A Sense Of Belonging... Somewhere Else

[PeteS]

no other relatives of mine share my interest.

It is clear that not everyone has those feelings or interest. Certainly my father had no interest in returning to Manchester where his family came from and certainly not to Blackpool where his family moved to in the 30's and where he lived for over 30 years. My mother was of a similar view but ended up in a residential home which she visited on virtually a daily basis as part of her job 60 years previously. She really liked the place and said she felt at home. Strangely we ended up burying her at a Church about 50 meters away from the school she went to as an infant (again only discovered after her death)
The aspect of family members being scattered all over the country doesn't apply to me- my fathers family lived in the Manchester area for generations and my mothers family , in the Bolton ,Lancashire area was traced by someone as having lived there for 500 years!

 

[PeteS]

I have a similar although slightly tangential story to relate.

Putting aside the fact that I live in Ukraine, I am originally from Cambridge (the real one not the facsimile), my parents are from Scotland and a city up north so to speak.

Back in the early 90s my younger brother moved to Berlin and after a few months I came to visit for a long weekend. My brother's apartment was in the old Soviet sector of the city usually known as East Berlin.

I had a constant deja-vu type feeling as I walked around the streets of East Berlin, I felt completely at home, the architecture had a sense of familiarity about it even though it was completely different to that which I had known in Cambridge and later in London. Bearing in mind I did not speak a word of German in those days I did not get lost in much the same way that one can walk around one's home town on auto-pilot. yet this was my first ever visit to Berlin and Soviet themed East Berlin was certainly not the dreaming spires of Cambridge.

Anyway wind on 10 years or so and my mother was recovering from a hip replacement operation so was spending a lot of time lying down. In order to keep her mind busy she started researching her ancestors.

Even though my Mum is from the Outer Hebridies (islands of the top of Scotland) she discovered that her relatives back in the 1800s were all from what became Prussia and then Brandenburg - this being the state (Lander) that surrounds Berlin. Further digging threw up ancestors who were registered in the Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg boroughs of what became East Berlin. These were the very streets I was walking around beneath a welcoming cloud of familiarity and nagging deja-vu.

Since then I have lived in Hong Kong, Sydney, Frankfurt and now Kiev and I have never experienced this sense of familiarity in a new place that I discovered in East Berlin.

In fact I felt so at home in East Berlin that I moved there and lived there very happily for 6 years before moving to Australia and when I returned from Australia to Europe it was Berlin I moved to not the UK because I felt at home in Berlin.

Wow - a real globe trotter! Something I have never had a desire for. I wonder in fact whether there is a correlation between the lack of desire to travel the world and the strong sense of place I have felt in parts of the UK over the years.

 

[XBergMann]

Wow - a real globe trotter! Something I have never had a desire for. I wonder in fact whether there is a correlation between the lack of desire to travel the world and the strong sense of place I have felt in parts of the UK over the years.

I didn't begin my world odyssey until I was 36 - you're never too old to find a new life, it opens up whole new worlds of inspiration and discovery, for example this is a song I wrote on my travels which I doubt I would have written had I stayed in London as a tube train commuting drone ...sorry there's no video but it was recorded in my lounge using a laptop and not with a band

 

[gattino]

I've only read the first page of this thread, so it may have been picked up later, but I'm surprised with all this talk of family trees and ancestral memory no one has taken the more obviously fortean route of suggesting these childhood memories of longing for and belonging in some other place as suggestive of reincarnation...

On the more general sense of feeling an affinity for a place: I was born in Belfast but lived from the age of two in Liverpool. I'd never been to teh place of my birth until last year and half romantically wondered if I'd "feel" some sense of connection to it. Did I hell. It was just another city.

My dad..a native of Belfast...himself had romantic fantasies of some spiritual or race memory connection to Spain, though he'd never been there. Last year I took one of those DNA tests partly to see if there was anything of that nature in my blood...nope. Boringly I was 95% irish with just a smattering of other north european. Not like in the ads.

