My Impending Return to the Empire
Or, A Brief Outline of My "Political Paranoia"

As I prepare to visit America next weekend, here are some thoughts...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

--W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

This morning, as I walked to the Shanghai public library from where I write you, I noticed, as always, the fresh-faced Chinese guards outside the gate of the US consulate. Like every other day, I smiled at them and they smiled back. In contrast to my usual strides, I slowed at the gate and peered in the room of personnel staring at banks of security apparatus. Then to the locked gate itself. Then inside to the retractable rampart, erect and ugly. Then to the triple row of foot-long spikes at the peak of the three yard high wall. In the train of the mounted video cameras, I passed the always-tense patrolling guard by the wall inside his yellow line. Unliked the gate guards, he didn't smile back. His sense of duty precluded niceties.

What might all this be protecting, I wondered, when American citizens' consular services are now conducted on the other side of town--from a shopping mall?

Directly across the street, the low wall of the French consulate, picturesque and unflanked by video cameras or a crown of thorns, stood in welcome contrast to my nation's manifest paranoia.

To the Empire

At the end of the week, with any small cooperation from the fates, I will sit through 14 hours on a jet to return to that world of spikes and cameras. I go with a heart full of love to greet an estranged friend, possibly to seek reconciliation, possibly only to deepen the sense that I best retreat further into study and prepare for (avoid, escape?) the inevitable.

I fear, not as many, that America is spiraling out of control, but marching--ever blindly--into control. The falcon hears the falconer, and responds.

A Sketch of My Itinerary

Concretely, plans for my three-week stay in the US include a three-day stop in San Fransisco/Sacramento. Then on to visit my father in Virginia. From there I return to the Great Lakes state of Michigan, the heart of a most blessed bioregion, which I longed for in Autumn and only now get to visit in Winter.

When I told my employer of my plans, he said, "Well, we'd prefer you take only 15 days off, but since you haven't seen your home in 14 months, you must think me quite an ogre for saying that."

I smiled and stuck to my guns. He wished me a pleasant journey.

If only my nation--all nations, all peoples--would smile and put down the guns.