I think about culture as a living thing. So my ethnic identity is imprinted by the signifiers not just of my parents, but the diaspora. The anxieties here, more over come from this feeling of vulnerability. We are a small group, though in actual fact, we are not. But we’re so unorganized and fractured. What they carry, what they build, do they remain a reflection of the mother culture? Or the new home culture?

What i see from the last generation (ie my parents) of the diaspora doesnt quite reflect what I saw from the previous generation (grandparents and godparents), the one that helped the last settle and eventually raise us. Instead is a “boomerfication” has gone on. Also, there’s no culture i can think of they have to pass on. Certainly song and recipes, but not what THEY specifically made. It’s like being human had to sit in a holding pattern while trying to make life work here. There’s a generation of music from the radio, but it felt like that boomerfication had to happen earlier, as they seem to more quickly enter the state of reflecting on days they had more freedom. Perhaps this explains how quickly television became a habit? We can watch a tv show in a home language and enjoy themselves after a week of hard work. This can explain how primed they were to exposure to conservative programming. An idea worth following but not for now to explore.

The culture of our parents also becomes our culture, but it cant be the repeating of stories and songs, culture will beget more culture. But meanwhile the home country has been moving on, and the diaspora have themselves a reflection of a familiar world they recognize, which is drifting from the home culture, as people age out, as new things come and go. Eventually the culture you recognize is not the relevant culture, and just like your parents with their culture, you cant recognize you or your place in it.

Eventually the past you know is a key to a lock that got changed. For you, for me, the case is, in all the time i was away from the home culture, it changed, so when i go to see it, it had less or even none of the markers i was made to be familiar with. Home is less familiar. There can be good or bad, but it’s important that this change is noted.

The next thing is realizing every member of the diaspora has with them a different photograph (or something far far less detailed like a rubbing) they carry with them that was the familiar world they hail from. Then they raise children on that fading picture, and they meet other members of the diaspora, and perhaps they try to compare notes. Neither understand the different regions have radically different ideas in cuisine, in art, in expression. There’s a case that all one can know is the food. It kinda makes you doubt if the connection you made would be strong enough to find it your home too. You may doubt your connection to that home. And it’s worse if you dont find a sense of home here.

Some parts of america have the homely vibes of a bus station, serving only to hold you between locations, with all the invitation you’d expect to find when the shops inside all closed.