We had ambitious madness planned for this break. It feels like we're in a rerun of last year right now, and sweet Moses I hope not. The madness, some of which was going to be written about, has to be shelved, temporarily (I hope), while we walk slowly. It doesn't stop any of us from planning for the future, of course. We're used to having things delayed this decade, I suppose.
In lieu of this, I was reading Mick LaSalle's new book, and I was struck by a long quote. I thought about "getting into it" more here, but copy and paste will do it justice. Sometimes when you're reading, or even viewing a scene in a TV show or movie, you have to stop right there and tell someone. You have to share it for whatever reason: what you've just seen or read has moved you to do so. My reason for this quote from Mick is simple enough: in a time when travel can be risky, when (for me) no one wants to visit but wants me to leave (and wonders why I haven't already), when, decades later, there are still snide remarks from those far from my environs, I just...well, here it is:
Pages 78-79
"No one who hasn't been to Nebraska has any particular idea about Nebraska that goes beyond some pictures of guesses involving corn, or snow, or tornadoes. But everyone in the United States decides how they feel about California. And the feelings can be based on anything, based on any number of facts, real or imagined, that a person chooses to believe. California is large. It contains multitudes, and so virtually anything you think about it will be, at least to some extent, true, unless you think it's small and doesn't matter.
Mostly, the feelings about California will be ones of either approval or disapproval. To most of America, California is good or bad.
Some people want to move here and will. Some people want to move here, but know they never will, but are okay with California as kind of dream or idea. And some people aren't interested - they're quite happy where they are. But in that last category, there are still others who, despite not wanting to live here, feel the presence of California as some alternate possibility, not only in American life, but within their own consciousness - an open door that they can choose to go through or not, but whose existence they resent and wish they could ignore.
Curiously, this last category also contains people who make generalizations about how we in California feel about them, when people in California aren't thinking of them at all, beyond a vague wishing them well. We can't quite imagine them, simply because, for better or worse and probably mostly for better, there is no national mythology surrounding their location. We do notice, when we go to the middle of the country, that the people tend to be friendlier, and fatter, and with an unaccountable tendency to be politically bizarre, but these are just impressions, hardly fully formed opinions.
We also notice, when we travel to other places in the United States, that we meet people who love to tell us all about California, to fill us in about little details, about how the whole state is going broke, or how this or that congresswoman's district is a disaster. But when we ask them when was the last time they were in California, they usually say they were never there. But they know all about it. From a friend. Who probably has also never been there."
Goodbye, 2021. Up and down, rolling hills, good/bad and vice versa. (deep breath)
