Back in the US of A

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Originally uploaded by club_rock_it.

I love America. Americans are so imperfect and so perfectly open, and straightforward, and mean, and perfectly flawed. They suspect each other, and insult strangers, and share intimate details of their lives and their children's lives with perfect strangers on public transportation.
Though it would probably make me more glamourous and instrinsically cooler, I wouldn't want to be anything but an American. I have the burden of being the newest scapegoat (and deservedly so) in a world that has always made mistakes and talked too loud in public and enslaved other peoples. Americans are like children or perhaps young teenagers; embarassingly cocksure, beautifully innocent, endearingly enthusiastic, rebellious, and bumbling.
I am one of them. Our wisdom is tied up in our innocence and in our diversity. Our wisdom is hard to see, but it is there, because we are all trying to live together here, and get along, and keep ourselves happy.
I return from far away to the familiar feelings of very real joy (at the profusion of music playing everywhere, the familiar faces on the streets) and very real fear (on the rainy streets at night, in parking lots, gas-station bathrooms). Emotions are unfiltered, and everyone is grasping the end of their very own frayed and taut rope.

(Above is a picture of my brother dancing at his club, dressed like a drunken banquet waiter. It has nothing to do with the above opinions and thoughts, except that he is part of what makes this country so awesome, so beautiful, so rocknroll.)