Just More Proof that the Cat Lady in me is Coming Out...

I was sitting in my bedroom the other day when I heard Ian calling for me from across the apartment. He was in the second bathroom, pointing at Clementine's cat dish. He had fed her a few hours earlier, and she had eaten away some of the catfood. This is what remained:I think Clementine is trying to tell us that she forgives us for shoving her in a box and almost killing her by moving across the country.

This Ain't Your Grandma's Kitchen: Peaches, Part II

I spent the better part of my Friday night putting up that flat of peaches that has been gathering dust and fruit flies on my kitchen counter. That's right. I am 23 years old. And I canned on my Friday night. On the plus side, I've now got several quarts of sliced peaches canned in a light syrup, and an equal amount of peach butter (a new discovery, akin to the apple butter I am so fond of) sitting on my shelf, next to the pickles and the apple butter. On the down side, I think I am prematurely turning seventy. Someone get me five more cats, quick--I'm gonna be that woman before you know it. I'm already walking around the house making strange noises and talking to myself. Not to mention that the stack of cans in my kitchen is eerily reminiscent of the amount of food our resident cat lady kept stocked at her home when I was younger...

I am, truly, going stir-crazy. Is this cabin fever? Can you have cabin fever when it's not a blizzard inside, and you are actually able to leave your house if you want to? I have spent nearly this whole month with literally one other person--a good one that I happen to love, yes, but still just one--and it is taking its toll. With school starting this week (and this past week spent in orientation, where I met and actually spoke with people other than Ian) hopefully this will soon change. But I am beginning to realize that this is not easy. Alright, alright, I have been complaining about it for weeks--I've known it wasn't easy from the start. To uproot one's self and just go. You'd think I would be more adept at this, having done it less than a year ago, and that time, all alone. Most people, when I relate to them the difficulties I am having here--not having any friends, not finding Adam's peanut butter in the stores (thank god for online ordering), or discovering through observation and then proving through online research that this state does not have one blackberry that I can pick to put in jam--reply that I had difficulties in France, too, but I got over them eventually, and at least this time I have Ian here with me. And in most respects, that is true. I do have someone here to help me through this. Contrary to last year's experience, though, there is just that one person. I was immediately thrown in with a ragtag group of language assistants last year--people with almost nothing in common but one thing: we were there, alone, but together. And there were many of us. I didn't find myself night after night looking from my computer screen, displaying old episodes of Lost, to the same person's face, and then back to the computer screen. And as pleasant as that one person's face can be, a little variety would be nice. I am yearning for that camaraderie I felt as a language assistant in southern France, that feeling I felt in a crappy college house in Bellingham making latkas in a kitchen whose windows were frozen on the inside. I am tapping my foot, waiting for a time when I can sit in my own office on campus, with my own peers (instead of intruding upon Ian's MA colleagues...) and feel at home.

But I digress. Before you all start writing me off as a lonely spinster (though I suppose keeping Ian around prevents this title from becoming fully relevant, even in my advanced and imposed anti-social state) let me just say: I may be canning on a Friday night, but I am doing my damnedest to keep it young and hip. This is emphatically not your grandmother's kitchen, unless, of course, your grandmother taught you to can with a glass of chianti in hand.

Moving to the Country, Gonna Eat a lot of Peaches

Ahhh, u-pick farms. It is only a matter of time before the man from stuffwhitepeoplelike makes a post about you. I can see it now--how stupid must migrant farm workers think we are? We go to farms and pay to pick fruit and vegetables? You have got to be kidding me.

Fortunately, I've never had any qualms about fitting the bill on that blog so perfectly (alright, alright, it is a bit unsettling how eerily spot-on the author is...) so Ian and I hopped in the car and drove a half an hour out into the sticks, feeling like we were traveling further and further into an actual cow as we went (we're such city folk, I swear) to a place called Butternut Farm, a local farm recommended by Ian's barber.

