Exile and longings

I’m reading another of the novels from Ursula Le Guin’s collection of “Hainish Novels & Stories”. 

I’m not going to go into all the reasons I like, really admire, her works. There is one central reason, or theme, that speaks to me: that of exile and longing. In all of her “Hainish Novels” that I have read so far, there are two or more different societies (in her works, often even different races or species, since it’s peoples from different planets or even solar systems) that interact, meet, clash; but usually, there’s one individual from one of these societies, or worlds, who, alone, tries to face, understand, live in, adapt to, discover the “other world”. Hence the perpetual sense of exile and longing in her stories: her main characters are exiles. Most of the time, they are exiles by choice, but they are exiles nonetheless, and thus have a longing for “home” that can never be fully satisfied (in her books due mostly to the huge interstellar distances). 

While of course not being as dramatic as interstellar spaces, I can relate to this sense of exile. I am an exile by choice, and have always felt like an “exile” in some way. I never felt wholly at home wherever I lived in Europe, being such a mix myself, raised in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual family. I always felt the desire to move to the U.S., where my mother had grown up. 

I have lived in the U.S. — in regions of the U.S. that I chose, not where my mother grew up — for almost a decade now and in all this time never gone back to visit Europe, where I mostly grew up. I feel “at home” in Colorado more than I ever felt anywhere else. But I don’t feel wholly at home here, nor do I think I ever will be able to feel wholly at home anywhere. And while I believe that I will never go back to actually live and work in Europe, and while I’m very conscious of the differences among/within European countries, I often do feel a certain longing for Europe. Which often shows in my choice of relationships or instinctive attachments here in the U.S.

Since moving out here almost a decade ago, I have often made friends quickly and deeply, almost instinctively, with people who either are, like me, “half European” or who have some other mixed, non-U.S. background, or who have at least had some significant contact with or knowledge of countries and experience outside of the U.S. And I am aware that a great part of the depth of the love and attachment that I felt a couple of years ago for my “European queer ex-lover” was precisely because they were European. That was one of the reasons they felt like “home” to me. And now I find myself, still two years later, instinctively seeking them in other people, in other relationships. I often find myself attracted or strongly drawn to strangers or acquaintances just because they remind me of my “European queer ex-lover”. 

This happened most recently yesterday. I went to do a trail race with some friends. Before the race, in the bib-pickup area, my attention was drawn to a tall, slim man, instinctively, irresistibly. One reason was that his build made him seem to me, possibly, as a professional runner, so I was simply curious. But the other, deeper reason was that he reminded me strongly, vividly of my “European queer ex-lover”. I don’t know if I stared, but we definitely exchanged glances and he noticed me almost as much as I had noticed him. Later, after the race, he came up to me and made a comment on my running shorts, which was effectively a compliment or at least a very explicit, appreciative comment on my butt. It wasn’t creepy or inappropriate but it definitely surprised me — now that I look like a guy, cis-het men, at least strangers, don’t pay me compliments anymore on how I look or what I’m wearing. I was caught by surprise, baffled, and honestly flattered. 

But the comment stayed with me longer and deeper than it would have from a random stranger, and this isn’t only due to the fact that I’m not used to compliments from cis-men anymore. 

The reason his comment — his “compliment” — stuck is because I had also noticed him earlier, before the race, and the reason I had noticed him was that he reminded me of my “European queer ex-lover”: he reminded me of something familiar, someone familiar, someone I loved and liked, someone I still, somewhere deep inside me, long for.