Of Immigrants and Aliens

Reflections on belonging, foreignness, and what keeps us awake in the darkest hours.

For whatever reason, every morning at precisely 3am I am reliably wide awake and thinking. I would prefer this not to be the case, but no matter how good the day had been — or how pleasant the weather — some unease comes creeping into my mind at that hour, and there I’ll be, arms folded, wide-awake staring into the void and thinking about how the world came to be in such an absolute, stupid mess.

It’s a tricky condition to manage.

You see, I’m one of those people who can be perfectly content to sit in a chair by a window and gaze out at the trees out upon nature and, from that vantage, go adventuring deep into my own thoughts. For hours, I’ll do this — especially if it’s an armchair, and there’s a ready supply of snow outside.

I will sit and I’ll think and think, usually about the intricacies of a book I’m writing, or books I’ve read. Lately, I think about the patterns in human behavior or, in broad strokes, what it is to be human, and conscious and alive. It’s a deep trance, from which I can reliably emerge in a state of deep relaxation.

Now, I know this sounds a bit of a strange matter to emphasize, but occasionally people in my life — you know, extended family members, and in particular, the ones you would not ideally have chosen for yourself — will suggest that thinking too much, or even at all, is terribly bad for one’s mental health. It leads, they assure me, to neurosis or despair. To their mind, thinking beyond the minimum daily requirement is a reckless endeavor and not recommended.

I used to be patient with this point of view, but after the fifth or sixth time someone ventured the opinion that I thought too deeply about, well, anything, I started shutting them up.

Anti-intellectualism was the norm, the background canvas of my childhood. I came up from the lower working class in Australia. Expectations of my future were limited, to put it mildly. And I wasn’t trying to prove myself, exactly — I simply enjoyed learning and, as they say, one thing soon led to another. But I somehow feel that if I hadn’t moved to the United States, I might still be the sort of person who felt apologetic or embarrassed for reading books.

(I think I’ve mentioned before that I asked my grandmother once if she wanted me to get her a book from the library and she replied: ‘Nooooo! I don’t read those! I reckon they put ideas in yer head!)

Now, one time, at Harvard Medical School, a faculty member and eminent physician asked my colleague, who was fixing his computer, if he was doing anything special for Labor Day.

“After all, it is your class’s holiday …”

Oddly, I don’t seem to recall having many encounters with that sort of snobbery at Harvard — unless I was too simple to notice? Mostly, the staff seemed to have as similarly humble beginnings as my own and overall, most people seemed particularly nice.

It’s only been here in Australia that I’ve had to deflect snobbery, and most of the time it’s been the inverse kind. Just the other day, a relative told my daughter that their father had read a lot of books when he was a child simply so he could make himself seem better than everybody else. The assumption is that no person could possibly be sincerely interested in anything for its own sake.

But class in Australia is a complex matter to discuss. Wealthy Australians usually exaggerate their accents to sound working class simply to seem more authentic. I can’t watch (wealthy) Australian politicians talking on the news; their contrived rural accents are nothing more than cynical parody.

Still, if I had a dollar for every time someone insinuated that my (checks notes) ‘reading a lot of books’ made me something of a class traitor, then I’d be well on the way to retirement. Though ironically, I’ll probably never be able to retire in this country because the older generation has — in a deeply despicable and shameless manner — purchased all the houses as so-called ‘investments’. Scalpers, you might call them. There are working families living in tent communities on the fringes of this city, because scalpers have driven the rent up beyond the affordability of many dual-income families. Real estate scalpers are the real traitors. But if my leaving Australia to work at Harvard made me a traitor to the working class, then it’s small wonder I rarely felt homesick.

I lived in Boston for sixteen years or so, then came back to Australia in 2021. I intended to return to the US after about five or six years here, but I’m no longer sure it’s sensible (or even possible) to return to the United States anymore. And this obviously makes me incredibly sad.

