America

When I read Australian Jeff Waugh's comments about his impressions of the US, I had some flashbacks to how I felt after returning here after my first long trip abroad.

I don't feel comfortable here. It's like a giddy nightmare set in a theme park devoted to "big". Everything is big - if not in size, then in volume or sheer in-your-face-ness. The cars are huge, though you could scarcely describe them as cars. The television in my hotel room is almost twice the size of our TV at home. The convenience store is a kidney-punch of choice and product. The Burger King girl yelled at me, very, very politely, with a searing-flesh smile.

I remember walking into a local supermarket the day after I got back from Honduras and being severly shocked at bigness of it all; having an identical reaction to Jeff's above. But I grew up here. For years, so much of living in the USA has been for me a process of coping and tuning out the insanities, trying to find the worthwhile things, and sometimes nearly giving up and feeling much happier abroad. So as I was leafing through my diary looking for my reaction to being back in the USA, I was suprised to find this, written a week after I got back:

Moon to the north-west, peeping out in a little clear-circle from the white clouds. Quarter-full crescent. Clouds covering half the sky and setting off the snow-covered hills, black and white. To the south, a big gap in the clouds, and orion and more stars shining out bright. Chewing on some crusty dry, clean snow. Klypso at my heels.

I had another beautiful night like that last night, out watching the blue moon. More and more there are to me two Americas, there's the America Jeff describes, and the special one I've sometimes managed to find. But I fear I have increasingly too much difficulty finding that side of this place to be able to introduce any visitors to it.