Transient Space
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By Clarisse Van Kote
I am standing in line at the gate, waiting to board my connecting flight. There are no direct flights between New York and Lyon, it is always a two-step journey in the dance between my countries, long hours spent in various European city airports. I could be eighteen, or twenty-three or twenty-six. I am most likely wearing comfortable clothes, jeans and a sweatshirt, perhaps a coat for the winter holiday trips. If it is a longer summer trip, punctuating the break between college or graduate school years, then I have my large backpack at my feet and my shoulders are a little sore. It is a Quechua backpack by Décathlon, the ubiquitous French brand that betrays French people abroad before you even hear them speak. Orange and brown with zips and clips and side pockets, flexible fabric that takes the shape of my belongings once I fill it to the brim. A life condensed in luggage. Books and notebooks and a laptop, small toiletries in ziploc bags, rolled up t-shirts and underwear, French or American medicine, cables, random knick knacks. Maybe a memento or two from Lyon I want to bring back to New York - another beanie baby, diary or childhood photo. Anything essential that hasn’t fit in the large checked suitcase, while the rest of my belongings are either stuffed in boxes in a storage unit or in my uncle’s basement in New Jersey.
I gently push the backpack across the floor as we inch forward towards the flight attendants. Let’s say I have coffee in one hand, my passport and boarding pass in the other, and I am waiting, waiting, trepidating. I am alone for all these trips, and part of me thinks I prefer it this way. It gives me time to reflect and prepare for the next step, a rite of passage of sorts. My gaze wanders loosely over bright snacks and fruits on racks, carpeted or vinyl floors, infomercials or the news playing silently on televisions hung on pillars. I look for little clues of the country I am in, making connections between words I hear over the announcements or read on signs and packages. Apart from these cultural details, we could be anywhere, each airport a variation of the same asepticized, surreal setting. Yet I am in familiar territory, my movements practiced and easy as I step through security, glide through long corridors between terminals, settle at my boarding gate, step on a plane. Here I am yet again in this transient space, on the brink, in between.
The flight attendant announces new groups that are invited to board. More people stand and trudge up to join the procession behind me. I push my backpack forward and stop, again. I toy with my passport, I check my boarding pass, my seat number, the time of arrival, again. I study my fellow travelers. We are all here together now, and eventually, we will all be there. What does this transition mean to them? Some of them have already been standing in line forever, while others wait sitting on rows of linked seats until the last minute and others still sit on the floor next to their phone charging. Some are talking, some are munching on chips, some are sleeping, head back, legs outstretched, mouth open. There might be solo travelers with backpacks like mine, business men in suits, sometimes businesswomen too. Expert travelers, the aura of many places emanating from their cool, nonchalant yet precise body language. Perhaps a group of middle aged French friends studying their “Guide du Routard”. Chatting, analyzing, debating, and likely already complaining about one thing or another in that all-knowing voice interspersed with classic sounds of French discontent, pfff, rhooo. Maybe a couple of seasoned American tourists, chino shorts and polo shirts, blow-dried hair and meticulous make up, talking in a measured tone with warmth and cheer, like my American grandparents and aunts and uncles. Or a group of loud American students in their college hoodies, leggings and flip flops, smacking gum and laughing and stretching out nasally vowels, tootally yeaah liike ooh my god yeaah. Or a bilingual family speaking Frenglish that reminds me of my own, and I picture my parents traveling with three kids up since before dawn to catch the cheapest flight.
A myriad of possible variations but every time, slowly, decisively, another world materializes at the gate, invisible yet palpable. In the traveler’s gestures and facial expressions, in the familiar cadence of their conversations, in their anticipation or lack thereof, the other place is becoming real. I can see the suburban cars and houses with manicured lawns in New Jersey or Massachusetts. I can taste the espresso en terrasse and smell the cigarette smoke on the Place des Terreaux. I can feel the rush and adrenaline of the New York City streets. Reality sets in, there is no going back now, I am physically leaving one of my countries to join the other and within me, the shift is occurring. Underneath the feelings of excitement and dread, the transformation into the second otherness begins. Inevitably, I become more French or more American than I was moments before; in contrast with the place and people I am joining, the imminent absence of the place I am leaving starts to define my inner world and sense of self, in a mixture of pride, defensiveness and nostalgia. I may be an American college student like you but I speak French and I spent the summer drinking rosé and falling in love in a city that has Roman ruins and two gorgeous rivers and accessible healthcare. I may recognize the French banter, that tendency to debate and digress over logistics, or I may feel oddly comforted by the chaotic traveling family dynamics, but I won’t simply revert back. I have just spent a transformative year studying theater and Russian in one of the most vibrant cities in the world. I want to remind myself that I have grown. I have been elsewhere, seen more. I want to hold the memories of the months prior close to my skin, to carry the city and people inside me. I am terrified that once removed from the reality of these streets, a whole part of me will disappear and I will collapse into a one-dimensional, pale echo of my full self.
