It’s probably because I am a first-generation immigrant, but I feel the push and pull of two dreams, two ideals vividly in my head.  The first is the one of Hellas,  the ideal home that was left behind, full of images of olive trees and seas, the warm embrace of kin, the idealized Eden that was ripped from me when barely 5.

And then on the other extreme is the other dream,  Ameriki, the American Dream, the visage of overflowing cupboards full of products that delight, the lure of wealth and prosperity curbed only by one’s lack of motivation, that luscious ruby fruit of potential possibility–the hope of fulfilling dreams through sweat, strategy, and work.  The American dream that straightens up the spine of a once poor island boy as he struts on the sidewalk his pockets fat with wads of green.  That incredible ideal that you can make what you want of your life, that you have the freedom to morph like the folds on the chiton of the goddess of the dawn as she slips on golden ankles through your imagination blessing you with visions of the grand house you can live in and the wonderful world that can open up, if you just take that huge step, that plunge, that plane that boat that crosses that watery divide that separates two distinct worlds.

The visions of these worlds mingle/wrestle in my consciousness like two antipodes.  Yet they are both illusory.  One Hellas is hinged on the past, the topos that no longer exists in reality but is purely tied up with nostos and memory. The other, Ameriki, the American Dream,  is conformed to the future and smells of warm hope; it is tinged with the glitter that dreams of made of.  But where am I?  I am just a stick figure balancing on the thin line between one and the other.  The present is precarious; it is the reality of the immigrant struggle, not to fall into the abyss of delusion by focusing too much on the past or the future.  Right now, as a member of an ethnic immigrant group that straddles two worlds, I am trying to survive, one step at a time.  (That is the spirit I have tried to capture in this photo collage, Between Two Worlds.)

 

This is the same spirit in a poem I have penned titled “Captive of the American Dream.”  It speaks to the realities and disillusionments that are exposed once the dream of Ameriki, the American Dream, starts getting frayed.

 

I am a captive of the American dream

in someone else’s head

I am the product of someone else’s choice

 

keeping silent slumber

In the hull that held the hopes of my mother,

Smelling street corners of piss

Reading signs behind shop windows, “No Greeks, No Rats”

Falling through the sidewalk cracks of neither White nor Black

 

 

“Ameriki Ameriki,” she kept repeating

“I am going to go to Ameriki”

She had wanted this self-fulfilling prophecy

from behind the white burlap sack of rice

compliments of Mr. Marshall

 

Ameriki, bubbled halos around the heads of kin

They packed quilts of her future life into a plaid suitcase

Topped the baulo in two wide leather buckles

To the rim with hand-embroidered dollies and photos

 

She resurfaced after a Pan Am night flight at JFK

 

It was the warm air of promise that inflated

the bouquet of their dreams

that lifted them right up into the friendly skies

 

Like a kind of birthday party inflatable

Yes, yes we are going to live in a three bedroom house

Yes, we will never go hungry again

Yes, our children will rise higher than us

Tomorrow it will be better

 

Railroad apartments running roaches

Be patient. Things will improve

50 cent per hour garment work hunched over till wee hours

the metal Singer drumming lullabies

Temporary, you’ll see. Make patience daughter.

 

All that hot air fissing fussing fighting

 

She was fed and fed penny by penny,

one garment stitch in time

Piece by piece, the American dream

 

The fabric puzzle piled under paper outlines like loose leaf reams

Fed the one-toothed industrial machine

those cut up body parts—

a shoulder, a sleeve, a hip halter, a neck, a leg—

to complete a Frankenstein garment of dreams.

$1.25 for each assembled whole

 

Lastly, the shaky penciled script of “028”

Her worker number

To trace back any irregularities

 

(By chance she found her ID

Beneath the tag with a purple swan

On the rack in Macy’s

$398 suggested retail price)

 

The price she paid for the transatlantic journey took more than 35 years

 

They cut one by one the chords that kept them bound to the possibility of return

Just like the balloons of Oz

 pappou’s gold rimmed tooth

             sunshine on hard boiled eggs

            branches of olive trees and votsalakia

            the tissue tablecloth clothes pinned near the sea

 

 

The mother looked to what she could gain in the glimmer ride of America

The daughter looked to what she had lost

 

The hot air of the dream fueled the drum of the driver of the machine

No matter that it mangled Baba’s mind, wore mama’s spinal column

 

 

(And still they come– by the boatloads bloated and bursting onto shores and factories

Like rats.)

 

The hot air escaped subtly -fissssss

Now she is stuck.

 

Noosed to an empty balloon

Holding taut a wimpy line

Deflated.

 

In a place no one can pronounce her name

Squinting her eyes shut

Clicking her heels in a zembekiko strut

Repeating under her breath,

 

“There’s no place like home

There’s no place like home.”