My last night stateside. Dinner with my parents. Gorged on tamales, chili relleno, rice, beans, green chili. Collectively we drank two bottles of California wine: both Zinfandels, the quintessential American grape.
I've been sating, in my last couple of weeks here, a preemptive craving for Americana.
Ultimately, it's impossible to divine what one will miss. We can take our best guess. Mine? Hatch chili (just in season this glorious month, for those of you unhappily not situated in the American southwest), my darlings (of which I am already missing my Bay Area contingent sorely), fluency - even modest expertise, if I'm generous to myself - in the language.
But it's said that once we are abroad, we discover our national identity and where we fit in. And in my last few days, after a long stint of Francomania, I have switched to steeping myself in my own culture. America, with all of its ugliness and frankness and friendliness, its overbearing Christianity and its paternalism. And most of all, its passion: monstrous, indomitable, dogged, gorgeous. Guess I'll be asked to answer for it.
In homelier thoughts:
I leave tomorrow morning - not dreadfully early - and arrive at 6:40 am at CDG on the 14th. I have an abysmally long list of things to get done once I get there (most of them in French, which is terrifying) but I have a feeling I'll spend most of the day trying not to sleep - halfway through which I'll succumb to my body.
Keep up on the grèves over the raised retirement age in the news. I'll be reporting during the next couple of weeks on the theater.
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