The Answers That I Wanted?

As I am proud of stating, I am an exile in my homeland but in my life I have travelled across the globe. In college I studied other cultures and I made it my purpose in life to try to understand other peoples.

Some people would say that I have lived quite the privileged life going places that others dream of going to once in their lifetime. I have actually been to places where I am the only one of my "skin color" and the only one there in years so I was truly a curiosity to everyone else. In these situations you are neither real or not real, but an idea on two legs.

I was someone that no one had met but they all knew what I was, because being an American is being known worldwide. I am kind of a no one, a minor artist of small distinction, so there was no way that in the distant reaches that I have been that my work was known, let alone me. But being a different complexion from natives made me a foreigner and when discovered that I was an American I became "wealthy and caring" and apparently "famous" if I could travel to where they were.

I try not to ask questions in such situations but rather observe. Enough questions are asked of me and I want to learn through observation about those I visit. Even if I asked questions would I not just get the answers that I wanted. I have learned that it is better to be a nobody who takes notes (with a camera or a pencil).

In a foreign country this is easy but when I am in America I blend in and it is more difficult to observe as an outsider and people want to involve me, but not be recorded. This is partly because of Americans sense of personal independence / space that mistrusts observation as if it is a way of trying to take something precious, their independence from them.

You can't call it an issue of pride as I have observed more proud people that live in abject poverty compared to average Americans. Typically I have discovered that those who are impoverished are more willing to share themselves because it is the only real thing that they have to share. The people I have visited are proud of themselves, their families, hometowns and countries no matter what we think of their situation. Some of the people I have visited live in nations where they are constantly observed. Other people live in such remote places that no one cares about their lives to observe them or take the time to visit them.

There are lessons to be learned from people who are literally only numbers that are managed and other people who are not even numbers. I am an exile in America because of who I am and that I choose to try to be outside of my culture to observe, a foreigner, trying to glean some insight into my own culture and this makes me a suspicious figure to the Americans.

I often refer to my cultural heritage as being "mut" as I am a mixture. A term for a creature of no pure breeding. Due to my complexion I fit in with the majority and because of racial, cultural and socio-economic background I am accepted by minorities.

I live in an area that is a hotbed against illegal immigration even though borders are distant, immigrants relatively few, but an area that is proud of its history of ingenious, tough pioneers that were illegal settlers. They have legislated their animosity against new immigrants to their part of the American Dream.

When I visit foreign countries "educated" people are always proud to share their ability to communicate in English, usually taught to them in a more pure form than the dialect I hear at home. In America we try to insist that immigrants learn "our" language and complain that we can not understand foreigners' accents (my aging father detests English actors because he can not understand them).

Americans call up telephone call centers in foreign countries because something we have (an item or a question) needs to be fixed at that moment. Americans state that they become angry because the operator on the other end of the line, who earns a smaller income but is typically as educated or more than the American, can not be understood.

Dignity is not what you have but how you act and the most dignified people tend to be hungry but happy to have a life.

If you see me sketching something come over and have a look.