Crisp June Evenings and a Slight Wavering Towards Home.

Miller at Big Sur

Henry Miller spoke of the word home with venomous hatred. He saw home as an oppressive, stifling concept. While I don't necessarily share his passion, I do tend to agree with the sentiment. Home in an American context is a dull, harsh and sterile place. While Japanese people have tiny sweltering apartments filled with laughter and joy; and the Italians live in run down buildings with two simple pieces of furniture and smile through a shared meal. We sit and brood and compare in giant cavernous mansions filled with every convenience and luxury. Or we pine in noisy, cramped apartments for that same luxury we see in manufactured images of home. We find it unbearable or untenable to share any space at all, and we yell and scream and drive off others. Americans are the chattering birds of public squares.

I'm not excluding myself here, by any means. I'm as incapable of living with people as any other American. My spaces are as filled with gee-gaws and wasteful practices as any suburban American. And I'm certainly not making a moral judgment. Unlike Miller, who was disdainful of the American, I'm more baffled. I've lived in other places. I see how societies can work. I see the appeal of what my wife calls "intact societies." Not in a utopian sense- these societies are flawed as well, from top to bottom- but in a functional sense of being cohesive, relevant to human issues... well, intact.

All that is in my mind as I return to my new home. My place that is suited to me, ridiculousness and all. I'm settled, for as long as my children live here, in Ithaca, New York. The New York that isn't New York. It's a fine place- I may lament in my romantic weakness for a Prague in which to cross bridges... I pine in a bizarre academic sense for structured Berlin... I even long to round a spiritual corner in a Kyoto park. But Ithaca is a fine place. We have a lovely little house, the kids are thriving and growing. My own wanderlust is tied securely to nonsense I need to purge, and Ithaca is the place to do it.

And best of all, perhaps, Ithaca is filled with people who would understand completely what Miller means by home as an oppressive concept. Without malice or anger, they could listen and hear. They could, as Miller himself would say, talk without just heaving facts at one another. I can get into that. I will get into that. If a small part of me pines or laments from time to time, hey... I'm only American. Only human.

I, Ryan of the Mountain State, To You

I'm fascinated by the return to home. Even as a kid who had no experience away from home, the mythological return was a source of constant inspiration and reflection. When I first read Whitman, extolling the virtues of his native land in poetry, I was enthralled. Here was a person who wrote about himself as a voyager headed back to himself! It was perfect!

As I grew up, I discovered that most of the work I loved was about that connection of past and present. Van Gogh painted peasants in France who looked and acted like the peasants in his boyhood Dutch villages. The title of Olson's masterpiece Maximus Poems that I stole my post title from was himself, looking at his Gloucester youth. It was all about home.

Home is that idyllic place, home is the hell you raise up from... Home is the paradise of the people or the hell of the boredom. I laughed when my Seattle friends lamented being from "boring, backwater" Seattle when I had grown up in such a tiny little town. But it was futile. It was a tiny backwater for them because of that familiarity. It didn't matter what my opinion was, or objective population statistics.

The familiarity itself is fascinating. Home is where you are loved and bathed in attention, or ignored and mocked as a freak... but it is familiar by definition. It is what you were, and where you were.

My frequent Kerouac binges also remind me of one aspect of the home that other writers sometimes ignore. Home is where the legend of your life begins. It is the primal narrative of you, the first story.

I always loved that aspect of home. "I was born.." is the cliche. But it is meaningful. It's a positive cliche in the sense that it can still carry meaning. Love it or hate it, that's the start of your story. "I was born..."

It's a fascinating thing, home. No wonder it keeps being the story we write.

I've read that early humans had a completely different relationship to home. They were nomadic or semi-nomadic, and home to them was the Earth. It was the land and the trees as a continuum, not a specific geographic locale. Certainly not a standing structure they completed. That is inspirational and amazing, and I wish I were that kind of person. But I am not. Home for me is a geographical location, with all of the love and hate and ponderous reflection that implies. It''s ridiculous and baffling. But it's true. Home is rolling hills and oak trees. I love other places and things. I prefer other places and things. But as much as I truly wish to say I come from the western spiral arm of the milky way galaxy, that would be a lie. "I was born..." still exists for me in a limited way. Like so many others.

