Off-Groundness

“My experiences growing up Latvian were very much about being Latvian. Whenever I'd take a standardized test and get to the racial and ethnic origin boxes, I would pick "OTHER" and neatly pencil in "LATVIAN." In Sunday school, I learned Latvian geography, history, literature and poetry. But it was the magical stories—like the time my grandfather was repairing the windmill’s sails and fell off!—that brought me closest to Latvia. It was a proud and wondrous land which might someday be free again. But that was not a day my mother or I would ever see or take part in.
Suddenly, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, that all changed. My mother spent a year packing for our trip—my first time ever, and my mother's first chance to see her family in half a century.
Sadly, most of her generation passed on, never to see Latvia free again.
The rose colored glasses came off, but my voyage into my family's heritage and the effect of simply being there have proven even more magical than those tales from my youth.”

位於波羅的海東岸的拉脫維亞，由於其戰略位置十分重要，數百年來雖一直是波羅的海區域人口最多、經濟活動最活躍的城市，卻也始終為各方勢力所爭相競奪，而長年處於割據與戰亂的動盪之中；因此，對拉脫 維亞人而言，生活在這塊土地上雖曾經歷過漢撒聯盟時期的繁華與興盛，民族的認同在諸多現實條件的限制下，卻始終顯得混亂而不穩定；正如上面這段自述的主角Peters，他身為戰後逃亡至 美國的拉脫維亞民族第二代，雖然對於拉脫維亞有高度的文化認同感，但畢竟像他這樣以拉脫維亞民族自居的拉裔 移民只是少數中的少數，更多的拉裔 人口不僅對於拉脫維亞已喪失認同感，更甚而逐漸放棄使用拉語。

至於稱里加是個百般「雕琢」的城市，說來也是因為其在歷史上始終扮演著融合東西歐洲文化的角色，於是在里加的老城區裡不僅可以看到豐富而多樣的中世紀建築，在近郊更有為數驚人的新藝術風格建築；其中，我對於Mikhail Eisenstein所留下的幾棟精雕細琢的建築尤其印象深刻，表情扭曲而誇張的人面雕刻、曲線幾近瘋狂的裝飾，其表現慾望之旺盛，也難怪其子Sergei Eisenstein會成為奠定電影蒙太奇理論的大家。