International News on American Radio, or, Living in Tony Hoagland's "America"

Running errands around town the other day, I realized how voyeuristic my interest in all the North African / Middle Eastern unrest is.  I had been listening to more news than usual, just wanting to keep up on the latest from Egypt and now Libya.  The Libyan situation was so tense at the moment that Minnesota Public Radio had given its broadcast over to the BBC, which was reporting exclusively on Libya for that full hour.  As I listened, I realized that I was enjoying the coverage, much as I might enjoy a documentary.  I recalled that very morning, when I had said to my daughter "the world is really interesting right now," and we had discussed a number of news stories that had captivated our attention. 

Then, even while I was listening and reflecting on my own distance from the events, I realized that I was tracking another thought at the same time:

I'd been all over town that day, and had noticed for the first time that a strange number of spas have opened here, recently--I can count half a dozen new spas in this small city of about 50,000.  Why is a spa a good business when the economy's in the tank?  I like a spa.  I like massages.  Aromatherapy.  Is there a need for a well-developed economy of relaxation when everything sort of feels like it's on the brink of collapse?  Or maybe it's more simple--a competitive strategy among financiers: if one spa opens, and you're a savvy investor, then you should open another spa.  Perhaps your spa will be better, and will steal the market that the first spa has worked hard to create.  Could that be a real strategy?  Could there be a name for it in a business text? 

As I went from working out to the post office to the grocery store to picking up the kids from school, with revolution in Libya in the back of my mind like the plot of a good movie I'd recently watched, while spas appear like visions of oasis on every business corner, I realized that my thought patterns closely resembled Tony Hoagland's poem, "America."

"When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher."

It's neither here nor there.  It doesn't change things either in my head or in the world.  But maybe it's something to realize that art is capable of leaving a record of its time--even if that record is one of collosal short-sightedness.

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