So we write on it. I wrote my huge epic poem Un/Fettered while living in Japan, Seattle, New York... but it's suffused with home. The narrow, confined sense. The subtitle is Constructing the Wild Beggar, implying a liberation and frugality that I long for and never achieve. The accuracy of it comes from the constructing, I guess. The desire to push beyond the limited and limiting "I was born."

Love in the Time of America

Henry Miller in Big Sur

I'm feeling restless. It's my affliction. It's not a bad one, as afflictions go- I could be a grown man in shorts. Or do heroin. But I am restless, and feel the need to move.

Writers love this disease. If they don't have it themselves, they tell the story of it. So many great stories are based on the love of moving right along. Talking to my good friend and official demi-god The Mighty Hercules lately about road novels, I was inspired to revisit one of my favorites, Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. It is my favorite thing of Miller's and one road novel that really stays with me. The basic overview of the book is simple: Miller comes back to the States as an expat, escaping war in Europe. He is disgusted by much of what he sees, but he finds positive aspects of America while he travels. It isn't a story of growth or acceptance. Like all great road novels, it's about the journey for the sake of the journey. Miller tells of his travels because that is what is happening.

I've been reading a lot of these books lately. I find myself relishing novels by Kerouac, Miller, lesser known gems like I See By My Outfit by Peter Beagle. I think they make sense to me now in a way that they didn't before, as I've traveled more, spent nearly five years overseas, and felt more restricted by life circumstances. I loved these books when I first read them at 19 and 20. I appreciate them now. Back then they represented possibilities, potential futures that myself and my friends could live. Now they mean something more complex and strange- the sense of community and isolation that I have as a (Oh My) basically middle aged man. (Wait is 35 middle aged? I guess not... but close?)

America is such a country of potential. It is frustrating because the greatness that lurks everywhere. The geographical perfection, the powerful ambition and drive... these are balanced by the greed and pathological individualism that infects us. Having spent time in a other countries always makes Americans conscious of this contrast in identity. It's a personality disorder on a nationwide scale. We are what we pretend to be, and what we have chosen to be. We are the past and the future. Reading stories of our past back to Whitman and Emerson, it seems like this has always been the case. We've always been a nation of confused identity. Or at least our writers and scholars have thought so.

Living currently in small town America, I have a desire to go to cities, to see more of the urban America. A part of me, logically or not, always sees urban America as the authentic experience of being the United States. Funnily enough, most Americans I talk to don't think this, but many foreign visitors do. They see America as big city because of their own media and preconceptions, I suppose. I'm not sure why I do. But there it is.

The road novels I love mostly talk about small town America. They love the cities intensely, or hate them with equal passion. But they talk more about rural and small town America. I wonder if it that is because, like me, they see it as strange and confusing. Or because they see the real essence of the American experience there, and wish to explore it. Kerouac is especially hilarious in this regard, since he sings the praises of these little towns that he spends hours visiting, and then complains about the cities that he settles in for years.

Kerouac eventually went home, to his small town New England past. He resigned himself to unhappily finishing his years with the familiar. I can't imagine doing that, personally. It's actually a deep-seated fear of mine. When I was young, I was firmly convinced (like every young man reading Kerouac and listening to punk rock, I'm sure) that my life was destined to be lived out penniless and free, drifting from place to place, without a home. Of course that is silly- and mostly untrue. (Well, I'm penniless enough. And I do tend to drift. But I take a lot of home with me.)

But in all of the nonsensical romanticism and flowery prose of the myth, there is a glimmer of reality hidden. I'm still desperate to find that authentic identity of my country, and myself. I still pull up roots and change what I can to see the United States from a new angle, to approach the problem of our national disorder from a new perspective. I'm interested in it, perhaps above everything else in my life. I want to understand it.  Reading those novels about travel, traveling myself for so much of my life... these are ways to find those stories again, and gain some comprehension. Until I get that... Well, I'll be restless. Ready to move.

