Has it only been a week back? The culture shock was there but wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I am still shaking my head at the size of things here though. Everything is on such a large scale.
It starts with the sky. We’re in Big Sky Country for sure. The land is flat and the view off the deck is over seeminging endless fields not so much as interrupted by a fence. Prairie land. The Rockies would be visible off to the West if they weren’t shrouded in cloud. The sky is a morass of constantly amazing cloud formations, making for some excellent sunsets that seem impossible to photograph.
Lots of land means houses are big. Huge even. Much like the vehicles which are truly staggering. There are so many ridiculously sized pickups, SUV’s, 5th wheels (Massive Caravan/Trailers that attach to the rear deck of the pickups) and RV’s (mind bogglingly sized motor homes that in any other country would be an oversized bus). No wonder North America needs to secure the worlds oil supplies.
No one seems to bat an eye. I guess it is so common place. To be fair the large pickups and SUV’s must be useful when the land is inundated with a few feet of snow and we are in the heart of farming and oil country, but still…
Supersize me seems to apply to the food packages and the supermarkets list cheap prices for two or more of every item. No wonder obesity and adult onset diabetes are so common. Living off the fat of the land I guess.
In other news I met my first fundamentalist redneck. Nice enough guy and very intelligent, but also a bigot. Narrow minded and full of dislike (if not hate) currently targeted at Muslims. Gee what a surprise. But he isn’t a racist, as he “has Philipinos working for him, and even has some Orientals for friends”. Fundamentalists are the same everywhere. Blinded by their truth – that we are all different.
I don’t know how people are going to wake up to the fact that we are all the same. All these imagined differences are just that, imagined, constructs of the mind, creations of the ego. It begins at such an early age, the building up of an identity. National anthems at schools, sporting events with us against them, the media playing on fears that everyone is out to get us. It should be no surprise to me but it is each and every day. The worlds population is unconscious, delusional and mentally unwell.
What a fucking waste.