A View of the Country

I’m back in the city. The big smoking, stinking city. The screaming crackheads and sirens city. The place where no one knows your name and no one wants to. I’m home.

Having spent the last two and half days in the country, I’m deeply relieved to be back. My parents are living in a quasi-utopian resort in the middle of the woods. People say hi to each other. People who don’t even know each other. They say hi. To each other.

I can’t believe it either.

Every time someone said “hi” to me, I wanted to reply: “What the fuck you want!?” But I reminded myself that these are simple woodsy folk. They greet each other for no reason at all. What a bunch of assholes.

Walking around there, I understood what communism is supposed to look like. The place is centrally planned so it makes sense. There are recreation directors and smiling people to do things for you. If I lived in a place like that, I would drink myself to death on vodka. It looks as if Father has gotten a head start.

My parents took me to different places where they like to sit. And relax. I don’t know why they’re so stressed out but it’s probably something I did.  At any rate, they certainly need to relax.  I don’t.  I find relaxation stressful.

I saw “the view” as they call it. Then I saw another one. Then the same one from a different angle. I don’t understand the view. It seems to consist of water, trees and some blue nonsense they call the sky. I much prefer the view on a city street. The one that consists of women in short dresses.

Now that’s a view I can, er, get into. Ahem.

So we went to town. It’s called Huntsville.

The streets are alive!

Something was wrong with the place but I couldn’t quite figure out what. Then I realized what was bothering me. It’s full of white people. The whole time I was there, I counted exactly one minority. This was an Asian child with two white adults. I wanted to take her picture but there was a lineup.

And this is what happens to culture when white people are left to their own devices.

Painted pillows and teapots.

While downtown, I saw an advert for some heritage place that had an owl exhibit. So I took my parents to this pioneer village where we saw how people in Huntsville lived in the 1970s. These were hard times. People had to shit in a pot they kept under their bed. Basically, it’s a lot like Scarborough.

This is me at a pioneer school.

But the owls were quite good. Except for one minor detail. They were all dead.  Although a recording of their voices played, I was only briefly fooled. These owls were dead. But still amazing.

Here’s all my owl pics.

On my second day, I played some golf. I have never played before. But that didn’t stop me from wearing checked pants. And a golf shirt. I almost bought a visor but then came to my senses.

I actually cleared the water with that shot. I don’t mean to brag but I’m completely awesome at everything I do. I even shot well over par, scoring 65 over 9 holes while Father shot a measly 42. I celebrated my victory  until Father claimed that the lowest score wins.

I never would have believed him.  His opinions have been suspect since that whole Santa Claus scandal.

But a brood of elderly women gamboled over to break up our fisticuffs. Having pulled us out of the swamp, they took his side in the debate. I slapped one of them –pretty hard too– but the others still refused to concede the point. So I guess it’s true.

I spent the rest of the trip in suspicious and brooding silence, exchanging hard looks with both Mother and Father. Then they loaded me onto the train. Eventually loaded me onto the train. It took a while.

For, while we in the city have crazy ideas about trains running on time, these simple country folk are far too relaxed for something like that. The train was two hours late. It was continually getting later. Each call to the station reminded me of Zeno’s dichotomy paradox. Every time we got closer to the alleged departure time, the departure time remained the same distance away.

I have no doubt: The train out of Huntsville runs on a quantum mechanical engine.

That’s me pondering the schedule, wondering about the futility of existence, how much of my life is given to waiting and how the map so often differs from the territory.

But the train had a nice view. If you just ignore all that other crap, you can almost see my reflection in it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 11:01 am and is filed under holidays, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.