America The Ex-Boyfriend

Photo: Jorge Santiago

Unexpected meetings with ex-boyfriends turn ways to measure oneself opposite a flitting of time as well as opposite former selves, a ones we embodied when we were with _____ . Ways of seeing how most a chairman we recollect through a eyes of a ex-boyfriend has turn someone else, has reconfigured her prior diversity of personhood in to a brand new one.

The United States of America, we realized, is similar to an ex-boyfriend.

One we strike in to unexpected as well as during once in a bizarre city. Maybe we suspicion a confront could happen, maybe it crossed your mind, though a way it will actually smell as well as feel as well as propel we in to spinning self-reflection has not occurred to we during all.

Then all of a remarkable youre there as well as saying, Oh God. Did we used to consider which awful corporate tinge was normal? Did we used to use it when we worked during coffee shops? You have a poetic day now, suffer your hazelnut skim latte. Did we used to wear jean shorts? Oh, God, recollect when we sprayed which hideous ginger perfume from Bath as well as Body Works all over a bathroom each sunrise in tall school as well as reeked of it, similar to Id swum in a vial of artificial over-emotional sweetness? Oh my oh my.

The U.S has been a most unfortunate kind of ex-boyfriend encounter, a the single which hovers in your thoughts as well as upon your skin for days similar to a stickiness of a vivid dream, as most state of being as memory. All a things we used to take for granted, all a ways we used to see. The smells of hotels, a perfumes similar to containing alkali pollens clogging up your throat in clouds, a receptive to advice of lawnmowers, a giant cars which it unexpected occurs to we dont go to drug lords, a howyadoin Ohio twang, a confident deafening swagger of undergrads with ponytails as well as gym shoes, a truth of everyth! ing pre scriptions, beers upon a shelves, prices a manners (my 5-year-old niece asked today what did we similar to about Mexico? as well as we said, There arent so many manners similar to there have been here. There have been so many manners in a U.S. She accepted which a single instantly. Like we cant climb up a food counters during Giant Eagle? Exactly, we said). The infantilization of customers, a unchanging feeling of being a four-year-old in shops as well as restaurants, a use attention clinging to coddling a tantrums as well as needs of consumerbabies.

The sheer possibility of it all. This literary repository as well as which one, this code of chips as well as which one, this nation road or which one, this code of boots or which one, this Thai grill or which one, this book or which one; a sensation of stumbling out onto a plain of choices as well as recoiling a bit in startle during a honesty of it, during a thousand burst veins tracing a open landscape, which we could follow to some-more veins as well as some-more veins a single choice replacing an additional as well as an additional as well as an additional as well as starting onwards until we get drunken as well as have to stop, gather your bearings, reason yourself opposite a grind of forward-moving choice-making beings for a moment. America, a land of possibility, of distracting, multiplying, forever divergent opportunities, as well as which have been fake is not for we to know until youve sniffed them out as well as left your trail of cash. The land of trends, fads, novelty, explosive newness (part of a perpetual apparition of kidness) inventing as well as reinventing enterprise with a brand new opportunity (gadget? distraction?) each month.

And also, a United States of America a Beautiful. Of amber waves of grain as well as purple mountains majesty as well as fields of Queen Annes edging in Ohio, of wilderness with a trenchant greens of pines as well as high whites of towering tops as well as heady, tall moraines of soppy yellow grasses! as well as extending elk, of Midwestern hills covered in a wash out of autumn reds, greens, oranges, yellows, flaring as well as fading before winter. Of seasons, forests, as well as lakes, of hikes, trails, as well as cheddar cheese sandwiches in cool groves of dancing light as well as maple leaves.

America a ex-boyfriend, similar to all ex-boyfriends will do, done me a small worried during first.

Oh, we recollect your smells, recollect when we slept with we as well as desired we though really bargain because or what gathering me to it. Oh, we see a me of which time, see my fashion, see my tastes, see my passions, see my surety, as well as oh, we cringe. What we mean to me right away as well as what we meant to me afterwards proceed to hit a carefree ornamented universe of undergrads as well as egghead precociousness (who was which me who used to consider it prohibited to discuss Green Imperialism during 3 a.m.? And how, please, how has she morphed?), a egg whites for breakfast, a laxity with seared placeless places (the sequence coffee shops, a sequence restaurants, a soul-deadened bagel joints full of happy corporate ad campaigns) as well as additionally a spontaneous interaction as well as tie with jumpy as well as alive Kerouacian American spirits, a refreshing vertigo of their freeness, a sense of wild honesty as well as possibilities as well as earnest, wacky, cynical, carefree humor, all of a afterwards as well as right away begins to brew a small as well as it scares me.

I begin to fall in adore with we again no, not woozy in-bed-all-day love, though a arrange of demure as well as captivating adore born of intense laxity as well as a bizarre arrange of love for/gratefulness to we for meaningful me so well, for a actuality which we (at a single time) knew we so well.

And yet, Ive changed on. we left we for a fibre of relations with a outward universe over a past 6 years, as well as a last time we saw you, United States saw we as a boyfriend, which is, as well as not just flirt! ed with a thought of assembly in short visits we was 22, as well as it was 2004. A lot has happened given then.

As Meg as well as we were observant driving a winding roads around Seneca Lake yesterday, a assembly with an ex-boyfriend is an opportunity to measure oneself opposite flitting time as well as a former selves it contains. That confront with we has done me realize which we want to keep we during arms length, United States of America develop a healthy, even insinuate relationship with you, though remain faithful to my dashing, complex, forever erotically appealing foreign lover: a world.