*****
Coincidentally a few days ago I was watching a history channel type documentary on the search for proof of a theory that some ancient Romans made it as far as China and established a town there. The locals in the modern city ...who have several atypically chinese features such as lighter colored , sometimes wavy hair etc..have made this alleged link to Rome a part of their sense of identity with an annual costumed pageant etc. One particular member of this group of enthusiasts was striking looking in a that he resembled a sort of oriental Gregory Peck. The narrator in passing explained how despite never having been there he feels a deep fascination and sense of identification with Rome. I was thinking watching it what would happen if they brought him there...would that sense of being at home at last engulf him? Well here's the thing....as in all these kind of documentaries they spend 50 minutes sucking you in with convincing evidence then end with a key fact or two whcih makes all that's preceded nonsense. In his case, apart from records showing the city existed before the date the theory required, they did a DNA test etc on our would be italian...figured out his ancestory is actually part Persian.

All of which suggests his sense of belonging to this far off land had nothing to do with his ancestors and everything to do with simply romanticising the idea once it was put in his head.

 

[Krepostnoi]

I'm a person who feels like I never fitted in in my town of birth, where I lived until early adulthood. Nor did I feel particularly at ease at university, and indeed I have spent a large portion of my life travelling the world in search of somewhere that feels like home. Still looking, although Malaysia ticked a lot of boxes. Granted, this isn't quite the same as feeling like you belong somewhere else, more the feeling that you simply don't belong here.

In my own case, earlier this year I took a number of tests (serious ones, respected in the literature), all of which suggested I was not nearly as neurotypical as I had hitherto believed. It's not an official diagnosis, and I am most likely not going to pursue an official diagnosis, but it's good enough for me and, I am led to understand, plenty of other people in the same situation. I'm not suggesting that this will be true of everyone who feels a sense of alienation from the place which ought to feel like home, but it is perhaps an avenue of exploration worth considering. At any rate, I now understand more clearly why I have had this compelling urge to travel: at least in foreign lands it makes sense why you don't feel at home there...

 

[XBergMann]

I'm a person who feels like I never fitted in in my town of birth, where I lived until early adulthood. Nor did I feel particularly at ease at university, and indeed I have spent a large portion of my life travelling the world in search of somewhere that feels like home. Still looking, although Malaysia ticked a lot of boxes. Granted, this isn't quite the same as feeling like you belong somewhere else, more the feeling that you simply don't belong here.

In my own case, earlier this year I took a number of tests (serious ones, respected in the literature), all of which suggested I was not nearly as neurotypical as I had hitherto believed. It's not an official diagnosis, and I am most likely not going to pursue an official diagnosis, but it's good enough for me and, I am led to understand, plenty of other people in the same situation. I'm not suggesting that this will be true of everyone who feels a sense of alienation from the place which ought to feel like home, but it is perhaps an avenue of exploration worth considering. At any rate, I now understand more clearly why I have had this compelling urge to travel: at least in foreign lands it makes sense why you don't feel at home there...

My issue was going to a foreign land and then finding I felt instantly at home there and then finding years later its where a big chunk of my ancestors came from.

I was also in the unusual position of my parents leaving home and emigrating to Australia followed a few years later by my brother leaving only me in the UK at the time.

So my running off to foreign lands was not entirely unexpected bearing in mind the rest of my family had already gone.

 

[catseye]

Around forty years ago I spent a long weekend in York (I'm from SW England). I felt an odd 'connection' to the place, and said if I ever had to move, I'd like to live in York.

I now live 30 miles north of York, and two of my offspring are residents of the city. It was an odd set of circumstances that led to me coming up here, but I don't think I have any family ties to the location - AFAIK my whole family going back countless generations are from Down South. Of course, I could be wrong. Of course, I could equally well have been drawn to York because it's such a beautiful city, undamaged by wartime bombing, unlike my home town of Exeter.

 

[merricat]

I've only read the first page of this thread, so it may have been picked up later, but I'm surprised with all this talk of family trees and ancestral memory no one has taken the more obviously fortean route of suggesting these childhood memories of longing for and belonging in some other place as suggestive of reincarnation...

On the more general sense of feeling an affinity for a place: I was born in Belfast but lived from the age of two in Liverpool. I'd never been to teh place of my birth until last year and half romantically wondered if I'd "feel" some sense of connection to it. Did I hell. It was just another city.

My dad..a native of Belfast...himself had romantic fantasies of some spiritual or race memory connection to Spain, though he'd never been there. Last year I took one of those DNA tests partly to see if there was anything of that nature in my blood...nope. Boringly I was 95% irish with just a smattering of other north european. Not like in the ads.

