In America

Susan Sontag

Leaving the cabin, after dutifully cleaning up after Julian, he regained the sun and wind and his own perch of scornful acuity. Like most writers who are intelligent, Ryszard had long since accustomed himself to being actually two people. One was a warmhearted, anxious man, rather boyish for his twenty-five years, while the other one...in the other one, detached, reckless, manipulative, flourished the temperament of someone much older. The first self was forever being surprised by the evidence of his own intelligence; it never ceased to astonish him, thrill him, when words, eloquence, ideas, observations just came, like birds flying out of his mouth. The second was condemned to finding nobody clever enough--and everything he saw a challenge to his skills as an observer and describer, because so blindly, thickly steeped in itself ("the world" is not a writer).

You men have it much easier. You are commended for recklessness, for boldness, for striking out, for being adventurous. A woman has so many inner voices telling her to behave prudently, amiably, timorously. And there is much to be afraid of, I know that. Don't assume, dear friend, that I have lost all sense of reality. Each time I am brave, I am acting. But that is all that's needed to be brave, don't you agree? The appearance of bravery. The performance of it. Since I know I am not brave, not brave at all, this spurs me on to act as if I were.

Every marriage, every community is a failed utopia. Utopia is not a kind of place but a kind of time, those all too brief moments when one would not wish to be anywhere else. Is there an instinct, a very ancient instinct, for breathing in unison? The ultimate utopia, that. At the root of the desire for sexual union is the desire to breathe more deeply, deeper still, faster...but always together.

No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.

You're asking me, and you have every right to ask me, if I really do love you. And I want to say--oh, dearest Ryszard, you know what I want to say. And that wanting is love, too, though not the kind you mean. But the truth is, I never know exactly what I feel when I'm not on stage. No, that's not true. I feel intense interest, curiosity, pity, anxiety, desire to please--all that. But love, what you mean by love, what you want from me...I'm not sure. I know I don't feel love the way I represent it before an audience. Maybe I don't feel much of anything at all.

December 9. I thought you liked happy endings, I say. I think this is a happy ending. M. says. You can't see why she wants to leave? All too well, I say. Everyone dreams of bursting the chains of marriage and starting over. Yes, M. says, but I don't now. And you, Bogdan? Do you want me to answer that? I reply. I thought we were discussing how to end this play. Husband, husband, M. says, we're always talking about ourselves when we talk of anything else. Yes, answer. Then why can't the ending be changed, I asked. I'm not leaving, I said.

Americans are incapable of emigration. The best we can do is become ex-patriots somewhere--Americans living abroad. Is this because we are an immigrant nation? You would think that would predispose us to ever more movement, ever more migration. But migration beyond our national borders is a thing Americans are simply incapable of. Perhaps this is because we have so many 'sovereign' states within these United States to which we may emigrate. But this sort of emigration seems more like drinking Sierra Mist because you don't want to support Mountain Dew (guess who owns both?) or eating Chex because you don't like Cheerios (again). If you're a US Citizen, where would you emigrate to (if you were going to emigrate)?