December 24, 2011

Send Your Eggs

I am in a strange mood. What's new right? Part of me is swimming in gratitude and merry holiday cheer, while the other side is drowning in the same weirdness I always feel when I come "home." I use the term home loosely, as I no longer really feel at home in America. After ten years overseas, the States have become just another destination for me, just another port I enter and explore, a place I people watch, a place I try to find my way, a place where I usually end up more disillusioned then when I started. What's more, I am not even in California, where I grew up, but at my wife's home town- Milwaukee, which feels even more foreign.

Driving around today and interacting with people, I couldn't help but feel deflated. People seemed tired and worn down everywhere I went. There is always something depressing about being home for me. I can never put my finger on it, but there is an element of imbalance that tweaks my equilibrium for the length of my stay. I wish my emotions were more profound, better articulated, but I am only left with a malaise that meanders and goes nowhere- into blog posts like this one.

I am sure, as per usual, I am allowing little uncomfortable ideas and thoughts grow into bigger ideas and thoughts. Perhaps, I should just stop thinking so much, or at least re-train my thoughts: I am with my family; my girls are so excited to be with their grand parents; I am relaxed and calm, letting work drift away for a few weeks, and life is good.

I won't allow America to work it's obsessions and depression on me. I know I don; have to live here. I can leave in a few days. In the meantime, I can't help but think of ole Allen G:

America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument...

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