The flight attendant glances at my photo and my boarding pass, says bon voyage or have a good flight. I check my seat number one last time as I barrel down the tunnel to the aircraft. I find my spot, cozy up against the window and look up as others trickle into the plane, wondering who will be sitting next to me for the next two to eight hours. I send last messages to say goodbye to those I won’t be seeing for months now, and then I set my phone to airplane mode, embracing this surreal phase out of time and place. The flight, a vortex that will lead to my second life.
As we gain speed and my hands grip the fabric of the armrest, I take a little inventory of my life so far. I replay memories of the past year, I narrate the positive highlights, a ritual that soothes me as I wonder if this miracle of flying will turn into the end. Perhaps something like you’ve had your first boyfriend, or you’ve fallen in love again. You’ve been cast as Lady Macbeth, you’ve seen Chekhov performed in Moscow, or you’ve created and performed a solo performance piece. You’ve graduated from the college of your dreams, or you’ve lived in your first real apartment in Brooklyn, or you’ve become a host at a restaurant, or you’ve auditioned for graduate school. You’ve danced all night, you’ve made new friends. The negative highlights are never far, the heartbreak, the anxiety, the time I spend missing someone or some place. But I try to notice how far I have come since the last time I have been here in the sky, on the brink, in between.
The plane reaches its cruising phase. I read, I doze off. I might watch a few movies I’ll probably forget, and chat for a bit with a stranger I might forget too. I stare out into the expansive blueness of the sea or blackness of the sky, lulled by the dull white noise of the aircraft, and I imagine my first moments in the other place. I picture scenarios in great detail, what I’ll post on social media to announce my arrival, where I’ll go, what I’ll wear and who I will see first. I wonder if we will be able to reconnect, to pick back up where we left off. I consider what stories of my time away I will tell and how. I hope I’ll feel more confident and driven now that I’ve had these experiences. I doubt I’ll feel less lonely.
This traversing between worlds is like a decanting of the self over the years. With each move, I am transferring parts of myself into a different container, back and forth, keeping only the essential, shedding a lot. The places, in their presence or their absence, gradually shape the mold of my aspirations, my relationships and my identity. As I shift between countries I move further and further away from the memory of childhood and adolescence in Lyon and Boston, as if I needed the distance to dare to stretch into different corners and parts of myself. To test and try them until, perhaps, finding a version that is more aligned and which could have resulted only from this experimentation. Through it all, I am questioning my place in the world, I want my life to mean something. Most of all, I want to find belonging and connection.
We start the descent and the other country takes shape, in miniature strokes at first. Tiny baseball stadiums and strip malls, geometrical fields, small villages with a church spire, highways drawing long lines and circles, the Manhattan skyline growing, French cars becoming recognizable. Familiar signs, yet I am never sure. Am I coming home? Will I ever stop longing for the other place as soon as I have left it? There are times, especially at the beginning, when I wish we would never land. Nervous to face family and friends and their questions, afraid of either not adjusting or losing myself, anxious about the next step in my studies or my career. What if this was all, in the end, for nothing? Other times, I am ready and hopeful. Home is here, now.
The intensity of this transition may vary, as does the power and meaning of my two cities as I grow from college student to graduate student to aspiring actor with multiple day jobs. The long breaks in France with summer jobs and a parallel life eventually turn into short trips for holiday celebrations, a cousin’s wedding or simply a vacation. A brief escape from a real life now anchored in New York with work, dreams and the search for love all in one place. In these little pockets of Frenchness I need to soak up the experience quickly and intensely, trying to fit as many coffees and lunches as possible into a few days. The desire and possibility to travel to new places expands. I start exploring Paris, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Copenhagen or Berlin, crashing with friends and family, walking for hours on end. I become a flâneuse in these cities, and in New York City too. Wandering becomes an artistic practice, understanding the meaning of places turns into creative fuel. I write a theater monologue in which I distill experiences and questions on my dual identity into five walks across seasons. I start to question my dreams and my place. A future in New York isn’t so clear anymore. And always, throughout, I wonder. What is left of a place when we are not there? How can I weave a coherent sense of self while I am pulled in many directions, sometimes barely tethered and sometimes, for a short special moment, deeply rooted?
The plane hits the tarmac, the other life begins.
Clarisse Van Kote is a French and American dual citizen. She has been based in Paris since 2021 and she previously lived in New York City, where she studied theater and Russian at Barnard College before pursuing an MFA in Acting at Columbia University. She currently teaches French language lessons and is working on a collection of interconnected essays exploring the relationship between place and identity. When she is not teaching or writing, she loves wandering through city streets, bookstores and museums.