We gathered a half a bushel (there were bags labeled '1/2 bushel' and 'peck.' I think I'm in heaven!) of Jersey Mac apples, two pints of beautiful blueberries, and an entire flat of peaches. Continuing my Laura-endeavors of the past week, I canned a few jars of apple butter, and I am wracking my brain for ideas for the peaches. Ian refuses to eat this, and since I refuse to eat a whole pie alone, we're kind of at a standstill. I need a city full of friends to coax into eating my baked goods again!

As for the blueberries, I think I'll make a batch of muffins this week (finally! something to put my butter on!), and freeze the rest. And that entire flat of peaches? Perhaps I'll can those as well--I am starting to have a pretty hefty stockpile for when that zombie apocalypse rolls around.

On a (slightly) related note...

When our microwave is finished, rather than flashing "end" or "done" or even "okay", ours, inexplicably, flashes "good."

From Scratch

Today, I am taking it back to the olden days, I am Laura Ingalls Wilder-ing the shit out of my kitchen, I am doing as Grandma would have done. I have six jars of pickles on my counter and a bowl full of home-made butter in the fridge.

I haven't been spending enough time doing things from scratch lately. We haven't been eating prepared foods, God no, but with all this free time on my hands, I should be baking cookies! I should be canning jams! I should be roasting hams and baking bread and learning how to make croissants! I am limited, however, by the fact that after moving across the country, funds are pretty low. And also by the fact that, having no friends, Ian and I would be forced to eat an entire batch of cookies alone. Ian might be up to the challenge, but neither of our metabolisms are.

But with orientation for English 401 (the freshman composition class I am teaching starting in TWO WEEKS) fast approaching, I decided it was time to bust out that flowery apron and get back to work, before all of my time is spent laughing at frat boys that can't write papers.

I spent the morning shaking a jar full of cream, pouring off the excess buttermilk--a bit of a messy process, but definitely worth it; it's probably the best butter I've ever had.

Canning the pickles went smoothly, aside from my inability to find dill head and my lack of jar-lifting tongs (my fingers are still smarting from getting pinched by the regular kitchen tongs I have lying around--I made Ian promise to include canning tongs in whatever birthday present he got me this year). I sent Ian out for some red chili peppers, to add some color to the jars, but none could be found. I think they still look quite pretty, especially with the garlic cloves floating around.


I must have cooking from scratch on the brain, lately (alright, alright, I never really think of much other than cooking things, or eating them...), because I am also reading "The Bread Baker's Apprentice", by Peter Reinhart (a going away present from my lovely, wonderful boss). It is, essentially, the bread baking bible, and I am reading it and learning all about bread and why it does what it does and how it does what it does. The author has spent time in Paris, studying bread with the Parisian greats, and each word in the introduction alone incites longings so powerful for the perfect baguette that I find my fingers twitching over the keys, ready to search for flights back to the land of bread, wine, & cheese--milk & honey be damned! When Ian asked me what I was reading, I told him that it was about learning how to bake bread and live. If this seems to be a bit hyperbolic, listen to this excerpt from the foreword:

When I began writing this book, my working title was Deconstructing Bread. It is a cute phrase but, as any philosophy student knows, true deconstructionism is a rather austere course. It means stripping away romance and myth and looking at the thing itself, without preconceived biases and notions. As anyone who has read my previous work knows, I am not a deconstructionist. I love myth and romance and, in fact, think bread is the perfect mythic symbol to explain the meaning of life.

When I read that piece to Ian, he reminded me that in the Lord of the Rings (yeah, we make nerdy references to each other. What up?) Gandalf marked Gollum's transformation from something human into something animal as the moment he forgot the smell of bread. I haven't actually made it to a recipe yet--I'm much too busy learning about the art and craft, and how important bread is to life--but when I do I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I am still looking for something delicious to put my butter on. I'm thinking blueberry muffins, but only if I can convince Ian to go to a pick-your-own farm with me this weekend.

I wonder if this is why America has an obesity problem?

