Last night, I could not sleep. Perhaps that liter of diet coke I drank at seven in the evening wasn't a great idea. Anyway, when I woke up my bed was surrounded by the carnage of a night without sleep - six or seven books, all of which I'd read one page before abandoning them and turning off the lights again, were lying face down on the ground.

Oh, I read some really offensively bad scholarly writing last night but I forgot the volume in my room, so I can't share. It was the sort of writing that strikes me as inelegant, anyway - the kinda stuff where they spell things like "mis-take" for emphasis. And it was talking about America in very highly anthropomorphized terms - America loves to reflect back on itself in mythic and violent terms, etc. It painted America as a consumer and purveyor of (what it seemed to think was) trashy, glittery, Vegas-style junk. More than this, too - the glamour was violent, the dreams all sort of sinister.

It was offensive, not (just?) because it wasn't a very flattering picture of the nation in which I happened to be born and raised, but also because it seemed to me incredibly arrogant. I mean, everyone and their mom likes to talk about what the Essential Core of a nation is, but I don't think any of us really know completely something so abstract as that.

And really - most of all - it just did not feel like the place I grew up in. I know that I paint a very romantic version of my childhood as quaint and New England, all granite out croppings and maple syrup candy, and it wasn't this. But it also wasn't what they were describing, either. My imagination was not lost in the glamorous world of cowboys and indians. So either I'm some freak of American culture (I prefer not to think so) or America is Thundering Along like a great monster and I just haven't noticed because I'm being carried along with it.

I guess it was a very strong "that was not my life" feeling that overwhelmed me.

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Separate late night thought: I wish my mother was more willing to speak to me, and listen to me, when I'm trying to tell her difficult things. But instead it's like she smiles and nods, and this WASP-y refusal to listen to ANYTHING even REMOTELY related to sex, and/or alcohol comes over her. It's like any time I start down that rode, I can tell my words just kinda glide past her. Yes dear, let's talk about something safe and easy. What the fuck? Where are our liberal upper middle class academic sensibilities? Haven't you spent years in therapy? Why aren't you any good at the kind of confessional business that has been all the rage in America for decades now? Hm?

I am trying very hard to be an honest daughter! Dear Mom: I drink here! I have had a lot to drink here, even! That doesn't mean I'm not studying hard! And I had sex! That doesn't mean I'm a floozy! That doesn't mean I'm going to hell in a hand basket!

YOU SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID TO LISTEN TO YOUR DAUGHTER.

2003-03-10, late at night

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