On the Road by Jack Kerouac

on the road

(I know this is longer than 100 words, but I had to tell you the whole story.)
I am a twenty-three-year-old Belorussian immigrant. For over ten years now I have been fighting with the feeling of loss of national identity and the unclear emotions over the event of having been moved to the States at the age of twelve. Anger at my mother, at governments, at myself, at art, at anything, really - it's a frantic kind of feeling, like an egg dropped out of the nest and going into shock - it's the kind of anger that chick would feel after the shock is over, and it's supposed to feel like a happy little egg because this new place is better, so slap on a smile and run along. I learned fast, but I could not find a sense of peace in the new identity I was supposed to sport and even though my accent went and my Russian instead got an American accent (a stab in the heart for the thirteen-year old me after I worked all summer and went back to visit and got called an "American"), I still felt like an outsider, especially in the subtle things, like humor and childhood memories that people around me could share. It's the intimacy of a common cultural identity that I lacked and that lack brought me the most pain and confusion. Nevertheless, I managed to get myself a full scholarship to BU and graduated with a double major in painting and sculpture and went along with my life, got a job. But the momentum of my migrant youth didn't let me stay put and I decided to backpack through Europe (again, but for longer this time) and go to the Balkans and see the gypsies and roam and have no home, because I was so sick of not having one on the emotional and intellectual level, of being the undercover outsider. There was a vagueness about me because I adapted so fast that I was almost American, but I held on so tight to my birthplace identity that I could never fully be inside. As I was getting ready to leave for the journey... I discovered the Blues and Woody Guthrie, then jazz, and then the whole wide mystical country rolled out before me, like a veil lifted and through the music I 'got it'. And I left for my journey with a new feeling boiling up inside - the feeling of leaving home, but one I could come back to, a wild home, and home that was itself homeless and longing and wandering and I could live there, because so was I. And somewhere along my trip I found On the Road online and listened to the whole thing in a gulp and Kerouac opened for me the last flood gate and I finally felt happy to be an American. I am planning many projects based on these new feelings- paintings, murals, documentaries, and I want to talk about home to those who feel like they don't have one, I want to talk about the Blues, about singing about storytelling. America is nothing but road and that's where I found my home.

Anya