*****
Coincidentally a few days ago I was watching a history channel type documentary on the search for proof of a theory that some ancient Romans made it as far as China and established a town there. The locals in the modern city ...who have several atypically chinese features such as lighter colored , sometimes wavy hair etc..have made this alleged link to Rome a part of their sense of identity with an annual costumed pageant etc. One particular member of this group of enthusiasts was striking looking in a that he resembled a sort of oriental Gregory Peck. The narrator in passing explained how despite never having been there he feels a deep fascination and sense of identification with Rome. I was thinking watching it what would happen if they brought him there...would that sense of being at home at last engulf him? Well here's the thing....as in all these kind of documentaries they spend 50 minutes sucking you in with convincing evidence then end with a key fact or two whcih makes all that's preceded nonsense. In his case, apart from records showing the city existed before the date the theory required, they did a DNA test etc on our would be italian...figured out his ancestory is actually part Persian.

All of which suggests his sense of belonging to this far off land had nothing to do with his ancestors and everything to do with simply romanticising the idea once it was put in his head.

I'd possibly be more attracted to the idea of it suggesting reincarnation if it actually ‘felt’ like that. It’s a difficult one to describe, and yet I am personally quite open to the concept of evolving souls and rebirth, it makes a great deal of sense to me, albeit I have no firm proof!

I’ve had dreams at various stages of my life which seem to suggest past lives, but they have never, to my knowledge, involved Scandinavia.

The Scandinavian thing, with me, feels curiously pertinent to ‘now’.
I might think otherwise if my sense of connection involved recurring dreams, perhaps even people, but it hasn’t yet strayed into those territories, which I’m inclined to think a past life ought...I don’t know though.

It’s a fascinating thing to ponder. Thanks for bringing some new thoughts!

 

[CuriousIdent]

True!
Now I am wondering about the possible link to Scandinavia for me - why would my leanings bypass several generations here in the uk and plunge solely into the Scandi element?
Watch this space, a few months will pass, I will explore my family tree and then have to report back that I have a connection to Edvard Munch!

Ha.

If you don't mind me asking, merricat? What part of the Country are you originally from?

I know it's been alluded to elsewhere in this thread, but in our distant past much of what we now know as Britain was ruled over by Scandinavian influence, after the Viking invasions and expansions into England back in the 9th Century.

The 'Danelaw' was the term given to the areas of England under the law of and occupation of the Danes. That stretched all the way from parts of Northumberland right down to London. It effectively cut England in two - with the Danelaw sitting in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw

It is this period of history which Bernard Cornwell wrote his series of novels The Saxon Stories (adapted for television more recently as The Last Kingdom). He himself can trace his ancestry back to the central character of these books - Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Bamburgh, Northumberland).

Uhtred was English but raised as a Dane, taken as a slave after Dane's killed his father and seized control of his lands. In the Danelaw period of England lands that fell under the Danelaw were governed culturally by the laws OF the Danes. Likewise those taken as slaves during those invasion of English cities were, in many cases, taken across the sea to parts of Scandinavia and back.

I know that does sound a little dark, having just typed it. But its not implausible that some distant ancestor of any of us could have been caught up in that.

Why I wouldn't compare the intensity of my own sense of kinship with Scandinavia as strong as your own I have always felt a vague connection, myself. In adult life I have found myself feeling more 'European' than 'British' (not that this seems to be a popular concept here in the UK, at the moment) and quite enamored of the way in which Sweden, Iceland and Denmark society works - in terns of both politics and infrastructure.

I wouldn't say I would feel I *belong* in such countries (nor have I visited) but I do feel a connection on some level which I find difficult to explain.

 

[Coal]

I'd be intrigued to know how many of those who have a different 'place of affinity' (POA) to their 'place of upbringing' (POU), had moved home many times before they reached the age of (say) 18.

I'd have thought that to have an affinity with somewhere else, you need to have either travelled away from your POU, possibly to the POA. I'd be curious to see if there's a relationship between visiting a specific POA or getting that feeling is caused by moving in general, so you are , as it were, just seeing somewhere you like better.

