My time in America

I’ve been in a weird long-distance relationship with America for the past 6 years.

All my work is in English and most of the audience — either of this newsletter, or The Glenn Show, or the projects I do with Bob Wright — is in the US. But the last time I had a direct, physical contact with the place was in the fall of 2015, when Rolling Stone’s suggestion to try “Taking Trump Seriously” made people chuckle or scoff.

Since then, the US has become a VR experience for me. I spend a lot of time engaged with it mentally and creatively while my body remains in a small wooden house heated by a wood-burning stove just outside of St. Petersburg, Russia.

It wasn’t always like that.

I’ve been to 11 states in my travels, spent 6 weeks in Snohomish, WA, and a little more than a year in Houston, TX. I’ve shared a place with a convicted murderer. I’ve been to Joel Austin’s megachurch, and talked to a terminally ill man at a Buddhist meditation session. I’ve helped organize a wake for a Mexican-America…