Recently, as I was feeding Clementine one evening (no doubt on a break from our marathon viewing of Lost), I was reminded of the time a few years ago, when we realized our cat was more than slightly chubby. I believe it was a visit to the vet that brought it on. They told Ian, gently, that Clementine was just a smidge overweight. We could probably stand to put her on indoor-formula, diet cat food.

When we got her home, we did some online research (cheers, wikipedia) and calculated the amount of food a cat Clementine's age and weight should need. It turns out that we were feeding her FOUR TIMES as much as we should have been, daily. FOUR. Good lord, no wonder she gained so much weight.

Since then, we've kept her on the diet formula cat food, fed her the correct amount (just a simple division BY FOUR) and try to get her to run around the apartment as much as we can. Unfortunately, the fat sacks have remained. If this is how the rest of America deals with portion sizes, no wonder we have a weight problem.

Shipping Up...er, down...to Boston

Having learned through the grapevine that our friend Seamus' girlfriend, Emily, was visiting friends in Boston a mere hour and a half's drive away from us, we decided to take a little roadtrip yesterday. The plan was to drive out to Walden Pond, to live simply, to go confidently in the direction of our dreams! Mostly just to go for a swim and escape this 90 degree weather coupled with heinous humidity...

It turns out, unfortunately, that the Walden Pond park only allows a certain number of people at once, and only at certain times of the day--one of which we had just missed. We had to live more complicatedly, after that.

Not really, though. We lunched with Emily and some of her friends, and some of their friends, at an amazing Indian restaurant called Mela in the "trendy West End," as they called it. The food was delicious--probably the only buffet-style restaurant where the food was actually quality. Afterward, the group split up and we walked around Boston for a while with Emily, Armando, and Brian. We took the metro to the wharf, and saw the Old State House (where the Declaration of Independence was first read to Bostonians) and generally enjoyed the old architecture and non-grid format of the streets. Hopping on a ferry, we traveled 20 minutes to Spectacle Island in the harbour (ha-bah, if you're from Boston). It's now a national park, but it used to be a garbage dump! There's a really cool mural made of sea glass that was from the dump--did you know Noxema used to come in a blue glass jar? Mostly we just swam in the waters, though, and then laid in the sun and took pictures of the Boston skyline:
After taking the ferry back to Boston, it was already pretty late and Ian and I both had job interviews this morning. We headed back to New Hampshire, which felt sad. After spending the entire day in the company of others in a big city, it felt odd to head home to an empty apartment in a town a third the size of Bellingham. In the car ride home, I told Ian that I had had a good time that day, that, in the words of Luna Lovegood in the 5th Harry Potter, "it was like having friends." I can't wait for school to start!

On a happier note, I've finally uploaded some photos--I've been deleting old Europe albums to make room on my Picasa account. Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/ashley.j.benson

A Man's Heart is Stonier by Fa-ah....

I had no idea how perfectly those iconic images of old cemeteries--with thin gravestones falling over and half-broken, covered in moss and unreadable--actually captured a New England cemetery. We visited the Portsmouth cemetery on Saturday, and although I am not sure of the exact date the cemetery was created (there was a distinct lack of informational signage in the graveyard. I feel like there ought to be informational signage everywhere in this area of the country--everything is so old!), there were graves there from the 17th century. Most of the headstones that were obviously older were too worn to decipher, but on a few we could make out names, dates of birth and death, and epitaphs. Despite the dated headstones, the cemetery wasn't really that much cooler than the Bay View cemetery in Bellingham--only one angel statue, and her eyes didn't even follow you as you passed by.

I am learning to play guitar...

Since I missed that awkward emo stage in high school where I should have had bangs and played guitar, here is a fret picture of me.

It is more than slightly possible that I am playing the riff from Blink-182's Dammit. Ian says I was born to be a lead guitarist. ROCK ON.

