In The Distance
I wrote this reflection last October. Deep into our first semester, we were homesick to say the least. I am far away. I am far away from that home. When I went on my walks in solitude, I used to overhear people and experience new lives through their conversations. But now when I eat my lunch and listen, I hear an exotic static: conversations around me in tongues I don’t quite understand yet. I catch some words— me, love, you, want, school, have, is, not. I imagine what they’re saying. But I don’t know for sure. We all have varying degrees of this. For the Chinese students, the language of the culture may not be so much foreign as the culture of the school. In any case everyone has their own kind of ‘uncomfortable’. In this discomfort we may find challenge, but even more so, we find perspective. I love the unknown. I love the thrill of the abyss. It doesn’t necessarily make me happy, but it makes me alive. When the void calls me, I holler right back. We are long-time friends. That being my carry-on, I left so much back home. All of the people I’ve ever had life talks with are in one small flank of land, twelve thousand kilometers away. It’s almost as if my life as I knew it was saved in one pocket of Earth, the size of an apple’s sticker. I felt…inside. I wanted to get out, not because I was dissatisfied with life, but because I was dissatisfied with how much life I was living. Life back home was fantastic. I had old friends who truly knew me, a companion who indulged in the absurd with me, and a family who provided for me. That was life, me. If life was this grand on an apple’s minuscule sticker, what if I went to see the whole apple? Risks were taken. And I decided to take some time, time to leave that life behind.
The top-left of this apple is more than all of California.
The University of the Big Apple: NYU, across the globe. What did you leave behind? Some of us have left more than others, yet all the same we have all lost something. You can feel the collective wandering, the sum of sentiments and pining hearts. This is the Distance: a quixotic feeling, numinous and forthcoming. How can you describe it? Distance is e m p t i n e s s. It’s a space for something you’ve never seen before. It’s parting the mess on a desk to make room for a work of passion. Distance is change. It’s the lapse between time, lapse between lives. And I have seem to have chosen one of the largest distances possible. It was no accident.
Point A-to-B. A simple picture behind many stories.
Across the globe, you are not only separated spatially, but consciously. When I’m awake, the world I knew is sleeping. Sleeping, there is reality shaping whilst I dream. There is a shift in time. I live 15 hours ahead of my previous lifestream— almost like looking back into an alternate past. I see California as an astronaut sees the Earth, his home. It makes me feel omniscient, transcendent, but so alone. It makes me feel like a powerless god. But I am here: in a place where so many people’s lives have too been insofar defined. More than 20 million (20,000,000!) residing inhabitants— each one sees Shanghai as their home, just as much as I see the San Fernando Valley as mine. There is something special in that. Something that rescues me from weakness. This is, too, a home, a place of life. I live here and I’m alive here. It’s like being dropped into another world, still full of salience, but so much to explore. It’s like traversing the lands in a new video game, to hold a new-found curiosity on the world around you. When I’m my bed in California, I feel comfortable. I don’t question what I see because it all seems familiar. When I’m here, I question everything. The architecture, the ethics, the history. Some things are familiar, indeed: the sleepless urban-hustle, the English pop music. You find people are more the same than they are different. Like staying a hotel room, there are things I’ve seen before. There’s plugs in the wall. There's beds. Denominations of toilets, even. But I don’t feel comfortable in this "hotel room". I want to open the drawers and see what’s inside. The water in the mini-fridge, is it free? Maybe this switch does something like lower a disco ball from the ceiling. I would never question things like this in my own home. This is the gem of distance. You question even the most familiar of things. Distance is a swelling heart. A blood rush. When you want something so bad but can’t have it, it tortures you. I miss spending late nights with my friends back home. California nights roar during Shanghai afternoons. There is a disconnect. Now, intimacy is in the form of a computer screen. There is a disconnect. There is so much in queue for wanting. Fondness grows, like water in a buckling dam. In healthy amounts it creates good energy downstream. But if the dam is overloaded, you better take cover. When you want something so bad but can’t have it, it teases you. I look forward to late nights with my friends when I return. It makes me value them so much more. I now know what I took for granted. To hold in your arms people you hold dear— I know what I lost. There is so much in life that we don’t know until it disappears. Appreciation grows, like removing a roof from over our heads. Tease me, and I’ll show an even greater passion for what I love. Yes, these are the zests of a far life. These are the challenges that mature us. Experience takes form from change, and change from distance, definitely. I'll be on a plane in some weeks, and I eagerly look forward to the moment where I look down through the small window to see the city I know and love. Whether a plane or train away, from one home to another and one home to the next, we'll be home soon. And when I return, I’ll feel the closest I’ve ever been. This article was written by Michael Lukiman. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Google, Michael Lukiman