Timothy AllenTHE IMMIGRANT"But one of these early settlers had chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the
world had so terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget . . . . all the friends and possessions he had
left up there, and start life over again in the lower world. " I never wanted to leave the old country. Tall ridges cut across the landscape, there, beckoning me with patches of meadow, hardwoods and august pines, a vernal continuum of green, peppered with reds and yellows in fall. Solacing as the arms of a lover, these ridges were, in my old country. Far west, the plains, horizons crisp and distant, afforded precious stillness of mind. I was brash in the old country. I walked in long strides there; my steely gaze was penetrating, I was told. Copiously-read books were held easily in one hand. My stride is shortened, in the new country. Well-meaning souls tell me the odd metronomic tone accompanying my gait, like a statistician's data, can be mined for invaluable information. This merely mystifies me. The ridges of arrested browns and greens, are a steep climb. No longer the comfort of a lover's arms, they impede and bewilder me. The vague horizon seems within arm's reach. Books are come by with great difficulty, in the new country. They rest on my lap; my reading is much like a climber scaling a rock face. The heavy mist of the street follows me into the stairwells and halls, in the new country. It's in my chair and my coffee; it restrains my conversation. My colleagues peer ephemerally from it, their countenances appearing as canvases thrown off by an artist caught unawares by a hard rain. Voices pop out of nowhere in random senseless mazes. I dream sometimes at night of the art museums of the old country, and that I will soon be going back there. It merely slipped my mind that I had booked a round trip. I relish this for several seconds upon wakening, before the flinty reality lacerates my soul. It is a one-way voyage. Irremediably and inexorably so.
I never wanted to leave the old country. Handshakes were firm and spontaneous there, and smiles contagious. I was deliberate, in the old country; I took stairs two at a time while affecting a casual air. Handshakes are hesitant and less frequent, in the new country, and smiles uncertain. My behavior is more tentative, in the new country, and each stairwell a trial. I was a gourmet in the old country, scouring markets for fine cuts and delicacies. And rare vintages, too. Fine restaurants were anticipated with relish. Sandwiches are more manageable fare, in the new country. Fine restaurants are at best an ordeal. Most salads and entrees confound me. Fine wines still succor me, yet their procurement has lost its intrigue.
I never wanted to leave the old country. The sun and the wind were steady companions there, as I peddled through long valleys and brick streeted towns. They are with me still, in the new country, pegs on which haphazardly-hung memories, faded coats of many colors, tantalize incessantly. Astride the bicycle, in the new country, a brief curb-crashing venture down a disserted lane is exhilarating, a curb missing one, a cause for celebration. I never wanted to leave the old country; and until forced to walk its thoroughfares and back alleys, never contemplated the new one. There is an undeniable bleakness here; yet, more so at first blush than upon reflection. Straight aisles and gnarled pathways yield surprises and treasures undiscovered in the old land, a marvelous richness and depth highly prized anywhere, and clearly more appreciated here. Twisted alleyways, a casbah of experiences, unanticipated and magical, of breathtaking depth and richness. Childlike, I devour them, unbelieving the thrill, pulsating, the wonderment, the magical, mystical discovery, zenlike in beauty and oneness, a level of reality ungraspable in the old country, made impossible by the schism of visual perception and its object, by the distance and divorce from truth and meaning it imposes. So, I abide in the new land, each day given to the many uncertainties and rare hidden gems that inhabit here. How much my voyage is like that of Anders and Britta Lena three generations before mine is a source of wonder to me. The familiarities of Alvsborg County abandoned, my forebears lamented the stark Allegheny Plateau where necessity drove them. A culture and way of life as alien to them as my new land is to me imposed harshly upon them, they doubtless sought out rare treasures veiled in the spareness of their existence, as do I. In a new and strange tenor, I relive their experiences daily; neither of us choosing our fate, yet each of us fleshing from the given the uberty of life.
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