big thoughts in the midst of America

like many others, I have traveled across my country.
In real time, (not airtime)
or something close to it. Automobile time.
Dips in to small towns for gasoline between hours of superhighway.
Days or hours between trips off the highway, to SEE some of the things that we are actually passing, and I realize all of these cliches for myself:
how huge this nation is. Every place we whiz by is a world of places.
These endless roads through desserts and plains and mountains and forests.
These strip malls, billboards, box stores, rest stops, "indian trading posts"
(really, what the fuck? I was surprised to see one, but there must have been hundreds)
These things too, are America.

Because we are not anything more than tourists. We're not special. We are taking the highway that the government made for all of the long-trekking americans in their gasoline chugging cars. that is what we are.

here is my own poem to America, cringing as I add to the chorus who writes one.
The great, great opportunities of this vast space,
and the tremendous burden of our scale
the yearning for a one-ness, for a nation as trustworthy as a small town.
this, the 300 million of us can never be.
Too many humans, too many towns. stores, objects, options, jobs for America to ever assume the honesty of looking someone in the eye.
The story of this country is the growing anonymity, or maybe the fight against it.
Each facilitated by that exact search for interconnectedness,
made possible by technology. the roads, the railways, the maps, the corporations, the telephones, the cell phones, the internet that make us all feel like we can each connect with anyone. that make us believe we could all know each other.

With my aliegence to the big America I must by definition be nameless,
in the grand scheme of things. In Portland I felt like there were a million of me, on their bikes to their low-pay-feel-good job. I want to feel like part of a movement, but it makes me feel like a cog. Find someplace smaller and different, make a commitment to belong to some more just place.

but I am all an American. my good and my bad.
this white jewish new york vegetarian queerish progressive artsy college grad kid, driving from the coast of fantasies back to the coast of home with a nice guy and a new car filled with old clothes.
There is nothing of me that is not part of this story.
Despite all this privileged pressure to be Wordly and Travelled,
I could live my life in this nation, and only grow my worldview, still not know nearly all of it.
There is soo much truth for any one person to hold as true.
Even just here, in America.

Do I tell you about the beautiful things I have seen? The gorgeous mountains and sculptures, the curious lives so much unlike my own.
They take so much more space in my memory than the hours of strip malls and suburbs.
Many places made me say "how could you live here?" off of any exit on any road.
But when we find the place we are stopping, when it is the home of a person. a life. there is something beautiful there. This is not random, of course, they are places we sought because we thought they'd be nice. But I am also trying to remember to think against judgement (something I am not good at) Often I don't believe it, but maybe everyone in America is doing the best they can.