Dsplaced

By Victoria Cho

It buzzes on the lips of financial types barging ahead, beyond, to their next sale; it shines in features and exposes, investigative pieces and commentaries, from the fathers of journalism; it vibrates through my windows from bass-heavy speakers in broken-looking cars; it leaks into my pants as steam through subway vents; it is caught on the lens in blacks, whites, blues, oranges, and more; it is sung, cursed, applauded, gossiped, lamented, loved, lost, left.

Once upon a time, I loved New York.  We had a rich affair of uncanny adventures and astounding sex.  My eyes were bombarded by its lines and curves; I walked around and absorbed the fabrics, the storefronts, the curses, the subway doors, the animals, and the clamor of the city.  New York and I dined together, sometimes at restaurants, sometimes in my room and it’d show me the beauty of the Mexican products I bought nearby, reveal posted photos from the day’s events, snuggle me up with an issue of the city’s and the world’s most influential newspaper, let me hear giggles or maybe gunshots from the local kids, and then watch me sleep as I decided the what when where for the next time and then couldn’t decide, and then fall asleep knowing I couldn’t decide or that I didn’t know, but felt more ready than ever to never be ready.

And we’d go to bars, and New York would win me over.  Classic or grungy, young or old, whatever I desired, New York gave me.  It spoiled me, it listened to me, and In indulged.

Once upon a time, I left New York.  And I saw something I never thought I’d see; it wasn’t the center, it wasn’t home, and it was as distant from me as anywhere else.  Disdain germinated within me, and I questioned my new feelings of loathing, and I don’t think loathing comes from an object or place but from inside me, and I think it covers something else, something deeper, and how do I remove the cover?

Inside was the embarrassment of my severe depression in New York.  I hid my false love for it, my jealousy of others who embraced the city, succeeded within it, would settle in it, would call it home for eternity.  They would make large happy families that would also call New York home, and so on, and so on, and here I was elsewhere, not missing New York and not knowing what I missed.

Once upon a time I was looking for a home.  I had tried Virginia, Boston, New York, and Thailand.  Once upon a time, I knew it existed.  Once upon a time, I realized it wasn’t where I was but who I am.

We are going on a bit of a hiatus. No-  we aren’t giving up the site and the project, but are simply re-thinking it. After a year of publishing your stories on this site, we have come to believe that a magazine is perhaps a better home for your heartlfet stories. Not only do we want to feature the best of Dsplaced but also help identify the common (and uncommon) themes and threads that flow through your stories.

We’ve taken a stab at creating the first edition of Dsplaced magazine from the stories you submitted. We selected teh stories and quotes at random and because they do a good job of highlighting the diversity of the voices on this site.

Continue to send us your stories and submissions via this site – only from now, they will be considered for publication in an e-magazine which will be distributed freely on the web and maybe in print.

Download the first volume here and stay tuned for more!

DSPLACED VOLUME 01

- Swiss Miss (Happy 10th!)

Every year I have fallen a little bit more in love with NYC. I have in the meantime become a true Brooklynite and could not imagine living anywhere else. I agree with John Updike: “The true new yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

NYC, thank you for being so good to me.

By Sruthi Atmakur, India – US

I know, it is a wierd title, but smells are what I seem to associate places with. Memories.

I knew I was in India when the smell of dung and beedi hit me…
I knew I was back to the U.S. when I smelt some wierd food in Kroger which I completely detest.

The smell of my old clothes back home and the smell of my closet here… The smell of the bed back home and my bed here…

The smell of a few places back in India and a few places here. I belong to that country. But I seem to love the county that has given me what I am today. I love this place, coz at the end of the day, there seems to be one thing that is making me strive through each day.. my sense of freedom!

I do not know how freedom smells yet.. maybe its the smell of the ocean.. or fresh mud.. or my closet.. maybe my shoes.. I do not know.. I can’t wait to smell it though!

via NYT

New York secretes its fullest range of smells in the summer; disgusting or enticing, delicate or overpowering, they are liberated by the heat. So one sweltering weekend, I set out to navigate the city by nose. As my nostrils led me from Manhattan’s northernmost end to its southern tip, some prosaic scents recurred (cigarette butts; suntan lotion; fried foods); some were singular and sublime (a delicate trail of flowers mingling with Indian curry around 34th Street); while others proved revoltingly unique (the garbage outside a nail salon). Some smells reminded me of other places, and some will forever remind me of New York.

Central Park: Canada geese; runner’s sweat; spicy-lemony-pink flowers; mulch; moss; ripe blackberries; pungent Chihuaha

Harlem: Aggressively soapy cologne; rum; peanuts; hot sauce mixed with mayo; spilled gas; laundry soap; Chinese food; black tea

What does your city smell like?

- Anonymous

I create my own colors

Some round, some blue, some coffee, some crude

I create my own memories

Some familiar, some new, most melancholic, most beautiful

I create my own homes

Some safe, some near, some too far, and most too happy.

Dalynn on Dsplaced.com

I don’t think I told you how amazing Dsplaced is. I check in to read it every now and again. It’s an amazing idea and I hope it continues to grow. I’ve been thinking about the stories and how different experiences affect all of us.