 

[Patrick30]

I've lived my entire life in Alabama. Venturing away very rarely from the South. But I've always imagined myself in a more arid place. In the last couple of years I've spent a couple of months out west.
Southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico is where I've always belonged.
So much so that I'm seriously considering relocating there if I can find real estate that won't break me. I'm looking at places like Alamosa, Cortez, Aztec & Las Vegas NM. Small towns where you can still buy a home for under 100,000. I could even live in a town on the Navaho reservation in the 4 corners, but I'm not sure how to go about finding real estate in Indian territory.

 

[merricat]

Ha.

If you don't mind me asking, merricat? What part of the Country are you originally from?

I know it's been alluded to elsewhere in this thread, but in our distant past much of what we now know as Britain was ruled over by Scandinavian influence, after the Viking invasions and expansions into England back in the 9th Century.

The 'Danelaw' was the term given to the areas of England under the law of and occupation of the Danes. That stretched all the way from parts of Northumberland right down to London. It effectively cut England in two - with the Danelaw sitting in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw

It is this period of history which Bernard Cornwell wrote his series of novels The Saxon Stories (adapted for television more recently as The Last Kingdom). He himself can trace his ancestry back to the central character of these books - Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Bamburgh, Northumberland).

Uhtred was English but raised as a Dane, taken as a slave after Dane's killed his father and seized control of his lands. In the Danelaw period of England lands that fell under the Danelaw were governed culturally by the laws OF the Danes. Likewise those taken as slaves during those invasion of English cities were, in many cases, taken across the sea to parts of Scandinavia and back.

I know that does sound a little dark, having just typed it. But its not implausible that some distant ancestor of any of us could have been caught up in that.

Why I wouldn't compare the intensity of my own sense of kinship with Scandinavia as strong as your own I have always felt a vague connection, myself. In adult life I have found myself feeling more 'European' than 'British' (not that this seems to be a popular concept here in the UK, at the moment) and quite enamored of the way in which Sweden, Iceland and Denmark society works - in terns of both politics and infrastructure.

I wouldn't say I would feel I *belong* in such countries (nor have I visited) but I do feel a connection on some level which I find difficult to explain.

Glad to meet a somewhat like mind!
Someone mentioned the Viking invasions to me a few days ago, not something I know very much about, but will make interesting reading.
I’m from the north west.

And regarding the part of your post which I have bolded - yes, I too feel this way, especially recently.

 

[merricat]

I'd be intrigued to know how many of those who have a different 'place of affinity' (POA) to their 'place of upbringing' (POU), had moved home many times before they reached the age of (say) 18.

I'd have thought that to have an affinity with somewhere else, you need to have either travelled away from your POU, possibly to the POA. I'd be curious to see if there's a relationship between visiting a specific POA or getting that feeling is caused by moving in general, so you are , as it were, just seeing somewhere you like better.

Sadly I’m still living where I was born. I even turned down a place at Falmouth uni to attend one closer to ‘home’.
Long story, haha!

 

[TheLeeds]

..................And also, I feel almost no connection to them, not in an emotionally cold sense, but rather I do not feel as though I am an integral part for my family line. I wonder if this is unusual. Perhaps not!...........

&

................I did always feel a tad different growing up, as if I didn’t quite belong ‘here’, and often even with ‘them’, but I was very close to my family regardless. I just always had a feeling of needing to find my ‘people’, which turned out to be via friendships rather than relations, who still, however we have matured, perceive me to be the ‘different’ one, for various reasons (my profession, education, life choices, etc).

A lot to mull over.

Because of a few things you've said, I too had wondered if you might be adopted.

The reason I ask, is that many adopted people report that when they were growing up, they felt like they were in a family of strangers with whom they felt no connection. As an adoptee myself I can relate to that. There was no genetic mirroring, and no sense of self in the usually accepted sense of the definition.

My adoptive parents were always honest with me, and when I was about 5 years old, they told me I was adopted .

Due to being adopted as a baby, I have never lived in the place where I was born, but the first time I went there, I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging, which I've never experienced anywhere else.

I was lucky in that my adoptive parents were honest with me, but I am aware of cases where children were adopted and not told. They grew up feeling that something wasn't quite right, but somehow never quite understanding what it might be.

Haha, no I doubt that very much, there are too many similar physical characteristics for one.

