The Republican’s bogeyman, the myth of failed Europe looms large in their narrow ideology of American exceptionalism. The American public is warned against becoming like Europe. I lived in Rome, Italy long before the EU and the Euro. On my last visit to Rome in 2009 the change I observed was culture shock to my romantic ideal but a boost to Italian potential. The reasons for my returning to the States all those long years ago are complex, living in foreign with no safety net (a corporate, academic, or State job) was a challenge. I had run out of money and my spotty employment as an illegal had failed to make the money I needed to stay (my attitude was also to blame). I returned with my fiancee ten years younger, the extent of his English was I love you. In three years he learned English, and was on his way to owning a wine importing business, proof of the American exceptionalism for opportunity.

The world has changed since 1986. The world has changed since the forefathers conceived and wrote the U.S. Constitution. Europe also has changed. Both Europe and the States are trying to recover for financial excesses. Europe since the Euro more resembles the States financial connectivity that leading economist have placed at the center of the individual EU participants fiscal problems. But this represents the large picture and distorts individual experience. How is it to live in 21st century Europe? My last trip to Rome the obvious difference I noted was younger Italians had shrugged off traditional values. Women of all ages were out at night alone and in groups. Asians and worker from other EU countries had taken the place of the iconic Italian waiter (even women). I wish I could pack my bags this moment for an extensive stay to observe and write about Europe today. My personal commitments will not allow me to be an eyewitness recorder and messenger to present a realistic picture of Europe that might inform, save, and revive concept of “American exceptionalism” we have exported around the world but seem to have in short supply here. How and who could get a TV series produced on European life today?     

I have begun, and abandoned because of complexity, a reading map. Today I read the introduction and first chapter of Annie Dillard’s Living by Fiction on my DroidX Kindle app. A free sample has sat on my phone for many, maybe as much as six, months. I have opened and closed the electronic link often. Yesterday the neglected obvious connection to my writing practice clicked. I made my first Kindle purchase ending my long search for examples of experimental texts. In seconds I am reading Dillard’s response to my inquiry on metafiction, analysis of writers and titles with descriptions of experimental techniques explored in the texts. I am reading in the back seat of a taxi heading up and cross town in freezing rain to have lunch with my beloved Feminist, Marxist professor well worth enduring the icy slush pools. Hours and errands later I return home to find Amazon has delivered Hazel Smith’s The Writing Experiment that is singing a duet with Dillard’s text. I will attempt to make a map on bubbl.us, a sort of comparative chart of corresponding and disparate theories.   

Too long since my last entry when the world looked so different as to be almost unrecognizable.