Something has been been busily nagging at a brother for the past couple of days. It took me 72 hours to acknowledge, then decode, then believe it, but I think I've got it now: uh...I'm happy to be here*.
This is literally an unbelievable feeling...moving to Europe revealed to me so many previously unseeable things about America and Americans that at some point I suddenly felt very much like Roddy Piper's character in the John Carpenter movie They Live.
Like Roddy, once I saw "the truth," my new perspective began to fill me with a hot indignation, and thermos-like, I kept it glowing uncomfortably inside me (yes, quite a bit like John Parr as well) until it just ate away my internal insulation and at this point the thermos metaphor resists easy extrapolation and I haven't had any coffee yet.
+++
The point of this touchy-feely moment we're having here is: this burning drive to share my findings with everyone else seems to have been extinguished in the two years since I've been here. I can guess why, but it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that 1) the overwhelming feeling I'm enjoying at the moment is less "solemn outrage" and more "sweet relief", and 2) I've extended my stay so that I'm now going to be here for Thanksgiving.
+++
* Here is strictly limited to this house. I'm spending as little time as possible out amongst the general public.
No comments:
Post a Comment