Exiles Eternal

[Guest guest]

Exiles Eternal

by Bill Bonner

"We finally master fundamental, deep-value stock analysis, and then

we find someone who outperforms us using Vedic astrology. If we keep

going in this direction, we wonder what will become of us."

 

 

"Is the weather nice? How's Aunt Gertie? And how's Tempest, the dog?

He must be getting up there in dog years. Are the tomatoes ripe yet?

Did you have corn on the cob for the Fourth? Did the relatives come

up from...Virginia, right? And is that old honey locust tree in

bloom? How I remember that smell. It used to intoxicate me. On a

warm spring day, I remember I used to lie in the hammock and suck so

hard at the air I almost fainted. Couldn't get enough of it, you

know. People ask me what I miss over here, and that's all I can

think of is things that smell. Yes, I miss the odor of the beech

leaves in late autumn. You know, under the big tree in the driveway,

and the grass after the first time we mowed in May. And even the

odor of the crisp northern wind before the snow flies."

 

Exiled from our homeland...far from kith and kind...thus we write to

our countrymen.

 

A man doesn't choose what he is. His culture sinks in to him without

his knowing, like the scent of the trees and the swamps. He can

ignore it. He can disguise it. But he can never get the smell out of

his nostrils, like Proust with his madeleines. Traveling in a

strange country, even many decades after leaving home, he catches a

faint aroma that seems to waft into some part of the brain that is

normally closed off, like a room in an old house where the dearest

memories are stored. And then it comes back to him. Not distinct

images. Not words. Not even actions. But a feeling that picks him up

and transports him thousands of miles to a place he once knew and

had forgotten all about. And that is what he really is. He knows it.

He is not necessarily happy or sad about it. But he cannot get away

from it.

 

American tourists wandering the streets of Paris or London squeeze

their passports tighter than their wallets. They can't imagine

anything worse than being cut off from the smell of home. When they

go overseas it is as if they were visiting the underworld and in

danger of getting trapped in hell forever.

 

They are not alone. There are many who would rather die than leave

home. Socrates, for example. Told to shut up or face the

consequences, he refused to stop philosophizing. His fellow citizens

decided to put him to death. When his friend Crito asked why he did

not simply leave Athens, he replied:

 

Or is your wisdom such that you do not see

that more than mother and father and all other ancestors

the country is honorable and revered and holy

and in greater esteem both among the gods

and among humans who have intelligence,

also she must be revered and more yielded to and humored

 

"and suffer whatever she directs be suffered,

keeping quiet, and if beaten or imprisoned

or brought to war to be wounded or killed,

these are to be done,

and justice is like this,

and not yielding nor retreating nor leaving the post,

not only in war and in court but everywhere

one must do what the state and the country may order"

 

Socrates might have gotten away from everything. He could have run

off to Rome, for example, as was the custom. In fact, 300 years

later, there were so many Greeks in Rome that Juvenal complained

that they were ruining the city. "I cannot abide...a Rome of

Greeks...there is no room for any Roman here." Nothing about the

Greeks appealed to him.

 

Ovid, by contrast, didn't have to worry about any Greeks crowding

into Rome since he was exiled to the Black Sea for writing what was

either naughty or critical, historians are not sure which. He

couldn't bear being away from Rome – even if it was filling up with

low-life Greeks.

 

>From his exile, he kvetched about the weather (too cold), the people

(barbarians), the language (incomprehensible) – everything.

 

And to the poetry he continued sending back to Rome, he added

plaintively, "I wish to be with you in any way I can." He even

concocted a few lies about the climate – complaining about the snow

lying on the ground all year round and wine freezing in the bottle –

to get Augustus to let him go back.

 

We began to have doubts about Socrates when we learned that the neo-

conservative bunglers behind the Bush administration were inspired

by the classics. It was a little like saying our broken-down pony

was inspired by Man of War; the only thing similar about them may be

that they have four legs. Still, it aroused our suspicions.

 

Of course, not all the ancients were homebodies like Socrates and

Ovid. When the Cynic Diogenes, for instance, was asked where he came

from, he replied: "I am a citizen of the world." He meant he was not

ruled by local concerns and customs but by a more universal code,

what the Stoics elaborated as a "kosmou polites" – or worldwide

citizenry.

 

Marcus Aurelius extolled the virtues of the kosmous polites. "One

must first learn many things before one can judge another's action

with understanding," he said. But we have noticed that the more we

learn, the less we know. Hardly have we got one idea down then

another comes along to challenge it. We develop a taste for French

wines, and then we discover Italian ones. We like living in London

and then we fly off to Buenos Aires where we find we can afford

twice the lifestyle at half the price. We were content in the paleo-

anarcho-Christian wing of American conservativism – a voting block

of at least two or three people – and then we discover that the

French national health system actually works quite well. We finally

master fundamental, deep-value stock analysis, and then we find

someone who outperforms us using Vedic astrology. If we keep going

in this direction, we wonder what will become of us.