- Mansi, From being 21 to being 25

Day after day, year after year, I see art being interjected with emotions. Let’s create a bookshelf with hands and eyelids, a chair with legs and confused feelings. Let’s create machines that can think. Let’s create art that lives. Let’s inject souls into the absolutely obsolete and the tranquil.

Day after day, year after year, I also see boys, girls, women with pink hair and men with purple ties, living their lives, one day after another, not questioning, nor raising their voices. Just drifting along the momentum that’s dictated by this thing called ‘fate’. Men and women and grown girls and little ones too, aspiring to be the furniture in the room. Look how shiny I am, look how rich-oak-like I appear, look how stiff I stand. We all think we are special, and yet we fail to act or revolt the norms.

I came across this amazing read a few weeks back that reiterates and reflects upon our generation: the glorious twenty-somethings. (http://www.eyeweekly.com/article/55882)
Here’s a short snippet:

“This phenomenon, known as the “Quarterlife Crisis,” is as ubiquitous as it is intangible. Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.”

This read was soon followed by an enlightening movie ‘Away we go’, which amplified our stories and extended them into a 2-hour feature on displacement. We are all displaced and happy to be.

I digressed and mumbled something to my friends about the notion of displacement again and what it means now. As more and more tools for communication increase, the less human we become. We all want to become parts of the whole. Miniscule parts. Less human, more furniture.

Last night, I was at a bar and witnessed a strange incident. Bar brawls are common but I was shocked to see one involving a furious boy and a helpless girl. She was hurt and he was intoxicated. And everyone just watched, not knowing what to do or how to react. The music in the background lived on. And so did the ugly fight. Some of us stood on the side, and some continued to play with reds and greens on the pool table. I don’t remember if the DJ stopped to induce action or not but I do remember that the night went on. The victim of the fight continued to live the night as if this was just like finding a fly in the bathroom, you try to get rid of it and then you ignore it, then it just becomes a natural part of your bathroom. They all moved on. ‘That’s what you do’, my friend told me, months after I still wondered about the lost lives at the Taj, in Mumbai.

You become the furniture in the room. You witness but you don’t tell. And you definitely don’t do something about it.

As furniture and fashion aims to be more free and expressive, are we destined to become more silent and opaque?

I lived in the same house for the first twenty years of my life. The first time we moved, is an experience etched in my mind in sharp relief. I remember every moment of it. How I applied for leave to unpack, sitting amidst crates and boxes in my new room, the slow, loving process of transforming an empty, dusty and soulless space into a persoal corner of the world – home.

The year before, I had had a dry run, so to speak, when I lived in Bangalore for 3 months. There wasn’t much I could do to change that place so I settled for moving the bed around and arranging my stuff neatly. It was much more space that I had ever had of my own.

My room in our new place wasn’t as big as the one in Bangalore but I set about lovingly turning it into my own personal space. Curtains, framed pictures, dupattas draped over one frame, hanging Rajasthani decorations near the door, a paper lantern strung over the light and plenty of clear floor space (scrubbed over many evenings till it shone). Unexpectedly I didn’t miss home. I had re-created home.

An all too-short four years later, my landlord needed his flat back and we finally set about and invested in a house of our own. We bought it from a working couple with an 8-year-old son. They had been offered better jobs abroad and needed to move as quickly as they could. We needed a place quickly too so the deal was done.

I walked into a readymade house. The furniture, flooring, interiors, room expansions had all been done already (the previous owners had thought they would stay there for a few years and had remodelled just the year before). The house is tasteful, optimising space like any good Mumbai home would. It is a dream house at a good address.

I inherited the 8-year-old’s room. The bed is broader than I am used to (presumably he rolled) but not as long. And I am a tall person.

The tubelight is fitted over the window, not over my bed. I used to read in bed, sitting propped up against the wall. I can’t anymore. I now have to sit in a chair when I read. Or at the study desk which makes me feel like a student. I had a study desk just like this when I was in school and it brings back memories of board exams, frowning teachers and unbearable pressure with no escape. I never sit there.

There isn’t much I can do to change the furniture (it’s all fitted into the ground) or wiring. I suppose I could but when we moved, I didn’t plan to stick around for very long. I thought I’d be getting married and/or moving out soon. So subconsciously I didn’t even let myself put down roots here.

It is a lovely room but it isn’t home. For four years I’ve camped in an 8-year-old’s ex-room. The room has a sterilized, magazine centerfold coldness about it. It is odd because I think if I had to design it, I wonder what I would have done differently. Perhaps the tubelight. And maybe I would have had a beanbag instead of a study-desk. Possibly a shoe-rack as well (closed). Maybe the bed would have been different. I initially thought it would be great fun to have a bed that I could literally roll around in. It turns out I’m a pretty stationery sleeper. All this bed does is remind me that I’m alone in it. A space too big for one person to fill. I do not love this place.

So I end with the feeling that I’ve spent four years living in a room that isn’t mine, has nothing of me in it – except me.

- IdeaSmithy