I returned to Australia for a few reasons — primarily because my mother was now elderly and I wanted my daughters, who were born in Boston, to have a sense of their mad Irish/Australian/Gypsy heritage. But I didn’t particularly want to return. It’s not that I don’t love Australia, but my childhood here was uneasy and unpleasant. It turned me into something of a nomad.

I felt particularly more at ease among immigrants in other countries. I liked Cambridge, Massachusetts, especially; it has a large research community, and most of my neighbors seemed to be foreign-born scientists or knowledge workers. Many were just kids from lower middle-class families who, like me, simply liked to read books. Oh, and the other thing worth mentioning is that the bookstores in Cambridge are ridiculously good. I could take my dog inside while browsing, and not only did they not mind, they kept dog treats behind the counter.

But such are the thoughts that sometimes wake me at three in the morning. I experience a profound sadness about everything going on over there. I mean, being an immigrant is tough — I was one for most of two decades, and I naturally detest the ugly rhetoric and scapegoating of immigrants that have become commonplace and permissible in the United States these days.

I lived an amazing immigrant experience within that country, and it’s a hard part of the world to do that. I was fortunate; I also met so many good people there who helped me. Few immigrants to the United States are as lucky as me, I think. The anti-immigrant sentiment was always there, of course. At least a few times, I was told I was ‘one of the good ones’. But my point is, I still consider myself an immigrant to the United States. I simply returned to my home country because my mother is a bit of an old stick.

“I’m not getting any younger,” she said to me yesterday.

“By the day,” I agreed, nodding emphatically.

So, my plan was to bring my daughters back to Australia and spend a lot of time at their grandmother’s house. Then, after the dear old battle-axe kicks the bucket (or ‘carks it’, as she puts it), I’d return to America and leave my siblings behind to fight over their inheritances.

Anyway, at three in the morning, I often wake up and think about Boston. I miss it in the strangest way. It’s not nostalgia; I don’t think I recall anything through rose-tinted glasses, and besides, it’s a rather tough place to exist. A Boston winter can feel like playing life on the hardest setting — though possibly for reasons you’d have to experience to appreciate. Yet it’s important for me, personally, to express this: most Americans are good people. I met so many great human beings in that country — and the kindest of those were often immigrants.

But I know, I know. It is now politically expedient to demonize outsiders; I get it, I really do. Nobody is safe. We’re all under attack from horrid foreigners. They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs. We’ve entered a dark era, but ironically it feels wrong for me not to be there nowadays. I want to be there, helping them somehow. I don’t know how, but … at three o’clock every morning, I somehow awake and think I should be in Boston, running a soup kitchen for my fellow immigrant. I know it sounds mad, and possibly silly, but that’s how I am at three in the morning. A living saint, you might almost say.

Then again, what’s wrong with this generosity of spirit? We’re supposed to be looking after each other, aren’t we? Admittedly, I’m not super-well versed on world religions, but I seem to recall ‘being nice to people’ is supposedly what we’re supposed to do. I just feel like I dipped out right before everything went bad and now I want to go back and be helpful in some way.

Here’s the problem: I am fairly sure about fifteen years ago I tweeted something to the effect that Donald Trump had slightly artificial-looking hair. So, I’m not sure I can safely re-enter my adopted country. So, there’s that to consider.

Now, the other thing that happens to me at 3am is I think about aliens. Here’s something you may not have known — the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. John Mack, was an expert on the phenomena of alien abductions.

I’m being perfectly serious. Frankly, he was a fascinating figure. He won a Pulitzer for his a book about T.E. Lawrence, and he when he went to London to receive an award from the T. E. Lawrence Society, he was killed in a mysterious hit-and-run accident.

I am now whistling the X-files theme. You can’t hear it, which is a pity, but it really adds a certain something or other to the story.

Anyway, John Mack also wrote a book about alien abductions, and I’m not sure if I should recommend it to anyone because it’ll probably just make your hair stand on end. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it— it’s certainly not a good read for 3am — and besides, I have two small children who make me nervous enough. But I got a few chapters in and the only thing I seem to remember is that almost every alien abduction seems to have occurred between the two and four in the morning.

