I am an American, as you know. We have been living together for three months today. Isn't that such a long time! When I first arrived I didn't know what to think. My French was poor, my shame from my origins high, and I expected you to be less than accepting of such a person as myself. However, you seemed to appreciate my efforts, and the first few people I met were very kind. More so even, than their jobs merited. However, the longer I have stayed the more I realize the truth. Europe, you have produced some delicious fruit, but your tree is rotting. You hold up your achievements, but they do not define your culture. Your achievements have actually held a reverse effect, that now people can hold up things they had nothing to do with, and whose implementation they complained about to exonerate their own debauchery, bigotry, or combinations thereof. Europe, you have to stop talking about Americans, because you are exactly the same. There was no culture in the US save for the yogurt and the Meningitis. I am afraid that you are headed down the same path. There are remnants of your culture, to be certain. But you can't hold on to these for long, especially when you are working as hard as you can to tear them down, and replace them with large gaudy offices, that will only be torn down to make room for more large gaudy offices. Giraudoux must be rolling in his grave so quickly it's a wonder that the Passy Cemetary hasn't robbed the Earth of all its angular momentum. And yet, you hold him up saying "Look at our greatness! Look at our culture!" When you yourself have done nothing to accept or encourage the growth thereof.
My point Europe, is that I wish you did complain about me. I wish I was ostracized and marginalized here. Disenfranchised with my lack of culture and my wont to be a little brash and completely stubborn more often than I'd care to admit. I wish you saw yourself as different from me. But you don't. You as we, have fallen into the abyss of consumerism. What's worse you do not even recognize it is glaring back. You have come to live lying in your most base desires and instincts. You do not care anymore Europe, and you are okay with that. When I first arrived I was so enamored. I guess I just talked to the right people. If I hear an iphone play hip hop on the metro at 7 am once more I am going to lose my mind. Headphones may be masturbatory, and the may slice through solidarity like a razor through the side of my cheek when I inevitably cut myself shaving, but they at least lack entitlement. We have screwed ourselves Europe, and we are starting to realize that our entitlement was unfounded. Please, you are looking up to what America is and behaving in the way that has made its last few years so very disastrous. I am only here for a little while longer Europe, and I'd rather say this as I left, but here we are. You have lost all the responsibility that you must have had after you screwed yourself the last time. You're on the verge of it again. But this time, you will rot from the inside, until your fruit gets uglier and uglier and soon disappears altogether. Norway stayed out of your organizations as did Switzerland. I don't blame them. I want the rest of our time together to be time well spent. But this will require change I know you're unable to make. It will require you finding something to eat other than McDonnald's and durum. It will require me finding cavernous art galleries packed and bars with bad music and overpriced drinks empty. It will require you to ask me about more than clubs when I tell you I went to a country you've never been to. I told you I didn't go clubbing already, why ask again? So Europe, I do value the time we've spent together, but I feel like what I have loved about you was an ersatz to what you want. The long dinners with friends were scoffed by your populace in favor of cheap and fast. The museums and cathedrals seen as only a place upon the exteriors to express your bland statement of ego, or pithy pseudo-anarchist slogans. How long are you going to ride the outliers of your society before you admit that something is wrong? more importantly though, how long will Poland last now that they look up to you?
I am going to be with Africa for awhile Europe. You treated Africa terribly, and well, I hope that in that regard they are different than you. But you've taught me not to expect much.
Kimball
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