LyaGuerra.com

At about 5 am this morning, after staying up all night here in Scandinavia flipping between CNN and BBC, watching for updates on my country’s presidential election, Barack Obama’s electoral votes finally pushed past 270. I called my best friend and cried in the glow of the television. And as I cried I watched other people on the screen cry.

I remember being very upset one night about 15 years ago. I was upset because my alma mater’s basketball team won some kind of championship, and hundreds of people crowded onto a popular street near the university. I could hear the screams and yells and all out jubilation from my house at least a mile away. I remember thinking that a great human achievement, like a discovery for cancer or hiv/aids cure, would not draw the same reaction.

Last night proved me wrong. Yesterday’s election was a great human achievement, a discovery and perhaps even a cure. And people poured into the streets of cities and towns all over the world just like years ago I imagined they wouldn’t. I stand corrected and humbled.

Beyond hope, the idea of a President Obama appeals to the common good, courage and thoughtfulness of Americans. This idea will become a reality if we expect as much from ourselves as we do him. I say this more as a reminder to myself than anything else.

I usually avoid crowds, but the sound of yells and fireworks on the line back home with my friend combined with the pictures of Chicago on TV had a particular gravity. In the wee dark morning hours of a far away place, wrapped in a blanket and temporarily grounded by pneumonia, I wanted nothing more than to wander into the street and find people so I could mix my tears with theirs.

A week and couple of days into my new surroundings, and the white specks in the snowglobe are still whirling and floating. A piece hits the ground and immediately gets swept back up. Different parts of me are reacting in various ways. A part of me is trying to cover up against the storm, a part of me wants the stirring to escalate so I can run through the whipping chaos, and there’s the part that just wants to stand still, like I did when I was little and catch the snow with my open mouth.

I’m getting familiar with various parts of my new flat, or more specifically, the views from the different spots I choose to sit. In one room, it’s the orange knobs on an electric stove that are surrounded by numbers that are meaningless to me. From the same spot I can occasionally see neighbors frequent their balconies, to meet the daylight. Another is my reflection in a mirror bookended with two long florescent bulbs. The light reminds me of the light in my grandmother’s bathroom and a restroom in a train I took from Paris to Lyon once. The glow is yellowish and hazy, and if I think about it hard enough I can feel the ground move beneath me, on the tracks.

From another spot in my new place I’ve caught myself staring mindlessly at exas ruck S43. A good name for a science fiction story. There’s a lot of room for rhymes with friction and gravitational associations. I like it. When my mind decides to wake up, it sees it’s the old license plate for my truck. The truck I drove all over Texas. The truck I bought from my beloved friend. The truck I was in at the turn of this past new year. The truck I no longer need. The plate has a little red Texas shape in the middle, a moon rather than a sun in the right hand corner, some oil rigs to the bottom right, and a cowboy on a horse at the center bottom. The left is obstructed, and that suits me fine. When I look at it, at least the right half of it, I feel like I’ve been there. Like that cowboy, under the moon.

My friend emailed me that I live in the future now, which I do and I don’t.

Bergen is seven hours ahead of Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas is a city late to rise. So, since I have a some of my closest friends there, and my work is still rooted there, I’m about ten hours ahead on the clock than most of the people in my life. In the morning, when I’m at my best, they’re all sleeping. I can’t help but wonder about this. Like a tree in a forest, who’s going to hear my best if no one’s awake? Did my best ever exist anyhow and if so where’s the proof and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty certain nobody’s missed anything yet. I mean since I’ve landed here in Norway. I’ll do the math for my future best later.

Someone on the radio said something along the lines of “We don’t live in time, we live in space.” Or maybe it was the other way around. Anyhow, I believe I’m on day five here, and the sun doesn’t go down till after midnight, and I’m eating breakfast when I used to be sleeping in total darkness, and while I eat breakfast I stream National Public Radio from Washington D. C., which give reports about what’s happening in a time I used to live in, but now I’ve already past. Besides all that, for some reason I’m having thoughts about a place I lived before I moved to Austin, a place called Tucson, Arizona. I think my head is searching for the idea of home. The sun and technology and memory are all making concentric circles that I’m sure could be illuminating, but currently are distracting as all hell. I feel very much like when I was smaller, on the playground, watching the two ropes of double dutch swinging in opposite directions. I’m sensing when to jump in. Maybe I should just hang from the monkey bars. That sounds good.

Before I left my country, the U.S. of A., last Thursday, for the country of Norway, the song I would lean on for comfort, for whatever reason, was the Beatles “Lovely Rita”. Number ten on the CD player in my beautiful and beloved black Toyota truck. “Aaaaah, lovely Rita meter maid…” over and over and over. There are songs that somehow come in handy or resonate for whatever reason, reasons beyond any tangible knowing, at least for me. Maybe I heard “Rita” when I was a baby during a moment when I felt suspended in perfect warmness, or maybe it was playing on the radio once when I saw something beautiful on the side of a road, or maybe I just like hearing the name Rita because I once knew a girl named Rita. I always liked Rita. She used to call me sugar. But who knows.

But now I’m in Norway and my truck is no longer mine and I have no hankering for “Rita”. Today I found a new song. Or it found me. I had never heard of Andrew Bird till this morning. He may be very famous or considered cool or not. My best friend downloaded an s. ton of music onto my computer, on my birthday, before I left him and my country behind. And today, itunes randomly selected Mr. Bird’s “A Nervous Tic” for me. And this song has accompanied my first morning of virtual work from my laptop in this pretty and foreign city of Bergen. Or maybe it’s a town, I’m not quite sure.

Unlike “Rita”, it’s very easy to trace why I want to listen to this song over and over. Although by my own personal standards, it’s a bit wordy, I like the words. I like the mention of North Platte. I knew someone from North Platte once. I’m pretty sure he forces a rhyme of flannel with banal. I like that. And there’s the familiar distorted whistle sound from Sergio Leone’s films, and some harmonies reminiscent of the Mama’s and the Papa’s. There are also qualities of Elliot Smith and Jeff Buckley and on and on. All of these things represent where I’m from, to me. They are personal notions of “America”. Maybe even especially that howly mysterious sound from the spaghetti westerns. Maybe especially because spaghetti westerns are once removed, much as I am now.

An invisible nervous tic, maybe to the left.

So a new song to remind me of who I think I am, in a place I do not know, yet.

Thank you best friend.