Good morning, America. How are ya?

I've been thinking a lot about home lately... home, as in Ithaca, and home, as in the United States.

I spent my first 42 years in Ithaca, and never thought I'd leave... it's a magical place, for all its ridiculous hippieness. It's the birthplace of Puff the Magic Dragon and, we claim, the ice cream sundae, and it's a beautiful, mIthical enclave of gentle, intelligent people, waterfalls right in town, Cayuga Lake (with its waves of blue) and my noble alma mater (glorious to view). When I close my eyes at night, sometimes I see lush, green hills rising above the long, narrow lake. One thing I love about Korea is the hills; Florida was just too flat, too not-Ithacan.

Ithaca is in my heart, whether or not I ever go back.

But mostly I've been thinking of the States. I prepare Korean kids to go to college in the USA, and as a representative of my country, I feel both proud and ashamed every day.

We were the first democracy in the modern world. We taught the globe about Liberty and Justice For All and Government of the People, By the People, For the People. We saved Europe. We've got the best popular music and the best movies, we gave the world baseball, and our ideals illuminate the Earth.

I love my country.

But we're also the land of the Trail of Tears and slavery and Jim Crow and drone strikes and empire and guns, guns, guns. We won't be capital-A America until our realities match our ideals. And it feels, from my vantage point over here, as if we never get any closer to that point; I hope I'm wrong.

I may be an expat for a long, long time. There are jobs here, and I get a certain je-ne-sais-quoi (but I don't know what) from being The Older American in Korea. But sometimes I miss Home.

Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son.

Ithaca

It won't be any great shock to anyone to hear I'm an Ithacan through and through. I have its zip code in my email address, I'm constantly wearing the t-shirt my friend sent with "Ithaca" on the front in Korean characters, I dream in forest green and Cayuga blue... if I were to pick five labels to place on myself, they would probably be Ithacan, American, vegetarian, Cornellian, and carbon-based life form (or possibly Ithacan again). Oh, yeah, and teacher. I should add that.

I've missed Ithaca so much for 14 years. If you've lived there, you'll understand (even if you don't fully share the sentiment; the weather's pretty crappy, I admit). If not, you'll have to take my word for it: waterfalls right in town, the hills, the lake, the town Utne Reader named "the most enlightened city in America" and (right-wing nutcase magazine) Free Republic calls "the city of evil"...

Today I signed into the "you know you're from Ithaca if..." group on Facebook and read several pages regarding "something you remember that isn't there now". Oh, mistake. The Temple Theater, the old library, the older library, Andrews' candy shop, Johnny's Big Red Grill ("Wait! What happened?!) The list brought it all (but me) home. Now I don't know if I'm homesick for Ithaca, or for 1970.

In some ways, I'm better off away from Ithaca; I do better with more sunlight and there are too many shadows of who I used to be. Still, I've always had it in the back of my mind that one day, when I have enough money to live out the rest of my life, I'll return to Ithaca. (Current calculations put the date in mid-September 2038.) But I know that most of the people I cared about have left, geographically or otherwise, and the town has changed and, I imagine, will change more. But its heart is still Ithacan, like mine.

Yeah, I got it bad.