Going Where?

Dec 28 2014

I am never asked
where are you from?,
because I am white, and blue-eyed
and dress unfashionably.
What being Canadian looked like
once.

But even had they done

they would never have asked
the when, or who, or why.

The metaphysical when,
the age

you begin taking shape
then find you’re stuck.
Perhaps arrested

in late adolescence,

still callow, and impressionable

and sure of yourself.

Or the people
from whom you came,
the obligations, generations
and relationships
in which you exist.
Or if unlucky, adrift,
an orphaned descendant
marooned in the present

whose family tree

was severed at birth.

Or why

you are from.
Which implies you must have left,
having fled, escaped
or made your way
in the world.
A self-made man
who did his best
with what he had.

Perhaps an immigrant
who came knowing nothing
of language, or culture, or place.
Or that he would be eyed warily
accepted reluctantly
or ever so subtly

excluded;
a small gesture, a turn of the head,

something said
under the breath.
Or be asked, innocently enough

where are you from?,

by the truly curious
who are willing to learn, and connect.

But they never ask me,
and the presumption
that I am known
leaves me invisible.

So I sometimes ask myself,
looking back, and wondering.

And where I'm going, as well.

Which even I

can't tell.

Only that time can't be helped,

carrying me along

in its single direction

to my inexorable end.

The river in which I swim;

a fish, in water

who knows nothing else.

Dark-skinned and exotic looking people get asked this. Mostly, it's an innocent question, motivated by true curiosity. And when the answer is something like “Mississauga”, the automatic follow-up is, of course “No, I mean where are you really from?” Although I suspect this is changing. As Canada becomes even more multi-cultural, and the stereotyped image of how a Canadian looks becomes more nuanced, people will be less inclined to ask.

Of course, I'm never asked this. I disappear into the background of white middle aged men. But we're hardly all the same. Why not ask where we're from? And why not explore all the less formulaic questions of identity and origin and interior lives, no matter how we look? Why stop at just “where”?

“Where” naturally calls up the other w’s of journalism -- who, what, when, and why -- and in the poem I play with this (although not the “what”, which I couldn't quite master!) And just as “where” calls up the w’s, “from” calls up its opposite, “to go”. So the poem takes a turn at the end, and becomes an exploration of purpose and agency, and turns from looking back to looking ahead. Earlier in the poem, I used the metaphors of being marooned and being adrift. So even though the ending seems to take a sharp turn, I think it can also be seen to follow: in the sense of being subject to inexorable time, of being adrift in an invisible current.