the one thing that bothered me throughout my flight to the US was that i seemed to have no sense of wonderment. no such feeling of "wow, i'm finally going there". not even the mandatory excitement about seeing a new country. the time hasn't come for me to talk about hindsight, so i don't really know how to look at the way that i was feeling. even now this country doesn't seem to have anything new about it. or is there so much of newness that the whole effect is paling on me? or am i too much of a cynic? what is it? why do i not have the wide-eyed look about me? so truly what is new about here? a lot is. the people are. the way things are done. but not new anough? is that my problem? or it is because i have dad with me that i'm till not seeing it as a whole new place?
whatever be the answers, i remain puzzled. i agree i'm a tad too cynical too really appreciate everything here. the one thing that did interest me was when i heard americans talk about their institutions, their politics. that had an aura of strangeness about it. not something that i know or something i can enter as an insider. the thing is that i am conscious of not being an insider. in fact i perhaps subconsciously maintain my status of an outsider. but there are time when i do it so regularly that i do not have the feeling of looking in. i am habituated to the things around me without knowing them. i expect things to work or happen the way they do without really knowing or asking how or why. this creates a curious dichotomy that sadly is my life and outlook. i am inbetween looking at things as though that is how they always have been and should be, and constantly knowing that at some very fundamental level they are different. i have not dropped the us/them binary and i see no reason as to why i should. see, that is what i mean by consciously or subconsciously being an outsider. i think much as i dont like that fact, i actually don't mind being the "other".
this has been one of the very confusing posts. though, paradoxically, i actually did have something concrete to say...shite!