This is America's Fault Line Within Me

Cool, the social currency of a country without prior culture, without a historical-cornerstone from which all things rest, is an extension of

their American-ness - our, Americanness.

Example.

Example.

Example.

‘ You know the ones ’

Which is to say, the sense that anything you do or say as an American has put you in the running for this prize, a prize that does not exist. Everyone

pretends not to

know. Before we know it we

sink into its molasses, insistent

it chants;;

I need it

I need it I need

to be needed.

That this is just a tether to, and from, that point.

That you could be

THE ‘ultimate American’,

—as if America were a single country and not two whole continents—

which would be within the acceptable boundaries of hierarchy, which presses, harsh and indirect, against your mental membrane. A tear, as in a folly, as in an incision, embodies your hopes for transmutation, finds its way here and now, fair and square. You do not know who you are, you only know how you appear to be to others. We are afraid to admit this. I KNOW its true,

I can see it in you (me).

They —the Americans that believe they’re THE MOST American— decide this with those same delusions. The idea that they (we) have a way of getting people to like us, that we know that only the charming survive, and so, we charm you we

charm you we charm

ourselves and one day, the fractured promise that we will be able to do as we please cripples us. The truth of the lie is haunting.

What do you give up in turn, to hold onto that fantasy? We are a country of sinners.

We want to become that supernova. We burn up, come crashing down at a party on some nameless rooftop, stood behind the neon lights of a shitty part-gallery part-venue selling commercial non-art art from non-art artists.

For its ability to remain, ‘a sound investment.’

It used

to be for the abilities you had, you were not your appearance but your resistance to its symbols. A dash adds separation in an attempt to solder:

Mexican-American is not Mexican, is not American; x-American is not American at all, not ‘like us’.

We become Icarus and inherit his fallacious imagination. This is nothing new. A tragedy that simply mirrors the belief that we

are hungry. We are haunted by /

not only the / first attempt / but by the six /-hundred forty seventh, too / and by any / and all / reminders that it/// was/// not/// you/// /

that/

it / could never /

even / have/

been /// /

The marks left by those who were not enough bare the burden of abandonment, the reed-flumed aspirations of the many. A handprint

imprinted through projectiled spit onto a cave’s concave surface, puckered lips at Pech Merle, the year 16,000 BCE. They (we) find

solace in the idea;

That their stories will remain from that moment on, from the moment that proceeded that one, in those that witness it through second-hand storytellers.

Not many of us live past seventy.

That they know they were pilfered for scraps and so, taking that as permission, go on and pilfer.

That even though we must not, even though we probably could not come close to being that ULTIMATE figure, an attempt is made regardless. Fulfilling a role, an equation on

a spreadsheet; hit send / hit send. hit / send. I click my metaphorical fingers. Let it be so — please god I

vote! We hope to become that, to embody that cool, not as a search for fame—which is a concerning social experiment on the limitations of the human mind and our need for approval, under scrutiny—but rather, to be in the running for a run-on joke we’re never fully in on.

We attack others through that belief, unshakable and resolute, that we will win because we must.

We follow the steps before us, not in a search for adoration but one of

relief, for a momentary release from the structures that bind our bodies against the tether of ‘Americanness’ of American-culture ei';

Procter and Gamble, or Apple, and Ford;

Kraft to Cheez-it, de-peeler, or selfie stick';

Black Friday, Cinco de Mayo, and green beer on St. Paddy’s Day — 5 % Irish, 5% Cherokee;

IT-girl, girl next door, heroine-chic chick, cottage core baby;

our own Trojan workhorse, 9 to 5 to midnight in the end; or

our ‘us versus them, besides me of course’;

or anything but the unkind reminder of our unremarkable nature, of our universality, our connection to everyone and everything before us. We hope to be alone in our successes, we hope to be the only one because we don’t know any better.

And it is in this naive manner that we remain resolute in our corrupted idea that maybe just maybe we

may.