a laptop. Eleven-plus years and two computers later, I spent an entire week purging and packing the things I’ve accumulated. But even after an endless amount of trash I discarded, the movers took away 10 pieces of furniture and 28 boxes of stuff, of which three ashtrays are the only surviving items that I had brought from the old country. A few of my belongings are staying behind, scattered all over with neighbors, friends, friends of friends, and complete strangers. I hope I’ve left my mark on the city.

I had arrived on a beautiful late-summer day and am leaving on an equally beautiful day in early spring. In between, I’ve lived in two apartments in the same neighborhood, but visited (meaning I at least had a meal) the other four boroughs, as well as twenty-one of the United States plus the District of Columbia. But my favorite sight was from the front steps of my school on Fifth Avenue: I loved to watch the evening set on the city – over the Empire State Building (lit in different colors almost every night), to my right, and the Twin Towers with the lights left on in their many windows, to my left. Those twilight moments, the shimmering lights, people and traffic rushing past me, the straight arrow of the avenue in front of me, the dark skyscrapers made look taller and slimmer by the dusky but still light sky in the background suggested endless possibilities awaiting me in this city. Strangely, the haste, the noise, the seeming ephemera of the place made me feel rooted, belong, at home and at peace.

And now I am on the road again. When I was running around collecting empty boxes from my neighborhood liquor and book stores, I saw many others moving in and out. It had always struck me as characteristically American to uproot oneself with such ease, to leave things, people, and places behind, to pursue the new and the unknown with such optimism. Supposedly, I am now doing just that, although the ease and hope are yet to be found somewhere along the road. On the other hand, I love a road trip, so maybe I should be thinking about my departure from New York as a long, uncharted excursion to America that will one day bring me back to my point of origin. But I will always remember what CAG and I read in some New York-dedicated book we stumbled upon at an airport giftshop when he was leaving the city a few years back: “Those who live outside New York must be kidding.” I hope the joke ultimately is not on us.

To mark my departure from my adopted hometown, I am renaming this blog. On the origins and meaning of its new name – in the next post.

Personal is Political

Last night’s speech by Barack Obama was, as always, audacious in scope and rousing in delivery. But I particularly loudly cheered the part on education policies: I very much like the idea of drastically increasing the number of college graduates in the near future. Of course, as an aspiring college professor, I have a vested interest in this: I am hoping that more students on campuses will translate into more full-time (and hopefully tenure-track and tenured) positions for MAs, ABDs, and PhDs like me and my friends and colleagues. I wish that social science and humanities in particular benefit from this new stress on education and the new approach will reverse the trend, reported today in the Times, of dwindling significance of liberal arts education that has become “the province of the wealthy” and “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”

Personally, I am answering President Obama’s appeal to make participation in the education system “the responsibility of every citizen”: the chapter I am writing now is going to be not for myself, my committee, or even my parents, but for America! But I expect that in return this country will make good on the president’s assurance that “this country needs and values the talents of every American” (okay, I am not an American yet, but I almost sure will be in two and a half years).

Also, more than ever I am convinced that my research, although obscure at first glance, will serve public good. It is imperative that someone at RNC (Bobby Jindal himself maybe?) reads the current chapter: I argue there that the “Soviet menace” was brought down by internal forces rather than the omni-powerful U.S., as the Republicans keep insisting, damn it! They seem to be stuck in the dark ages in more ways than one. But their loss might be our gain.