"I'm from Brazil. I wish that I could live and die in Europe, but it seems impossible right now. Even so I love deeply Europe. The family of my father is half Italian, from Sicily and half german from Bavaria... I always loved the people, the culture, the cuisine, the architecture, climate... everything from Europe... Hug from Brazil. "

The above text is not something I have written, but it might as well be, because it's these exact thoughts that are on my mind almost...well, if I am to seriously be honest, almost every day, and they are certainly thoughts that I have written time and time again in essays and short stories, et cetera. I found the above oh so relatable  text sitting underneath a video on YouTube - a video entitled, not shockingly, "1 Hour of European folk music."

I had been trying to write up a story about elves and decided I needed some ambience (which i often do) while I wrote, so after scrolling a bit through "1 hour of medival instrumental music" and "Fantasy music instrumental playlist, uplifting!" I came across this video...and then of course I scrolled around on the comments at some point as I listened, and found what that guy was saying... and ... I guess I am writing about it now because it just makes me very sad , so very sad, every single time I think about just how *impossible* it truly is to re-locate across continents, unless you are Johnny Depp or George Clooney.

 I personally find the impossibility of it to be absolutely ridiculous (of course I do!) especially when you think of it from this angle of ancestry and what not , and you realize that the Brazilian there, just like me here in the northeast corner of the USA, is connected to Europe rather intimately by blood, far more intimately than he is connected to Brazil or I to this American story, in terms of history,  and yet now, in this oh so enlightened modern age (they say) we are both in pain, and suffering, because we are both utterly and completely  blocked off ,from even what we are interpreting as  our own blood and family cultures , by a thing called bureaucracy.  I was trying to write about it another time a few months ago, about the manner in which the bureaucracy in our modern age has just closed this all down, and made it impossible to move easily between the continents and .. one thing I find rather interesting about it all is that, believe it or not, and most people I know are not aware of this, but this actually was not always the case. Literally at all. No one ever made a comment like that poor kid on YouTube one hundred years ago. Because he would have just figured out a way to go back.....  i.e. bought a sailing ticket and gone back and uh...game over, no one would be waiting there to harass you, or check your papers, etc.

 For, you see, 100 years ago, in 1917, the idea that we would all be sitting here in 2017 , utterly locked into these continents as we are by "citizenship" and "passports" and "papers" (and not just language or customs) would have been largely unthinkable for the vast majority of people living on the Earth. In the past it was language and customs that locked you somewehere, which made sense, but language and custom are also, you know, quite surmountable..you can learn a language...you can learn a custom...you can get in the door. Now, however, this is no longer sufficient. Language and custom no longer make much of a difference. In 2017 it is over for you the second you are born: You are in the prison cell in which you have been born in, for life.  That kid is in Brazil, because his grandfather chose to sail there, and I am in N. America, and another whole bunch of Italians are in Venezuela and Argentina, et cetera, and that is it. They are trapped there, in those boxes, for life. "Citizens". Whoopdeedoo.

In the past however, again, this was not the case. You had no box. The world was your oyster, if only you wanted to eat of it, and you were brave enough and willing enough.

An American, for example, who was born in Wisconsin in the year 1905, could have just as easily sailed the sea and gone to live in Paris, France, with essentially no real grievances or huge bureaucratic problems, as a Sicilian from Palermo, Sicily could have gone and sailed the sea to come and live in the USA. The whole adventurous bum thing (thats what I call an immigrant) basically went both ways. You were in Iowa and felt like taking off and maybe trying your hand at living in Sweden? You could do that, if only you had the will to adventure and take a journey, and many many people, not surprisingly, did just that , even, yes, the  Americans who had started off in some farmland place like Iowa. Believe it or not but, when you start reading literature from the 1800s or the early 1900s, you'll start to see that there are **tons ** of stories of Americans heading backwards  to Europe, many of whom just went permanently, becaus they liked it there, instead of here. I know it sounds odd from a modern perspective, because America is thought of as solely the entrance point, and the only place to go to, but the truth is that once people were settled here in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they had the money to go back and travel to Europe and so they did, and when they got there, they were not met by, you know, bureaucracies trying to keep them out or anything like that, et cetera. They just learned the languages, many of them perhaps already knew them anyways, and started living as Europeans again, as though America had simply never happened for their family lines. The early Americans had the chance to return if and when they wanted, to old Europe, just like other folks had the chance to come here etc. There was no sense at all of being locked here or there, on this continent, in this country, of being completely unable to return back "home", even if you wanted. There was no sense of that whatsoever.

