Last summer, I had decided to escape New Orleans and ended up in Indiana of all strange places. I went to both Bloomington and Indianapolis. The thing that amazed me about the Midwest is that the sky was so tremendous! It was just huge, and made me feel so tiny (not bad, just tiny). I still do not understand how the sky is bigger in the Midwest than it is in the South, but it was astounding.

The distance between earth and sky made me understand the innate earthiness of every Midwesterner that I had ever met. The grounded ness and practicality that permeates the culture suddenly made sense. You should understand that midwestern culture is as foreign to this southern girl as Chinese culture. Honestly, I feel more at home in Barcelona than Indianapolis. Do you think there is any validity to the notion that people are naturally oriented to specific latitude? Is it possible that cultures along certain latitudes share more commonalities than those in the same hemisphere?

I digress.

Yesterday I was in the marsh and I couldn’t help but notice how low the sky looked. The clouds were right there mixed in with the marsh grass. It looked like my idea of heaven with the entire elements sort of intermingled in one spot. There was no distinction between earth and sky whatsoever.

It is true that here in New Orleans, I feel closer to Heaven.

It also occurred to me that the lack of visible boundaries in the southern atmosphere is truly caustic in the southern ignorance of social, personal and political boundaries. It also has an effect on our tendencies to disregard our connection with the earth, and think only about short futures. How else should we behave when the sky is falling?