#106

Immigrant shit is weird; to be constantly discussed in the abstract is psychically pervasive and usually alienating. I mean, it's on all the paperwork. I am, and I promise you I am not alone in this, extremely aware that I am an alien, although it is a piece of information that I could always choose to keep secret. I have absolutely no accent and hell, I've been naturalized for a decade. I attended three nonconsecutive years of elementary school and all of  middle and high school in the town I live in now, where I've spent most of my adult life in the culinary and automotive job economies. I been all over this land and I been to some far-out places on this globe, and my position is this: U.S.A. all the way, we do some very fucked up shit and we are wrong wrong wrong a lot on a lot of stuff but this is the best country in the world and that's final. Venezuela was fucked up yesterday and it'll be fucked up tomorrow no matter who sends how many troops where or who stole what vs. who gets to steal the next round or which lobster with its claws rubber-banded shut is "president".

Basically, you couldn't get me to leave the U.S., I don't care how that sounds, it's true of everyone who lives here whether they admit it or not, and if it isn't, they either have the privilege to leave or they don't comprehend in the slightest how lucky they are to lack privilege in the most privileged nation on earth. 

Native soil is a complex idea with complex feelings attached, native soil is in the blood and in the heart and in the outlook, I'd never deny it. Nevertheless, I swore an oath, and I meant it with every fiber of my being. I'm an American that was born in Venezuela. I took advantage of an opportunity and came on over, working hard to capitalize on it. From the Bering land bridge to today, that is how it has been done. Fucked up shit happened every step of the way because people are fucked up, and glorious beautiful fantastic miraculous shit happened every step of the way because people are all those things and even more, too. 

It is all just stories. Inheritance is inheritance. How will you deal with your inheritance in order to write your story? All you can do is make choices. 

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So, Venezuela? Fuckin' whatever! I would see it depeopled and given back to nonhuman nature, like the rest of the planet. I want to die in the woods, ascending in the certainty that all around me, the earth is sighing as it is relieved of a terrible burden.

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It'd be cool if Olympic medals were presented with great hearty cheer but perhaps too literal of a turn of phrase. "Here's your gold prize for doing the longest jump! You're the best jumper at jumping far! Hurray! Best jumper award, right round your neck! Yeah!"


--JL