we are all mutations

tortoise (terry griffen; my sister dated him when they were both in high school) used to call jerseyites "mutations." he exempted himself because he was from minnesota, forced to live in jersey because his father relocated after a second marriage to mrs. hansen, president of bergen bluestone, after her husband's death.

i had a friend in nyc who referred to me -- along with jack nicholson, bruce springsteen, and patti smith -- as a "jersey mongrel." like tortoise, this friend exempted himself since he migrated to the city not from the other side of the hudson but from south of carolina.

i wasn't from jersey either; "from" is so much more complicated than where i went to high school or where my parents currently live or even where i now lay my hat. in fact, lots of us "mutations" and "mongrels" aren't from the place to which self-describe "exemptions" hook us. instead, from elsewheres, product of remixed genetics, ribbons of this and that dna-knots, generating nonlinear stories, multiple, conflating, shifting, replicating, warring, inconsistent answers to the question "where are you from?"

a man operating the elevator in an apartment building in rio assumed i was from argentina -- something to do with my portuguese accent, i assumed -- and so i was (at that time, the late 80's, brazilians responded more favorably to argentinians than americans; one or the other, still inherited the gene pool of um civilizacao que assassinar los indios) and so i am, because i was for a time, at least to this trabalhador; although before this, i had been taken for french (because i carry a pen case in my bag?).