The Ocean Breathes Salty

I found the Atlantic Ocean today. Unfortunately, so did thousands of other people. The nice sandy beaches in the Hamptons (I actually went to the Hamptons. Eee!) were literally covered in pasty and not-so-pasty American bodies and beach umbrellas (who uses beach umbrellas? apparently everyone on the East Coast) and so Ian and I headed a bit further north up the coastal highway to some rockier, less-populated beaches. Here is what I found:
It's funny to see the Atlantic from this side of it--I've never been in American Atlantic waters. The water was fairly warm, actually, but full of seaweed. It also tasted saltier than any ocean I'd ever been in before, but it's possible I am imagining that.

On the drive there, we stopped at a beachside food shack, adveritising the best lobster rolls in New Hampshire. I'd been wanting one since we came here and saw lobsters EVERYWHERE, and we sat at a picnic table in the sun to eat. It was delicious, and HUGE. Unfortunately, it contained mayonnaise, and I was unable to share it with my partner in crime. I think I threw away about $7 worth of lobster today.

The Sound of Settling

Here is the couch I purchased in Massachusetts:
It's red and there are small flowers all over it that have blue centers, and it's worn but not by me. I'm afraid that the upholstery is going to wear through before I can afford to fix it. I'd like to get to wing-back chairs to go along with it, but Ian maintains that they are uncomfortable.

We've been driving a lot lately. I think that it feels weird to be off the road, but also there's just so much here that we've never seen before. We try to take the small state routes--the freeways are almost entirely toll roads here, anyway--that take us through the countryside, past colonial houses and farm estates. I see so much that I want to stop at--thrift stores, family-run farms, The Big Dipper lobster shack--and begin to feel slightly overwhelmed before I realize that the thrift store on the way to Maine probably isn't going out of business just yet, that I'll be here a while. And then I feel a bit more overwhelmed about that. Two years is a lifetime. Ian's unborn niece will be a toddler before we can even possibly move home.

I'm waiting for the weather to turn, and for fall to come. Summer's been over for me for a few weeks now, but this weather keeps holding on. I settle better during the fall, when it's not too hot to can apple butter, to make pickles and bread, to bake pies and drink tea, to do homework and write papers. Fall is a better season for changes like this.

Making Chicken Noodle Soup in New Hampshire

This is what happens when you make chicken soup in a foreign state, with alphabet noodles purchased in Bellingham.

First Impressions

I awoke this morning to pounding rain and thunderclaps. Torrents upon torrents of rain, beating down on my deck, on the pavement, on the roof. I was reminded of the essay by Tom Robbins that he wrote as a response to the question "Why do you Live Where you Live?" posed by some journalist or another. Robbins has a home in La Conner, Washington, deep in the Skagit Valley, and has lived in the Seattle area since 1962. The piece about living in the Northwest is beautiful, and if I can find "Wild Ducks Flying Backwards," his short works anthology, somewhere in the SIX boxes of books I have yet to unpack, I'll include an excerpt. The last page or two of the essay deals with, of course, the rain. Robbins is "here for the rain". Or there for the rain, I suppose, as I am no longer 'here' but 'there'. The downpour this morning, fierce and fast, reminded me of home. As much as those grey days can get monotonous, it doesn't feel right without them--the rain in Perpignan this past year was a welcome respite from sunny day after beautiful sunny day. But the rain here is different. After a ferocious thirty minute downpour the rain stopped, the thunder rolled off into the distance, the clouds parted. And less than three hours later the sun is trying to come out from behind the clouds, and it's 76 degrees out. Yesterday was 90 and the humidity level was at 65%, if I'm not mistaken. But the sun was out. I told Ian that I needed a linen pantsuit. And that we should go to a clambake. I can't wrap my head around these weather patterns.