 

In Socrates' view, the masses need shared values to make the city-

state work. Today, the lumpen can't live without Social Security,

central banks, and Major League Baseball, he might add. Certainly,

the world's governments would have trouble selling their bonds if

the next generation showed itself unwilling to pay off debts

incurred by the generation that preceded them. And maybe it is true;

maybe most people need the warm embrace of familiar places, familiar

people and familiar holidays, pastimes and rules.

 

Elizabeth came back from Paris last night. She reported on the

madness in the streets:

 

"It was unbelievable. When the French beat the other team – I think

it was Portugal – people went crazy. They leaned out of windows

shouting and flying flags. Everyone was blowing his horn. It was

amazing. We were trying to drive across town to the apartment, but

there were mobs in the streets. They would come along and rap on the

top of the car. It was kind of scary."

 

A few days before, we were in a cab in London. The cab driver

said, "I guess you were watching the game earlier."

 

"What game?" we replied.

 

We cosmopolitans don't know or care. We are cut off. Exiles from

everywhere, and nearly everything. We work in the office on the

Fourth of July, and miss the Super Bowl, too. We have no voice in

local politics. We get involved in no local action committees. And

we only read the local newspapers for entertainment. "What will

those dumb frogs do next?" we ask ourselves. Meanwhile, the dumb

things yanks do irritate us so much we can't bear to read the

headlines at all.

 

Are we lonely? Not so we've noticed. Do we miss the Rose Bowl? We

never watched it anyway. Are we starved for information? On the

contrary, at a distance, we see more clearly what goes down in the

homeland than people living in the middle of it.

 

But who protects us? Who looks out for us? Whom can we turn to get

our highways and speeding tickets fixed? We exiles are exposed to

the harsh elements – always in danger of getting rounded up and

shipped off. We are in danger of having our visas revoked, or having

our property confiscated. But why would anyone want to get rid of

us? We are no trouble. We do not vote. We do not ask for any

services or benefits. We do not complain. What would be the point?

We spend money and pay taxes. Who could ask for better citizens?

 

But the more cosmopolitan we become, the more we wonder about home.

Out on the Maryland tidewater, the old families spoke their own

tongue – derived from a 17th century dialect from Southwest England,

we are told – for 300 years. With the language and time came history

and eccentricities that made local life rich and interesting. But

then came a homogenization that washed out the particularities. In a

few decades, the place came to resemble every other suburb of

America. Local accents were replaced by the English you hear on

television. Tobacco and oysters yielded to government jobs. And

local customs were replaced with national rules and regulations. You

couldn't smoke in a restaurant. You couldn't build without a permit.

You couldn't drive without a seat belt. Toss an empty beer can into

the river and it's a federal case.

 

Ol' Cap'n Earl used to live out on a pier in the West River. He had

built himself a rickety cabin over the water to get away from his

wife. He would sit outside, drink his beer and throw the cans into

the water. In the summer, after work, when the river smells rose up

so strong they were almost overpowering, men would gather out on the

pier with him. They would talk. And drink. Sometimes they would pull

a crab up out of the water. And the hours would pass.

 

But then some agency showed up. His cabin was condemned by about 12

different government agencies. Cap'n Earl, an old man by that time,

was moved onto dry ground and died soon after. And then, the

sailboats came, owned by Washington lawyers. They were soon so thick

on the river that you could walk from one bank to the other, hoping

from boat to boat.

 

 

No, all the baroque odors and smells have been scrubbed away. Now,

the Maryland tidewater is no different from any other place in

America. Our friends have grown up and become middle class

Americans. There are no front porches, no rocking chairs, and no

screens in the windows – no shutters. The old folks are almost all

dead. No one speaks the local dialect anymore, except a few diehard

watermen and unreconstructed tobacco farmers. And even the church

seems to have been amalgamated into the general faith of America's

great religion – where the greatest sin is being "intolerant" and

the greatest virtue is recycling.

 

We are happy here on the other side of the globe. And then, when the

wind comes off the Atlantic, we sometimes get a whiff of it...a

ghostly trace of what we once knew. We pause. We stagger. And then,

we remember:

 

There are a lot of exiles in this world. Each one has his own

reason; we have ours. Long before we left America, the America we

knew left us. We travel not to get away from it, but to find it.

 

July 8, 2006

 

Bill Bonner [send him mail] is the author, with Addison Wiggin, of

Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of The 21st

Century and Empire of Debt: The Rise Of An Epic Financial Crisis.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/bonner/bonner268.html