Of buses and bees and flags

I was riding a crowded bus once in Kamakura, Japan, trying as usual to fit in (not much use with my long wild brown hair) when the bus lurched around a corner as buses in Japan often do since there are a lot of corners. A six foot-plus American, probably from a nearby base, was standing holding a strap and in trying to catch his balance lifted his meaty arm up suddenly and smacked the face of the small middle-aged woman next to him. Uncharacteristically for a Japanese person, she let out a loud complaint and for the next few minutes until she got off at her stop muttered grumpily under her breath about stupid foreigners who are so heavy they can’t balance on a bus. When I made my way to the front to get off a bit later I was treated to a long aisle of glares associating mild-mannered little student me with this red-faced Marine. I wanted to stop and explain to everyone in my very politest Japanese that I knew how to keep my balance on a bus.

Post 9-11 America reminds me of a large sweaty man stung by a bee. He yells, swats and runs around red-faced, cursing bees, until he finds the one that maybe stung him, stomps out its life, then for the rest of the day charges around the neighborhood searching out bees to destroy, obsessively relating the story of his stinging to everyone he meets. “That bee HURT me!!!” He is probably the serviceman from the bus, who returned home at the end of his enlistment and raising kids, drinking beer, commuting to the insurance agency told stories about the impossible lurching buses in Japan and the strange little Japanese people who were sometimes so polite and sometimes so angry. Just couldn’t figure them out.

How to identify? Should we even try? Why do we obsessively maintain our Culture? Do we like being Red Ants vs. Black Ants? My emerging consciousness of the world began in the midst of the Viet Nam War and was strongly colored by a deep suspicion of Government, Military, Establishment. We used Ike’s “Military-Industrial Complex” like we had invented the term ourselves. Leaving the country for about 10 years completed the process toward viewing America objectively and made me feel awkward around flag-wavers.

I remember being strangely confused when an acquaintance in my group of expats, comfortably ensconced in a bilingual little clique in Tokyo announced to the group in the winter of 1976 that he was going home. “Why??!” we all asked—“home” was the bad guy, the Land of the Nixon, and he strangely enough was going to Washington to look for a job. What??! Well, he reminded us, Carter has won the election and for the first time in 13 years (Johnson didn’t count with him) there is a Democratic administration and there will be places for liberals with an education. Hmmm . . . well, OK we all said but nobody followed him and he was never heard of again, disappeared into the maws of bureaucracy. The whole big Red/White/Blue country music Smokey the Bandit CB radio America glorifying late 70’s pretty much passed us by in Tokyo. We tried a little to explain it to Japanese friends and they didn’t get it either.

So I am neither ashamed nor proud to be an American. I just would rather not even go there. I am an ape with overdeveloped frontal lobes and sensitive dexterous fingers who is trying, as are all, to keep the food going in one end and the shit out the other long enough to see with the mythical third eye a little glimpse of what’s behind the web of concepts we call light, atoms, molecules, culture, French fries. I would rather try to feel kinship and co-matriotism with my cousins the bears and the horse flies than worry about which community of apes was bothering another. It's hard to love horse flies, that's a challenge worth working on.