Memorial Day

Leaving America indefinitely in just over a week. When one leaves one's motherland, one leaves with reason. Emigration, after all, is no trifling matter. But there is always also "reason" to stay. Writ: things to be missed.

When people ask me what I will miss, I tell them: the American diner. New Jersey is the capital of the American diner. So I'm leaving a place that I will miss perhaps even slightly more than other American places to miss.

America is a country of implicit and explicit libertarianism: what binds people together is the fact that everyone imagines himself pursuing his interest independent of the next guy. This means that the next guy is not really a part of your nation, since nations are commonwealths (which are giant amalgamations of shared economic interest). So what's wacky about America is that everyone hallucinates a different America. America is unified through the fact that everyone has an utterly idiosyncratic delusion of what Americans are.

The following is true of every nation, but especially America.

While the virtual binding is a bit fragile, Americans are bound together tangibly through food. This is why I adore Thanksgiving and grilling holidays (such as today). Whether you think America is all about white suburbia or about urban multiculturalism, everyone makes food on these holidays. Most of the year, we eat processed garbage. But on these particular days, we eat like kings. No individualized, loneliness-producing imaginations are necessary to enjoy food together: taking one's time to prepare quality food is a thing of the real.

On the diner (or even the truck stop, as pictured to the right): I think everyone can agree that a place that serves eggs and toast and has refillable coffee is a very good thing indeed, something that serves everyone's interests. (Refillable coffee: a thing to be missed in and of itself). At least the food is not from a drive-through or a massive freezer, intended to be consumed on-the-go. You sit down and read the paper or chat with your grandfather or fight off a hangover. The diner is a sanctuary where one can take one's time and eat whole foods.

When I visit a diner, I believe it is then that I enter the national borders of America. I see the regulars, I smell the pancakes, I taste the really bad coffee, and I feel the rare experience of American community. Open 365 days a year.