Most of my complaints about this state surround food. There is no Tillamook dairy, which means no Tillamook cheddar, no Tillamook yoghurt, no Tillamook ice cream. I didn't realize how much money I gave to the Tillamook dairy. My options for yoghurt include Yoplait or store brand. My option for cheese? Far worse--I can buy store brand (not terrible, although with very little flavor) or Kraft. Kraft cheese. Our neighbor is Vermont (the Great State of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!!!) and you give me Kraft? You have got to be kidding me. Where are the local dairies? Where's the quality? Where oh where is the beloved cheese counter at the beloved community food co-op? 'Good' coffee in this area is much, much worse than the Starbucks people at home insist upon loving. Good coffee here is a cuppa joe from DUNKIN' DONUTS. Holy hell. I'm doomed. Good thing I've got an espresso machine of my own. And it doesn't end there. They. Don't. Have. Adam's. Peanut butter. This is the worst--an insult to my taste buds, to my sensibilities. Back home, you all better be working on a rotating care package schedule, just for peanut butter. The situation is almost as dire as that in France. Eep!

Aside from my food-related woes, New England is alright. I'm certainly not in Kansas anymore. My foreign disconnect from this area of the country hasn't diminished much--I still feel like I am very much in New England and not in America. The houses, the architecture, the public's demeanor, all seem incredibly Old World (as much as England, I suppose, can be considered Old World. But you get the idea). Ian keeps repeating that these people take themselves so seriously, and although I don't think that quite captures the entirety of this place, it is a start. New Englanders don't have that earnestness that I think characterizes the rest of America; they display a reservation that I have really only seen in the English friends I made this past year abroad (don't worry girls, I still love you!). But for all the separation I find between 'New England' and 'America', everywhere I look are signs that scream "THIS IS AMERICA". Almost every house and apartment we pass has an American flag out front, and many also have red-white-and-blue patterned bunting. Front doors are adorned with patriotic stars and iron eagles, and banners everywhere proclaim connections to America's foundation (See Dover, NH as Abraham Lincoln saw it in the 1860s!!!). After all, this is where America began, this is where America was established. It feels strange to me, then, that America seems so much more 'established' the further west you travel.

The past few days since arriving in Dover (founded in 1623!) have been spent in a haze of unpacking, of searching for furniture, and of familiarizing ourselves with this strange land. Thank god for google maps. We went to Massachusetts for a couch, Maine for a television, and have seen a fair amount of south-eastern New Hampshire in the process. We've visited the campus of UNH, found the English department and the financial aid office, as well as some cafes and food markets. We passed by Greek row, and saw two frat boys in fedoras drinking beers on the front steps at noon. Future students? Perhaps. My UNH i.d. shows a very confused looking girl with a side ponytail. I live in Dover, New Hampshire, I am getting my masters in English and I will start teaching college courses in three weeks.

As a last thought, since I am so homesick, I managed to dig up "Wild Ducks Flying Backwards." Alright, alright, I'll be honest, it was sitting RIGHT on top of one of the book boxes. Here is what Tom Robbins says about the rain in the Pacific Northwest:

The rains will steal down from the Sasquatch slopes. They will rise with the geese from the marshes and sloughs. Rain will fall in sweeps, it will fall in drones, it will fall in cascades of cheap Zen jewelry.

And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, redrawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea and quicksilver.

And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast.

Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disguising intentions and golden arches. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of the beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals.

And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world.

Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes, and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from the desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs.

And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world.

Yes, I'm here for the weather. And when I'm lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud, a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage beneath my skull, I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE. AND HE WAS GLAD!

Here I Go Again

Day One:

By the time we had reached Vantage, I felt I had already experienced --and felt a profound appreciation for--the vastness of our country.

*

There's nothing in Montana but tree after perfect tree and fascinating little curio shops like 50,000 Silver Dollars. I think this is America. That and the overweight woman riding a large ATV on a state highway. In a tank top.

*

Aside from my year abroad, I have never been further east than I am at this moment.

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America has wide open skies and houses made of wood and mile after mile to separate everyone from each other.

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I think my cat almost died in the mountainous region between Montana and Idaho today. Ian and I pried her mouth open to upturn capfuls of water into her throat.

*

It's strange to have the sun setting at our backs--stranger still to think how long it will be before I see the sunset over water--though Montana at sunset is as golden as Kili said it would be.


