Looking South

I'm watching the Democratic National Convention and listening to all the references to the election of 2000.

At that time, we were in the process of moving to the States. In retrospect, I didn't really want to go. Don't know whether it was because I felt comfortable where I was .. in Ottawa, content in my quiet little Canadian existence. Or whether I felt ill winds blowing .. I don't know.

We moved to the mountains of Kentucky right around the time of the election. Barry was already down there when the election happened .. I was still up in the north country packing up our stuff. He was coming back in a week to load up the truck, pack up me and the cats and then be out of here. We were on the phone with each other constantly ... talking about what our new life would look like.

I remember the night of the election .. watching what was happening and feeling more and more like I didn't want to go as the election returns rolled in. And then travelling south down I-81 a week later, thinking .. this place is going crazy. (On top of it all, our car broke down on the highway, leaving us stranded in a hamlet with a gas station, a Burger King and a Best Western for two days while we wondered if we were ever going to get down there. I think I just wanted to turn around and come home).

When we got down there, Barry's co-workers at the Media Arts Centre where he was working said "you sure picked a hell of a time to move down here". And we didn't know the half of it ... the next year, the planes hit the towers, the country prepared for war and I said time to get out of here ...

In some ways I am glad that I spent two years in the States. After all, can we really understand the world without understanding the US of A? No .. but then again, can we really understand the US with all its contradictions, its sense of itself which doesn't match people in other countries' sense of the US? A country that can throw around the word "liberty" and "freedom" yet its actions demonstrate either that they don't know what the words mean .. or that they do and just don't care?

It was time to come home ... I wonder if I'm any wiser from having wrestled with some of the questions about the contradictions I saw. Or whether I'm just confused by it all.