The Presence and Absence of Culture
I have officially been living in Washington, D.C. for three full weeks. Every time a coworker or friend asks me, “How are you adjusting?”, the answer is never a straightforward one, but I feel that I have formulated a perfect go-to response, regardless:
“If i’m in my apartment, it’s as if I never left LA and every time I step outside and see the Capitol, I point and say “Oh wow, it’s the Capitol!”
I exist in my own perfect little bubble, mere minutes from friends I consider my family and in an apartment that is much bigger than the space I occupied in Koreatown not a month ago. Nothing feels different, even though everything is and I’ve been wondering if that’s good or bad—the lack of shock. The delayed response to my environment. The complete intake of a new and lush and wondrous surrounding.
And then it hit me.There are no Filipino grocery stores nearby, boba that is few and far between, and Asian grocers that moonlight as holes in walls on the way to the hottest Michelin star restaurant. My culture, in its magnificent diaspora, is no longer outside my door in abundance.
I hate relying on cliches but, “you really don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” *cue eye-roll*
It’s amazing how that small realization set in motion a series of mental spirals that led me to rock bottom, with only the “Oriental” section of a local grocery store to keep me company. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: “But Jason, it’s just food! You’re overreacting and there are plenty of places to order from!”
And yes, Internet stranger in my imagination, you’re right. There are alternatives and workarounds. There is nothing wrong with the hole-in-wall grocery store that has an ample amount of daikon radish and Napa cabbage for kimchi making or the restaurant on Vermont Ave. NW that has decent Filipino food.
But the shock was in the absence of the abundance. What was plentiful and taken for granted, was now commodified and hidden away; deep in the belly of Shaw and Adams Morgan, like the Room of Requirement: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need only ask.” (—J.K. Rowling, the TERF). Where were my outlets? Why do I have to drive to Virginia for a reprieve of Korean culture? Will I have to make it myself to make do? Even a simple bag of rice has become a matter of who I know and where to go, as I no longer live 45 minutes from my parents who tend to buy a 50-pound bag of jasmine rice at Costco, which I could pilfer when supplies ran dry.
Then another question hit me—Did I make the right choice in moving? Aside from the scarcity of Asian food, I began to wonder what else the city had to offer me aside from workarounds. If the culture I became so accustomed to back home (which even then was a third culture, at best) was my norm, what is the new norm? D.C., as i’ve come to learn, is a transient city and filled with a multitude of identities and cultures I have yet to fully discover, but I have been so caught up in what I’ve lost to realize what I’ve gained in its place. Perhaps the profundity of the loss has blinded me; perhaps I don’t want what I’m being offered, like some petulant child who only eats chicken nuggets and fries at every given restaurant.
As you can tell, with every question posed another is posited; yet another series of spirals that I will undoubtedly become caught up in until the day I leave this planet. Once again, I am left to sit with uncertainty in all its banal and inconsequential nonsense. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing.
Cliches will haunt me forever, but I, truly, didn’t know what I had when it was right in front of me back home until I left.
For now, the workarounds will do and the small Asian grocers will become my new reprieves for cultural indulgence. All that said, I can already tell that every visit back West will lead to warmer moments—Rice that tastes heartier, soup that feels warmer, and smells that ignite memories which will keep me in check from that visit until the next.
