Fix
The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,
Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling —
True believers in liberty, and also security,
And of course sex — cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,
Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.
They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They’d like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.
You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
— Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud —
The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we’re smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we’ve lost
That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable
So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.
–by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, from No Heaven. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.
This is …horribly, terribly, awfully TRUE.
SO many people here in Scotland think Americans are rich and oh, so, so happy… Yet, I see people here who are more satisfied with their lives, despite what seems to be a very short treadmill of doing the same things every day, they’re fine.
And I know people who are obsessed with the ‘violent screen’ – violence and car crashes and fireballs, and I’ve always found it so odd. I just can’t watch that kind of thing, no tension or horror, not without nightmares, and I’ve known ministers who decried sex and various “deviancies” from the pulpit, but loved Indiana Jones and the melting Nazis and loved all the old Terminator movies and took potshots at turtles in a pond… Somehow people are so puritanical about sex, but bring on the violence, God bless us one and all…
‘…mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth…’ I’ve quit arguing with G. about violence and Americans; I kicked him the last time he said something about some Scots “imitating violent Americans” and I realize I’m completely proving his point. But. In a not-funny way, it really bugs me that I’m being tarred with that particular brush, even though I *do* kick him. He beat up a complete stranger the other day, and I’ve never struck anyone in my life, except by accident.
(Oh, next time, I’m totally going to remind him of that.)
And then that thing about ‘enthusiastic as trained seals;’ oh, yes, I have now watched myself smile at strangers and laughed inwardly, imagining the people in the South of France cringing from my American face. I have thought, “Hm. Now I can quit smiling,” because other people in other countries don’t care if people like them, and don’t try, so now I just stare at people when they stare at me. I try not to look hostile, but smiling is overrated to the French, right? So, I’m going to adopt that blank stare, too…
‘Puzzled and at a loss.’ A very good estimation – people who believe the shiny, happy people in the glossy magazines, who believe in the Barbie’s Dream House dream, and the sixty-four Technicolor Crayola American dream. Yep.
This poet is scary.
— by May Sarton, from Collected Poems 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton and Co.
