Things Big and Small

This country is full of big stuff.  Mammoth Caves.  Grand Canyons.  Great Lakes.  And that’s good.  After all, were it not for the big draw cards—and their corresponding labels—possibly we wouldn’t log ten thousand miles in a little car with Chuck the dog drooling over our shoulders while we eat rolled up slices of cheese and turkey.  And let’s face it:, a humbler, more specific approach to the naming of our natural wonders would feel rather comic: the really big Kentucky karst caves; the large glacial pooling formations of the upper midwest; Big time erosion in the western plateau.  

I’m not suggesting these places are without shock and awe value.  Or are somehow not living up to their names.  They totally are!  Like, awesome.  But one needs balance, and in this pursuit lies some of my happiest and most interesting findings. Chuck’s, too.

Take, for example, our morning walk, in which he sniffs at the various leavings surrounding hotel parking lots.  Empty Wendy’s hamburger bags, cigarette butts, plastic bottle caps.  Sometimes he’ll dig his nose into an amorphous pile of dirt, clippings, and shredded plastic shit, giving it the old focused snort as his nose literally blows aside the bad in search of the good (a decidedly relative relationship) before coming up with some morsel he works hard at swallowing before I can yank on his leash and pry apart his jaws, his eyes rolling back in his head, tongue working to force the wretched, slimy thing down his throat. 

“Goddamit, Chuck!  You puke in the back of the car, and I’ll kick your ass.”  Though we both know that isn’t true.  In fact, I’ve come to appreciate the basic give and take, push-pull relationship us living beings cultivate with our environment and each other.  Something Chuck  unabashedly trades in—and helps me keep a weather eye on.  All the things between the great big things we work toward (canyons, caves, big balls of twine) that celebrate the human comedy.  

Yesterday morning, after extracting the day’s vile excrement from Chuck’s mouth and putting him back in the room, I walked down to the front desk to check out the buffet and get a cup of coffee.  Rebecca was in the throes of her morning fight with light, pillows piled around her head, shoulders hunched in angry protest.  (Not, by the way, a morning person.)

My host was a man of Indian descent—the state of Gujarat, specifically—and he seemed available, so I thought I’d take a minute to get his views on India’s recent shift in prime ministers.  

“I don’t even see how that is a question I can answer!”  Mind, he was smiling when he said it, so I didn’t feel stupid or anything, but I certainly needed some clarity.  Did I miss something? I traced for a minute my impressions of the past night’s lodging, the faint smell of curry permeating the place, the dirty carpet, the smudged walls.  Damp.  And my man standing before me, all dark-skinned, slight bob of the head, pot belly.  Indian. Indian.  Indian.  And, unless my world had somehow come untethered, I didn’t see how he could possibly not have an opinion on his home countries' politics, even if we were occupying a piece of ground in southern Kentucky.

“I don’t get back much.  Maybe ten years now, I’ve been too busy.  My wife and children went last year, but I must run the business.”  And then he went on to talk about how Mr. Modi was in fact from Gujarat, this fellow’s home state!  And he spoke of politics.  Of Kashmir, of Pakistan, of the thirty-plus languages his countrymen speak over the whole of his homeland.  Finally, when I said something about his access to areas east of Assam that I (as an American, though I didn’t say as much) would not have access to, he came back with his assertion that he, too, had an American passport—so why should my access be any different from his?  Hmmm.  Why, indeed?  

My first impulse was to say something like, “Well, you speak the language, were born there, are clearly of the people with whom you would need to get favors…”  But I held my tongue.  It occurred to me what was going on with his initial response to my opening question: This man—this very-much Indian man who has made a new life in this country, wanted to seem and be seen as American.  One who clearly was of a different place, but who had given himself to long, hard effort at cultivating a business and family in a new land—going so far as to gather citizenship and procure an American passport.  Yet here he was, making a case to me (though rather tacitly) for his inclusion in my sense of all things American.  He wanted to be a part of the big ball of twine.  Which I found—and find—rather touching.  

There’s this, too: (and I’m not feeling particularly proud about this): I still think of him as something else.  No, that’s not right.  When I think about it, of course I reason that, yes, he is American.  But my intuitive sense says, Indian dude running a business here.  Really shitty on my part, I know.  

Do I need to get into how much more this rattled around in my head than, say, Big Bend National Park will?  Actually, I should say it resonates in a different way.  One I can’t help but revisit.