to see the world the way I see it now
(Most Recent Entry)
introduction to poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-- Billy Collins
Every tear you cry
Every doubt you have
All of these things will pass away
All of your big mistakes
Your little old heart would break
Wishing that i could take them back
Write down the things you don't want
Burn them in a glass
Write down the things you dream of
Make a paper plane that flies to Heaven
-- Jann Arden
Friday, January 21, 2005
the nature of freedom
I am fascinated by the founding of this nation. Today was a day when the beginnings were in the air. As President Bush delivered his second inaugural speech today, each word competed with history to make it into the annals of time.
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
He had a lot to compete with.
Freedom. Liberty.
What do those things mean? I wonder if, because I’m not American, I have less of an appreciation for the true significance of those words. I don’t mean that I’m not free or liberated. I come from a free country. I was born into a liberal society (some might say even more liberal than this in many ways, although in others more conservative, more traditional). And yet freedom and liberty are keywords that are somehow ingrained into the American soul, along with the Stars and Stripes, hand-over-heart, American-Pie dream. It’s a mindset where the key phrases are different. While Britain has a wide expanse of history before it—history that merges back in time so far that we can’t pick a place where our national identity arose and we can’t hark proudly back to the philosophies and ideals of the “founding fathers.” Freedom and liberty are part of the very framework of this land—they were written into the constitution and they are alive today perhaps just as much as they were when a group of men got together to bring together what they saw as the best of the political and social ideals from around the world and added a spice of something unique, something new. America is a lesson learned and a new road built toward a new tomorrow. When Britons look back to the past, they see a myriad of different ideologies; they see monarchies that chopped and changed the national religion as often as the sun rose. We still retain a great deal of tradition—perhaps more than America—with our pomp and ceremony, our monarchy, our great national pride (“Rule Britannia”) rooted in the old-school approach to life. But when Americas look back, they see a unity of purpose, and it’s a purpose that continually strives toward the future. America is so vast. It has so much space, so much potential for expansion. There is no doubt that it will surge forward toward tomorrow because its past is so much in the here and now—so real and current. Perhaps that’s why I tend to have so much more understanding for America than I do for my own country. Britain is so complex (yes, America is too, but its complexities are more comprehendable, perhaps—laid out in the constitution and in laws, governed by principles with nomenclature like freedom, liberty, justice, peace, prosperity).
Or perhaps there is a simpler reason behind my inability to put my finger on the true nature of Britain and Britishness—because I’m an insider there, and because the last few years—when I was actually paying attention and showing interest in the world around me—have been spent across the ocean. I feel out of touch with what makes England England, with what makes me British. Over here, I am very English—there are the accent, the cultural marks, the childhood memories—but when I return home, I loose those marks of uniqueness that give me an identity as English. It’s then that I need to grasp on to something else. I never had that need before—the need to feel a national identity. Perhaps that’s because in America, national identity and national pride are inbuilt notions, culturally defining and socially real. The British Empire is no longer real, and Britishness is slowly giving way to Europeanness. When I see the American flag, I feel a tinge of national pride. When I hear the Star Spangled Banner (or “Proud to be an American,” oddly enough), I sing along. I do the same when I hear the British national anthem, but there is a difference in emotion. I understand American patriotism more because I have been here for so long—because I was here when the Twin Towers crumbled and when torn American flags were hung in desperation and pride around the wreckage. In Britain, the only Union Jacks or St. George’s crosses I see flying proudly are when the country goes to the World Cup.
And yet it is unfair of me to make these judgements, these comparisons, when I perhaps don’t really know enough about my own country to have a valid opinion. Perhaps patriotism is alive and well in England and I just haven’t been there to experience it. It is unfair to compare the national pride of a country so strongly based on its forming principles to the national pride of my own country—which has been through so many years of turmoil and greatness of its own. Part of me wants to take a peak at life during the World Wars in England—to experience the jingoism I have so often read about and heard the older generations reminiscing over. I want to see a time when the women of Britain empowered the country and themselves by pulling on trousers, rolling up their sleeves, and going to work in the factories. I want to experience a world where even the simplest gestures, like cultivating a small vegetable patch, are considered patriotic—the birth of Victory Gardens. I want to experience the pride of my own nation joined together against a common enemy. A strange comment, I know, since I certainly wouldn’t wish to return to a world of war. It fascinates me, though.
