nostalgia for a home land
i dont know if its just me, but i am obsessed with 2000s esque serbian folk pop and rock. maybe its a nationalistic thing, but i find songs in serbian are way more capable of capturing certain feelings than songs in english. maybe its a deficit of the english language and its lack of gendered arguments. maybe its the fact that english has become such a general and widespread language, that media in english feels unoriginal and redundant. i dont think you could write ceca's beograd in english and have it come across the same way.
my manager at work gifted me a copy of the brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoyevsky for my last week of my internship. he noted that he read it in both the native russian form and the translated version (he is persian, so this is very impressive), telling me the translated version was missing that charm of the original version. in a similar fashion, ive been reading some posts by spanish bloggers here on bearblog. even with my limited spanish reading skills, these posts feel like they are capturing something that i dont think could be conveyed as well if they were in spanish.
maybe its the fact that hearing, speaking and reading in serbian is nostalgic to me, and that nostalgia draws me to listen to these type of songs. its my native tongue, but my whole life is here in canada. when i hear these songs, as dumb as it sounds, i envision myself sitting on the balcony of my grandmother's apartment, drinking coffee and having a smoke while shes in the kitchen preparing food. its an ode to a simpler, eastern european life, and is one that ive really been striving to emulate living here in toronto.
i spent most of the summer alone. my parents and sisters had gone back home and i stayed here to do my research grant and also take care of my two cats. it was sort of nice being alone cause i could emulate this life i've been nostalgic for. i got to wake up without an alarm clock most days, make coffee the correct way (bringing water to a boil, throwing in two spoons of coffee grounds, then bringing to a rolling boil again), sit on the balcony quietly in the morning watching the lake. it was nice. i also got to tap back into cooking again and draw upon the recipes my grandmother and mom taught me. i had people over a few times (but honestly not enough), served them snacks, coffee, homemade brandy, the works. i bitched about the summer a lot, but i really enjoyed having the chance to live a bit in that nostalgia.
my parents and relatives often ask me where i want to live when im older. im born and bred here in toronto, so to image a true "life" outside of the city is unnerving. i've lived through all the seasons back home, and ive had chances to live with family and partially by myself for extended periods of times, but actually having a life there feels a foreign to me. i remember renewing my passport and resident card and being completely dumbfounded, it all felt so complicated to me, even though if i were to do the exact same processes here in canada, it would be easy. living outside of the city is so daunting, i dont know, its a big canyon to cross.
i dont think i would move to a country that didn't at least have a small serbian community. most of my childhood revolved around going to the serbian community center to dance and attending serbian school after classes, so its a bit disparaging having stepped away from all those things as i've gotten older. i remember being in vienna last winter and visiting the orthodox churches for christmas eve. even though i dont hold religion as a big presence in my life, i really value the community it brings with it. it felt like a very small piece of home in a very big city, and it was nice being able to switch off from english for a bit. i got to talk a bit with the pope of the church, watch the service, light the candles. vienna is an example of a city id be fairly okay living in if i were to live there. speaking about churches and community though, i am a bit dissappointed there are no serbian orthodox churches in portugal, so i will probably have to visit the romanian or russian ones for christmas eve.
while writing this, the term "third culture kid" comes to mind. i want to say that this term sort of resonates with me, but i think my experience has been different. canada, to me, is a country where people aren't assimilated into a single national identity (looking at you united states...), and with that i think my experience tends to differ from the standard definition of a third culture kid. my friends and circle as a whole span across many different backgrounds. i dont think i've ever had a moment growing up here in toronto where i've been in a monoculture of people (apart from serbian school). its very weird living here, it feels like i'm almost overexposed to every single culture. the overall culture of the city itself draws up on the many different ethnic and national backgrounds of the people who live here. maybe this is just the side effect of globalization, i dont know.
anyways, forgive me for all my talking. as a whole, i still dont really know how to feel about all of this. i think it would be good for me to fuck off somewhere outside of toronto one day, just to see how it is. i often talk to my friends about the simple, quiet, farmer / cafe owner life i want to live one day, but writing all this has made me realize that where i live is crucial. i just want to dig a hole and live in that hole for the rest of my life, maybe that would be the best solution to all these feelings.