Dope

Limited Inc was raised in the suburbs, but escaped those wastelands at the end of our larval stage. Still, sometimes there is a thing that calls us, a beckon in the sweet air, and we must go back to haunt those teen tedious reaches, those bloated wood and brick tents each on its own independent half to one acre� Well, really there isn�t, but for anthropological reasons we took off with a friend to explore Round Rock, Austin�s bedroom community, yesterday. The friend had romantic visions of Penny Lane, or at least the Cal-friendly colors of the Truman show, but we knew better. We knew that this is the South, after all, and that suburbs are where Yankees have traditionally coped with the South � by voting Republican, adopting Northern racism � a primness about language combined with a ferocity about money and who (and what color of who) it goes to � to Southern norms, and exuding around them, like the shell of some strange crustacean, that outlying reef of oddly monotonous shopping centers, among which old Southern remnants � the visibly unhygienic barbecue place, the commercially dubious shacks, usually sprinkled over with some disgusting grayish sludge of oil and rubber, somehow connected with the auto trade, the bakery outlets (white bread discounted) � exist in an uneasy symbiosis.

My friend, a product of Europe, had never taken a close and loving look at suburbia. Well, to the unaccustomed sensibility, it does come somewhat as a shock. She kept looking for waterfalls and greenery � Limited Inc never did find out where these inviting, though wavering, images came from. Alas, the only waterfalls to be found in the Round Rock area are artificially constructed, and usually involve railroad ties and some sprayer on an automatic timer. As for greenery, it has been a brown winter.

Paradise is getting everything you want � hell is the necessity of living with having gotten everything you want. Any teenager can tell you that. What makes America perpetually different is the p-to-h ratio � it is just at a different multiple from everywhere else. For three hundred years there�s been a bull market in paradise; but also, inexplicably, hell never disappears -- just take the next exit off the interstate if you want a taste of it. We Americans have produced the first real blackmail empire in world history � we have the weapons to end it all, and that armament has penetrated the pores of our very dreams. Assyrian lust for power, and the British conviction of our essential righteousness, this is a heady mixture. We like to think we are giants. But oh my friends, why, why, does all that power seems to leak away in the bungalows, at the end of the day? Why can one drive down the streets of Round Rock and feel something deadly, a tedium that seems to visibly weigh on the Dell Baseball Stadium, the HEB Grocery store, the Gatti�s Pizza Delivery place?