Most of the Italian immigrants for example, like the ones whom the Brazilian was referencing,who **just arrived** in the early 1900s, in my personal opniion, if they had been told that their descendants who would come afterwards would be blocked off from Italy *permanently*, and landlocked for life and eternity in the States, or the New World in general, may very well have thought differently about embarking on the journey, because when you put it like that...it all of a suden starts to sound...rather threatening and even almost scary, really. All of a sudden you perhaps start to understand what has been lost now. How come? Well it's pretty straight forward I think: Because you are now being essentially held prisoner in a sense, on a spcific continent, again utterly blocked off and not allowed - except, basically, for short little 30 day glimpses etc -- to see the one where literally *all* your families history occurred. Which means of course to say that, more likely than not, every single thing about my family "the DiMarzios" and "the Agnellis" occurred in Italy, or somwhere in South Europe, for well over 2,000 long years, if not 3,000 or 4,000... and yet ... just because we came to the USA pretty much on a whim , after one bad mood and argument 100 measly yeras ago, to see the 'New World', I am now , essentially, completely and utterly trapped here, with no chance of getting back to Europe, or getting to intimately understand Europe anywhere asid froom a book or a screen..  That's it, it's over, I am trapped in this cage now, I must learn to love it because I can never leave it. Which, I'll tell you, is easier said than done , especially when you are reading history that goes beyond 100 measly years ago.

If you find what I am writing baffling and bewildering and you think I am making too big of a deal out of this, then try for a second to just think about this entire situation from another sort of angle, rather than the one you think you know so well. Try for example to pretend that the USA is another planet  like Mars or Venus, and 100 years ago, in 1917, your ancestors, who you've never met and who got to freely make the choice to travel, decided to go and get on a spaceship to fly to Mars and leave Earth, because they heard that Mars was going to be something utterly new, and splendid, and fantastic, and yes .. okay..one hundred years later, in 2017, Mars ended up being alright, it got colonized well enough, they built some skyscrapers and highways and shopping malls,  but even with all of that, it still isn't exactly -- in a certain sense -- "home". It still isn't "Earth". And it never will be.

It is instead Mars, or Venus, or some other planet, that was only relatively recently colonized, and for the rmost part, aside from the two Martian liberal coasts, there is , in some ways, still almost nothing in it yet, and most of it is still pretty rural and spread out and untamed and undeveloped woodlands where nothing at all of any historical intrigue has really happened or been built, because, well, it is going to take another 1000 years to fill it up, just lik eit took that long to fill up Earth!

 Now of course imagine that you grow up reading about all of this and you come to realize that, even if you don't wanna be, you're totally trapped and marooned on Mars, and you can't go back to Earth, where all of human history occurred, and where all of your customs and traditions and songs et cetera come from, even your very religion,  because....it's no longer considered *your* home, or *your* planet, because *you're* now written up as a Martian, and you don't have the right , they say, because of some guy in an office who collects papers in a file cabinet and who  calls himself a bureaucrat, to be an Earthling anymore. You're no longer an Earthling. You're a Martian. That's it. You can't go back. You're blocked off. You can go and visit Earth, you can hang around for a month or two and take pictures if you want, if you're very lucky, but beyond that, hey, even if you speak the language of the Earthlings perfectly, you gotta fly back off to Mars eventualy, because you're a Martian now, you can't stay. It makes no difference that you look exactly like an Earthling, and that you can cook like one of them, or that you drink the same sort of coffe and espresso as they do, or that you love everything they love and grew up with it just the same as they and hold it just as near to youor heart, because you're written as a Martian now, and you are trapped on Mars, utterly trapped, not allowed back to Earth..to be an Earthling... because your family made the choice to get on the spaceship, 100 years before you were born. Oops. It's over. The end. Martian for life. Can't look back now, kid. Can't look back.

