The Hamlet Project

England feels like home to me. It is not my home. Though it was briefly. I grew up in Virginia and I live in New York City. And yet England can feel more like home than either of my homelands feel sometimes. Is there something to an ancestral homeland? I have many many ancestors from England. Do I have some English loving DNA? Some DNA that recognizes its roots and starts shooting them down the moment I arrive on English soil. Some DNA that gets very upset every time I have to return to my own country because immigration laws don’t care about my feelings or my ancestral roots. They’re like, “Y’all people left on that damn Mayflower – and now you want to come BACK here? Nah. Nah. That ain’t happenin’.” I don’t know why the immigration authorities of the U.K. sound like Southern folks from my hometown but apparently they do in this make believe scenario.
I try to get back every year but I don’t always manage it. This year, though…get ready to shake, roots, we’re going to England.