The embassy on the hill

»The sky's still, the same unbelievable blue» as Springsteen put it. Early Sunday morning, Nilla has taken the train up to Stockholm for a visa interview at the US Embassy and I try to write up the blog post I started on yesterday.

Actually that post was on another US Embassy, the one in Prague. Located on the Petřín Hill and overlooking the historical city, the American embassy was for a long time precisely a beacon of freedom: a white house surrounded by gardens and apple orchards.

To me, the white building represented an unworldly purity, the hope embodied by Walt Whitman: I hear America singing. All the things the US could have been (and still can become).

During the long nineties, that beacon was not as dimmed as it is today. There was no Guantanamo, no Halliburton Administration and definitely no rapping Karl Rove. One could spend Sunday mornings like today with a Californian Omelette, reading the news and there was only Whitewater or maybe a lost saxophone.