I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

Sometimes I am not sure how it's all going to turn out. In fact, I am never sure.

Today we went to hear a Chumash speaker over at the University speak about his culture, and tell tales of his people. Of all the myths I have studied, I find myself drawn to Native American creation stories perhaps most of all. The only systems close to it are Ovid's view of nature, and Japanese Shinto traditions. I love the reverence for nature, and the notion that everything is alive with spirit. It's reassuring that everything conspires together to form the reality we see. This gent today told us a story of how Great Horned Owl came to be, and how Coyote rescued Hawk from the whale-eating Swordfishes.

They were great stories.

Then my parents called as I was leaving, and I had a two hour conversation with my father on politics, the economy, and becoming ex-patriate. I came right out of the world of myth and into the harsh light of 'reality'.

My father is an extraordinarily intelligent man, and he reads absolutely EVERYTHING. He is quite possibly the most well-informed and fiercely analytical person I know. He stimulates me constantly to watch the BBC and read the Economist, among other things. My parents are Brits who left early and never looked back. They've lived in Italy, Holland, the US, and now the Carribean. Their boat, sunk recently by Ivan off Grenada, has been their country for the past 10 years.

And something in me is veeeerrry attracted to that. The idea of having your own country....

I am quite certain that life as an ex-patriate is in my destiny. I realize I am not as able to pick up and go overseas since I have an American child, and an American ex-spouse who expects visitation somewhat regularly. But we already are down to 2-3 visits per year. I wonder what it would matter if I sent her to him from the Carribbean versus from California.

You can disappear there pretty easily, can't you?

I have had more friends speak to me in the past few weeks about leaving the country than I ever have in my life. I am beginning to think about this quite seriously myself, though Canada's a bit too cold for me. I do have relatives up there, and that might be nice.

I just worry that the US, drunk on a steady diet of imperialism, would get the crazy notion to annex Canada as a state while I am living there.

Years ago I saw a really bad sci-fi film where people were trying to escape the US and go to Canada because we'd become something...well, terrible. And in this film, there were big yellow danger signs everywhere booming that this was the US border, and you had to stop and get out of your car and be searched. People had to go through x-ray scanners to get through the security checkpoints. The guards were dressed in combat gear and carrying semi-automatic rifles.

I remember seeing this bad film 15+ years ago, and shuddering at a US that could look like that.

And now the airports have become that very scene, wrought from the pages of a bad sci-fi film. It's not that you can't get out, though. They just want to stop you from being a terrorist. Because now everyone and anyone could be one.

But it IS becoming eerily like a bad sci-fi film, isn't it? Invading far away countries for seemingly no reason, deficits ballooning out of control, debt out of control, a hijaked government, and then there's that Roman feel to things with people becoming so greedy and empty all at once....

I find myself surprised that these two events occurred on the same day - a dip into the other-worldly, and the THIS world banging on my consciousness. It's an interesting contrast, with the former culture having been pretty much blasted out of existence by my culture. And this was considered progress at the time....

How will this all look 20 years from now to me?

Depends entirely on the landscape from which I shall be making the view, I suppose.