I am sad about the headache that I have. I am meeting D in Claremont in less than an hour though and who knows what fun we'll have! It's nothing really that spectacular spectacular, but it will be a nice break.
This morning I went to Old Town to see Yankee Doodle Dandy. Now, I do not consider myself un-American, but flag waving really at any level makes me uncomfortable. I start to feel a little weird. I do not understand the whole idea of patriotism. I don't think my country is better than any other country, and frankly the whole idea of the nation as the main actor in world politics feels very weird. I don't think that I feel any more connected to someone in Boston than I do to someone in Vancouver. People from Tucson are to me no stranger than people from London. I feel strange making a big show of uniting myself to people in Boston and Tucson instead of people in Vancouver or London. I guess, too, I am not terribly excited about the fact that I live here. Not that I am miserable in any way. I love life and all, but I don't honestly feel that this country is any better than anyone else's, and I think it very strange that a lot of people actually believe this. I am happy to take ownership of people like O'Neill and Albee and Williams and Kushner, but I have just as much respect for people like Lorca and Wilde and Ibsen and Chekhov.
Maybe, too, it has to do with the fact that I have no desire to come to blows (I almost wrote "fisticuffs"... this comes into my head as if it were normal conversation!) about anything. I don't believe in violence. I don't believe in war. I don't believe it profits people much of anything. Now, uprisings against dictatorships and elitist classes and horrible motherfuckers like Saddam Hussein, I am all in favor of. But these are conflicts that come from within as opposed to going somewhere to kill people. This has kind of gone somewhere I didn't mean it to go... what I think I wanted to say was that, though I appreciate George M. Cohan songs like Give My Regards to Broadway and Yankee Doodle Dandy, that song Over There really creeps me out. The idea of selling war to the American public is something I am very much opposed to. Writing a little song so that we can sell war as if it were Fruit Loops is some serious false advertising.
Wahima likes my voice mail message. Yay.
Jill comes home tomorrow for a week. Double Yay.
I don't think Kill Bill, Vol. 2 comes out until 4/16. Sorry, Wa.
Love yourselves.
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