Southern Culture

I realized after my weekend in Philadelphia I was going be mildly outside the norm.  Not as though I’m a freak to begin with (although I’m sure there are many of you out there who could make a pretty long list–please don’t) but I do come from North Florida, where confusion exists as to our nationality: Southern (like Georgia/Alabama), or Cuban/NewYorker (like Miami/Boca Raton).

Most people fall decidedly in the “Southern” category.  These are the people who wear their cowboy boots to their own weddings, who sometimes just as much weight in front of themselves as behind, who aren’t sure that “you’ll” is correct (but know God–with a capital G–definitely said “y’all” somewhere in the Bible), who wave The Banner of The Republic (also know as the Confederate Flag) between the two giant antennae of their jacked up truck–although I’ll admit sometimes the more liberal ones just wave the American flag, who wear bibs while their eating BBQ because usually their beer belly is the perfect place to rest their messy hands because it allows minimal movement, who own acres of land and have shot at a target on every tree on the property, who…  I’m gonna have to stop there.  This list gets depressing after a while.

And then there are the “erudite” Boca Moms who wear the really classy “Juicy”-written-on-the-butt pants to go grocery shopping (and to highlight their recently plastic surgeried buttocks), the Cubans who hang out at La Fiesta because it’s their only stronghold in the city (and feels just like home), while the liberal Cubans hang out at Gordo’s because they just smoke a lot, and the Boca dads who are invariably in Tallahassee only on government business and disdain everything about Tallahassee mainly citing the fact that the classiest hotel is the Double Tree downtown (where I once had a delicious, but kind of dry, Thanksgiving dinner with the entire family)…and this list goes on too, but it only starts to annoy me.

So anyways, I’ve been deciding what parts of my Southern heritage I should pack away and bring to these strangers up north who don’t know how deliciously disgusting a Sonny’s All You Can Eat is (both healthily, and visually).  I mean, this culture may not be much (or it actually may be running into the negatives these days), but it’s all I’ve got–along with my sense of superiority for trying to get out for a couple of years before I inevitably get sucked back in by some lame excuse–like the lack of frolf courses.

I started to make a list when I realized everything I was bringing could usually be purchased in gallon form, which is when I stopped and thought: “This is a bad idea.”  I also realized this is probably why I’ve been slowly trying to fight off obesity for the last ten years (with general failure), and why every family event ever, absolutely no exceptions, all involve not only eating, but such excessive eating as to require at least two meals, one nap, at least five (soon to be empty) bottles of wine, ungodly amounts of leftovers, and gravy.  Even my graduation involved gravy–don’t ask how, even I wasn’t comfortable with it.  And I specifically blame Paula Dean for that.

Cradling those few words (y’all, mayaam, howdi, and mullet) of the true grassroots civilization in my mind, I set off towards the north (of the War of Northern Agression fame) in search of a few converts.  Actually, no, that’s a lie.  I’m probably going to try as hard a possible to lose any trace of an accent and southern habits and become the cold, unwelcoming, and indifferently hostile conservative individual wearing all dark clothes who walks by a dying kitten on the sidewalk, sees just a part of it out of the corner of my eye, and thinks “When will those homeless people just get a job already?” as I walk towards work.  I’m looking forward to that.

“After Tonight” by Justin Nozuka

You’ll have to forgive this entry if it is uninteresting, but I keep coming across the topic of stars in my reading (as I roll through the Young Adult section of Borders) and in the music I listen to and I wonder if I’m reading too much into things, or if this is legitimate.

One can generally assume in Western Literature that if it’s a reference it probably comes from one of three places: Shakespeare, the Bible, or Greek/Roman myth. Right? Right. These are the three pillars of Western literature pretty much. There are others, of course, but these are the Big Three, if there were any at all. And, at a cursory glance, the stars in the night sky seem to pop up a lot as symbols for practically everything. They are a big part of the current world’s modern mythology, for more than a few reasons.

So just chew on this for a moment:

• Probably one of the earliest references would be in the Bible’s first book Genesis (15:5, KJV) when God commands to Abraham–currently childless–to “Look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them… So shall your descendants be.” So initially stars symbolize a promise, and they symbolize the future, and they symbolize fertility. All at once in those two little sentences. But there’s more–much, much more.
• And according to Ovid in the Metamorphoses when a god created man he created him upright with his head towards the stars in the heavens, and not like other animals whose gaze is constantly directed at the ground. And then, in another creation story they become the sign of man’s intelligence, of his higher being, or his status as master over the animals, of his privileged place in the world, and of that which man can accomplish, even–that being anything. Limitless potential.
• The stars are also the symbols of astrology and take on the role as guides of fate and fortune.
• And then there’s Shakespeare. I could write a thesis about all of his references to stars, just in his tragedies, and all that they mean; but I’ll take one of the more popular references: When Romeo begins his little “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?” as Juliet appears on her balcony he continues on saying “Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven/Having some business, do entreat her eyes/To twinkle in their spheres till they return.” Getting us to the more basic symbol of beauty, not getting into to the lengthy discussion of eyes as the portals into the soul and what starlight in those eyes could mean…
• And, just to get more modern more quickly, there is the classic Walt Disney animated motion picture Pinocchio where “When you wish upon a star” … and I’m assuming you know the rest, where the stars here are promises for the future, wish granters, almost representative of gods you could pray to and grant your deepest desires.
• And just to give these bullet points a nice symmetry, I’ll just end with the reference from Lois Lowry’s book Nubmer the Stars, the title she borrowed from the passage in Genesis, about the Jews of Denmark in the escalating years right before and in the beginning of World War II. There the stars are the Jews, the descendants of Abraham, the people who were represented the Star of David, the fulfilled promise from ages before.

And then I hear a song like “After Tonight” by Justin Nozuka. Here are some select lyrics

There’s something in your eyes
Is everything alright
You look up to the sky
You long for something more

Darling, give me your right hand
I think I understand
Follow me and you will never have to wish again

(Chorus)
I know that after tonight
You don’t have to look up at the stars
No, No, No, No…

And I can’t help but wonder if he’s consciously or unconsciously taken in all of those cultural references about stars, even if just from watching Pinocchio as a kid, and the power that they seem to hold in and out of literary, cultural, and collective imagination.