They come through TV, books, radio, internet, iPods, certain manifesting circumstances, and other various sundries. I wonder what there is about this place that makes it so different than that place. And I wonder why the lives we traverse are not so immediately forgiven that when someone picks up and goes, they are gone not forever. They are merely responding to the gravity pull of the metropole.
I wonder how we deal with these ripping situations. Where people are ripped out of their lives and into others lives in such a way that it creates a sense of isolation so extreme and perhaps evokes an individualism that cannot be paralleled and likely will never be because as long as metropoles exist, there will be migrants. The kinds of draws we hold, the kinds of concerns we have play under the shadow of these big gravities.
I think there is much more to this than we think and I think there is a lot more to things than that which we would hope it to be. I think living life in the metropole is part of an economic, cultural, social, mental, psychological, and a somewhat sticky and mildly disgusting assimilation. The way it makes us want to leave, physically, from our families, from where we’re from, to something entirely different. The ways our economies bring migrants to LA, Houston, NYC, Chicago, to the cities in between.
The Global North is stockpiling itself with those from the Global South.
But is it in case something happens? Or has it already happened? The wars of political economy that wage miles, years, moments south of where I sit and write so often spell out the thoughts of migrants, that where they were is no longer where they want to be. I make presumptions and assumptions, no doubt, but I feel there’s something here.
The metropole brought someone to the immigrant detention center. He was explaining to me how he came over, what he did to come over to this city of angels. How he paid a coyote twice to come over, how he had worked as a mechanic and then started his own business at his home. He didn’t do anything wrong, got married, had two children, and was then picked up by immigration officials. His glasses were broken, and he had a barber pole colored string that let him keep his glasses functional. I didn’t ask him why he came over, but I guessed, why would anyone wade over miles of mountains and rivers, duck from headlights, keep eyes peeled and ears perked for hours and hours?
So what do people do? How do we deal with the ripping? We just do, as in so many situations. Negotiations happen constantly at braincell, telephone, email, and holding hand speeds. I was struck with the immensity and intensity of the story I heard. He is being held because he wasn’t proper in the eyes of the metropole, he is somehow an odd piece that the metropole’s racist and xenophobic apparatus feels compelled to keep for inspection and then push out, with strings of family still tied to him as he is jettisoned just south. I was in awe of his story and his experiences, he’d been through much more than my life ever probably will - and yet, I’ve been perused, processed, and deemed just fine in the cracked lens of the metropole. I can stay here; he cannot.
The gravity of it all both silences, and angers.