I think it may come down to family dynamics. Perhaps I did not feel a strong enough connection to them?

A girl I knew when I was 14 once commented that I looked very much like my dad. She struggled to believe it when I told her we weren't genetically related.

Another possible explanation might lie in Transactional and Structural Analysis. Beyond the "I'm ok, you're ok" theme of this area of psychology is something Coal has already mentioned, in that we are the product of 4 grandparents. Not only that, but we are the product of all of their parents too, which might explain why certain characteristics can 'jump' a generation or two. Maybe an area worth looking into.

The books I've read about it are, surprisingly, I'm Ok, You're Ok, The Games People Play (Eric Berne) and TA Today. The first two books are fairly easy reading if you have a sufficient interest. TA Today is very good, but it's more heavy going and I think it's used a diploma course text book.

I don't know about people but in sheep, especially the mountain breeds, cling to the place they are from and don't try to move beyond the boundaries. Their offspring do the same. If you try to move them somewhere else you have terrible trouble keeping them off the roads and stuff as they try to wander back where they came from. I think the word is "hefted".

More generally though, people who move often stay very attached to the place they came from, even for generations. Look at the US for example. Americans are often very attached to the homeland, even though if may be generations since they were last actually there. Doesn't happen to everyone but it seems to happen enough. I think they are hefted and struggle a wee bit.

Kind of related to this, I read once that elephants return to their place of birth, even though in some cases, this involves walking hundreds of miles to achieve this.

 

[Dotty]

One of my grandads was born and bred in Anglesey. As far as I know my other grandparents were from Ireland, came over to the uk in the potato famine. My mum always said we have Italian blood in us! Weird! But lots of my relatives have really good singing voices (as I imagine Italians do? I was in the Verona ampitheatre once in a bad thunderstorm and the people selling raincoats to the plebs on the stone steps had magnificent tones). Anyway I digress. Thing is one day I read 'somewhere' (can't find it now) that an Italian ship was wrecked off the coast of Anglesey in the 1700 hundreds. Several sailors managed to reach safe shores and the rest is history ?.... when I visited Verona i felt like l belonged there, we did a trip up to the church at the top of the hill and it was magical.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... Thing is one day I read 'somewhere' (can't find it now) that an Italian ship was wrecked off the coast of Anglesey in the 1700 hundreds. Several sailors managed to reach safe shores and the rest is history ? ...

This Dulas Bay incident might be the one you're remembering ...

Traeth yr Ora and Porto Bello were, according to local history, apparently named after a group of men allegedly shipwrecked in the area around 1750. The men were said to be of Spanish or Portuguese origin, but the precise spelling of these names suggests that the men may actually have been Italian. Some local families still claim descent from these men today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulas_Bay

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Several sailors managed to reach safe shores

The Welsh side of my own family came with a similar tradition, that we had some Spanish blood from a sailor wrecked in Pembroke.

I think the Welsh were just hungry for any blood that prevented them marrying their sisters.

 

[Maviself]

Wow - a real globe trotter! Something I have never had a desire for. I wonder in fact whether there is a correlation between the lack of desire to travel the world and the strong sense of place I have felt in parts of the UK over the years.

I understand this completely, I also have no desire to travel the world and often feel like I'm about the only person I know who's never been to the USA. I am more than happy to spend my holidays in my home town!

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that when my Dad researched our family tree (both sides - his and my Mum's), I plotted the birth locations of all our ancestors as far back as possible on a map. Without exception all the plots were centred around 2 small villages in Kent, one for my Dad's side, one for my Mum's!

Maybe our roots have a stronger influence over us than we realise

 

[PeteS]

f

I understand this completely, I also have no desire to travel the world and often feel like I'm about the only person I know who's never been to the USA. I am more than happy to spend my holidays in my home town!

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that when my Dad researched our family tree (both sides - his and my Mum's), I plotted the birth locations of all our ancestors as far back as possible on a map. Without exception all the plots were centred around 2 small villages in Kent, one for my Dad's side, one for my Mum's!

