Freak
lukehollis • 24 May 2023 •
Walking into a Costco for the first time in years, I suddenly realize I’ve never been culturally American.
In the future, two vast trunkless green legs will protrude from sands, inscribed “Look on my works, ye mighty & save 10%”
Photo from ArchitectureAU
Why do I feel like such a misfit here? I have my entire life but wasn’t self-aware enough to notice.
Why do I sometimes get along with the immigrants to my country more than the people sharing my citizenship?
Why didn’t I like football? Why didn’t I focus more on STEM?
I spend all day in the library scanning books and am cut with nostalgia for grad school days spending 14-15 hours reading.
Now attempting to be the best tech builder I can, many in the tech community would say I wasted that time.
Without judgement on it, it’s better to have these ego deaths–and seek them out.
Where you thought you were really good at something, and suddenly there’s completely different standards and everything you once thought gain is now counted loss, etc.
This type of destruction of self makes you a more gentle & open person, and builds your empathy like nothing else.
Fragments of words form a weird incantation in the back of my mind:
I want people to care about art
I want art to be as important for our society as I believe it is
I want people to believe art & our shared histories are as important for our society as I believe it is
And pay for it to support my work haha
One of the founders of my home country, I forget who, writes, “He who lives outside his home country for 8 years or more, roughly, is a new person. If he returns, he will sufficiently changed from his original identity, he’ll never be at home. Still, he will never be fully the other, in whatever land he settles.”
Maybe growing up in a sheltered Christian home with emphasis on the Bible & British writers like Lewis& Tolkien, my life might make more sense to interpret as kind of 3rd culture kid.
For the purposes of this lifelog, I’m using American to mean person from the United States, b/c if I wrote “person from the US” everywhere I wrote American, this would be really long.
Comments
Haha, wow that’s awesome. Good marketing somehow by Costco. It’s so funny how much we take it for granted when it seems like it’s pretty unique to have these giant warehouse stores.
My neighbor works at Costco. They don’t call them customers. They call them members. I told her they’ll let anyone into Costco. They pretend like it’s some exclusive club, but they’ll let anyone in. It really is a prime example of the excess of the US.