I've been thinking about this post since before I started the blog.
It's easy to write about ice and snow and cold and weather, because it's funny, and because it's a bitch, and because it's easy to take pictures of. But it's not easy for me to articulate my comprehension of cultural nuances, especially because I'm nervous of being offensive... to talk about being nervous of being offensive in... well, just about everything.
I'm not making sense already. Here, let me try again:
Deep down somewhere inside, I'm Texan. Stereotypically, Texan = big everything, beef, bad beer, big beefy beehive-y broads, bragging and bravado, Baptists, and the innate belief that no one else matters. I hate Texas. Texas is where the sperm met the egg that became me, and that reality had a more profound effect on me than I'd like to admit.
Then I migrated west to Nevada, where I came out within a week of crossing the desert, grew out my armpit hair, bought a bike instead of a car, considered anarchy, embraced atheism, learned yoga, and went into the Peace Corps. I became as un-Texan as I could get. When people said, "Where are you from?," I'd always say, "Reno."
Peace Corps in El Salvador deserves volumes, not a paragraph. I'll just mention that I was heavily influenced by late night sinful salsa dancing, a radical socialist alcoholic boyfriend, and white guilt. TONS of white guilt. I planned to live indefinitely in Latin America by way of finding a place where I could make art, and live my life dancing/crying/loving and doing all that delicious life stuff I'd been holding out on previously.
After Peace Corps, I went back west - to San Francisco, and I taught sex ed, counseled rape survivors, got involved in transgender health, thought a lot about outreach to sex workers, and started to pursue medical school to become an abortion provider. In California, this shy girl learned how to talk - about stuff nobody really knows how to talk about - and I hung around really chatty people, people who were way more social than I will ever want to be, people who went out a lot and talked a lot about their fabulous ideas and lives and plans to alter the world. I lived in the Bay Area bubble, the land of liberalism and lewd, lascivious acts of love.
Now, back to my point. I'm here in Minnesota and I just realized the other day that I've just started to not miss mountains and ocean constantly. Which is even sadder than missing them. That's to say, I'm getting used to it here, and I'm liking it for a lot of reasons, and I'm still confused for a lot of reasons about how the hell I ended up here and why the hell is it working out so well when it seems so strange. Huh? Everyday, it seems so freaking strange to me that I'm here.
Even after San Francisco, I'm still really shy. My heart beats in my throat when I talk in front of groups. As a social work student, I have to talk in front of groups all the time about incredibly passion-full and emotionally painful subjects - for me, right now, that means talking about death, and bearing witness to it - about oppression and disparity and injustice and phobias - about my own feelings that come up about hopelessness and despair when a client expresses those feelings - etc, etc, etc.
Doing this emotional stuff around Minnesotans is so different than doing that around Texans, Nevadans, Salvadorans, and Californians. I emote. I describe. I cry. I ponder. I ask 500 questions a day, half of which are bold and blunt. I fluctuate. I hide. I get brave and emote again. I don't acknowledge a God, and the only thing that keeps me getting out of bed every day, I figure, is the hope for more authenticity and growth than the day before.
Minnesotans, by and large, do not emote easily. What I've heard is that the mix of Scandinavian and German ancestry created the cultural notion that it's preferable to have a stoic and unblemished, pleasant and even facade. Something like that? Is that right? Minnesota Nice confuses me.
This is what I've been wanting to blog about forever. I find it so hard to articulate. I don't want to complain, but I feel incredibly tentative and uncertain of how to unleash my wild and wacky internal self. I'm terrified of offending the Minnesotan sensibility. I'm afraid of being the weird kid. And I'm frustrated at myself for being afraid.
There. I said it.
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6 comments:
I think that about sums it up. There is something about the long winter that makes it so we're just always bundled up. We get accustomed to staying inside and not getting out in the streets to meet new people. We like the invisibility of wearing scarves and hats and gigantic coats.
I think traditional (ie "older" or "rural") Minnesotans really value the stoic and even facade you described. My impression of the "big cities" is that there's more room for emotion and flair. But take this with a grain of salt. I grew up in Wisconsin which may not be very different from traditional Minnesota. In general, I'm not too worried about looking like an oddball or an ass. And I have found there's quite a receptive audience for oddballs.
Here's to you, sanguinetti! This blog rocks. And so do you!
As I read your comment, Nancy, I realize that in all the flair and color I used to live in, I always felt like the average wallflower. Now I always feel like I'm drawing attention to myself. It's crazy - people respond to you so differently in different contexts. Fascinating, actually.
Thanks Nancy!
The best description of Midwestern stoicism I've found is from Dar Williams:
But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother
We don't like to make our passions other people's concern
And we walk in the world of safe people
And at night we walk into our houses and burn.
"We don't like to make our passions other people's concerns." That's it exactly.
What a change! Going from a wallflower to a crazy assed extrovert over the time it takes to drive a little east.
I like Dar Williams.
A :) for Stevie B. That's the best sum up yet.
:) I could use a little polka dance on a day like this.
I grew up in northern Minnesota and I sure learned how to be stoic. Not always a good thing, but not always a bad thing. It helped me in the military. It didn't help me when I had a miscarriage. I needed to let my feelings out.
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