Difficult and Defeated on the road in Tennessee
We’re driving through Middle Tennessee, one of the so-called Grand Divisions of the state. West, Middle, East: each one is a white star in the blue circle of the state flag, which hangs and flaps on the roadside. Adopted in 1905, it looks like a rework of the Confederate Naval Jack, the X shrunk to an O on account of far fewer stars. The circle is set in a red field, a blue bar fixed on the fly. The bar apparently has no significance, save to keep the red from running; the designer of the flag said that it “prevents the flag from showing too much crimson when hanging limp.”
Another flag flies everywhere in red, blue, or black. It is familiar, though the slogan beneath TRUMP has changed. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and KEEP AMERICA GREAT have yielded to TAKE AMERICA BACK! People are excited for him to run again, excited to test how brittle reality is in the face of their own faith.
Even the blacklettered church signs take an increasingly ominous tone, going from NEVER BE AFRAID TO TRUST AN UNKNOWN NEW YEAR TO A KNOWN GOD to IF YOU LOVE ME YOU WILL KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS to IT’S BETTER TO KNOW HIM BEFORE YOU MEET HIM. Encouragement barbed with threat, very much in keeping with Christ. It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
You can read all kinds of different notions in the marginalia of American highways. Even the most legible—flags and signs—yield only concordances and impressions. Flags and signs as emblems of national pride. Flags and signs as proof or pretense. Flags and signs as the cynical wagers of history and belief.
Other ideas of America are more fixed. Not ideas—things. Walmarts, cattle, ugly snares of off-ramps and fast-food signs, the baby food factory that looms in the distance in Red Boiling Springs. The enormous houses sitting in the middle of nowhere, the signs that say CIVIL WAR TRAIL. The white cross made from white metal, some three stories high. The factory is recent, and makes baby food for a French company. The CEO explained that “We love the quality of the environment, and the beautiful nature surrounding our factory; the great quality of the environment will also help deliver high quality products.” We drive past a sign for Cedars of Lebanon State Park. We drive past a red flag emblazoned with the Under Armour logo, past a peeling billboard about final judgement. Flags and signs for the old, new holy land, and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.
Americans, including myself, have no idea what America is. Probably something violent and unspeakable, though on days like this one it’s just the aimless questions of a long highway view. Why is there a Moldovan flag over that driveway? How old is that barn? Who goes to these churches? Are those dogs dead or asleep? The only person I saw on the two-hour drive was a man in a coat blowing strangely in the wind. For a moment I didn’t think it was a person, just clothes or debris. But cresting the hill revealed that he was standing on a two-wheeled hoverboard, twirling impossibly in the sunlit cold.
A few hours later, I am on a plane, staring down through fog at a billion bleary lights. The City makes the country feel large and lonely; the country makes the City insane. In the car to my apartment the radio mentions Anne Frank and Chris Stapleton, a ceaseless interruption of story and fact.
On a plane the weekend before, a man coughed hard and I looked across the aisle. He had his mask pulled down to his chin and was staring at his hand, which glistened with phlegm in the light of the HGTV program he was watching. He stared at it for a long time before pulling his mask back up. In front of me, a man was sending screenshots of text conversations to friends and kept watching a video of girls partying, over and over. His phone screen was so bright I could see it through my eyelids when I tried to sleep. Before our departure, the captain explained over the PA system that we were too heavy, that we would need to wait on the tarmac and use up fuel before we could fly.
America? What am I saying. Sitting going nowhere, burning up fuel, waiting to be light enough to finally leave the ground.
ben tapeworm