Maybe our roots have a stronger influence over us than we realise

Interesting that and I agree -strange really that I have trotted the globe somewhat - I just have no desire to do so again despite the fact that I have always had itchy feet. I find myself now in a bit of a quandry. The places I have found myself at home are no longer particularly attractive places to live due to astonishingly rapid over building in the North West. I have a strong desire to move as does Ms Petes but we have no idea where to move to( constrained a bit by her work requirements but not much). This will probably be my last move and I want to get it right and not make a mistake and suddenly realise I hate living in unfamiliar territory .

How does one choose a new place to live- any ideas would be appreciated about the thought process. I confess that for the first time in my life I am at a loss in this respect. (Appreciate its not a particularly Fortean question)

 

[Coal]

How does one choose a new place to live- any ideas would be appreciated about the thought process. I confess that for the first time in my life I am at a loss in this respect. (Appreciate its not a particularly Fortean question)

I've given that some though, as I've moved and travelled a lot.

My plan 'B' is to get a small camper-van, take a fishing rod or two and potter about, trying places out for size.

 

[Maviself]

And again, I understand completely where you're coming from there - this once sleepy corner of the south east is rapidly becoming a concrete jungle remarkable only for the amount of time you spend sitting in traffic jams. To travel practically anywhere is to endure the fresh hell that is the M25, most of the time you could get to France quicker than you could London!

Anyway, rant of the morning over. Sorry, I don't know if I can help there - maybe you need to spend lots of weekends away exploring areas with a similar countryside/geographical/geological terrain to retain the familiarity

Good luck!

 

[PeteS]

I've given that some though, as I've moved and travelled a lot.

My plan 'B' is to get a small camper-van, take a fishing rod or two and potter about, trying places out for size.

I've suggested that kind of thing to Ms petes but she goes all girly on me. She'd be up for the fishing tho'.

 

[Dotty]

Mavis elf but were they Kentish men or Men of Kent?

 

[Coal]

I've suggested that kind of thing to Ms petes but she goes all girly on me. She'd be up for the fishing tho'.

Some of them are pretty comfy. Mrs Coal and have discussed tripping around the fjords in one for a long summer, before we're too old to manage it. If it was 'just me' (one has to admit the possibility), I'd go for a really well done white van conversion.

 

[IbisNibs]

The Welsh side of my own family came with a similar tradition, that we had some Spanish blood from a sailor wrecked in Pembroke.

I think the Welsh were just hungry for any blood that prevented them marrying their sisters.

It is my understanding that there is little diversity in Welsh family names, so it might have been the women who opted for some Continental choices. Why go through life as Doris Davis, nee Davis, when you have the choice of becoming Doris Davis Rodriguez and having children you can name Dalia Davis y Rodriguez and Davy Davis y Rodriguez?

There was a study of Y chromosomes in Welsh men which indicated that the Welsh are descended from the Basques of Northern Spain. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/basque-ing-in-welsh-dna-2281798
Perhaps this also explains some of the jaw breaking place names in Wales. (Here is an example of Basque : Gizon-emakume guztiak aske jaiotzen dira . . .)

Not that that would rule out shipwrecks -- Spain is so close to Wales anyway.

I also have no desire to travel the world and often feel like I'm about the only person I know who's never been to the USA.

I have a desire to travel the world because I live in the USA and want to get away -- I'm tired of the car centric culture here. Really, unless you have a high tolerance for being scrunched into a car and staring a vast amounts of pavement for hours a day, you don't want to spend time here. It's terrible thing to have created from such a magnificent continent. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's happening in your part of the world too!

So how are you supposed to find roots when the ground is covered with asphalt?

 

[Coal]

Not that that would rule out shipwrecks -- Spain is so close to Wales anyway.

The storm that wrecked the Armada apocryphally wrecked ships all around the coasts of the UK causing an influx of 'new' and Spanish blood in some areas.

 

[skinny]

Hi merricat. I've felt strongly drawn to three places, two of which I've never been to.

First and most enduringly, I have, since my early teens, felt an inexorable urge to go to Ireland, particularly the Northern counties, and, even more particularly, Belfast, which I've googlestrolled at long length and breadth by now. I have family from Tyrone, and family from the South, but we're 5 generations separated (Australian), and my parents were the first to reconnect - they've been twice. The pull has strengthened markedly in my current middle age. I have regularly dreamed I was there, and semi-lucidly dreamed of a walk through a field and over an embankment to find a view of the western ocean, which I know was in Ireland.

