Awayness

It was the awayness of it that first attracted me to the place. The vast awayness from what I had called home up till the time I first stayed there — that was what made me decide to settle for good at Miss Carruthers's.

These periods of awayness are not followed by manifestations of fatigue, and are usually terminated by a sudden [...]

They describe the trances of the balian or seer of the village they studied most exhaustively as beginning with such "awayness," then passing into a period when "the seer exhibits emotions never otherwise expressed except on the stage [...]

Clearly then, two separate spaces, the countries of origin — the Caribbean — and the countries to which they have migrated — England, Canada, the United States — become the figural polarities linking together the condition of awayness, [...]

Potentially, “awayness” is a messy category for analyzing a people's behavior.