I've never been one to be particularly patriotic but there is something in the make-up of this country that brings out the team spirit in me.
Most of the authors I've admired throughout my life have come from here. Maybe it's the difference in population level, I don't know but people feel more engaged here, more present. I feel less tension about asserting one's individuality or hiding it. Hard to explain and clearly, I've left off blogging for too long, this is all but inarticulate but Margaret Atwood comes to mind.
The United States would never produce a Margaret Atwood.
I like Atwood's work, I've read most of her novels and about half her poems. Her work is suffused with a sense of arch observation, she is the removed observer, always. The perfect narrator, Atwood is dispassionate. She is the ideal, non-judgmental purveyor of irony and cool detachment. She is a turn of the century writer, as I feel is Munro. Technically adept they are emotionally removed and this is perceived as a strength. Ok - in Canada, I see it. Here? Not so much.
The sun is slanting over the snow in outside the house. It is absolutely silent, much quieter than my place in Ottawa or even my family home in Victoria. Nevertheless, there is a palpable sense that life in all its messy, busy, active, bustle carries on just a few minutes away. And it does.
Americans are engaged. It's easy to love that.
And there's nothing detached about my writing, at its best or worst - I'm here, I'm present, I'm involved.
This week I have an essay on adoption to revise and complete, four personal statements to write for my application to law school and a communications plan to sketch. There are dinners to cook, family time to spend, conversations to be had and a Christmas tree to decorate.
Maybe it's always true that our friends know that our friends know us better than our family. It's certainly true for me here and now - this is a kind of homecoming and I am very glad of it.
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