Nowadays we here at the Experiencing Belgium desk are displaced exiled American expats repatriated in another exile of sorts. Trapped in an exile within an exile of Love. In short lost in Plastic-land. Feeling trapped in Ohio with nowhere to go. Temporarily or permanently - who knows - who cares...
I don't mean to feel sorry for myself but there is no one here to listen to my endless rants and raves. When I do find other souls out here I find they have such a short attention span that I spend my time listening to their mental loops turn in ever closer around themselves.
It's not just the oversized Sports Utility Vehicles that I am becoming used to and rather fond it. It's the gas prices for even a 80 Miles to the Gallon Italianate Vespa (motor scooter) that I can't afford. With names like Santa Fe, Tahoe, Durango... I do like those big over sized cars with the names of American towns from way out west - towns that have become cities. Big oversized American cars popular on the roads between Dubai and Sharjah (where gas is cheaper and the currency goes farther around the world that the US dollar goes at present)... I wish I were getting job offers from the UAE because I'd be out of here in a heart beat. Isn't there anyone in Dubai or the UAE or anywhere in the Arabian penninsula or Muslim world who wants a live writer and commentary from abroad?
Here in Plasticville we have sidewalks - except the sidewalks don't take you anywhere but around in circles. One neighborhood of a bedroom community like this one I am in doesn't connect up to the next one over within sight. Even if it did connect that one there would just take you around in circles. Consequently when I walk the streets here in these circles I feel sinister. Like I am casing the joint looking for open garage doors or open front doors. Nevermind that on hot summer nights I sleep on the floor in the main room with both doors of this modern day plastic shotgun shack wide open.
I seem to be caught up in a place great for teaching kids how to walk or learn how to bicycle ride - but once those kids are up on their feet and wheels they have no place within reason to go for the sidewalks and bicycle paths don't go anywhere. I tried riding a bicycle the other day on the short distance I drive to my brothers house and found that the roads out here don't even have enough shoulder to walk on. It seems the drivers find bicyclists to be akin to international terrorists and thus find it a sport to drive bicyclists off the road.
When my father complained to me that I complain alot about the world I live in - meaning the beloved land he is a veteran of foreign wars for - I said well look at it this way dad - being critical of the world we have made is a patriotic thing to do. I believe this. I am not overtly patriotic but I am critical. I might, however, be covertly patriotic though I am not sure. My being critical stems from my belief that the USA is a Democracy and that change is possible. I believe this land and nation are big enough to benefit from my negative observation on the way things here don't work. Whether this is true or not depends on the purse strings of multi-national corporations and the rather warmongering Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower once warned the Americans of - but no one remembers that farewell speech.
So yeah I do think for the moment Ohio and my Fatherland of the USA are lucky to have me here in residence once again. Ohio having suffered a massive brain drain over the years is run by a bunch of idiots. I hope they fear me because I don't fear them but their ignorance is vexing. The Fatherland, well, the USA is my fatherland and as long as it behaves as the worlds Keystone Cops abroad I shall refer to our beloved country as the Fatherland. I am proud to be an American Dissenter in residence in this strange country after an all too short ten year absence. Not every country in the world has citizens allowed to self publish dissent or experiment with the boundaries of freedom of thought and press or decency. I'm not sure if that has ever been true in the land of Uncle Sam - whoever the hell he is - but I ain't behind bars yet for thinking and writing this stuff. But then nobody is reading this either.
Meanwhile Plasticville the dubious condominium place of detached bungalow villas still quickly age. Keep in mind if you go to Google Earth and look at this place it still is a farm field. So these villa-ettes are all new and yet look at how they age. I'd show you but as an unemployed blogger in the midwest I don't have enough money for a digital camera to upload scenes of my life for you. If I did have such a camera and if I could figure out its tiny wicked workings I'd photograph for you how the plastic vinyl siding is beging to warp and woof. How the bolted down decorator "shutters" that don't shut as they don't even have a hinge and if they did they wouldn't be big enough to fasten to each other anyways - well they are beginging to fade and they can't really be painted because they are solid plastic.
I just wish there was an over priced corner store to walk to but there isn't. If there were it would be set behind an overlit parkinglot for cars and everyone would be suspicious of people arriving on foot. This cantonment of containment I call Plastivillette could be anywhere - Russia, Mongolai, Saudia, Iraq - anywhere American Industries work abroad and want to house their employees and their families in a make believe mini-America walled off from the reality outside.
But this is the US and Ohio at that so why do I feel like I am trapped in a Western styled Cantonment for foreign ex-pat employees and their families? Where do you find excersize in these parts without being suspect for walking or riding a bicycle. Why does it seem like if I am outside riding or walking I should be wearing a suburban uniform to inform onlookers that I am making sport. Why don't Americans excersize in their pyjamias.
Then the clothes here in Plasticvillette - Suburban mall clothing variations for a nation at WAR. Camoflage sweatpants for running. Military shorts for walking with useless pockets for war gadgets I don't have. The clothes all look rather casual and strangely militaristic. It's one thing to support guys who have no options in life but to go the military route but it's another to support the corporations making war on nations who would choose to become just another new state if they were at least politely invited. When I look at the young men here in town from the military I envy their physical training and their mental discipline. Back when I was young enough to go that route I thought about the Navy but felt I was too much of a sissy to pull through basic training. Now it would be alot of fun.
For such a nation and such a land of the free we here in Plasticvillette cannot paint our houses pink if we wanted to. We cannot plant trees or garden - much less plant a "Victory" Garden to get by on. We are not free to walk anywhere or bicycle to any place in particular. We are not free from gripping debt, working poverty much less ignorance despite our college loans. We do not have time free for reading a book much less writing one or even blogging. I'm not so sure America is the land of the Free for all the obsessive talk of it or the compulsive flag waving.
Which reminds me I once read a booklet from the 1950's - more an aged and yellowed brittle pamphlete on the proper way to display a flag. The booklet included the proper way to fold a flag - when to hang it out and more importantly when not to hang it. When I see all the plastic flags dotted around Plasticville or on the back of cars I wonder if anyone of these "Patriotic" types ever learned about the rules and obligations about waving around their precious flag. Well it's getting about time in history to change all those white stars in the blue area of the flag to little six pointed stars - If this change were initiated would anyone in these parts notice much less care or get the irony of it?