Certainly I cannot be the only one who finds that idea absolutely terrifying for ...when you put it like that, in terms of Mars and Earth, does it not all sound just a little ... lonely? As though you've been rather deviously torn from something quite special, that being Earth, your home, and thrown out very far away from it ...and now you're even being blocked off from going back- no matter how much you weep for it and miss it? Doesn't that sound mortifying? I think it does, and of course the wildest part about it is that this is basically the story of the United States and the New World behind it  because the United States was at one point an "unknown planet" in the same exact sense as Mars, completely uncolonized, with nothing on it, at all, just like I said,  and if you live there this is basically your story as well, and yet the only reason you,perhaps, unlike the Brazilian and I, don't really think about it is because, well, nobody on Mars really talks about Earth anymore. They try to sort of disregard it and pretend it isn't there anymore. They don't make movies on Earth too often. They purposely make them almost always on Mars. They even go so far as to try and pretend that Mars and Earth have almost no connnection points or bridges anymore, as though the two big continents mean nothing to the other one, et cetera et cetra. The histories are not seen as totally connecting. They even almost seem like they might be enemies with one another now, in truth. Talks of wanting to go back to Earth, in many corners of Mars (ironically the so called most traditionalist corners), get you pegged as a sort of "traitor". "What the hell would you be wantin to go back there for kid? Aint you a patriot ? Don't you believe in ...old fashioned patriotism?"

 Hence you see "Earth", from our martian angle, and everything on it, has almost been sort of forgotten, in truth, entirely....   unless of course, like me,  you just so happened to start opening history books at one point, books that spoke of the world before 1917, or hell, even before 1930, and you came to undrstand just how intimately tied to Earth you were, in every way imaginable... et cetera et cetera... or of course if you maybe, again like that sad anonymous Brazilian, had the father who freely chose to leave Earth but then maybe regretted it and talked about it very often, and now even though you could pay a spaceship to bring you back, and you want to go back, to live your life there, you can't. You ain't an Earthling now! Stay on Mars. That's your cage now. Shutup and deal with it.  It does not matter that you can afford the fee for the spacship, and it doesn't matter if you know everything about Earth, or the language, none of it matters, because you are landlocked on Mars permanently, as a result of having been born there. Enjoy it. Make the most of it. And make sure to always uh... I guess make sure to always keep drilling it into everyones head, as well as your own, that leaving on the spaceship for Mars 100 years ago was, hands down, the greatest choice ever made in the histoy of choices et cetera.

Again: I honestly just can't help but think, every tim I think about it, and unfortunately I'll admit I really do find myself thinking about it quite a lot, that very few  of the original ancestors would have ever decided to get on that "spaceship", if they had known that all of us, forevermore, would be permanently cut off and disconnected from the ancestral home. The gravity of how deep that sounds, and how foreboding, and limited, just makes the entire choice, and the entire story, as interesting as it all even is, a horror stroy for me. It ruins the story is what it does, it ruins it and it makes me not like it anymore.

It really has for some time now made it all nothing but a very bad, very strange horror story for me, and I think the main reason why is really because, again, this story has no precedent! Never before in the entire history of the Globe has there been a point in time when you would find yoruself totally trapped and disconnected and not allowed inside of a country that you actually recognize and relate with and feel at home in. That's really the thing of it, you see, and that's what makes it feel so creepy, and it's also the reason why, even after years now of trying to force myself to accept that I really can't go "back" to Italy, no matter how badly I want to, even just temporarily, for a few years, et cetera, that I still can't get it all out of my head. It is because of what I said earlier, you see, when I explained about how, in the past, prior to 1917 and 1930 et cetera,  people often were trapped in a culture or a town, just like now, but they were trapped by, as I said, language, custom, and of course cultrue itself. They were, in short, too limited, too far away, and too uneducated to break out of a culture. They were not trapped, however, like we are, solely by political bars and bureaucratic cages.

This really actually changes everything because you can't really, if you're from Cairo, Egypt, in 1890, find yourself yearning for small town Iowa because you wouldnt have known anything about it and you would have -- more importantly - had no connection to it! Your mother wasn't from Iowa and you were suddenly, for example, in Cairo, or your father or grandfather so and so forth. An adventurer might have yearned for it ...sure... but an adventurer does not yearn for something in a familial or..better yet..familiar sense. An adventurer isn't looking for HOME. That feeling of home, however, is what that Brazilian was feeling, and thats what I'm feeling, too, when I yearn for Italy: I'm not really yearning for an adventure so much as I am yearning for my families main spot, where we learned all of our recipes and so forth, blah blah, for literally thousands and thusands of years. An adventurous yearning for me would be China, which I have no real yearning for. Italy is not an adventure. It's going back home to my original planet. Yet I am still not allowed. I have to look away, I am told. It's off limits to me now. My families home. Off limits. Of course I suppose some people now might say "well its homesickness, that has an historical precedent, that happens, an adventurer goes too far, gets trapped and lost, wishes to go home...hey that happens...so this isn't unique.."

