Editor’s Note: This story is a piece of fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
In the mornings, the American wakes up with the sun. He lies in bed and has a vague memory of his childhood self. Then he turns off his alarm and thinks about Nicaragua.
The American allocates time for a shower. He strips himself bare and faces the far wall, letting the water strike his neck. Already, his mind is racing. Yesterday, it was Lollapalooza. Today, it’s Nicaragua. Tomorrow, it will be either poststructuralism or autistic tennis journeyman Jenson Brooksby. The American doesn’t know much about Nicaragua, but he should. The President’s there on a diplomatic visit to discuss U.S. investments into Latin American ports.
Time for the American to get dressed. Things would be so much simpler with a belief system, he thinks as he negotiates a pair of Levi’s. It would make it easier for him to have an opinion about the President’s visit. Simply knowing things doesn’t help; everyone can do that now. What he needs is an argument. He needs something incendiary, something that really cuts through the noise of cold logic filling the airwaves.
The American steals a glance at the electric clock sitting atop his chest of drawers, permitting himself a breather before he starts the day. He employs the inhalation exercises his yoga instructor taught him, designed to slow down the inner workings of his mind. He mutters to himself a brief Brahman prayer and checks his investment portfolio on his phone. The stock market is unhappy with the President’s visit to Nicaragua, so he supposes he should be too.
Before he leaves, the American assesses himself in a mirror propped obliquely against the wall so it looks like his image will crush him underfoot. He looks tall and confident, with smooth mahogany skin and coiffed hair. His suit is Italian. (Much in the same way that Impossible Burgers are burgers.) His lunch leftovers are French. His coworkers are Asian.
The American drives a Tesla so big it seems to be compensating for some long-forgotten Freudian remonstrance. It seats a family of six despite the fact that the American has not had a girlfriend in three years and a non-virtual girlfriend in seven. He does not mind, because he has read Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and knows that courtship is an art and a struggle. Maybe one day he will travel down to Nicaragua and fall in love with a good-hearted girl seeking a whirlwind romance and entry into U.S. borders.
Reminded of Nicaragua, the American switches on a podcast as his Tesla drives him down the I-101. A sixty-two year-old ex-newscaster mulls over the future of CAFTA and potential alternative sources of sugar imports. In an ad break, a literary critic advertises her new show about Jane Austen. The key to Austen’s longevity, she argues, lies not in her appropriation of the trappings of the paternalistic gentry, but rather in her unusual approach to portraying masculinity itself. The problem with Nicaraguan imports, the newscaster continues, is that they cannot be supplanted by improvements to domestic manufacturing without a complete infrastructural overhaul. The Nicaraguan Development Secretary says, “Nicaragua will no longer bow heedlessly to the unfair and predatory export policies of the Americanos.”
The American enjoys this feeling of constant self-edification. It prepares him to weigh in on the issue when his colleagues ask him about it at work. Learning, after all, has a good return on investment. He loves learning things, experiencing life, and improving as a person. That’s his drug, not Adderall or pornography or whatever garbage most people are addicted to nowadays. The American is destined for greater things.
As the Tesla pulls into the office parking lot, the American has a thought about how to improve his personality — but an impulse hijacks him and he decides not to pursue it. Instead, his body leads him out of his car and into the sunlight. Spontaneously, unwittingly, he looks up at a green pattern unfolding quietly against the sky. In a moment of attention and vague terror the American observes the leaves of a willow, standing alone in the concrete apathy. He has a sudden vision of his childhood self.
The feeling leaves him quickly as it came. The American looks down, shakes his head and trudges to work. He wonders to himself, internally: Nirvana or Nicaragua?