government

I will do nothing

Today is USAmerican Independence Day, and I will do nothing, in deliberate protest. Will anyone even notice? I’m no longer convinced people in the world care about or have even heard of the United States. Justice Kennedy is retiring and President Trump has the opportunity to appoint yet another Supreme Court justice, and I don’t know anyone here to talk about it with, anyone who wouldn’t stare at my mouth as the sounds came out, both of us considering a question of reality and/or having gotten it wrong. I want to put quotation marks around all of these proper nouns, which are something people made up and getting a little fuzzy around the edges in my mind.

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the ways of the point of origin

For la cena today we had omelets from the eggs I had collected and potatoes I had fried, thinking of the Spanish speakers I’ve been close with heretofore, almost all of them standing over hot oil in New York City like now I do in rural Spain.

Patatas, my hosts here said while we ate and I played point-to-a-new-vocabulary-word. “Papas” is strictly American — North, Central, South — they said, as is “con gusto.”

I find myself feeling some loyalty to the Spanish — Mexican — Ecuadoran — Salvadoran — I’ve learned from coworkers back home, resistance to inculcation in the ways of the point of origin. Not my king, I want to say. 

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