As the world spins around and people live their lives, I wonder, where do I fit in? Where do I belong? I've been a nomad--a bit of a gypsy my whole life. So tell me Ethers, where AM I from?

Dear Ether,

People often ask me where I’m from. It’s so hard to say. If I say London, they’ll cock an eyebrow, wonder why I don’t have an accent, and when I explain I only lived there 8 years, think I’m affected. If I say I’m from Los Angeles, I almost have to cough it out. I find it difficult to believe. Half my life I don’t even remember spending in California, and the last 8 were when I was a teenager and didn’t really have freedom to see the city. I spent 3 years in CT and 1 year in NYC. So I guess I have to technically say I was BORN in Los Angeles….but really, where am I from?

When I close my eyes and ask this question, I picture myself with my face plastered against the grimy plexiglass of the last row on the tube being jerked to sleep by its stops and lurches on my way home from an exhausting days work. I see myself in a magnificent coat with a full scarf and a sugar-free vanilla skinny venti latte from Starbucks. I imagine great jeans, my All Saints boots and a fag in Camden heading to a freelance job walking to the beat of my own heart amongst the throng of other colorful people, all while seeing the florist set up her hut diagonal from the tube station. I visualize English gent and I on a night bus when we first met laughing before we cared about money and being adults, heading into the depths of ugly New Cross. The feeling of a cup of tea to soothe you after a bitter day and watching the rain pour down and just being so grateful to be indoors. And what about fingering the wares at a market stall and being called ”love,” or walking through the Sussex countryside and passing the same river Virgina Woolf drowned herself in all those years ago?

And what of Los Angeles? Again, I slam my eyes shut, feeling my lashes against the tips off my cheekbones, and I see memories too—just in different hues. Bright blue skies with sun that warmed your skin and made you golden after a day at the beach. Nights when my brother and I would be bundled into the back of our old station wagon and my mom and dad would take us to drive-in move theaters (relics now) in our pajamas. Every year on my birthday being taken to the same Mexican restaurant that had been around since 1927 and having mariachi’s sing to me and have my picture taking wearing a sombrero so big that it covered my whole face. Looking down at my feet and seeing the heavy tan line my flip-flops left on my feet. The smell of the gardeners laying down fertilizer in October for seed to grow for fresh grass. Pumpkin pie and gravy for Thanksgiving and catching my dog on the table while we were all in the other room having hour d’oeuvres. The overwhelming beauty of fuchsia bougainvillea growing wildly all over neighbor’s gardens. My darling standard poodle whom I used to lay out in the backyard with and talk to for hours until it got too chilly and then we’d go inside and we’d talk for even longer debating issues of the heart!

I now reside in Los Angeles, but in my soul I know it is temporary. I know I am bound for somewhere else. This place and I, it never had a connection. And being here, I remember that now. And I pine for London. But boy did she and I have our problems too. Where’s next? Where will I end up being from? I don’t know. I feel just because you’re born somewhere doesn’t make you from there. It just makes that the place you were issued your birth certificate. Like I’ve said before, I feel like more of a Londoner than a Los Angelino—but not according to my records or when I’m issued jury duty.

I always thought it was so funny that I was considered an immigrant. Me. A white, upper-middle class girl, with a Master’s degree and some cash in her pocket. Terrible. I know. That I should feel like I shouldn’t be looked at as the same as someone from Africa or Mexico. I’ll never forget sitting in East Croydon in the Home Office waiting for my papers. I was very nervous. I didn’t know if my visa was going to get reissued. A guy about my age from Nigeria spoke to me. He saw my passport in its clear folder. “You’ll have no problems” he smiled. “I don’t know, I’m really worried this time. I’m applying for residency.” He grinned and said, “You are white, American and a woman. Me, I’m black, a man and from Nigeria. I have been here 6 times. If I get rejected this time, I am out of chances.” I looked down to the floor and didn’t know what to say. He said cheerfully, “Don’t feel bad. Remember, you have a good home to go back to. I have a good family too. I just want a better life. Just remember, it’s all about where you’re from.” We chatted a bit more and his number was called. I wished him well. Then it was my turn to go to the desk.  I was shaky but determined. Within ten seconds I was approved. They were most concerned about how I was going to pay. I still wonder if 7 was that man’s lucky number and if he really meant what he said about remembering where you were from—that no matter where you are in the world—you can always go home again—wherever that may be.

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365

"Death is always, under all circumstances, a tragedy, for if it is not then it means that life has become one." Theodore Roosevelt

Dear Ethers,

I was there.  I was in New York City.  I was 21 years old and had a plane ticket booked to leave out of JFK on American Airlines for September 13^th to London.   

Tuesday.  I remember the ceaseless noise of sirens.  Trash floating in the street.  The city a barren wasteland.  

Papers plastered everywhere on every possible surface with faces and names scrawled underneath begging for any information about loved ones.  College kids my age.  I stared at a picture of a boy.  It was a recent photo.  It said he was on a high floor.  I knew he was dead.  He looked so alive in the photo.  Handsome, even.  But the shaky pen on the flyer begged for information.  His picture was one of thousands on walls, on lamp posts, across the city.  I fingered these papers.  Hopeless cries for help, dirty and dusty from other fingerprints that had done exactly what I had just done—tried to touch their souls. 

I sat on a train where a couple had a list of hospitals that they were checking off looking for their daughter (this is what I could gather from their conversation).  It was grim.  They had many tick marks with X’s and not many hospitals left.  

The TV was relentless with coverage.  No one looked each other in the eye and if you did catch someone, it was a glazed over stare or a reddened, tear filled orb, exhausted from crying. 

No one understood.  The world had changed forever. 

I walked passed a firehouse that had candles burning for the men they lost.  

People clapped on the streets when a police car or a fire truck blazed by.

American flags were everywhere—it was a sea of red, white and blue.  But mainly blue. 

8 years.  Those interns would have been college graduates.  Some men and women might have been retired.  Many of those people might have been married and have had children.  

It used to haunt me.  The vision of that man who jumped out of the window.  What must he have been thinking?  Can you imagine having to decide to burn alive or jump to your death?  All he did was go into work. 

And then what about the woman who called in sick that day and never recovered? She still shakes everyday and is on disability from post-traumatic stress syndrome.  She believed it was her day to die and never forgave herself for not being in that building. 

I was one of 9 people who sat on the American Airlines 777 plane that finally got clearance to leave on September 19^th, 2001.  We all hoped that 777 was an omen.  I was grateful to leave.  I couldn’t bear the heaviness in the air anymore.  I couldn’t breathe from the pain and the loss.  

Being an American on September 10^th 2001 and being an American on September 11, 2001 was a transformation that will resonate with me for the rest of my life.  

I won’t say anything that anyone else hasn’t today.  But I felt it was essential to say my piece and honor those who perished.  Those who were strapped to their seats in horror when they hit the Pentagon.  Those who were brave and fought to their last breath to try and save their lives and their fellow man by rushing the pilot of that United plane.  Those who died in the towering inferno that was the World Trade Center.  The brave servicemen who went into that building knowing that they probably wouldn’t come out alive and put their lives aside to try and protect and serve.  

I am not a religious person.  It’s days like September 11^th that made me give up on that a LONG time ago.  But for those who perished and were pious—and for those whose families believe, I want to say that I hope that your loved ones are in heaven and are at peace.  And if I had a wish for you today it would be that you could touch those who you lost again and say good-bye one last time.  To have one last day.  To have it be September 10^th, 2001 again. 

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365