Tuesday, November 09, 2004

El apátrida

10:46: Mark sent me a link to a posting that summarizes the conundrum very well indeed. Uncannily so--it's almost as if chisparoja had gotten into my brain and started siphoning thoughts and feelings out.

I'm thinking of this relocation business. From having relocated four or so times in my life, I can tell you that it never becomes easy. A part of your soul gets ripped out and left behind, the torn tendrils of lifememory waving in the air laden with smells that will forever trigger memories of places not to be lived in again in the same way, the remaining solid chunk of soul firmly pinned to the ground that infuses all its foods and drinks with its essential flavor whether sweet or bitter. My thinking that I should once again rip out my roots and hope I can successfully survive another transplant, after having become fond of the idea of settling in my comfy three-bedroom condo with city view for the long haul, is the closest analogy I can conjure for emotional shipsinking.

Displacement versus persecution. I went and saw a terrible production of Ragtime last Friday. I've never been a believer that the Broadway musical is laden with meaning and depth. Seeing this show of three groups, white landed gentry, black musicians in Harlem and Latvian immigrants speak of their own dreams, aspiration and disappointments with this land between Canada and Mexico vibrated like a poorly tuned chord between being American-dream-cheerleading and American-nightmare-exposing. People have survived tougher environments--my family, the people of Latin America over centuries, the folks in Afghanistan--and maintain a sense of life. But those who can, leave for better worlds and opportunities. My folks did that in 1980 when they left Colombia for the prospect of a 100-fold increase in standard of living through my dad's new career in Peru. Gradmas and Grampas left their towns for the big city of Medellin as the farm life seemed to appeal less and less to their children. Nola, who worked at our house for many years in Peru, had left the violence and poverty of her beloved Tarapoto in the Amazon to seek fortune in Lima.

Flight or self-protection?

Canada beckons. UK beckons. Europe beckons. Modernity and global awareness beckon. Provincialism and fuck-you-all-ism hold no appeal. You're with us or you're with them. Well, I'm with them--not with the terrorists, but with the Rest Of The World. Always have been. In spanish, we have a word--apátrida, one without a countrynation. I've always been one of those. Citizen of the world. Allegiance to my fellow humans, not to my fellow nationlivers.

Monday, November 08, 2004

Grumblings from DC

16:56: Fear is high up on my list.
Sadness is right next to it. It's not frustration, surprisingly enough--I think I had just become resigned to the thought that the average person in the US is underinformed, uninterested in the world, and watching out for number one and number one's own view of the world, to the degree that every other person out there, and the space in which they live, becomes unimportant.

I had already become pretty convinced that we're headed towards a major painful split, and that there's little reconcilitation happening. even though there's still some sense that there's a majority of people who are levelheaded and decent, they're uninformed and unwilling to become more informed--not that they're going to be getting better information in the mediascape we'll be getting.

i had made a decision last year that I'd be living in europe within a few years. this has accelerated the process--I just don't think that it's going to get better before it gets much, much worse. Already there's rumbling around here about plans for war in Iran. There's emerging talk about tightening the grip against Castro, and I can only imagine what shape that might take with this batch of neocon zealots running the show. The one republican who was standing up to the far right wingers on the idea of supreme court nominations (Arlen Specter, of all people) just got spanked back into submission.

There seems to be no viable opposition to what is most certainly going to be a very right wing agenda. Moderates are too scared of upsetting anyone--particularly the right wingers, lest they be labeled babykilling liberals. Liberals are too dejected to dig out of our collective pile of tear-soaked kleenex and mount any kind of challenge. Libertarians are too much against organizing to matter--and too much attached to the idea that being a social liberal and economic conservative can still fit within the framework of the republican party to actually try to form some kind of coalition with anti-right-wingers.

The Netherlands may be where I need to be. I'll be checking them out over Thanksgiving.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

The new world?

09:45:

Still speechless.

09:29: I'm surprised some of my friends have been able to muster words of sadness, anger and/or frustration over email. I haven't been able to do so.

I'm still shocked. Pained. I spent all of Election day in the West Virginia panhandle,waving signs and feeling confident and optimistic about the future. Every (rare)time someone slowed down and yelled "baby killer" or "anti-american" I simply smiled and told myself "that is why I'm defending democracy".

Now I'm making the emotional adjustment I need to move forward with my long-established plan of moving. Sounds like a harsh thing, to scamper when the ship seems to be sinking. But I just don't see how I can continue to live in a country that will be divided ideologically with no reconciliation in sight, where the dominant tone is being set by people who prefer comfortable fallacies than any semblance of evaluation of facts, evidence or history, where a group of people who are only interested in creating a better society for all are treated as apologists for murderers and killers, and where cognitive dissonance is so rampant that Bush is described as a "people's man" and Kerry, Gore or Clinton are described as silver spooners.

I can't muster the optimism that Iggy seems to have, or the frustration that Chaeny seems to articulate. I can only seem to focus on the fact that 80 percent of voters
in 11 states believe that my having a relationship worthy of recognition is so abominable as to be prohibited by a constitution; on the fact that slightly more than half of the people in this country, living in the poorest states, seem to believe that an administration of fundamentalists is going to improve their lives as they dole out the largesse of cushy contracts to cronies; on the fact that fear, fundamentalism and xenophobia have more power than education and conciliation.

I can't see myself growing old in a country where the supreme court for the next
30 years will have been appointed and confirmed by a congress of rabid right wingers;
where health care will continue to be a privilege for the few; where education
will continue to be controlled by people who don't care about education but about
indoctrination. I just can't. The stage is set for what may be an ugly life here
for more than four years and I'm not sure I want to be a part of it. I just don't
know.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

What to do now?

14:12: I'm not sure what I'm going to do now...