I'm reading Fitzgerald and consequently the thoughts I'm forming for this blog are uncharacteristically grand--elevated diction and complex syntax I usually reserve for my role in academia--too formal for an internet post. I'm feeling melancholy, not sad. Never have I read more beautiful prose.

*

It's strange to me that most of the rest of America has large stretches of nothing--farmland, forests, prairie--in between cities. Even along the interstate, we travel for miles and miles without seeing a house, a fence, a light. I'm accustomed to the I-5 corridor of city after city, suburb after suburb. I'm not sure which America I prefer. I have guilt about loving urban sprawl, but all this emptiness makes me feel tiny in comparison.

Day 2:

I don't particularly know where people in middle America, in these tiny homes dotting the landscape, buy their groceries.

*

After checking out of the Sky Motel in Drummond, Montana (home of the Trojans) we went into the gas station. Everyone knew each other by first name. I know this is normal, and I must seem snobbishly city to point it out, but I haven't been around small town culture since I was 7 years old.

*

Montana by Rocky Votolato came on the ipod shuffle around mile marker 195 on I-90 in Montana. I felt like posting the occurrence on www.mlia.com

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I think the Decembrists provide a perfect soundtrack for driving across America.

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Today there are clouds in the sky, and God rays have constantly been shining down on Montana all morning. For some reason, the God Bless America signage seems quaintly appropriate here, in a way that I can only pretend to understand in a more than ironic fashion.

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I'm trying really hard to understand America. I wonder if I'm doing a great job.

*

I feel inadequate and idealistic trying to force meaning on this drive, though it's still true that I am on the road in some vague Kerouacian way, sans drugs and alcohol. I've always disdained the young twenty-somethings that travel abroad, or at home, and do a lot of thinking and philosophizing and soul-searching. But I don't know when I'll ever understand America or be able to explain its essence and appeal to foreigners if I don't try now. I can't imagine I'll have much opportunity to drive across the whole country this way again.

*

I liked the gas station clerk in Billings, Montana who seemed puzzled when I told him I didn't need a bag and started shoving snacks and bottles into my reusable-stuffs-in-my-purse pig bag.

*

Everyone is nice in Montana, except to us. I'm not entirely sure what it is about us that screams "not-from-around-here" or why that allows for shortness. I guess everyone just already knows everyone.

*

Knowing that the Great Wide Ocean isn't at my back, and is in fact many, many hours away gives me claustrophobia. Perhaps it isn't claustrophobia, because we are pointed at a giant, expansive stretch of land, but the Great Plains have got nothing on the Pacific. I've spent nearly all my years that I can remember hemmed in by towering mountains, facing stretches of water with no end. I don't know how everyone in middle America manages not to choke on all this land on all sides.

*

We stopped to gas up at a little town just inside Wyoming, where two Washingtonian hippies (also filling their Nalgenes up at the soda fountain) asked us if we were heading home, and where I laughed before answering the clerk when he asked where we were headed.

*

Wyoming is further west than Washington State, by far.

*

I am in the American West, yet I still insist on calling this "middle America". Is it ignorance or pretension that causes me to think that any part of America that isn't coastline, any part in the middle of America, is middle America?

Day 3:

South Dakota is flat and has absolutely nothing to block out the sun.

*

I have seen probably a thousand motorcycles between yesterday and today, as our time in South Dakota coincides with Sturgis, the annual Harley Davidson festival/rally/conference. Attendance at the events in 2000 was estimated at 3/4 of a million people. This morning, two Harley guys helped us get the car & trailer out of a tight spot in the Days Inn parking lot. I'm not entirely sure if it's because they were afraid we'd harm their bikes, because I'm a cutie with curls like a cherubim, or because they're just genuinely nice people. I myself believe that are gnarly Harley riders are secretly softies at heart.



