A step into the presence you could call it, or a separation from the past, but every long-term migrant will experience a similar process. The first step in a migration is the physical move from the old land to the new land. In its trail follows a long, slow shadow that drags out in the foggy dawn of a migrant’s newly rising persona. This long trail is a largely invisible transition which change you recognize best under the light of hindsight. 

Fifteen years after my migration to the new land, the United States, or rather New York City, I can say today, I look backward and see the new dawn around me. I was born into my Dutch heritage like a fish that moves around in the water and my upbringing is the land on which I crawled, but I see that what was my right by birth, Holland, has now become my past. What has settled and rooted so deeply in who I am, has been separated from me, like a ship that disappears past the horizon out of sight. I am afloat, have become my own buoy.

In sight, only the rails of the ship and a horizon all around still are. Above the clouds, below the waves and the play of light and shadow drifting on the water. Today, there is no lifeline back, no road back, no home to return to, any direction is equally random past this point. Of course, one always has direction, and the water itself, spacetime if you will, always holds a steady course for a certain amount of time. There is no clear separation of past and future, the present is a long continuum that shifts slowly, gently, fastly.

Where lies my future now? Heavy wheels were set in motion, a new seed planted, roots intertwined, a wind blows, a stream flows.