normalizing to your culture
In the link from my post the other day, Yoko Tawada discusses why she is fascinated by the former German Democratic Republic, how it was a fantasy place for her before and still is, even more so because it no longer exists. It is a place that has actually disappeared. When comparing herself to writers from the GDR, she says, "Unfortunately I can't write like them because Japan still exists!"
This inspired to try a mental exercise: imagine a world in which one's home country, in my case the United States, no longer exists. I don't suggest this as a referendum on American foreign policy, anyone who reads this blog or knows me has a clear idea of my feelings on those issues. But just imagining one's country of birth no longer existing is a disorienting exercise. It immediately makes one realize the huge role their country plays in their total make-up as a person.
Realizing this is OK, but the thing I fear the most is completely re-normalizing to this culture in America, of no longer seeing how truly strange it is here. It hasn't happened yet, I don't think.