About a quarter of the way through South Dakota is a little town called Wall, where a mysticism and legend to rival that of King Arthur has grown up around Wall Drug--a tourist shop/restaurant/pharmacy/museum/miracle that provides the one interesting feature in South Dakota's otherwise bland, flat landscape. Wall Drug deserves a good hour or two of research on the interweb to fully understand it. The doughnuts were divine (ta, Brandi), the 5 cent coffee bearable, and the ice water as free as it ever was. I've never felt more American, I think. Although Ian's purchase of the 2009 Sturgis Rally American Lager does rival the feeling.

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The problem with this state, as Ian put it, is that it has far too much sky.

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Somewhere in South Dakota I realized why there were so many taxidermy shops littering the countryside. I was under the impression originally that everyone in the area stuffed their pets after death. And then I saw the amazing amount of deer and buffalo and other game stuffed and mounted on the walls at Wall Drug. It's for hunting. Oh America.

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There's so much corn in Minnesota that I wonder how Americans eat anything but corn, how grocery store shelves aren't just stocked floor to ceiling with ear after ear of sweet, homegrown corn.

Day 4:

The God rays in Minnesota shining over America's bread basket over its fruited plains, put Montana's to shame. The people here are so heartbreakingly nice, so friendly and welcoming, that I'd be tempted to stay awhile, if it weren't for the billboards asking what is at the Center of my education (with a cross standing in as the 't' in center) and reminding me that my aborted fetus, where I to have one, had fingernails seven months before it would have been born.

*

My prose is lacking. I need to start another Fitzgerald novel. Stat. Fitzgerald never would have said stat.

*

There was a documentary made a few years ago about primary schools in China--I can't remember the title . Every year in primary schools, the teacher selects a class leader of sorts. But this particular year, in this particular class, the teacher introduced a little thing called democracy. But as I snapped a photo of Minnesotan God rays shining down on a cornfield with an American flag in the foreground, I wasn't thinking of the class' democracy experiment. I was thinking of the footage of the Chinese children standing, reciting songs and national anthems together, stepping in time. It was eerie, just the kind of anti-communist propaganda that HUAC needed to terrify the American public in the 50s. And then I made the connection. We do that. We stand together as elementary students and chant words in unison about our country and our love for it. In expecting our children to commit the Pledge of Allegiance to memory, our schools are producing a nation of factory-stamped patriots, just as China is. No wonder the English I met this year found it hilarious and weird when they had me recite the Pledge of Allegiance. What a funny country I live in.

*

The Mississippi lies between the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin (MN forms MIMAL's hat, in case anyone learned that mnemonic device). There was a trail leading down to the eastern river bank, and I stuck my pointer finger into the water. It's not as large and impressive up here as it is down south, where Huck Finn used to float, but I find it amazing that someday the water I touched will travel all the way south through America, out the Mississippi Delta, and into the Gulf of Mexico. In the middle of this country, it feels like it never ends.

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We're driving towards Madison, Wisconsin, and I can't get that Kimya Dawson song from the Juno soundtrack out of my head. It's beautiful here: there's so much water and large trees,and cheese, and I'd love to spend some time here on a giant tire swing.

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After paying the toll to enter Illinois, we put on Sufjan Stevens' album for the state, and I wished it were night time. The album felt fitting immediately, and I saw a fully-grown sunflower that had pushed out of the rocks by the side of I-90.

*

Passing through Chicago was not the first time I wished that I was born near the turn of the 20th century, and turned up my coat collar to the wind in Chicago in December, at a time of gangsters & bank robberies, good music and insert-nationality-here-Americans. The brick buildings make me nostalgic for a time period I never witnessed.

*

Five minutes in Indiana were enough for me to decide I hate it here. It may have something to do with the factory smell and the haze in the air or the fact that I have had to pee since before we started Chicago's traffic and the next exit with services isn't for 15 miles, or that I-90 is a toll road all the way through, but this is a state the Union could do without.

*

There was a Confederate flag hanging in a gas station off I-90 in Indiana today. I was loathe to give them my money, but the needle on the gas gauge was pointing dangerously close to E.

