Kitschy kitchens and Elvis collector's plates.

I never realized how strange American culture is. Foreign friends have pointed out to me time and time again that I’m so strange, weird, a “hippy hipster lady”, crazy, etc. I never really understood why. I think compared to many Americans I’m quite calm. Yes, I have my own idiosyncrasies but I am far from the most eccentric person in America. Very far. I think I’ve begun to realize why people think this. I was out for a walk at the theater festival with my friend Jenda and I spotted some abandoned tea cups on the ground next to the trash. I thought they were quite pretty and considered picking them up, washing them and taking them home. Of course, Jenda yelled at me, saying they were dirty and anyway they were very kitsch (he also yelled at me for taking a picture of the bird skeleton we came across). Jenda doesn’t understand my fascination with kitsch. I told him, “You say kitsch, hipsters call it vintage.” While I was only joking I realized that it’s actually quite true. I think maybe that because America doesn’t have this long history full of ancient battles and old kings and we don’t have any castles that are thousands of years old, we are making our own history through kitschy items. We have this fascination with uncovering some semi-lost past and making it trendy and cool and exciting. I was pondering this as I was trying to sleep last night and came to some realization but of course I didn't write it down and it doesn't really make sense to me anymore. It was something like this: our obsession with a somewhat meaningless past is like stuffing a twenty-dollar bill in your pocket, forgetting about, and they fishing it out of your jean pocket after washing it and storing it in your closet for two months. It’s a pleasant surprise but we obsess over it and tell the story to our friends over and over. Yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that. Half-asleep logic is weird. 

But we do cling to the things from our recent past in search of some identity that we don’t really have as Americans. Or at least I feel I don't really have as an American. America used to be known as The Great Melting Pot and then morphed into a politically correct salad. I think that’s great for those who maintain their original identities and cultural practices but what about the following generations of those individuals? They don’t fall into the same category as their parents and are forced to form this new identity that is patched together from so many different scraps. It’s kind of a Frankenstein’s monster sort of deal. I guess that means we’re all freaks of nature.