Rootlessness - 02

At the beginning, once I arrived in Madrid, visiting home happened frequently. On the one hand, the distance was not that much and, on the other hand, I could economically afford it thanks to the discount for residents on the plane tickets and also because I had easily found a job (through friends). Stepping into the emptiness was not as bad as it could have been.

Those visits were not aimed to disconnect from Madrid's hustle and bustle, I was far from feeling the chronic stress of the big city. Its aim was meeting my family, understanding by family both my partner, who was still residing there, and the family core in which I grew up. They also helped to release, tear after tear, in the intimacy of the relationship, the anxiety caused by having moved to the unfriendly environment Madrid was to me and the lack of the everyday affection I was used to while living in Tenerife.

With the passing of time the frequency of those visits was reduced, in part, because the emotional disrupt they meant, both before and after my partner moved to live with me; in part, because I had integrated, adapted to, or assimilated what living in the capital meant. However, that integration was not full, the links which made me yearn for my home, my land, were never broken. Those links left me with the sense of guilt, the feeling of having abandoned a family which needed me more than I needed my new life.

The proudness I saw in my parents eyes for having started to build a promising future and the satisfaction it meant for them that so many years supporting my degree had finally a reward, were translated inside me into a feeling of treason. I felt that it was time for me to help them and instead of that I was in Madrid seeing how every day it was more and more difficult to go back, to end an experience that although never lost its temporal nature, I carried on postponing year after year.

It is not that Madrid satisfied me completely, I never had that feeling. I felt professionally tied down. The salary I earned there was unthinkable for the Canaries and the incentive the career progression meant became a mice trap, the farther I went into that dynamic the less possibilities I had to go back.

rootlessness - 01

The other day I wrote that I could not blame anybody for me to be here, that I was the one who took that decision. When the noise around me was so unbearable that I could not focus on my writing anymore, I decided to give up and read through what I had written. I gave to it a second thought. Cannot I really blame anybody? It is not that I was looking for somebody to blame for me to be where and how I am. What I was thinking of was if it was really a free decision. I think it was not, or at least that is the point to which I arrived. At the following day, while I was doing some research on the Internet, I found an article in a psychology web page which pointed in the same direction.

Migrants use to assume that it has been them who, as an act of freedom, have taken the decision to package their belongings and look for a new future away from the family environment. But that act of gathering the needed courage and starting a new life is not as a voluntary act as it looks like.

Why on earth would somebody leave their homeland, the warmth of the family, the plans of a local future, in other words, everything that is left behind; if it was not their intention and had the chance to grove a professional future in that familial environment?

What migrants assume as a voluntary act is, in reality, a forced decision; the gathered braveness to start the definitive step, is not such a thing, it is pure resignation, it is closing the eyes and stepping forward into the emptiness, not knowing how long it will take until crashing into the ground.

So, the reason of my move was not my on initiative but the lack of a sufficient market, one adequate to the needs of a over-skilled population. And definitely it was not a act of courage. While it was not a necessity, despite having been a personal objective, I did not gather enough courage to leave my environment, to try my luck, to go in search of a promising future.

It was, simply, the impossibility to carry out those dreams I had started to build. A family, a house and a vegetable garden were the unreachable objectives, the forcibly-postponed plans and, for years, the consolation, the justification of a imaginarily voluntary exile.

I got a letter

"I got a letter in the post which comes from home". This is what this photograph seems to say. That I got a letter in the post is quite a straight reading, I am holding it in my hands. That it comes from home is not that obvious as the viewer cannot see who the sender is. However, there is a sign which points the audience in the right way, the photograph of the door-knockers in the foreground.

A door-knocker is an element to call for someone's attention, to get open the house door, to be invited to go into the house to pay a visit. That is what a letter does, it pays a visit to the receiver. Once the envelop is left in my letterbox it has started knocking the door; when the sender's name is read, the house door is opened and I know who the visitor is; if the sender is welcomed I open the envelop and start reading its content. The visit has started and with it a conversation; time is consumed reading the letter whilst memories are brought back to my mind or I am informed about the latest news.

There is a dedication in the photograph which says "Desde Cádiz para Javier. El cariño siempre" (From Cádiz to Javier. Always affection). As the link between the door-knockers and the letter is already done, this touch of affection could be extrapolated to the letter and, therefore, to the sender. So, the sender is somebody who loves me and, presumably, loved by me; in other words, the sender is somebody sentimentally close.

How important the sender is is described by the fact that I have gave up doing everything else to focus on the letter, in order to be able to read it without interruptions or disturbances. This is reinforced by the place I have chosen to read the letter, the bedroom, a place of intimacy, a place to which the viewer is partially welcomed - the room door is only partially open and the room itself is not fully shown. The door is a symbol of passage from one place to another, in this case, from a public one, the living-room, to a private one, the bedroom. The fact that the door is more open than close highlights that the viewer is still welcomed although I want to keep some intimacy. It is not a moment to interact with the viewer and the audience is not allowed to interfere in such an special occasion (if it was possible).

The body language and the way I am holding the envelop suggest that the letter has brought some melancholia, a sad feeling which is either hidden or avoided during the busyness of the day but which comes to the surface at night time. The fact that the lamp by the window is on places the action in this time frame, the moment of the day in which one is more emotionally vulnerable.

Apart from the bed, there is not other visible furniture and there is not many decorative elements either, which creates a sense of austerity. The curtains are flower-patterned, which does not completely suit the fact that the person in the photograph is a man - who would have opted for a less feminine pattern. This may suggest that I am not in my own environment; that although it is my room as it is the place which I have chosen to have some intimacy and read the letter, that is not my house and I have not made it my home.

So, if I am not at home, where is my home? By the way the arrival of the letter has affected my emotions, the viewer may guess that home is where the letter comes from.