The second place is Vietnam, or at least the American/Australian war in Vietnam. It has always held a deep fascination, and Vietnamese people I have met I have always felt an instant affinity with, even what you might call a cousin-like familiarity. I've never been. I don't have any close Vietnamese friends. I've had no strong dreams about being there, apart from one or two of soldiering there in the 60s as one of the invaders.

The third is Korea. I met Koreans for the first time in 1996 and since the very first meeting it has remained a large focus of my life, to the extent that I married a Korean lass while I was living and working there and now have two children who share heritage with Korea. I had significant dreams before traveling there in 1998 for the first time. In one dream, there was a rising of water outside a church, and I was picking up coins by the handful just laying on the grass. That was just prior to going, and the friends I was spending time with at the time said it was a dream of good fortune. On my first trip there (on holiday April 1998), I twice had the experience of meeting and chatting to strangers out of the blue, then bumping into them in a completely different area of the city quite by accident days later. These are significant events in their culture.

I have three general ways of looking at this phenomenon:

1. genetic memory - while I don't know of any heritage in Asia, I think the length of time a genetic lot has been in an ancestral place compared to the amount of time a family has been part of a migrant colony (such as say 3000 years in Ireland compared to 150 years in Australia), there is bound to be something of the ancestral length appear in the genetic experience of the individual. For some it wells strongly and explicitly, while to others it might just brush the subconscious from time to time.
   
2. personality/psychology - I had a wholly unremarkable childhood and was a wholly unmemorable person as a child. I wanted to be more popular with my peers but spent the first 16 years of life well out of the limelight. The idea of having an importance beyond my actual lot might have given rise to fantasies of more significant lives lived in exotic places.
3. reincarnation - I have several friends from Asian cultures who, due to the cultural buddhism of their forefathers, hold the view that all souls are reworked through cycles of failure and recovery towards enlightenment, and eventually to nirvana or the state of unbeing. They have variously been convinced that I was a member of their society in an earlier life. I do not hold to this philosophy but acknowledge the possibility.

 

[decipheringscars]

This isn't the same as the OP, but possibly related in some way, and definitely related to what others are posting.

I used to feel like I didn't belong anywhere, though my depression may have had something to do with that. I grew up in rural SE Michigan (in a small town that's now become an exurb of Detroit), and spent a lot of time (church, school, shopping, friends) in the suburbs. I grew up hearing stories from my older relatives about the "good ol' days" in Detroit, but how bad it had become, and how the house my grandmother grew up in didn't exist anymore (had burned down at some point). We rarely went into the city, just for a few things like the art museum (which is world-class, by the way, and well worth a visit), but I knew I'd been born in the city, and that my dad grew up there, and much of my mom's family had lived there (although my mom grew up in one of the suburbs). My family, though, all love the country. My maternal grandfather had come from a farming family on the other side of the state, but the rest of my family had roots in Detroit, to varying degrees, from my dad, whose parents both moved to Detroit from other states, to my mom's mom's family, which has been on either side if the Detroit River for several generations spanning a couple centuries (which is kinda rare here, in a city most people moved to in the 20th century).

As an adult, in my mid-to-late 20s, I moved to Detroit, and for the first time in my life, felt at home. I loved even the crumbling concrete, the noise, everything. Then I found out, without knowing it, I had moved to an area very close to where my maternal grandmother grew up, and immediately next to a park where my mother used to play when she was in town visiting her grandparents.

I was also just down the street from the hospital where I was born, but I hadn't noticed that until I was in psychological crisis and went to the ER there. And not far away was the church where my dad was baptized as a baby. Keep in mind, Detroit is geographically large: 143 square miles!

Now, where I live, it's pretty much in the middle of a straight line between where my maternal grandmother grew up, and where my dad grew up. That was unintentional!

I suppose it's no surprise that when I moved into the city, I moved into the west side (northwest at that), since where I grew up was northwest of the city. But all my family who ever lived in the city were in the northwest.

At any rate, I feel like this city is in my blood. Not surprisingly, I got the city logo tattooed on my wrist, where you find my pulse.

