Mondoj / Poland / 2021 / CS
It was a cold Christmas morning, just hours after our traditional eve dinner. I was young enough that the darkness of the sky was as unfamiliar as the strangers in the white van taking us to the airport.
There are sensory memories of that flight so permanently etched into my being that I can close my eyes 40 years later and relive the combination of air pressure, cold, wafting air, rough, seat fabric, and the journey itself, occupying a space between endless and immediate.
Attempting to recall events from those first few hours, days, months, and years after landing is difficult. Not because anything was traumatic, but because there is no clear border between thinking of yourself as an immigrant and not.
You acclimate and morph, and can even choose to go through the experience again, voluntarily, traveling to new places, like muscle memory.
My particular story is neither here nor there; critical in shaping me, but invisible to you. The deeper truth is that we are all immigrants or descendents of immigrants. It is our deepest bond.
By foot, wagon, boat, or flying machine, someone, at some point in your lineage, travelled to get to where you currently are.
Can you imagine making such a decision; a move so seismic that you can never see your friends or family again? Even if you’ve never had to make that journey, one of your relatives has.
Immigration is the most loving change. It means loving yourself, your family, your life. This action is so profound. It changes your neighbors, streets, language, irrevocably for the better, forever.
Embrace that change and those who put themselves through it, with all the love you can muster, and then some.
Originally released on Rephlex (CAT 113) in 2001.
Licensed courtesy of Warp Records.
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