Day 5:

The midwest makes me profoundly sad, I think because it betrays that so much of America is not the prosperous country it claims to be. We stayed in a seedy Motel 6 just outside of Toledo, Ohio, and at each turn we were confronted with something more and more depressingly American: the surly clerk at the Motel 6, who only brightened into some form of customer service once she made a mistake, the tired and bland "Big Boy" restaurant staffed entirely by 40-60 year olds, the overweight and overloud families that ate there, the two mini-golf places less than a minute's drive away from each other. But with poverty and destitution everywhere in this world--the very least degree of which can be found in the U.S.--I feel guilty bemoaning the plight of America's once-prosperous breakbasket. Perhaps it's because in the gradual shift from America as a country rich in production to America as a country rich in...fact?...it isn't the factory owners who have suffered--it's the 50 year old man whose only employment option is a Big Boy restaurant in Maumee, Ohio. In any case, as we drive along this piece of shite tollway in Northern Ohio, I can't get the image of a homely and matronly housewife gone slightly to seed out of my head.

*

Cleveland was just as nice as Liz Lemon made it out to be.

*

At the subway in Pennsylvania, if you buy the double meat, you get a free cookie. This is America.

*

We crossed into New York just after midday. I-90 traverses the Northern half of the state, bisecting upstate forests and wineries. It's beautiful here, and I can't quite believe that less than 500 miles away from these vineyards lies a giant, bustling city. America, like Libya, is a land of contrast.

*

Somewhere in upstate New York we stopped at a Travel Plaza--a sort of 'get everything' stop off the toll highway that leads to nothing else--just the shops, bathrooms, and gas station (similar to an aire in France). Walking into the building, I felt immediately, and perhaps unnecessarily, out of place. Actually, 'out of place' is not how I formed the thought. I believe I said I felt 'West Coast'. What am I doing here, in the east, so far away from home? I don't know how to integrate myself into East Coast culture, that clashes so immediately with that of the West Coast. And what about me could possibly be so different from these people that I feel at odds in upstate New York--an area that, admittedly, is still quite 'country' (I am smelling manure and staring at corn as I write this)? How will I feel in an East Coast city? I'm reminded of that bit of graffiti I found in my lycee in Perpignan, scrawled in cursive on the hallway wall: "I'm Westside anyway, nigga!" I feel as incongruous here as that graffiti was in France. I might as well twist my two middle fingers together and throw 'westside' where ever I go.


*

Through the few thousand miles we have driven, in each of the dozen-odd states we've driven through, there has been something in it that I have identified as intensely American--something I could identify objectively as American because I was a newcomer to the state, but I could identify with, in a very subjective manner, because it exemplified America, and as much as I love French wine and wearing heels to the grocery store, I am, unavoidable, so American. What surprises me--the further we get into New York and the more I think about it--is how foreign I feel in New York, this most American of all states. To many foreigners, New York is America. But this doesn't feel like America to me. And it isn't just when I come into contact with the people here. Driving through New York feels, inexplicably (or perhaps quite explicably, as this is New England, and is some of the earliest settled land when America was colonized) like Europe. It's something in the juxtaposition of trees and civilization, something in the layout of the farms. We aren't anywhere near the West anymore.

Day 6:

The forests here are deciduous. Deciduous!

*

We're shipping up to Boston today, and then on past that to Dover. We've spent most of our time in Massachusetts in the dark, looking for a hotel room that took over two hours to find in the sparsely populated wooded western half of the state. We did see two spectres in a parking lot last night--tall waif-like blond women pouring over a Blackberry: the East Coast wealthy stereotype. Throughout this trip I've been taking snapshots of scenes and images that I find capture America. I don't think I've taken a photo since Ohio. To me this seems more New England and less America. The custodial staff at the hotel were low-paid white people, the customer service here is more of the French persuasion, and post-vocalic R's are being dropped right and left. But I'll find America here--it may just take longer, the Americanness may be a little less obvious. Take the highway signs; in Washington State they portray a silhouette of George Washington's head. In Massachusetts? A pilgrim's hat.