American Water

The fourth graders here in Dresden gave short presentations about the United States last week.

“The total area of the United States is nine thousand… no, wait – nine million… eight two six – eh – eight two six thousand, six hundred seventy five, kilometers… what’s this little two?”

Among my four sections of fourth graders, this statement about the exact area of the United States was repeated fourteen times. I stressed to them that it is important to know that America is big, but knowing its exact size is trivial. (1)

“Germany,” I told them, “has an area of about 350,000 square kilometers. But what does your family eat for supper?”

Despite my plea for more substantial cultural facts, the kids continued the barrage of numbing numerical nuggets, like population and median income.

One kid started to list the dates of office for every American President until we stopped him at Madison. Another listed the average temperature for every month of the year in Los Angeles (Spoiler Alert: it’s pleasant except for August and July, and then, tragically, you have to go to the beach).

This stout kid, Moritz, is pretty bright, but he didn’t know what a Table of Contents was, so he started reading it aloud: “1, Geography and environment, 1.1 Political Divisons, 2, History, 2.1 Native American and European settlement…”

The kids know New York and San Francisco and that the Golden Gate Bridge is in one of them. (2) They know that movies come from Hollywood and that Barack Obama is a good President because their parents hate him less than that other guy who came before him. They know that the Statue of Liberty and the White House exist somewhere. They know what the flag looks like and that there’s either 50 or 51 states – it’s not easy to remember.

They know a bit, but they have a lot of questions.

Most importantly: “Dan, how many celebrities do you know?” But other questions, too.

Most of the questions start with “Is it true that…” – as if they can’t quite believe that things in other parts of the world are actually unlike Germany. Is it true that people drive cars everywhere? Is it true that people eat plain cereal for breakfast? Is it true that everyone carries a gun in New York?

At the end of one class, this demure girl, looking alarmed, asked, : “Is it really true that Americans drink water out of the tap?”

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The room I’m renting in Dresden belongs to the family’s oldest child, Carmen, a sixteen year old girl who is spending a year abroad in a small town in Ohio.

She lives there with an Ohioan family and has had to adjust to American high school, which is markedly different from the German equivalent, Gymnasium.

Socially, high school is a blast for Carmen – and a total mystery for her parents here in Dresden.

“Carmen said she has a dance coming up,” the parents tell me. “It’s called… Homecoming?”

After speaking with Carmen, they were confused why the dance seemed charged with the sort of razzmatazz that normally accompanies more important ceremonies, like, say, a wedding. Over-the-top proposals. Tacky matching of various articles of clothing. Luxurious dinner. And who is coming home, anyway?

Why do we do those things?

I found my attempts to describe Homecoming difficult – and not just because I only attended once and spent most of the dance trying to hide from the girl I liked. (Such is the dating strategy of overwrought sixteen-year-old males.)

The reason why it is so hard to explain Homecoming is because it can’t be defined in isolation. Homecoming is not an event, it’s a nexus, embedded in assumptions and traditions and questions and images.

Football games. Alumni reunions. Last minute corsages. Boy asks girl. New dress – maybe return it after the dance. Olive Garden. Alcohol. Grinding. Sex. Or no alcohol, no grinding, no sex. That one slow song. Who pays for the tickets? Are we boyfriend and girlfriend? Do you love that song? I love that song. That song plays. Dress shoes. Bare feet. Chairs. Stage. Sweat. Chaperones. Mike just got kicked out for being drunk. That’s so Mike. Do you want to… dance? Those silly lights. Getting tired. Last song. No driver’s license – parents pick you up. How was the dance? Fine. Fine. It was fine.

It’s a cultural perspective I understand because I’ve always had it. I explained what it was like to Clemens and Julia as best I could, but Carmen did a better job when she simply said: “It’s really crazy!”

When I discuss the peculiarities of American life with Clemens and Julia, I’m reminded of a great benefit of living in a foreign country, a benefit that can easily be taken for a cliché: I get to see things from a new perspective. I get to look at America through German eyes. I get to look over there from over here.

And sometimes I’m embarrassed.

Like when Carmen talked about how no one in her town wore a coat during winter, because they’re only outside for two brief periods: between the house’s front door and the car, then between the car and some other front door.

Or when she describes how everyone heats up some food in the microwave and eats it in front of the television without talking to anyone.

Or when I explained Black Friday, and how someone will inevitably get trampled not long from now, running fast and arms stretched out in pursuit of a television or a toaster or some other green light, on some fine morning. (3)

But most of the time, I love America.

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Last year, I took a class on Walt Whitman.

It took a long time, but I read all of his wonderful work, Leaves of Grass.

Whitman first published the volume in 1855 and re-published it seven times, continuing to work on it until the day he died.

He was fascinated with printing and said that he wrote with attention to how his words would look on the page. The title of Leaves of Grass is a printer’s pun: leaves are the sheets of paper, and grass is what printers called the long works that were printed and assembled slowly, a contrast to the short newsletters that had a quick turnaround and an immediate payoff.

And here’s where I get to use my favorite literary term: synecdoche: a part is made to represent the whole, or vice versa.

So you see, Leaves of Grass is stunning synecdoche: the slow construction of Whitman’s poem is a reflection of the gradual development of a human life, but – on an even grander scale, where the or vice versa comes in – Whitman says that “the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

A poem revealing a life.

A tapestry of lives expressing a poem.

And Walt Whitman, wearing his commonest clothes in his diminuitive frontispiece, can say what I love about America a hell of a lot better than I can.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors … but always most in the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendship—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage … their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul … their good temper and open handedness—the terrible significance of their elections—the President’s taking off his hat to them, not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.

And that last sentence, that forward-looking sentiment, is why I’m hopeful.

America is built and being built, working through the contradictions and the expectations and the disappointments. (4)

I can’t say much more than that, though I try to when I teach my classes. I try to explain Native Americans, the Civil War, September 11th.

I try to get them to imagine what it actually means that America is a place where people from every other place in the world live. I don’t know what it means myself, but who could?

Every person is a universe and every universe a poem, and we’re all winging across this Arcadia in matchbox cars with pale, tarnished paint.

The bed’s unmade and the trash can is full and we’re building a bridge to nowhere yet known and my head is under the bathroom faucet guzzling chilly water.