At the end of each working day and every weekend, I undergo a process I’ve come to refer to as “internal emigration”. What that means is that when I am on my own time, I leave behind as much I’m able, the stress of everyday life in New York and my chronic dissatisfaction with living in America, and instead occupy myself with passtimes that intellectually take me very far away from the circumstances I find frustrating and extremely difficult to change.
Thank God for the internet! In the last year or so especially, I’ve been able to bypass the mainstream American media almost completely and choose how I wish to get information about what’s going on in the world and how I want to be entertained. There’s an enormous amount to choose from that only grows with each passing year (month really). So MUCH of contemporary American life is transmitted through the major mass media, especially tv, and I try to shut that out more and more, because it’s so mind-numbingly dull and superficial. Since I work for the media I have to know what’s going on, but I try not to let it intrude much when I leave the ugly edifice where I work. I admit a weakness to watch certain glitzy trash television programs now and then and to channel-surf once in a while, but nobody’s perfect (and I run for the mute button during the endless commercial breaks).
Of course there’s so much the web can provide someone like me, including a certain level of interaction with other people: keeping in touch with friends who live far away from me, as well as finding new people who share my interests and outlook. I’ve done that, and more. The web for me is like a huge virtual library of cyberbooks, and so much of what I come across is from outside this country written in other languages, or at least with a different perspective. A few years ago, I felt much more disoriented because so much of what I enjoyed and was interested in could only be experienced on expensive and all-too-short trips to Europe.
The other great source of comfort and creativity for me is my project detailing every aspect of Alphistia, the model country with its own unique culture and language I invented. I’ve been involved with that since I was nine years old, and I have no doubt that it will occupy me until my last day on this earth. More than anything, it provides relief from all those things that for me are far too overwhelming, or underwhelming, as the case may be.
It’s an escape, and every person does it, each in their own way. For most Americans escape means walling yourself off in a suburb and a car, and spending the rest of your free time shopping or watching what cable programmers think is entertaining. For the more creative, it’s gardening, or athletics, or writing--some kind of rewarding hobby. And for those who are self-destructive there’s always drugs and booze. Then there are those people who devote their lives to really trying to change reality instead of escaping it. All too often we've seen the burnt-out remains of such people along the way, however laudable their do-goodism. Everyone has to escape reality...those who don’t are the dullest and least creative among us, and I’m too occupied with my own avocations to include them much in my own life.
I’ve read how in the communist countries, by far the majority of the people jealously guarded their private lives from the intrusions of the state, and the term “internal emigration” was used to describe the results. Most people concentrated on the little joys in life: their families, their close circle of friends, and their hobbies and their personal interests. The state couldn’t interfere everywhere all the time, and by and large, this was not just a way to survive, but to thrive. In some ways, it’s what the people in the former communist countries miss the most about those oppressive years: in some ways they were happier, because they concentrated on experiencing things that are so important in life.
For me, I’m living in a society that the vast majority of people unthinkingly support, the last thing they like to do is to reflect on this or that or why and why not. I can’t relate to most of my countrymen except in a superficial way, and nowadays that’s more or less how most Americans interact with each other, so I'm not unusual in that respect. Americans love to say how busy they are: busy, busy, busy. It’s why they have such a high divorce rate and their children raise themselves--everyone’s too busy to get together all that much, and as for me, I'm too busy avoiding what I'd rather not be around.
It’s difficult not to get sucked in by this dominant culture, but I try. I’ve always been more than a little eccentric, so that helps when it’s not a hindrance. I do try to question assumptions that my compatriots don’t even think to ask, and very often having someone voice such ideas makes them rather uncomfortable. Fortunately, very rarely have people reacted in a negative way toward me personally (first of all, I choose my friends carefully ;-), but it’s hard for people to know HOW to react when someone even subtly upsets the conventional way of looking at things.
So my “internal emigration” is a bit more solitary than what the people living in the east bloc carved out for themselves, because there aren't that many people here who identify that way, and ever the individualists, Americans tend to lean more toward the angry loners like Ted Kaczinski. Plus I wouldn't say I envy the difficult lives that people living under communism had, but I admire how they created solidarity and could experience happiness under very difficult circumstances. I try to do the same thing, but in my own way, in the context I live in.
My own attempts for real emigration never happened (although I’ve come close to doing it, once quite recently). I doubt it'll ever happen,but I have a feeling that I’d carry along my outsider status in my new surroundings. The places where I would most like to go to live don’t exactly encourage or openly welcome newcomers and immigrants, and it’s almost impossible to really assimilate in such cultures. I’ve noticed that something like the sense of community that I wish for does exist in some of the countries I admire so much, but I also noticed that an occasional foreign visitor isn’t really included in an intimate circle and no more than hospitality requires. I have the gut feeling I’d never be anything more than that “unusual American” if I tried to live permanently among them, which would have its own frustrating isolation. Even so, I’d probably feel more comfortable than I do in the country where I was born, because when I’ve been in various places in Europe that I like to visit, I feel more at home than anywhere I go in the US. Fact of my life...
The best I can do is to continue to be myself. I like to learn about other places and how other people live. From time to time I like to physically go and see for myself. My reason for being here where I am (like it was fate that did it....;-) is to be a gadfly, perhaps. Every society needs them. Sometimes people even pay attention to them.
The rest of the time I’ll be somewhere else, “internally emigrating” right in my apartment or as I walk through the canyons of NYC.
(March 3, 2000)
Feedback is welcome. Please send e-mail to: alphistia@yahoo.com