September 29, 2009

While we've been hunting down the American Dream, America has been dreaming us. America dreams of itself: of it's land and those who inhabit the land. America is oblivious to the idea of itself as a nation-state. It does not care if the people who live inside of it are real Americans or not, it does not judge us on the merits that we judge ourselves.
America dreams in train whistles, in high school gymnasiums, in deep lakes, and in road side graveyards. America dreams in county fairs and in bus stops; in backyards and bodegas. America dreams in groundhogs and buffalo; in cornstalks and apple orchards.
And it breathes out and rolls over, like Kerouac said, across the great prairies to the mountains that border them and then it stretches out to the ocean beyond. America dreams of people on a shore line, some stepping into the water, some retreating back; the tide of humanity that is shaped by her pull- forever changing, surging out and back.