Busyness Isn't A Word

We've spent a crazy few weeks here. Between J's busy schedule, and my fairly busy schedule, and 24/7 kid stuff, I'm about to collapse. Well, I would be, if I wasn't spending my Saturday evening sitting on the recliner watching cartoons with the boy. That's a fairly relaxing end to the week, I'll admit. But overall, this is not a sustainable pace for me. I'm enjoying my work; and I even kept the house fairly under control. I cleaned the kids' room, even, which is a shock to us all.

I really wonder how people do it, week after week. I know the kids won't be 2 and 4 forever, and as they grow they get easier in some ways. But they get tougher in some ways too, and running them all over town for this and that, helping with school, and then trying to work enough to pay the bills seems as daunting to me as taking them with me everywhere does at the moment. It will possibly be harder, because at least now I get a baby girl hugging me and saying "Wuv wuv Papa!" as she toddles along. When she's embarrassed to be seen with me, will it be harder to get motivated?

I think a big reason is that I am not happy in our situation. I'm extremely happy with how awesome my family is; but being really broke and working hard, living in a city that I'm hot and cold on, and (alert Homeland Security here, Glenn Beck) a country I'm increasingly frustrated by and disappointed in, I'm losing patience with my workload. I'm working hard, and Jaime is damn near killing herself, to make bills in a place with no health care, lousy education for my kids, and the prospect of millions in student loan debt for my whole family just to get them all through college. Is it worth it?

There great things about this country. I'm not saying I'm casting any votes for Somalia or Indonesia anytime soon. But more and more I find myself fantasizing about Sweden, or Japan, or Canada. (Your national anthem rocks, Canada. Seriously. Even the name. "O Canada" is awesome. It sounds so casual. Like, Oh, yeah, Canada, by the way, we like you. Do you like us? Check a box below for yes/no/maybe. Canada is awkward in a really cute way.)

Are these places better? They seem better, when I visit. They seem calmer, more polite, more egalitarian. Is it true? I don't think I'm totally rose-colored-glasses here. Other people tell me the same thing. People a lot like me, in mindset and temperament. Which I think is the key; America has greatness, and maybe will have greatness again in the future, but it isn't me. Does that sound weird? It does, I know. But more and more it seems true. I do find that woman with a gun slightly hot though, as disturbing as it is. Maybe the problem is that it's more me than I want, and less me than I need.

Everyone's Your Friend In New York City

There are a few places that I consistently fantasize about visiting. I even fantasize about living there, having a place, getting to explore it. Most of these places are places I have already lived, and wish to return to explore in greater depth, such as Hiroshima, Japan. Some are places I visited, briefly, and would like to experiment with living there, such as Nice, France. The one in the latter category that I have been focused on a lot lately is NY, NY.

I'm not sure why I have had such interest. Something about NYC is fixed in American mythos. It's everything I love about America, diverse, huge, and intense. It has stories that have shaped the rest of the country, and I feel like I know it in a way that most places I have visited I do not. And I know, really, that I don't know it; the mystery adds to the fascination. It isn't a place to live with kids, in my opinion, so I don't imagine I will ever explore it like I want to. I don't have the money or the time to spend a year there, which is what it would take to even begin to understand it.

One reason I am fascinated is that I have become such a city person, here in Seattle. And Seattle, being a small city, makes me want to visit the east coast big brothers that it emulates. The first thoughts of the Americans who came here were on building the NYC of the west. It didn't come close to happening, of course. It's too far away, it didn't have the position as a trading center that NYC had from almost the beginning. Really until the past thirty years, Seattle was barely a city. It has grown, in positive and negative ways. (Light rail! Yay! I-5 is a parking lot! Boo!) But it can never be the beating heart of the country that NYC has been and will likely to continue to be.

Some of this may have to do with the history. But that's not the whole story. Every modern story I see about the city draws me in as well. It's still fascinating. I would love to see the past of the city, but the present excites me too. The vitality of the city, in my awe-struck limited time there, is real. I don't imagine I'll get a chance to really walk the streets in the way I want to, but it's still fun to imagine the place from the perspective of a resident, pavement under my boots, and noise and lights all around.