Ive never really felt at peace in the United States of America.

It has always had

the quality of that overly violent kid in school that was tolerable 90% of the time until you
either stepped on the pencil that he had dropped and forgotten about and were snared
by his lazy and overprotective egosending him into a dripping red rage ...or you
laughed at something you thought was a joke that actually was not a joke- either way
you were left on the ground in a confused and bloody daze.
It came as quite a surprise that the latent feeling of force is built into the monikers
of our veins, our connected passages ways: boulevards, drives, avenues, and roads
frame and map any city in America. What do these have in common with violence?
They are all martial epithets, all leftover from the violent conquest of America that is so
often heroized in popular American history and still unfolding today on the public in the
name of security, stability, and freedom.
A boulevard comes directly from French where it originally referred to the top part
of a rampart, or defensive wall. Just what do we have to bulwark in a civil society? Who
is attempting an armed overthrow of the local convenience store or redbox? At best the
criminals are after petty cash not the stuccoed castles where we fill up our steel
carriages and unsettled guts.
A drive comes from the the Old English drifan, which is to rush against or hunt. I think
drive is better used to describe the aisles of holiday sales at big box stores that turns
soccer moms against colleges kids and approval seeking fathers into human
steamrollers all for the benefit of few percent off retail.
Avenue is linked to the Middle-French word avenue which was used as a
militarys way of approach to the enemy. I wonder just how satisfied Martin Luther King
Jr. would be having his name chained to the avenues of so many cities. I realize that
avenue and other words were not exclusively used by the military, but I think the very
access ways we use everyday should be described as kindly as possible especially in
these irruptive times where a person can be killed in a traffic stop for no good reason
other than fear.
And for the most used of them all, a road, which comes from the Germanic word for raid
or hostile approach is a slow way to civility.

It seems that the road to success that America has chosen is to stand on the
shoulders and rights of others by force, why claiming the actions in the name of
tranquility and peace. Although all thats paved in America is not latently hostile, I am
truly bulimic to walk the gentle ways and easy streets because they were cleared and
paved for journeys outward, of sublime exploration, unlike the other supposedly helpful
travelways which seem to hushedly celebrate inroads and repression. I realize that
everyday is feigned peace. However, the ones that are interested in us not knowing the
relativism of history also are not interested in correcting the counterfeit peace either
they prefer the forgotten hollow marks of our warlike past to guide us. They know that to
get to peace you have to know where you are going and that few of us will ever realize
where we are going or where we came from.
If these leave you wondering how hostile the modern American spirit is ask
yourself what other domestic issues besides the war on terror, which is softly justifiable
in some lights albeit far from what America is doing, we attempt to solve with war, like
drug addiction and poverty. America is a place where mental health is criminal and
charitys a war. Criticism without direction is useless, so for our map to a better America
I think the best approach is to be only a little kinder to anyone you come across. It
doesnt take much to share happiness with people. We are all dying together, perhaps if
our curiosities were as large as our prejudices and frustrations we could destroy the
Earth, our only home so far, in peace, together.