Inside Outside In

I have two blogs. One is at http://southlands.wordpress.com. The other one is this one. Recently I sent out a newsletter which directed people to this blog. That is pretty scary for me. This has been a bit more uncensored, kind of like a room where the public doesn´t go. This one has been the room where me, myself, and some good friends, and people who don´t spend too much time worrying about each other´s morality feel comfortable enough to kick off our shoes.

The other one is a bit more public and has less desequilibrium (is that a word, or should I just have said, “more equilibrium”) to it.

But in reality, it is a bit of a theme of late. A little bit of enjoying the mess and giving the mess permission to exist. Waking up and letting everybody sit at the front of the bus. All day long. And asking them to give up segregation and look for new ways of being together.

So, it is only natural that it would happen on the blog as well.

So, is one a sham and the other one “real”? Is the “fake me” presentable while the other one’s not? I don´t think so. Rather than thinking real and fake, it helps to think a bit more like the social acceptability of picking your nose or saying “crap,” neither of which you would ever do from a church pulpit (though you might say the first at your dinner table among family, like we do).

How the Irish Saved My View of America

I’m not allowed to call it America any more. It’s the “Estados Unidos”. I am constantly reminded by Uruguayan elitist intellectuals that THEY are Americans as well. As are Chileans. As are Bolivians. And even Canadians (but don’t tell THEM that, eh?).

Sometimes I don’t even like America. I write these words and picture some pot-bellied Viet Name biker vet on his Harley with “love it or leave it” painted on the side. And I think, “Like, yeah, duh, I left.” And then you move to an entire continent where the most vocal don’t like the same things about your country that you don’t like. Only, you are one voice in a sea of voices trying to tell them, “Yeah, but we aren’t all shallow, plastic, consumerist, uneducated, unaware, uninterested, egocentric, extravagant, and wasteful. We are gracious. We are generous. We are pragmatic. We are innovative. We don’t stand on ceremony. We wear shorts to social occasions (okay, I don’t really see that as such a positive anymore). We are cordial. We are welcoming.”

But nobody hears the voice. Oh, there are some who like to have an American in their pocket. A little center-left American who “thinks the way they do.” At the end of the day, there is that in most of us that just wants to use each other, and if you eat too much of their Turkish Delight, you can’t stop going back for more.

But you start to realize they are false friends. And then I start entertaining Republican thoughts again. I start to see that we who lean more to the left are little more than dreamers and idealists who don’t have a healthy enough belief in Original Sin and its lingering consequences.

But then I see the reality of America–I mean, the United States, from the OUTSIDE (okay, I don’t see the “reality”. I just see what every news syndicate OTHER than Fox news wants me to see, along with the macroeconomists, the raw data from wall street, etc), and I get skittish again. I see how a tiny little nervous jitter on Wall Street, you know the kind that drives you to order a second cup of Starbucks, can actually wipe out vast swaths of micro-businesses and small-businesses in other countries. From hiccup to Tsunami. Brutal to watch.

Then I listen to Koffi Annan’s address to Mr. Bush. Well, to all of us, us Americ–I mean–UnitedStatesians (what? Oh. You mean, Mexico’s real name is “The United States of Mexico”? Oh, guess I can’t use that one either); I was saying, I listen to Koffi Annan’s speech, his warning not to be unilateral. His warnings, and I’m like YES! YES! PREACH IT! And then I’m whoopin’ up all over the-nation-between-Canada-and-the-United-States-of-Mexico (NaBeCATUSOM) again.

I’m like one sick, torn individual in my relationship with my homeland.

And then I put on Rattle and Hum tonight as I’m washing dishes. I put on these big, chunky headphones, and listen to B.B. King’s guitar scream. I rock out to Love Rescue Me. And then I get to Heartland. It’s not Republican. It’s not Democratic. It’s not Muslim. It’s not Christian. It’s not black. It’s not white.

I remember high school. I remember sitting on the hill above the mississippi with Kurt, Erik, and Kathi after seeing the movie. I remember imitating the movie as we sat on the same place Bono and the boys sat and were filmed.

The images stream through me. I remember being sixteen and driving through the Ozarks. I remember the Grand Canyon. I remember Penny’s family welcoming me and my Dad in out of the cold, even though we had migrated from up where the Yankees live. The heartland song. The land that can shake off political stupidity like a bad cold. The land that has the capacity to rise above reproductive organs and reproductive rights issues…

And I am reminded that I love her. I am reminded that I miss her.

Oh, I know there is no national air, grass, dirt, or water that is made of something essentially different than some other nation. But that air, grass, dirt, and water that I first learned to love and eat and drink and play in in California, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina. That is home. That is grace embodied.

That was Bono and the boys are singing out in that Heartland song. And in so many other of their tunes. Oh yeah, they see the bad, smell the bad. But this is something that lets you wrap your arms around all that and love it, cry for it, encourage it, call it to rise to its inherent greatness, and then walk, dance, run… with it.

Thanks to the Irish, I am in love all over again.