"The Perhaps of Foreignness" | Spoken Word | Stephanie Zerpa

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• published: 23 Jun 2016
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Thank you to Poetry Lime Barbados for the space and the video. It means a lot how safe you make all of us feel, even on the gloomy days. May's performance. Transcript: From the time our brains are developed enough to comprehend simple facts we are taught that this is our land and that this is our country; that it belongs to us. That we are some sort of greater power with the ability to kill some people, pay some money and then magically draw lines across territories that never belonged to us to begin with. When I first came to Barbados they asked me if I wanted to take history and I said no, not because I was not interested but because I was taught that it didn’t belong to me, because this is not my country. Soon later I was taught that the words that were coming out of my mouth didn’t belong to me either because this, this is not my language. I moved to Barbados almost 3 years ago, and on my first week of school I refused to lend somebody money and their response was “she probably doesn’t even understand what I am saying”; and the other day I was walking down the street and when I remained quiet after being catcalled the guy dared to comment “oh, she probably doesn’t even speak english”. Because me choosing to ignore your selfish request must equal to “Oh, get her out of our country”. I spent 15 years belonging. I spent 15 years being part of a place that I will call home for the rest of my life and which history and culture I carry in my veins with pride. One day, out of the absolute blue, I became a part of the wind instead of the land. In the span of one year I had lived in 3 different countries. When you move around so often you start to lose your identity. I have a spanish accent in English because more often than not my words mix with my past. I’ve been told it comes out stronger when I speak about a subject with passion. I learned it’s because my passion tangled itself among my roots when I was born. Apparently I have an english accent in Spanish too, I was told about it for the first time by a native spanish speaker who said to me, and i quote “you have a really good spanish, for an American”, and it’s funny because normally when I am called American while speaking english I take it as a compliment, because somewhere along the lines sounding like something that is not myself made me feel like I belong more. But when those words came out of that lady’s mouth I never felt more foreign. Foreign is an adjective defined as strange or unfamiliar, not belonging to or characteristic of. Basically, I am an alien. I became an alien to my own country the second I stepped out and confused somebody else’s reality for mine. I became an alien to this country the second I stepped in and confused your reality for mine. Or so I’ve been taught. Francois Rabelais was a french poet whose last words were “I go to seek a great perhaps” and that’s why I left the first time. And the second. And perhaps I found it already or perhaps it’s hiding somewhere on the tips of my fingers and I just haven’t noticed it yet. The first time I felt out of place I hadn’t even left my country. So maybe belonging is not a thing that floats around between borders or state lines. I started learning french 4 months ago, and in that classroom I feel more at home than in many other places, so maybe being foreign is not determined by how many languages I can swallow in my alphabet soup. And maybe it is true; maybe this country doesn’t belong to me, and neither do these words. Maybe I have to think things an extra couple of seconds when I am constructing a sentence because my brain is trying to decipher what language it should think in. But maybe, maybe I found my great perhaps the day that my brain started spitting out sentences in 3 different languages; or the day that I placed one foot here and the other one across the border. Or the day that I decided to belong to the wind and not the land because there is way too many regulations down here. I might be an alien, foreign and unfamiliar. But I belong to myself, and maybe that’s the great perhaps I have been looking for.