G A L A

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Our solid American citizen awakens in a bed built on a pattern which originated in the Near East but which was moditified in Northern Europe before it was transmitted to America. He throws back covers made from cotton, domesticated in India, or linen, domesticated in the Near East, or silk, the use of which was discovered in China. All of these materials have been spun and woven by processes invented in the Near East. He takes off this pajamas, a garment invented in India, and washes with soap invented by the ancient Gauls.

Returning to the bedroom, he puts on garments whose form originially derived from the skin clothing of the nomads of the Asiatic steppes and puts on shoes made from skins tanned by a process invented in ancient Egypt and cut to a pattern derived from the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean. Before going out for breakfast, he glances through the window, made of glass invented in Egypt, and if it is raining puts on overshoes made of rubber discovered by the Central American Indians and takes an umbrella invented in southeastern Asia.

At breakfast a whole new series of borrowed elements confronts him. His plate is made of a form of pottery invented in China. His knife is of steel, and alloy first made in southern India, his fork a medieval Italian invention, and his spoon a derivative of the Roman orginial. He begins breakfast with an orange, from the eastern Mediterranean, a cantaloupe from Persia, or perhaps a piece of African watermelon. With this he has coffee, an Abyssinian plant. He may have the egg of a species of bird domesticated in Indo-China, or thin strips of flesh of an animal domesticated in Eastern Asia which have been salted and smoked by a process developed in northern Europe.

When our friend has finished eating, he reads the news of the day, imprinted in characters invented by the ancient Semites upon a material invented in China by a process invented in Germany. As he absorbs the accounts of foreign troubles he will, if he is a good conservative citizen, thank a Hebrew deity in an Indo-European language that he is 100% American.

Ralph Linton, The Study of Man: An Introduction. 1936.

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People think they know what they want but they generally dont. Sometimes if they’re lucky they’ll get it anyways. Me I was always lucky. My whole life. Scrapes I been in.

People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I don’t recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.

No Country for Old Men, McCarthy