America and I, two lovers in an out-of-town motel

It's always good to take a step back. To take a step back from one's life, like from a canvas, just a step or two to see the whole. The result is always surprising.

The moment I walk through the passport control at my hometown airport, I'm already gone. I sit behind a glass wall, still able to see those who saw me off, but I'm gone. All focused on experiences ahead of me. Because I’ve set off on a journey.

America and I have a gentle love affair, like two people who meet in an out-of-town motel, without any long-term expectations, but inevitably bringing out the passion in each other. I'm excited about coming again. There are so many familiar things about it, but again so many surprisingly new. The first couple of hours after arrival I feel like I've entered my avatar who's not fully functioning yet. Words fail me. Unknown things disturb me. I'm confused by proverbial American talkativeness, small talk at the airport, in restaurants, on the street. I look aside, quietly passing by people, not addressing anyone unless I have to, wearing dark glasses. You look so European, my American friends tease me sometimes.

This time I'm first greeted by a friend from Sarajevo, Dada. My country, and its people are devastated by war, and the only good thing that came out of this cataclysm is that today I have friends and relatives living all around the world. That's why I feel at home even in a small Philadelphia studio apartment I enter for the first time, designed in an industrial chic style, as I unpack my bag to take out the Bosnian gifts: music, cookies from our childhood, books in mother tongue…

America has once again surprised me with its well-known enormousness. The kitchen sink is as big as a baby tub or a shower bath in a small Mediterranean town. A parking lot I see from the train is huge, vast, the massiveness of the scene reminds of reality multiplied by special effects. Coffee mugs are so big I have to hold them with both hands, food packaging and the fridge are so big that I see myself as Alice who has taken the magic mushroom and suddenly become small.

The distances here are also huge. My friend says that something is within walking distance, and then we go walking for two hours. By the end of the day we've spent so much time walking through parks, cafes and museums that I feel tired in American proportions. Enormously. I say, If I had spent so much time walking back at home, I would have reached the end of the state, and I would certainly need to have a passport on me.

I'm looking forward to meeting other writers that I'll set off on a journey today. Socializing with writers always makes me happy as it is a kind of a membership in a club for eccentrics: I'm excited about a possibility of sharing thoughts with people who look on the world somewhat askew. We speak different languages, we have different physiognomies, our lives back home are completely different, but when we meet together the magic usually works and we recognize one another’s similarities.

In the days to follow, America and I will show each other our vulnerable sides, we'll talk about the things that hurt. I hope we'll also share stories of fall and recovery. A song from my childhood comes to my mind: Someone dreams of having a horse/Someone has a horse/Someone dreams of riding a horse/Someone rides a horse/Someone dreams of falling off a horse/Someone falls off a horse/Someone wakes up on falling/Someone gets up and rides again.

Beginnings

I'm in transit now, somewhere over northeastern United States. Arrival in Baltimore is still up ahead, as is New Orleans and the Atchafalaya Basin, and Birmingham, which held such sway and sadness over my imagination when I was a teenager studying the American civil rights movement.

I'm hoping to find "the things which no chart can tell us," as James Baldwin so beautifully wrote. For me, a Canadian, America arrives like a step-brother, a worldly-wise, belligerent young man with Harvard dreams, who calls you late at night and speaks wistfully of all that is slipping from his grasp but, in the morning, forgets to wish you happy birthday. We know him like our own (he sends a great many letters, his certificates hang on our walls) and yet he isn't. But that hasn't stopped us from reinventing his late night stories, and being proud of the home we've made which is also free, also grand. Like Vicente, I, too, find my thoughts pulled away to events in Japan and Libya, and I know those images and histories will continue to impose themselves on the places we experience over the next two weeks. It's Baldwin, I think, who is my beginning guide, who understood that "we must find the terms of our connection, without which we will perish." Through fiction and the imagination, he tried to examine the lives of others, and through this examination, this proximity, express something about the meaning of what we are living.

Full of words

Two things get me mentally ready for a trip: deciding what to pack, and reading about the places I’ll be traveling to. I’m still not sure what things to pack for the next two weeks --from university readings in Gettysburg, to formal dinners in Washington D.C., to visits to the old Jim Crow districts of Birmingham, to muddy strolls through the Louisiana rivers and swamps. In fact, the only packing decision I’ve made so far is this: no computer, just pen and notepad. The readings, on the other hand, have for a while now been taking my mind to Ford’s theatre, and to the Birmingham jail, and to the Lower Ninth Ward levees that, in August of 2005, gave way to what is perhaps the country’s greatest human catastrophe. It seems as though I’m leaving on this trip full of history and images. Full of words. What will I bring back with me, I wonder, in two weeks time? Earlier today, while reading a brilliant story by John Biguenet --a New Orleans writer we’ll soon be meeting--, I happened upon this line: “When one makes a trip, he comes home with stories.”

Eduardo Halfon

Three things before I start to move

Manila, Philippines -- Three more nights before I board the plane that will take me again to the United States. The schedule up ahead looks grueling: seven cities in two weeks to get up close and personal with America filtered through the theme "Fall and Recovery." Like many other non-Americans, much of what I know about the U.S. comes from the mass media, and this tour promises more of the behind-the-curtain revelations of my IWP residency two years ago.

In the last three weeks, my mind has been turned constantly towards Japan and the continuing devastation wrought by earthquake and tsunami. I have no doubt that this will color my experience of the study tour ahead, providing contrast and context. The images of whole towns and cities obliterated by a giant black wave remind me again that history is littered with the remains of once-thriving civilizations laid low by disasters both natural and social. In a bit of serendipity, a recent news story about the rediscovery of "Atlantis" references both Japan and New Orleans in the same breath with lost civilizations like Pompeii, Babylon, Ayutthaya, and Petra.

My first taste of America was New Orleans, in 1997. Perhaps it wasn't the best introduction to America, as its culture and ambience set it drastically apart from the rest of the country. But I found it memorably, rapturously alive, with an appealing darkness and danger about its edges. I'm not sure how my memories of Crescent City will be revised by this post-Katrina encounter. Our itinerary promises an in-depth look at the circumstances of the disaster and the subsequent recovery efforts, and I look forward to the education.

I've also been going through the material provided by the IWP as background for the tour, and I'm quite frankly amazed to discover that an attitude that I've sensed or intuited hazily about America actually has a name: exceptionalism. Given my ignorance of this philosophy, as well as my cultural background, I'm approaching the subject a little warily, although the more I learn about it, the more it seems to illuminate the things that puzzle most about America. I think this will drive much of the discussion in the days to come.

-- Vicente Garcia Groyon

Hello

Hello everyone, What a relief, setting this up was easier than I thought. I look forward to meeting you all in a couple of days' time! Natasa, this sign in has worked for me! Alice