staying in place, but still searching
I’m still sort of searching for the right answer to the question “Why did you want to move to Italy from New York?” (The way this question is invariably phrased in Italian is “Come mai,” which adds a dash of incredulity, as in “Why on earth?”) Nothing I’ve come up with when asked has seemed to satisfy anyone so far.
The obvious thing to say is that it shouldn’t take searching for an explanation, just answer honestly. But the most honest answer that comes to me immediately is that wanting to move to Rome shouldn’t really require explanation at all. The way we see Italy (in the United States and I expect beyond that) is very different from how they see themselves here; and likewise Italians (even those critical of the US politically) tend to see New York as a sort of Mecca, not the kind of place you would ever want to leave without a good reason.
One of my Italian friends does get it though. The first time I saw him in a few years, when I first arrived here and went to his house for lunch, he was telling me about how he was applying to graduate school courses in San Francisco (although he’s now ended up back in Spain, after having done a year abroad there a while back). Comparing the fact that so many Italians dream of going to the US, and so many of us dream about coming here, he said to me, “Nobody is content with their own country.” Well no, not quite nobody, my brother for example is perfectly happy where he is, already looking in his 20s for a house near where we grew up. But for those of us pulled to travel and living abroad, it isn’t necessarily about the place specifically, it’s just wanting to see something else. It’s a certain kind of personality type drawn to this; maybe only that kind of person will ever fully get it: how ironically I’ve come across an ocean to find other people who seem to understand me, who combine my interests in the same way.
There’s a conversation in “The Little Prince” when he’s asking about trains, and the people riding back and forth in both directions constantly:
“Were they not content there, where they were?”
“No one is ever content where they are.”
“Only the children look out, their noses pressed against the windows.”
“The children are the only ones who know what they’re looking for.”
And at the risk of infantilizing myself, sometimes that’s how I see myself. Only some of us know that we’re looking at all.
