In my mind, I'm goin' to Carolina ...

Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Maybe just like a friend of mine
It hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind



Lemme tell you some things I love about America.

I love huge, wide sidewalks. Swipes of concrete where you can walk without stumbling over someone's garbage bins, or their car straddling the kerb, or the ubiquitous pile of little French dog caca, or that never-graceful dance of confusion with passersby, where you try to figure out who has the right of way.

I love 24-hour supermarkets and gas stations and convenience stores and boites de nuit and always something to do, someone to talk to, someone to call. The ability to banter at the bank, the market, the shop on the corner.


I love houses that aren't beige, roofs that aren't the same red tile.

I love many faces, many voices, many languages on the same street. The French all look the same. The same bodies, the same trends, the same pointy-toed eagle talon boots and faux-fur trimmed vests. The same silver-and-black striped shirts, and so many buckles on everything that they could be Pilgrims.

Here I walk down Mission Street past Mexican men with slicked-back hair, black puffy jackets, and Adidas polished too-white peeking from the cuffs of their extravagantly baggy jeans.


Internet that works nearly all the time, and very, very fast.

Cheap cell phone minutes.

California wine.

Avocados, 4 for $1. Limes, 10 for $1.

American greenbacks.

Strong black coffee in those heavy white diner mugs, on a chipped formica or peeling woodgrain table, in a vinyl-covered booth at half-past midnight.

Pizza with tomato sauce and without creme fraiche. Or lardons.

American microwbrews. Fuck, American brews, whatever they are.

Large pillows, large towels, thick mattresses, hot showers, dryers (for clothes and for hair), comfortable socks, Christmas lights, fog around Sutro Tower.

The American Postal Service, bless them.

Grey's Anatomy.

The Sunday Times.

Gingerbread houses.

Knowing the correct usage of punctuation.

Knowing how much my cash is actually worth.

American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee.

The Food Network.

Graduate school.

Secondhand bookstores.

Refills.


Dark and silent last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
Signs that might be omens say I'm going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind


People who have travelled and come back and gone away again.

The ability to leave, and have a place to come home to.

My own apartment.

My friends, who, much to my surprise and pleasure, missed me.


With a holy host of others standing round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind


Hey guys - I finally had that cup of coffee, in the paper cup with the little sleeve and the plastic lid with that frustrating little hole through which to scald your tongue. I drank it walking down the street, while talking on my cell phone.

I'm going to the movies, where the previews are too long but not as long as the half-hour French ones, and where the popcorn comes with extra butter and isn't sweet. Then I'm going to eat Chinese food in the middle of the night, out of the paper cartons and with those wooden chopsticks that you break apart and then rub the ends together to smooth out the splinters.

I'm going to a brewery, to hear bluegrass and drink real beer. I'm ordering a hamburger. A big one. With melted yellow cheddar cheese. And fries, not frites, that will come beside my sandwich instead of in the middle of it. And ketchup that doesn't taste like that tomato sauce that comes in the toothpaste-tube things at the Casino.

I'm still waiting for my first diet Mountain Dew.

Tomorrow, I get to see my father, who's brining a turkey because my family kept Christmas on hold til I could be there. I'm going to eat my grandmother's sweet potato casserole, and the cornbread dressing she makes completely from scratch, and her grapefruit and avocado salad, and that quintessentially Southern truc with the apples and bananas and walnuts and celery and mayonnaise. And three kinds of pie. And iced tea, even in December. And I'll pour gravy over all of it, and leave my squashy buttered dinner roll on the plate the whole time.

It's a beautiful thing.


Say nice things about me 'cause I'm gone,
Southbound
You'll have to carry on without me
'cause I'm gone, I'm gone
I'm gone to Carolina in my mind