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August 26, 2007 07:41 PM

The Flag

There is a thing you forget when it's been too long since you've properly held
and folded an American flag.

I'm no patriot, and my delusions of country and loyalty are long since lost in
the fracas of whatever the hell division is currently splitting our modern
society, but there's a /thing/.

Maybe it is pride. The sense of respecting an icon, a physical thing for what
it represents in the truest sense, and not reflecting on how it has been used
and abused as a tool to promote an agenda. Perhaps it was just the memory
for me of having done this solemn thing of perfectly folding the flag in the
exact way, so many times before.

I don't think that's all though. I really think that it evokes such a deep
common bond between people that it taps into the collective unconsciousness.
That it's that intense connection itself that creates the feeling, not what
you're connected to at all, just that you are connected in the first place.

Can you tell I'm in the Midwest but still have SF on my side?

I left town a few days back and took a redeye to Grand Rapids, Michigan,
rented a car and was dumbfounded. Every other car seemed to be a classic 60s
muscle car (I think I was just lucky enough to happen upon a car show letting
out). There was the Michigan thing of SO MANY American cars (though growing
up, it was almost ALL). I drove through the slight rolling hills and thick
green trees of late August on I-96, windows down, blaring classic rock. I
thought to myself that I could stay. Just stay here. Abandon all the other
things, the stress of work and life, the duties of doing the right thing or of
having fucked up and done the wrong thing. Abandon decisions and failures,
successes and glories, all of it. Just to surrender into staring at the lake.

I'm at the cottage (jpgs are somewhere, but dialup means less net), my folks
were here for a few days, but now I'm alone. Nothing but the sound of the
crashing waves and the crickets at sunset. Well, that and the insane chatter
in my own head. Its abating somewhat. I don't feel like I've gone mad
anymore. So much chaos. I don't know about those underpinnings anymore.

I've been not checking email/voicemail/sms/anything. I'm trying to take the
disconnect from society that I usually get surrounded by 20,000 of my closest
friends. Maybe this will be more intense. More amazing, yet on a wholy
different plane and for an entirely different set of reasons. Looking
inwards. I'll probably get bored at some point. I wish I was at this long
enough to pass through that phase. Such are the requirements of life.

Its the last weekend in August; I drove down the road behind a half dozen RVs
with bicycles haphazardly strapped to the back of them, and yet I'm not going
to the desert. What a funny thing to see on this exact weekend.

Also, I forgot the bunny hat. I hope my world doesn't collapse.