 But no, if you think that, you're forgetting the bureaucratic detail I told you of before. You're forgetting that the adventurer in the past had the option to reneg on his adventure and try to get back home and he wouldn't be penalized once he, or his descendant, managed to get bkac, even if it took 2-300 years!  Let's just postulate , for example, just to try to show yet another angle, that maybe you were someone in the year 1850 and you left a country like China, your homeland, and you traveled all the way to France, and then you got homesick after 50 years, or your kid got homesick after you told all those stories about China - years after you were dead-- and they wanted to go back...to bring the family name back to China, where it began? Well,guess what, like I said before....they COULD have gone back, if only they wanted, in the year 1850! Just like the Americans were able to go back and return to Europe in 1917, and 1930, and even afterwards, for quite a long while! Until suddenly one day we all woke up and the bureaucratic machine had grown to such a degre that, oh my god, that's it now, oh my god, oh my god, we can't ever go back at all! LOCKED OUT! PERMANENTLY! LOCKED OUT! 100 PERCENT! They closed the door! They built a WALL! We can't get in now! It's SLAMMED SHUT! They closed it! You are now officially locked out of a culture you recognize, and are familiar with, and get along with! Locked out 100 percent! That's it. You can't enter into it. Boom. Shut. Done. Again, as I keep saying: make due with what you got. Right? I can hear the people who say that already. Oh I can hear them so loud. They're screaming it at the top of their lungs just like I'm screamin how unfair this is. And I wish they were right! Oh I wish they were! I wish more than anything that I could forget Earth! I don't want to remember it anymore! Because it makes me sad! And it makes me feel, as I'm saying to you, like I'm imprisnoed, becuse I can't go to it! So I want to make due, I want to forget! Oh I want so badly to FORGET! I wish I never knew that Earth had existed at all, I wish I had fallen for the trick and that I only ever thought about Mars, and that I just thought Mars was where all my history happened....

But of course now...to make it all worse... for the story just keeps getting worse, and more horrifing...now, in the year 2017, do you know what happens next, each and every time you try, like I do, to just make ' due' with it, and to forget it all? I'll tell you: You can't forget it anymore, because the World is moving at a thousand miles an hour now, and the spaceships that once took 3 weeks to take you from Earth to Mars, back in 1917, guess what? Those spaceships can get you there in just 12 hours now, at a fraction of the price and the danger! And ...beyond even that, a machine called the Internet and the computer was invented, and when you log onto it, you have the chance, unlike anyone had for the past 100 years, to communicate intimately with Earthlings, and to talk to them, and get to know them, and have them personally teach you their language, as though they're lying there on your very bed right next to you! You have the chance to log online and follow the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube pages of the Earthlings, and see how they live, back on Earth, and read their newspapers in a moments time.... and yet... and yet..for some reason, at the same time as all of this, you also are the only one in all of human history, who also has this strange story of being completely blocked off , as well. You are therefore at once so close, but so far, and could anything be more bizarre? I can't imagine what. I honestly can't imagine what. It's, in my opinion, heart  breaking. It really is.

I don't even know what else to say about it, but I honestly think it's just the craziest thing in the world, and I also really don't think that it's going to be too sustainable for much longer, this way of doing things, and locking people out and so on so forth, because traveling, in terms of both 'mind' (with the internet) and 'space' (with the airplanes) has just become too easy now. The entire immigration story is simply not at all like it used to be, and in fact nothing is like it used to be, because it's so easy now to be trapped in contact with other people who you leave behind , that it is  quite frankly almost annoying. New immigrants don't lose contact anymore, with Mexico or China or whatever country it is they leave, like my immigrant ancestors almost immediately lost interest with Italy. Doesn't happen now. Not at all. The internet has built bridges and those bridges....they don't burn. They cant burn. They don't exist in reality. They're in VIRTUAL reality.....

