america

I am gearing up to go across the country...and it has me thinking about my American heritage. The scope of the states is overwhelming if seriously contemplated. It also made me realize how foreign my own nation is to me. I am going on a short, short when realized how far I am going compared to the entire country, trip to help a pal move out to med. school in Philadelphia. I have this glorified vision of giant golden fields (probably attributed to reading Kerouac) and ancient weeping willows in the Bayou (probably stemming from Huck Finn). The landscape could very well represent the country itself and its complexities and scope. I feel that it would take a lifetime to comfortably grasp this country's historical wealth even though its age is equivalent to a teenager comparing to the rest of the world...

Anyways, I am excited to see some of my foreign home. I plan to party in Austin, listen to some Jazz in New Orleans, sit on a plantation porch sipping iced tea in Alabama, wonder at the Spanish Moss in Savannah, dance the Charleston in Charleston, and hopefully "find myself" as so many of my favorite literary characters have done while exploring America.
So here is a pondering thought belonging to Huck Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which I remember most vividly. Huck and Jim are on the raft floating down the river. This is the sense of calm mixed with adventure I hope to feel hangin in the Bayou...

"The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me."