I am so deeply American, in the insecure but blustery way that some Americans are taught to be American, that it has taken me all my adult life to develop a more mature picture of what it means to be American.  (This isn't at all the fault of my parents, who were deeply committed to my sister and I becoming aware of the amplitude of the world, and the possibilities for goodness and value to be discovered everywhere; it is my adolescence.)  And of course I'm still developing into a sufficiently adequate resemblance to "maturity."  Like my country, I am very much a work in progress.

I don't know if I can characterize the emotions I feel about the Fourth of July, but they are multitudinous and terrible, both positively and negatively.  More than anything else, they speak to me of some existential depth at their base, as if these things matter, that the fate of the world is somehow tied up with the fate of America.  I don't think that's entirely right--I try to be an Augustinian, after all--but a cold-eyed vision of our world today would suggest that, if we as a nation can't get our act together, the rest of the world will be in a much worse place than it otherwise would be.

This Independence Day, even here in the UK, feels more visceral than it ever has before. Messy and clotted and bloody and sweaty and emotionally draining. (OK, in the UK, not so much "sweaty," but in an emotional way, sweaty.) In a way like never before, I feel _cornered_ by the Fourth.

It makes me think of a small essay I read some years ago by a great poet, Adam Zagajewski. It's in his collection A DEFENSE OF ARDOR, and I highly recommend it. To my fellow Americans I give you these words:

We are so prosaic, so ordinary. Do we even deserve poetry? But we, too, will be legends for future generations, because we once lived, and our words will mean more than we care to admit today.

Whether we like it or not, whether we think we can endure it or not, here is where we are, and I think we must admit that what Zagajewski says is true. Our words, and our deeds, will mean more than we can imagine; they will be permanent, historic. We will be legends, in one way or another. What we get to do is, in fear and trembling, choose how we will appear.

I wish us all way more than luck.