 Here is an example that may at once seem unrelated but is actually quite related to how the immigration story has changed: Many years ago I had a pal who moved all the way down South in Florida, and basically lost touch with everybody, at a very young age, 19-20. A few years later he passed away, and at the time he passed away he was not at all in contact with anyone from back here. Nevertheless, we all learned about how his story ended, due to the fact that Facebook revealed it to us. In a previous age, like before Facebook, this kid would have just vanished and probably never been heard from again and you wouldn't have known, unless you had real live mutual friends with him, that he passed on. I would have remembered his story where it left off for me personally, never learning of the strange ending that took place in a town very far from here, etc. With Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of it , however, there is a link, a bridge, a connection, that the Internet carefully keeps for you, not only with other countries, but also just with the most insignificant people you could ever imagine, who pass through your life. You meet a guy at a party for 5 minutes in 2010, esxchange Facebook pages, and even if you never talk to him again, you may very well read his morning posts on Facebook every morning for the next decade, or 2 ... or for all we know, the rest of our lives! This is really strange. Extremelly strange. At least from the perspective of the past....where you had to be extra sure to stay in touch with someone, or to hold onto something, or else it would be lost.

Not to keep going on about something that seems disconnected, but even with records or films for instance, you know...years ago, someone like me, I'm pretty disorganized, I would have prboably ruined, lost, forgotten or just given away many of my favorite records and never thought of them or gotten reminded of them again ... but in 2017? In 2017 I am able to return to the same records time and time and time again at the drop of a hat, the second I think for literally a second about them, and never be in fear of losing them, at all because they've been carefully organized and archived for me,by other people, in the Cloud, which I can access from literally anywhere at all - plane, train, automobile, etc. This is extremely strange, becasue it's almost like a tattoo of sorts that you can't get rid of, even when you want to get rid of it. For instance I have some records that I really would like to stop listening to (or better yet, music videos I wish I could stop watching) but, because they're there, I always go back to them, the second I get the inkling. I can't get them out of my hair! Because they are in the Cloud, and someone else controls the Cloud. So even if I am sick and tired of lettin myself wander back into the cinema to watch the old Mick Jagger video , and in the pre--internet era I might have shattered the disc or thrown the VHS cassette tape underneath someones moving car, in the internet age, I cannot do that anymore, I cannot ever get rid of it, becaus eit has been copied a million times in easily accessible places online, and so I eventually see it again, and I go back to watch it.  Cant get rid of it.

 Which is what brings us back to the entire European thing, and the traveling thing in general: The truth is that I know more about Europe at this poin, and feel more familiarized with it, than anyone in my family has for the past 100 years since the original adventurous bums left in 1917, because I've gotten to essentially explore it and immerse myself in it through the Internet.... all of it.... especially with something like Google Earth, where I can tour all of the greatest European cities as though I am quite literally on foot or on a bicycle, in 3D, nonetheless, and yet ... I'm also the only one, essentially, for whom this wall of bureaucracy has become so mighty and strong and impenetrable. Granted, the bureaucratic wall has been building more or less since the 30s, lik e I keep saying, but it has only gradually gotten stronger and stronger with each year, and is now at its absolute strongest. I have read stories for instance, of US travelers from even as recently as the 90s, who said that "back in their day" breaking through the bureaucratic wall in Europe and going wherever, and setting up shop there, or just getting a gig as a stock boy there , or a street sweeper, was as easy as pie, and it is the same story for Europeans coming here etc.

 In todays world it si not the case. In todays world , game over kid, you are locked in the box that you have been born in, whilst at the same time having a screen that can take you everywhere and get you into touch with absolutely everyone, in your pocket. Its honestly like a ... i dont know... like a bad joke, like a piece of meat dangling in front of you when you're starving,almost, that you can't ever quite grab. Its really crazy, and don't think my situation as an Italian descendant in the States is the worst when it comes to this, because it certainly isn't. In fact just the other day I was watching a new singer from the Caribbean when a story, like this, that I personally think is much worse, occurred to me, which is the story of the Jamaicans....

