It's snowing/sleeting here. Wonder what beautiful British Columbia has in store for us next. Scott is at work and my roommates are in Vancouver shopping for a wedding dress for one of our friends. And I'm home alone. It's nice--I haven't been alone for a while.
I've been beginning my search for a job next year (since my current job depends on whether or not another teacher is coming back next year) and found a school in Tennessee that is hiring. When I mentioned it to Scott, he crinkled his nose. As if he would rather be tied to the tracks of a speeding train than have to claim to be from Tennessee. That got me thinking: what is it about where we are from that shapes our identities? I look at this phenomenon sort of as an outsider because my family moved so much when I was a kid that I never really developed an identity attached to a place. In a way we considered ourselves apart from the people in the place we lived. In school we were never the "cool" kids (with the exception of my little brother) but we didn't really want to be either.
When I think about moving to a place like Tennessee, I anticipate an interesting culture adaption. I imagine it to be very beautiful--Chattanooga is in a mountain range, I believe. The people there are probably much different from what I'm used to, but it could be a good experience to see how they live and think and what makes them act the way they do. I find it fascinating to live in the place and figure out how living there shapes the identity of the people there.
Never in all of this thinking do I actually think, "oh, but then I'd have to be from Tennessee." Because I've never attached my identity to the place that I live. But I'm not normal, I think. So when Scott wrinkles his nose at the thought of moving to Tennessee, maybe it's because he really doesn't want to be from Tennessee. As if living there would make him just like everyone else. Interesting.
2 comments:
i've always thought that to be interesting as well. i think i'd be willing to give tennessee a try, depending on where i was and what i was doing, but i can understand the nose-wrinkling as well. just tell scott that he could grow his own tobacco.
hey, that's only an hour away from where we went on our honeymoon. it really is beautiful there, but it WOULD be a culture change. (like those fried green tomatoes we had...)
i think it would be fun to live there for a while--i even though about it when we'd go driving around in the hills there. kind of creepy though... (i think of those movies where scary things happen way back in the hills in hill-billy land) lots of poverty there--you know, those yards that look like junkyards because people keep everything
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