In late September, I posted the first of my American Stoats series, here. Now, it appears, I am posting the second. I've also recently uploaded some photographs I took in America during the same trip on which I made these notes. I mean, stoats. I might put more photos in the same album later. And now, here is American Stoats, Part Two. Sorry if it's a bit cringey (for god's sake, you should be used to that by now), but it was written in a diary sort of way, after all:
8th Sept, 2008
Sitting at a table in Midway Airport, Chicago. I've just been looking in the bookshop here. We're used to thinking of Britain as Americanised, but when you come to America you realise what that really means. The '-ised' part indicates that we are not quite America yet. Ann Coulter. Eat This, Not That, Deepak Chopra's Life After Death etc. etc. It's snake oil, all snake oil.
Of course, America is also a country of considerable beauty. At about 6.30AM I was at Roosevelt Station where I was about to change to the Orange Line train. I turned and saw, between skyscrapers, beyond the road on which early cars drove with lights on, an incredible sunrise like a bugle blast.
The train arrived and I took my seat. Through the window opposite was visible something huge and – to me – nameless. A hut of some kind sat in the middle of a great metal bridge suspended between two giant poles. I had no idea what this construction was for, and I was not quick enough to take a photograph, as I had of the sunrise. Strangely impressed, I did not continue reading The Member of the Wedding, but gazed from the window. Perhaps it is inevitable that a visitor to a country, knowing it more through hearsay than experience, will frame even very fresh and bold impressions in terms of cliches. Seeing rail-coaches at the sides of the tracks, I thought of pioneers and the pioneering spirit. Again – this is a recurring impression – everything seems to be about size and expansion. It occured to me that, if one uses the word in a loose sense, America is a very romantic country. Place names in America seem made for songs, as if by someone dreaming of some place further west, or possibly of their old home deep in the South. Even the telegraph poles seemed to catch the rays of the rising sun as if inviting you to dream of the next town and the next town. But what do you do when you actually get to the next town? It's not unusual for human beings around the world, wherever they are, to dream of elsewhere. But when they get to that elsewhere, it is usually only someone else's normality, where other everyday people dream of other elsewheres.
For the English, I think, to dream of England is to dream of the past – And did those feet in ancient time?… – which is, I suppose, one safe way of keeping dreams intact. But what about Americans, who have, presumably, already arrived in America. Is this all just everyday life? Presumably it is, to a great extent. And yet, I have a sense that, where England is no longer a promise to the English, but a memory, for Americans, America is still something promised. Why else do so many company names here needlessly incorporate the word 'America' – 'American Matress' sticks in my mind – if not as some kind of promise? Do Americans need to be reminded they are in America? Is America elsewhere for Americans too?
