Rollin' Mama Blues

What is it about America that obscures all other places
almost to the point of erasure? And how is it that it can
reach you anywhere you are? Irritating, but once you've
found roots in America, all your noble aspirations toward
globalness* become severely compromised.

Yet there is life outside America, folks. It doesn't quite
sound like Kate McTell, but it's there, and it's beautiful
and it's got its own kind of blues.

I, for one, am quite pleased at the prospect of life in
a reachable elsewhere.

Every elsewhere is here to somebody.


*If you are unable to comprehend in the author's tone a fair amount
of sarcasm and self-mockery, kindly step away from this blog.
I fear it will do you no favours.

Where?

"I'm interested in what Ondaatje calls the "international mongrels of the world," or what Rushdie calls the "international bastards," all those people with no place and yet every place inside them. The best line I ever heard along these lines was from John Berger. I met him in Paris. We were both a little over-served, shall we say, wine and vodka, and I asked him where he was from. He looked at me strangely, as we are friends and we'd been corresponding a long time, and he said, "England, of course." And I said in the most ridiculous way, "I know, I know, I know, but where are you from from?" He smiled that big smile of his, those eyes of his. He waited a long time and then he said that he was "a citizen—no, no, not a citizen—a patriot of elsewhere."

- Colum McCann, in a conversation with Nathan Englander published with Let The Great World Spin, which I just finished today and found intermittently fascinating and illuminating, but didn't wholly love. This bit intrigued me, though. It's not the puzzle piece so much as it is a tentative outline of the gap that needs to be filled, but it's something.