This was originally posted in February of 2009 and written a few years previous. Given the Independence Day weekend and more tweaking, it seemed appropriate.   

It seems you’ve just got to pick and choose. Often to make the day-to-day bearable; other times to make existence possible.

Take Bob, for instance. I knew Bob throughout college. We were very good friends, he and I.

Bob was a Marine, but no stereotypical “jarhead.” Focus supplied by the Corps enabled him to finish college with clarity and determination. He went on to graduate school as a rather astute student of history. Bob was also rated one of the best Special Forces personnel in the USMC during his service. The elite of the elite, indeed.

When Bob was called to the Persian Gulf in 1991, he didn’t hesitate. He knew his obligation and responsibility. He served; he returned. 

Once home, he bluntly told many he didn’t want to talk about his experiences in the desert. I honored his requests.

In time, though, he made some things clear. Bob was acutely aware of the realities of international politics. He was cognizant of his role in the restoration of an oligarchy. He knew oil smeared everything and everyone involved. He knew Saddam, like Noriega before him, was an American “experiment” gone awry.

But, he couldn’t think about any of that. His stated reason for leaving was to preserve his immediate world. He thought of his family and friends then conjured a direct and lethal threat to us.

“I went for y’all,” he said.

Of course, once there, it became more about saving the lives of he and his mates, but that doesn’t change anything. Bob knew what it would take to make him face the fire, to keep him motivated. I was humbled to make that list.

But, Bob definitely picked and chose. As we all do.

When I think of the land of my birth and existence, a place I still call “home,” my thoughts venture beyond bottle rockets and beer cans. Some of them make me smile. Some cloud my brow or shake my head.

So I latch on tighter to that which lifts my chin and elicits joy.

And of the American things that make me proud, the most endearing are acutely related to my region of origin. Folks below the Mason-Dixon have boldly splattered the canvas of our national culture. The literature, food, and music of the South are arguably our country’s best.

Our relationship to the written word is well documented and award-laden. Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Zora Neal Hurston, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Albert Murray, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty; the list is worn. And it grows with every decade.

The pleasures of the Southern palate are incredibly diverse. There is as much art in our provincial cuisine, in the canning and preserving of fruits and pickles and vegetables, in baking airy biscuits or getting enough “tang” in red-eye gravy, as there is in whisking a buerre rouge sauce to perfection.

Not to mention the universe of intricacies in Creole and Cajun food.

No coincidence that pair of gustatorial disciplines emerged from a distinct cultural melange that also incubated my favorite of American gifts to humanity: Jazz.

Musically, America spawned a few original forms, blues and bluegrass being worthy examples but only in a land that boasted ideals of immigration and rebirth could jazz have begun. Only here would you have the tonality of blues melding with the syncopation of Midwestern ragtime, the melodic drama of Southern gospel and the rhythmic nuance of Latin and Caribbean music. The technical aspects of European instrumentation and notation were the final key ingredients to a recipe that moved the mind, feet, and heart all at once.

Inseparable from the story of jazz is the role of “race” in America, probably the defining issue of our 500-year existence. Also imbedded is the classic immigrant’s tale of struggle and sacrifice.

There’s discipline in there, hard times, too. Horror tales of self-destruction and excess dot its landscape, as does the warm bond of shared tribulation.

But, man, the stories those instruments tell, tales that can’t be told with words, where only tones can touch a part of you verbiage will never reach. Sounded colors and feelings so personal and lonely and beautiful and frightening the listener can’t even share a glance with another, eyes locked in sweet isolation on the floor or closed altogether.

And the magnificence of people working together, of collaborative improvisation so primal, that’s magic, too. It mirrors the wonderment of a nation where the governed have the opportunity, regardless how slim, to govern themselves, to mold the rules as they go along, to let work what will, just as those musicians do.

As a trumpeter once said, “Jazz gives us a glimpse into what America will be when it ‘becomes itself.’ And it will become itself; this music tells you that. And once you get a taste of that, you don’t want nothin’ else. That’s a sweet taste, man.”

So those are the things I cling to in reassurance against a more Machiavellian actuality. That’s my America.

Yeah, I’m an American. Its food built my body. Its culture formed my beliefs.

My people gave the world To Kill a Mockingbird and Native Son. We invented gumbo and etouffee, Bananas Foster and sweet potato pie. We begat Robert Johnson and Louis Armstrong, Bill Monroe and Dizzy Gillespie.

I'm an American. I’m a naïve ideologue who believes in things like “certain inalienable rights,” and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

I'm an American. I believe we all fall short and there’s work to do.

I'm an American because part of me always wants to hope, wants to believe it's not too late.