[Now, this isn't all that weird, but it made me happy: about 20 years ago, I went with some friends into our most famous post-industrial ruin, the Michigan Central Station. Climbed all the way up to the roof (18 stories up, which is a challenge in pitch-black, failing stairwells, even with a flashlight). Afterwards, I found out my great-grandfather had been one of the carpenters who worked on that station (it was builtin 1914).]

I've become intrigued with the idea of the genius loci, as I've read Detroit history and noticed a number of motifs that keep coming up. I wonder if that's a concept that might be useful in this thread.

 

[PeteS]

This isn't the same as the OP, but possibly related in some way, and definitely related to what others are posting.

I used to feel like I didn't belong anywhere, though my depression may have had something to do with that. I grew up in rural SE Michigan (in a small town that's now become an exurb of Detroit), and spent a lot of time (church, school, shopping, friends) in the suburbs. I grew up hearing stories from my older relatives about the "good ol' days" in Detroit, but how bad it had become, and how the house my grandmother grew up in didn't exist anymore (had burned down at some point). We rarely went into the city, just for a few things like the art museum (which is world-class, by the way, and well worth a visit), but I knew I'd been born in the city, and that my dad grew up there, and much of my mom's family had lived there (although my mom grew up in one of the suburbs). My family, though, all love the country. My maternal grandfather had come from a farming family on the other side of the state, but the rest of my family had roots in Detroit, to varying degrees, from my dad, whose parents both moved to Detroit from other states, to my mom's mom's family, which has been on either side if the Detroit River for several generations spanning a couple centuries (which is kinda rare here, in a city most people moved to in the 20th century).

As an adult, in my mid-to-late 20s, I moved to Detroit, and for the first time in my life, felt at home. I loved even the crumbling concrete, the noise, everything. Then I found out, without knowing it, I had moved to an area very close to where my maternal grandmother grew up, and immediately next to a park where my mother used to play when she was in town visiting her grandparents.

I was also just down the street from the hospital where I was born, but I hadn't noticed that until I was in psychological crisis and went to the ER there. And not far away was the church where my dad was baptized as a baby. Keep in mind, Detroit is geographically large: 143 square miles!

Now, where I live, it's pretty much in the middle of a straight line between where my maternal grandmother grew up, and where my dad grew up. That was unintentional!

I suppose it's no surprise that when I moved into the city, I moved into the west side (northwest at that), since where I grew up was northwest of the city. But all my family who ever lived in the city were in the northwest.

At any rate, I feel like this city is in my blood. Not surprisingly, I got the city logo tattooed on my wrist, where you find my pulse.




[Now, this isn't all that weird, but it made me happy: about 20 years ago, I went with some friends into our most famous post-industrial ruin, the Michigan Central Station. Climbed all the way up to the roof (18 stories up, which is a challenge in pitch-black, failing stairwells, even with a flashlight). Afterwards, I found out my great-grandfather had been one of the carpenters who worked on that station (it was builtin 1914).]

I've become intrigued with the idea of the genius loci, as I've read Detroit history and noticed a number of motifs that keep coming up. I wonder if that's a concept that might be useful in this thread.

A very similar experience to mine. I found it strange to find out that ,over a period of decades , I had been unknowingly walking virtually the same streets as my ancestors. As if I had been drawn there by some calling.

 

[Lb8535]

I've lived my entire life in Alabama. Venturing away very rarely from the South. But I've always imagined myself in a more arid place. In the last couple of years I've spent a couple of months out west.
Southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico is where I've always belonged.
So much so that I'm seriously considering relocating there if I can find real estate that won't break me. I'm looking at places like Alamosa, Cortez, Aztec & Las Vegas NM. Small towns where you can still buy a home for under 100,000. I could even live in a town on the Navaho reservation in the 4 corners, but I'm not sure how to go about finding real estate in Indian territory.

Patrick, this looks to me to be just very good taste, as I agree with your opinion, but not because of genes or reincarnation. The four courners area is magnificent, and if you are willing to stray a bit from the bourgeois and yuppified towns I am sure you can find housing. There are areas of Flag that are very reasonable. North of Albuquerque. North of Santa Fe. Window Rock or Ship Rock. Check on line or subscribe to the local papers. Not at all Fortean, except that the spiritual strength (and I don't use that phrase often) of that area is overwhelming. Set as a goal to wake up every morning and see Shiprock. Wish I could.