If you are an American, have you ever thought about how odd it must be, in a way, to be a Jamaican? I don't know precisely how they feel about it ...but personally, if I was a Jamaican, I'd be kind of a little aggravated, I think. Why? It's simple: Jamaicans speak perfectly comprehensible English, all the time, its their native language, albeit with an accent, and they are only a hop and a skip from the USA (literally, what, a 1 hour flight) and yet.... they are not permitted to come and live here, because Jamaica is still apart of the United Kingdom, which is 12 hours awa y by plane, and not the USA. Now ... I want to be clear: I am not saying that I think Jamaica should or should not become a part of the USA, I have no idea whatsoever about that, chances are they perhaps do not want to become a part of it and they appreciate their sovereignty; but what I am saying is, I can't help but think that it would be very odd , if not extremely odd, to be sitting there on that tiny little island, speaking ENGLISH, looking at this massive USA country right above you, one mere hour away, where they say all of this opportunity is happening and yet.....what .... you're utterly trapped on this one little island, and thats it, no more options. Even though you speak the language of the country in question!

Come on! That is really , really weird... there is no other way to describe it, and yet again, this is something else that is just,  you know, completely unprecedented prior to the world that developed around the middle to late 20th century. It's completely unprecedented, it never happened before, and for the Jamaican this whole story, like I am saying, is actually even more absurd, because now we are talking about people speaking the very tongue of the country, just an hour away from it, on an island right off of it, where people vacation constantly...  and STILL not being able to go there. Thats really profoundly strange in my opinion. Profoundly strange. That to me is basically an exile of sorts. And I cannot stress enough how unprecedented it is, because now you're not even just talking about that ancestral element, like Italy and I, ... no, now you are even talking about a culturer you are connected to linguistically *and* culturally, yet still totally blocked off from. Ive watched, for instance, and followed, **dozens**, if not hundreds, of artists, from the United Kingdom, and Australia, and even Jamaica, for that matter; but.... I can never hope to live there, same as Italy , even though I speak their language and write in it, because....why? Because of a file cabinet that has my name stamped on it and says I belong in this box, instaed of that box. Thats why, and thats the only reason why, the only reason at all.

At this point of course, now that we are on the topic, I suppose one can't help but wonder: Is this bureaucratic nonsense going to get worse, or is it going to get better, and looser? Earlier at some point in this "essay" I think I sort of passed across the idea that maybe it would get better ... but now that I'm re-thinking it, I am not so sure, because agan it has only been getting progressively worse since the 1930s, and .... well, considering all the recent political talk of walls blocking us off from Mexico, and then even of California or Texas perhaps splitting off from the 50 states... who is to say that this will not somehow devolve into a situation where each of our boxes are going to suddenly get smaller than they even already are? Who is to say that, in a country like the USA, it wont now somehow revert to the point where, even though everyone speaks the same language here, it switches  into some sort of situation where even interstate travel becomes highly .. what.. highly problematic and regulated etc??? Where you will, in the future, maybe need some sort of special passport or document or visa or something to get out from Iowa to Nebraska or Illinois? The kid of the future won't just be an American, trapped in the North American box, he'll now be a Nebraskan...and the traditionalists, if he decides to ask a question about moving out of Nebraska, or what happens outside of Nebraska, they'll say "you little rat, what are you a traitor? Aren't you a traditionalist? Aren't you proud of being a Nebraskan and nothing more? That's who you are, you should own it...you're a Nebraskan...until death..."

It all sounds a bit claustrophobic and restrictive doesn't it? Welcome to my world, you see ... because that claustrophobia is exactly wha I already feel with Europe! And England! And Australia et cetera. It'd be very nice to have the freedom to *truly* move amongst these places, espeically amongst Italy which I recognize so well, but.... eh.... they got rid of that didn't they? Cause they like walls.... dont they? They sure do. They think walls are going to make them rich,and give them opportunities. I don't know about you, butI sure don't feel like I got too many opportunities whwen I think about all those absolutely enormus countries being completely cut off from me. But oh well. God bless Mars kid. Earth never existed. Earth never existed at all.

ERROR. INACCESSIBLE. WRONG VISA. STAY IN YOUR BOX. ERROR. INACCESSIBLE. WRONG VISA. STAY IN YOUR BOX. ERROR. INACCESSIBLE. WRONG VISA. STAY IN YOUR BOX. ERROR. INACCESSIBLE. WRONG VISA. STAY IN YOUR BOX.


/END.