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Pinning down the Scarecrow
Mar. 2nd, 2007 07:10 amEvery time I try to write my take on the American dream, to pin down this ragged galloping scarecrow moving as fast as any truck on the highway, something happens that makes me wanna sit, mute for a whole day, a week, weeks. My momentum is scattered again.
The mountains are covered in powder, satin and veins - but a close family member and friend of ours took her car and drove away one day, the meds she had to balance chemistry in her head were cut from her puny health insurance plan. She is back now, but she is constantly one breath away from becoming a lady talking to her stolen shopping cart outside a a bleeder valve. Or just someone that is gone. Goner.
It's so easy to talk to everyone here in the city, at work, cafes. We talk life, courses taken, books and fantasies - and then we split with a smile never to call each other back. I'm carrying an anchor in my shaking arms and for that I sometimes need to sit. If someone should happen to see it one day and talk about it, I might just put it down.
A Fifteen year old girl and her two guy friends murdered her single mom and kept the body as a part of the inventory in the house for a month, decomposing. They were having the time of their life, partying until the neighbors called the cops. These were kids belonging to the high school where my Geek works, he saw them in the library, the corridors, maybe even in the classroom - even though they actually dropped out of school before they decided to have the time of their life.
This is another mute moment, I am thinking Is it all the programs they've cut from that school for years?, or is it just these three pieces of damaged bone china that happened to rub against each other in that particular basket.
I was talking about child care in the break room last fall. That there isn't any, unless you have a fat wallet, and this lady - an occasional volunteer worker in her 60's who has a PhD of something in something screamed at me. Since she's the kind of person who never raised her voice this was in comparison to a volcano trembling in Yellow Stone Park. She screamed that it's easy for a person from Scandinavia to say, because unlike Scandinavia, the US had to take care of all these immigrants. And therefore no childcare.
My arms and chest were filled with lactic acid for days after that, I dug up statistics and percentages that showed, that indeed, Scandinavia had no border to Mexico - but it sure had immigrants and could measure up to many states of the same size. But then I realized...the tab for one had nothing to do with the tab for another. The shout was a guilty one, she was too clever to say "This is the best country in the world" - and it hurt so much she had to raise her voice.
When spring comes I want friends around me..and yet when I see this woman in the corridors now, I just want to come up to her and say: Those kids are white, they are white and born here by other whites.
My friends are continents away, they send me letters, also more frequently in the spring, because the thin long line between winter and spring - I call it the zone, is hard. The sky is hollow and hungry and vast and every discrepancy becomes a bone-shaker ride.
I need to remember in times like these that I came here because of love, my best friend is here, and I did not come to America with my cap in my hand like a beggar.
The mountains are covered in powder, satin and veins - but a close family member and friend of ours took her car and drove away one day, the meds she had to balance chemistry in her head were cut from her puny health insurance plan. She is back now, but she is constantly one breath away from becoming a lady talking to her stolen shopping cart outside a a bleeder valve. Or just someone that is gone. Goner.
It's so easy to talk to everyone here in the city, at work, cafes. We talk life, courses taken, books and fantasies - and then we split with a smile never to call each other back. I'm carrying an anchor in my shaking arms and for that I sometimes need to sit. If someone should happen to see it one day and talk about it, I might just put it down.
A Fifteen year old girl and her two guy friends murdered her single mom and kept the body as a part of the inventory in the house for a month, decomposing. They were having the time of their life, partying until the neighbors called the cops. These were kids belonging to the high school where my Geek works, he saw them in the library, the corridors, maybe even in the classroom - even though they actually dropped out of school before they decided to have the time of their life.
This is another mute moment, I am thinking Is it all the programs they've cut from that school for years?, or is it just these three pieces of damaged bone china that happened to rub against each other in that particular basket.
I was talking about child care in the break room last fall. That there isn't any, unless you have a fat wallet, and this lady - an occasional volunteer worker in her 60's who has a PhD of something in something screamed at me. Since she's the kind of person who never raised her voice this was in comparison to a volcano trembling in Yellow Stone Park. She screamed that it's easy for a person from Scandinavia to say, because unlike Scandinavia, the US had to take care of all these immigrants. And therefore no childcare.
My arms and chest were filled with lactic acid for days after that, I dug up statistics and percentages that showed, that indeed, Scandinavia had no border to Mexico - but it sure had immigrants and could measure up to many states of the same size. But then I realized...the tab for one had nothing to do with the tab for another. The shout was a guilty one, she was too clever to say "This is the best country in the world" - and it hurt so much she had to raise her voice.
When spring comes I want friends around me..and yet when I see this woman in the corridors now, I just want to come up to her and say: Those kids are white, they are white and born here by other whites.
My friends are continents away, they send me letters, also more frequently in the spring, because the thin long line between winter and spring - I call it the zone, is hard. The sky is hollow and hungry and vast and every discrepancy becomes a bone-shaker ride.
I need to remember in times like these that I came here because of love, my best friend is here, and I did not come to America with my cap in my hand like a beggar.