So, I don’t seem to want to leap out of bed at 3am and wander about the house. Instead, I somewhat prefer to lie there until the coast is clear. A large heavy quilt will probably make you invisible to gray aliens at that hour, or so it seems in the moment.

Now, if this all sounds too silly for you, understand I am precisely the sort of person who certain things will happen. I was once arrested in Poland for reading from a phrase book incorrectly. If I am ever renditioned to El Salvador in consequence a fairly innocuous tweet about the synthetic nature of Donald Trump’s hair, I will be the least surprised. And gray aliens showing up in the middle of the night? That just seems like it will happen, eventually.

I was thinking about this just the other night. I was picturing the situation — you know, at 3am, obviously — and I don’t mean the abduction, but the newsletter I’d be compelled to write afterwards. How would I even write such a letter? How would I contrive to make anyone believe me?

I’m thinking I should keep a bag packed and ready by the door, you know, in case of aliens. It’s good to be ready for any eventuality. Then again, I’d have to explain it to my wife who is, it must be admitted, a good woman who does not deserve all this nonsense. But what can a man do? If I knew how to be otherwise, don’t you think I’d be doing that instead?

My point, however, is that I was laying there, thinking about all this, and about how creepy the gray aliens look, and also marveling at the fact that we have, in some fashion, universally decided what aliens look like — and, by the way, how did we arrive at that, exactly? How did these creatures become so established in our folklore? Is it that gray aliens really exist and truly are out there, abducting blameless people like me? I really should have finished that book by Dr. John Mack. But scratch that, why don’t you do it and let me know how it all ends?

Again, I was thinking about all this, and in that very moment — upon that very thought about whether I should have a bag packed in case of alien abductions, something moved in the darkness. I swear to you, this happened. My mind went blank. In the darkness before my eyes, a creature was moving — about three-or-four foot high, it was. A dark silhouette came around the bed, reached out a hand and touched my shoulder. I gave an almost strangled cry.

“I can’t sleep,” whispered Hattie.

“God’s teeth, child!” I half-screamed at my daughter. “Why are ye so determined to kill thy father?! Away with ye, ye wretched horror, or I’ll fetch a horse-ship and flay thy skin from thy bones!”

Now here’s something I’ve never understood, but whenever I am particularly startled by my children, I seem to transform into a 19th Century Yorkshire vicar. Nobody knows why this is the case and when I am eventually abducted by aliens, I somewhat intend to raise the question with them. Because, well, whatever the explanation for my behavior is, I don’t think it can be found here on Earth.

But Hattie, bless her little cotton socks, is accustomed to my nonsense. If I’d reacted differently, she might even have worried about me. She just cuddled up next to me and I held her tight and, not for the first time, wondered if the aliens, when they finally turn up, might be persuaded to take me and my children with them.

And abruptly, it was four o’clock, and the danger was over, so we got up and I made coffee to soothe my nerves, and Hattie watched me play Civilization 6 until dawn. In summary, I was not abducted by aliens, and that is probably for the best.

In conclusion, well … there is surely a splinter of wisdom lodged deep within this tale — even if, in this present moment, I can’t seem to get at it with tweezers. Perhaps it’s that, whenever some professionally aggrieved politician rants about foreigners, we should remember that I am a foreigner, and you, too, are a foreigner, just as everybody is a foreigner to somebody else on Earth. And that perhaps it’s not foreigners who are danger to us, but the politicians who build their power upon a platform of fear and hate.

Then there’s other matter, which is that the head of the Department for Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School from 1977 until 2004 apparently took alien abduction cases rather more seriously than any of us have considered. So, do with that knowledge what you may, and sleep well tonight, and stay vigilant. Particularly between the hours of 2am and 4am.

With Chaste Affection,

Kris St.Gabriel

2.54am, Indooroopilly, Queensland, Australia.

source: https://wrongcards.com/ecard/aliens-fail-me/