First time across the Atlantic

‘Suddenly, I was disorientated, a familiar feeling that had started haunting me occasionally after the beginning of my current job. It was three years ago when I started working as a Director of Overseas Collaborations for a British University and their Greek partner institution. This meant that every two months, I had to spend a week to a month working in Greece, my country of origin and place where I spent the first 20 years of my life. That day in the conference, momentarily, I felt Greek but … It is not the case for people to pause when they have to answer the question ‘where do you come from?’ I did. In fact, being away from both London and Athens had somehow unsettled me; Of course, in London if the same question was posed to me I would have said “I come from Greece”. Similarly, if I was to be asked when in Athens, I would have answered “I live in London but I also live here, I come here regularly...”. Now, first time across the Atlantic, I seemed not to be able to find the ‘other’ against who to define myself, we were all others in this room somehow, I thought. That day, across the Atlantic, I hesitated. Could working in my country of origin so regularly be responsible for my hesitation? ‘Where do I come from’? I was feeling out of place, no, not because I was in Philadelphia. Out of place being Here or There, where I was born and Here and There, where I live; Here and There, where I work and Here and There, where I have always to understand, to remember, to belong, to distance from, to connect, to arrive, to depart... Where did I come from? Dislocated, misplaced, yet with a surprising conviction, I answered: “It is complicated, where can I start from...”’(Diary Entry, April 2005, Conference, Philadelphia, USA)].