Front Porch Ramble #1

Village Nuptials, Healthy Migrations, and Rubrics for Settlement

I.

The phrase “It’s time to settle down” is used not only to describe the act of establishing an indefinite residence in a particular town, but to describe marriage as well. This quiet metaphor built into the phrase is among the most apt in our language; settling in a particular place really ought to be quite like a marriage. After all, it’s difficult not to let a place shape you to a lesser or greater extent. The Seattlite unconsciously assumes a faux-Brooklyn accent by the end of her first six-month lease in Bushwick. The British expat to Wyoming nervously attends range day when invited – and in mere months, he’s wearing a revolver on his hip daily. Unless there is a twinge of desperation or inauthenticity hidden in these sorts of changes, they tend to come across as endearing and very human. I find it totally natural for people to become infected with the spirit of the places they choose to reside. 

Conversely, migrants shape the places they arrive – for good or ill. I find it necessary not to examine patterns of human motion between regions and even nations in a completely binaristic fashion; many folks I meet often seem to either be of the mind that all migration is fantastic all the time, or of the opposite view. In actual truth, so long as newcomers to a particular township, village, or even nation are of a compatible cultural disposition and do not arrive rapidly in overwhelming numbers, a little ‘new blood’ is seldom a bad thing for a place. Perhaps the difference between these two modes of migration consitute something similar to the difference between hook ups and marriage. 

The modern progressive relishes the hook-up; for these bold and often perverted idealists, the sex act entirely lacks moral consequence — if consensual. (see footnote) To cross the boundaries of the body is never inherently meaningful. Coitus can be as casual as a hug. And perhaps by extension their collective disposition on national boundaries is equally laissez-faire. Every line in the sand forever porous – and may the ever-meddling government stay out of this sacred liminal zone of ecstasy. Except in the case of the free motion of human beings across borders, the ecstasy is hardly orgasmic so much as it is stimulating in another manner - it stimulates both the economy and the cultural palette. Migrants come with delicious food and cheap labor; their colorful music and ceaseless efforts at vivifying the stolid boredom and brutality of WASP America are forever welcomed. And all less-desirable consequences can be overlooked and ignored – until they can’t be. Quite like the hook-up, it is a costly chain of mediocre thrills that feasts on silence.