notes in memoir

I find I get nostalgic.

I think about the parallels between the experiences and their meanings. I sit on the precipice between the lives. I look out over what was and search for what sum total this amounts to within my soul 

there are so many times 

that I fall under the current;  fall within the arms of rapids that take me within their ferocious flow 

“if I could compare the two lives….” (Kundera)

I see a lot of parallels but before I shrugged off this silly observation 

this repetition of experiences that repeat. Why again. And again. And again. How dismally boring. Caught in a Groundhog Day loop of neverendings.   

If I were to compare— oh, I don’t know…. who I was before —when first this green southern girl at a private school where my looks of “exotic” kept me in that social category of freak 

definitions mean different things to different people. Everything is relative. 

I want to draw a diagram in our imaginary sheet of paper. 

When I was “before Holland” —I was a freak at school. I wanted to always just melt into the walls there. A private school, you know, by Biscayne Boulevard and —no, red flags for prejudice as I prefer to avoid such things; but I did not fit at that school. The word exotic I find is some polite suggestion of —I never could place my finger on —what 

but I did not fit in with my private school world as a preteen in — yes—southern Florida. There were so many stigmatisms 

If I were to lay down an overlay between the two lives I’d say that befire I did not exist and then suddenly I did exist. I could not blend in Florida. Not at my school. 

I never changed myself. Per se. but the perception of myself as seen by new environments always changes 

    my meanings 

I guess looking back I can say undoubtedly now that, I was happiest when I was in the Netherlands. Those years. But I did feel an outsider in the country. I did not like that.so as it was never my personal choice to be there, I resented the attitude I got from the people when —those encounters occurred. Such as the time I have mentioned previously when I was reprimanded by a policeman for failing to provide him with proof of my identity in the form of my American passport.

I did feel uncomfortable often for being there. I consider this feeling when I hear all the politics about Immigrants. 

I had not —myself—chosen to be there. But I felt the constant slap of my presence there. So— what do I do? I learn to blend. I do it well. Except —Dutch people are very very very big so not always convincing to be me there, you know? But, I knew where to go as I grew up there as a young adult first encountering society independent of parental chaperones and learning how to negotiate payment transactions for my own purchases. 

But I learn fast. And I became expert on the art of camouflage —

But to compare the Celf in Florida to the one I was seen as in Holland —it is like having a light shine over a darkened recess of a very old map where all the mountain ranges can be seen 

All the reasons I did not fit in in that Florida school by the Jockey Club and the Yacht Club and the Golf Club became the reasons I was interesting to people I met when we got to live over there. Recently, I saw a school friend say that as students living abroad in holland, we hit the lottery young. Some of us appreciated this but also 

the experience at the Montessori international school by comparison to the regimented American school 

never mind just that, now in retrospect I know I am dyslexic —but the acceptance I felt at the former school I did not feel at the American school —but, the American school of The Hague by far was much more broad minded than what I was exposed to in a small southern private school in Florida. 

I know if for nothing else I desire the exploration of why any of that matters to me