Week No. 2 of 16

Iyer, P. (2000). The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home

Summary & Reflection : Reading Iyer's article, I couldn't stop thinking about the style of the writing. I really enjoyed the narrative approach he took. And now I really want to see a picture of what he looks like. (Just added the pic, 2-5-08). I feel like the writing, in being so autobiographical, is more captivating, and I feel drawn in. Especially in the opening where he writes about the experience of losing his home in the fire (although notably, he does not elaborate on his feelings involved in that loss, but rather goes on to talk about how he's never felt at home). His account is detailed and action-packed, so when he starts to write about his encounter with his "unknown neigbhors", and the Mexican man down the mountain, I'm totally there with him, imagining the scene, sensing the precariousness not only of the trailer, but of their positions in the world...for both of them, the sense of home literally hanging in the balance, teetering on the edge of a mountain, the ground beneath essentially foundationless, shifty, made of quicksand, ready to slide. And still, they sit down and chat like neighbors.

For myself, I can only relate so much to a story like this one, so highly personal and so possessive in tone (he talks about the Global Soul with ownership, and admits that he's probably most at home in the foreign in-between land). I have roots, at least I claim to have them, and I try to nurture them simulataneously as I seek to integrate new cultures into my life. Of course, I also haven't racked up 1.5 million frequent flyer miles. His story is unique, but I get his point that there are others like him and even moreso. I can relate to the sense of inbetweenness, of not belonging, however. The most specifically global example from my own life being the reverse culture shock that I experienced in moving back to the United States after living more than a year in Madrid. It wasn't a huge problem at first; I came back some time in early June to my parents' house at the lake--the place where I grew up. But in late August, it was time to go back to college, back to Madison. My mom helped drive me back there (no car of my own) and find an apartment (since I still didn't have one, yet all my Madison friends did, having secured their housing that spring). As I walked with my mom down State Street, I looked around and noticed how store fronts had changed, cross streets that had been underconstruction and no longer were, faces of new freshmen everywhere, faces I had never seen before. This wasn't the Madison I remembered. And on top of it, I had nowhere to live. I missed Spain and my friends. And I started crying right there in the middle of State Street. I remember telling my mom that I didn't fit in anymore, and I never would.

This little personal narrative ties in with a lot of what Iyer discusses, and also what we as a class discussed, in terms of what do we call "home". For me, at least for a time, home was cute little patio apartment in Madrid at the intersection of Moncloa, Argüelles, and Quevedo neighborhoods. It was my site of rest, relief from the outside (foreign) world, the space I shared with my roommate and visiting friends, the place I kept all my belongings, where I cooked, ate, bathed, studied, slept...It was my piece of Madrid. I had the key to get in, the doorman knew my name, I had a mailbox which periodically delivered messages from Minnesota. It was definitely home. And when I came back to Mille Lacs and the house I grew up in, again, I was home. How could I not be? Surrounded by 6 loving family members, family pets, familiar sights, smells, tastes, sounds...I was home. But going to Madison that fall, it was different. My friends had scattered, relocated to new apartments I still hadn't located...the streets had changed, the student body had spit out 12,000 students and brought in 12,000 new ones. And I had no place to sleep that night but the Howard Johnson hotel. It made me want to go home...but home to Madrid.

I did eventually go back to Spain a year and a half later. Not surprisingly, I experienced a disenchantment not unlike what I felt upon returning to Madison. The streets had changed, stores had closed, my friends were no longer there—returned to their home countries or graduated and moved on. The sense of belonging had all but disappeared. I still knew my way around, the food, the language, how to use public transportation...but I was staying at a hostel with my little brother. I didn't carry an apartment key in my pocket. And speaking of pockets, and lingering sense of continuity I felt with my former home was shattered when I discovered I'd been pickpocketed outside the Prado Museum, obviously targeted as a tourist. And again, I cried. Because I felt violated and abused by the thief, and because we were in a financial jam without my credit cards...but also because it was a violent rupture with my sense of place in the city.

Returning, then, to the writing, key to this paper seems to be this dichotomy; that on one hand we're moving closer together, while on the other, forces are driving apart. Multinationals span various continents, while small nations are fractured by poverty, crime, civil war, and nationalist/separatist movements. Where Iyer regains my attention is when he brings back the point that the MAJORITY of humans on the planet do NOT live as he does, criss-crossing the globe, or even accessing everyday technologies like the Internet or phones. For them, time might move more slower, but at a cost, as we spread a wider divide between those who do and those who don't---challenging the core notion of what it is to be a united global society.

Questions: Obviously the main question raised by this article is what do we do with global souls? How can we understand them, categorize, and reconcile them, when the nature of their being defies our current frame of understanding and categorization? Such a reconciling of the global souls' difference becomes increasingly important in a climate of increasing globalization. Today my boyfriend, in a moment of introspective soliloquy, lamented his in-betweenness saying,
"I don't belong here. In my day to day life, I feel happy. I work, I live my life. But the more they talk about illegality, the more illegal I become. The more I feel that coming here to the U.S. to pursue my education and live in American society is just a dream. I'll always be Mexican. So I should just live the illegal man's life--stay here and work, buy a big TV and some gold and diamond jewelry, live in a garbage house, and go dance salsa on the weekends. Then, after seven years, go back home to Mexico, buy my parents a house, give money to my sisters, get myself a little business, find a girl on the street and marry her, and forget about it. Just be."

Jorge talks about both these lives with equal emotional distance. He clearly struggles to find the middle ground between the two prescribed paths; a place for himself--a global soul--in the inbetween land.