Merry Christmas! and more capitalist blues

I will reluctantly be receiving an iPhone for this holiday. My mother called me today from work and said, “Gracie, do you think I should get an iPhone?” and I said, “Mom, I just came back from Cuba, you know what I think, that it’s completely unnecessary.” Turns out, it was her tricky way of asking me if I wanted an iPhone for Christmas. Once I found this out, I told her emphatically to PLEASE not get me an iPhone, I don’t want any presents, I don’t need anything, the last thing in the world I want is an iPhone, please don’t feel obligated to get me a useless expensive gift just because America is telling you its your patriotic duty to be a consumer right now.

Unfortunately, my dad spoke to me later about this, and the bottom of the dealio is that if we get two iPhones (and Mommy needs one because her Blackberry doesn’t work, but Daddy doesn’t because he has a Blackberry that does work) we can get a better monthly phone rate than the one we have now, so it will be a money saver in the long run. I decided it would be hypocritical of me to refuse the phone just because I don’t want to identify with rich iPhone-carrying youngsters, and because the idea of having everything I could ever technologically need in a little metal square in my pocket terrifies me a little (already with free WiFi 24-7, I am a little overwhelmed with internet addiction/endless-possibilities-stress, and wish that I didn’t have such readily available WWW), also I hate having a cellphone anyways, I hate feeling it vibrate endlessly all over the place, never really pick it up, and love it only for its alarm clock function. But I guess for the sake of economic necessity, and practical necessity (having a cp in america counts as practically necessary, right?), I will switch in my little 6.5 year old Samsung number (the buttons were starting to stop working) for a sleek piece of unbreakable magic metal which I will most likely scratch up and ruin within the first week. The one thing that I am excited for, though, is having a decent–by decent I mean functional–camera with me at most times, because then I can take pictures of things that surprise me.

Today, I also got my nails done (bubble gum pink, its kind of disgusting, but they look good with my mustard yellow arm warmers), went to a giant grocery store, went to Blockbuster, and watched an American movie ‘Julie and Julia’ the one with Amy Adams and Meryll Streep about cooking with my parents. In the grocery store checkout line, I read tabloid and trashy magazine covers with my parents, and looked at the pictures of all the beautiful celebrities with their beautiful airbrushed skin and plasticked bodies, and started to feel all the insecurities of trying to feel beautiful in America. I am re-learning daily how fucking complicated this world is, with all its plethora of distractions, inventions, things to read, things to see, and things to buy. America, America, why are you brainwashing me again? Today I have started to feel bourgeois urges rising inside me, urges that truly did not appeal to me the past few days at all, urges I thought I had overcome. For example, I want to own fun colors of nail polish and another pair of arm warmers. For example, I ate beef, and when I was at the grocery store, I found myself wanting to put far too many things in the cart–brownies, flan, green peppers, oatmeal, yogurt, soy milk, cookies, pies…unnecessary bourgeois food cravings! For example, when I looked at the magazines and saw something about THE BACHELOR I felt an urge to watch it. When I entered Blockbuster, I dreaded picking a film, because all the escapist movies that my mother would want to watch seemed utterly repulsive to me at first, but by the end of my stay there, I could imagine myself watching a romance comedy. Already, everything about this world is making me feel much smaller, and because of it I feel myself turning cynical and pessimistic again, especially in the face of all these adults telling me what a young optimist I’ve become. America is TURNING ME INTO AN OBJECT AGAIN, or rather making me believe I am one, a pin in the system of everything who can do nothing but let the world create me and move me through it, Oh Lord, Heavenly Father, who sent us His only son this day 2009-ish years ago, on this day please let me not forget everything I discovered in Cuba about my position in this world as SUBJECT AND AGENT, please don’t let me cower in the face of all these images and messages flying at me from every direction every instant and become immobile, please give me courage to continue believing fervently in the creative imaginative potential of humanity and by extension my own as well.

Okay kids. Merry Christmas.

Chicago

Today I drove to Chicago with my daddy to get my Chinese visa. Chicago is a beautiful city, elegantly modern and not too tacky. This is what I remembered from my previous trips there.

This time, I felt like I was discovering it all over again, it along with all of America, or at least America in the cosmopolitan city sense–it was wonderful, and I felt like an endlessly curious and alert child, every store window display grabbed my attention, every noise–the song emanating mysteriously from the restaurant awning as I walked by, the beeping noise across the street from the walk sign, I looked unabashedly at the people who passed me, the clothes they were wearing, their faces, their races, and the smells! that delicious smell from the mexican cafe, this one from the italian restaurant.

It was snowing, and the colors were thus: gray, brown, white. I felt a reflexive urge to say ‘buenas’ to the strangers whose eyes I met, instead of ‘hello’ or ‘good day’ (today I also kissed my neighbor on the cheek in greeting without thinking when he came to visit us and bring us a turkey, but that is unrelated to chicago, just another anecdote of reverse culture shock), and it wasn’t even so cold. As the day went on, I learned to think of snow as beautiful again, if in a cold, bleak kind of way.

But all of this is unimportant procrastination. The important thing is that when we drove into the commercial section of downtown Chicago I was struck, to say the least, by the number of stores stacked horizontally next to each other, their big shiny glass windows revealing quantities and quantities of beautifully stocked shelves. My dad, at the steering wheel, was muttering about taking wrong turns and directions and stuff, but I couldn’t pay attention, my eyes were glued to the gleaming store displays, glittering with Christmas decorations, hyper-elegance, and hyper-abundance. Is this the realization of man’s potential?

Although I didn’t want to be a bitter commie cynic, the words ‘unnecessary’ ‘profligate’ ‘exorbitant’ kept on flying through my head, and I couldn’t help but wonder who the hell is buying all this shit? Supply seems to have reached such a high level in this country (to ensure comfort, convenience, a sense of abundance and wealth) that all sorts of artificial demand must be created to match it. No wonder we are in an economic crisis, no wonder there are so many advertisements everywhere. My dad showed me the Polo Ralph Lauren store on the ritziest part of Michigan Ave, and it was decorated and organized like a museum/mansion from the mahogany days. I guess it was artistic and kind of cool/original whatnot, but does that justify how completely unnecessary it was?

But even in all the glitzy elegance there were some slips of obvious TACK. The first was a store named ‘Material Possessions,’ with old fashioned lamps and other fancy looking things in the windows. The second was a mannequin Christmas window display for a mid-high end clothes shop that featured Christmas-lights pronouncing the giant words JOY and CHEER. I wish I could have taken a picture.

There are, however, some good things to say about the system. It’s all clean and pretty, and brings a little color and life to the boring winter scape. The food is yummy. Getting my Chinese visa was the easiest, fastest, most efficient thing that’s ever happened to me. Except for the 4 hour drive to Chicago, it was no hassle at all, in, out, done, something which never would have happened in Cuba.