We Drove North to Find What’s Missing
An alien's search for beauty, belonging, and a bench that actually gets used.
🇬🇧 Still searching — but at least there’s parking
🇧🇪 Waar is da bankje? – En wa doet da stoplicht hier?
🇫🇷 Encore un virage — toujours pas de village
I sometimes wonder if Americans even notice what’s around them.
Ever since I moved here, I’ve been searching for something—anything—that feels familiar. A town square with a fountain, a butcher, a bakery, a little grocery shop, maybe a bench under a tree where people actually sit and talk.
A place where life happens at a human pace.
In Europe, there’s usually a church at the center—not always for worship, but as an anchor. Something that gives the place history, character, a reason to exist.
But here… it’s just miles and miles of chain stores, all blending together.
Gas stations with near-identical convenience stores, stocked with endless rows of sugary snacks and drinks.
Big-box retailers—some like Russian nesting dolls, filled with smaller chains inside—sitting in sprawling parking lots, which then lead to yet more fast-food joints, also drowning in pavement.
And everywhere you look, massive pickup trucks, parked in double-wide spaces, built for a scale that has nothing to do with people and everything to do with excess.
And just when you think you’ve escaped it, another highway exit appears and—boom—the same thing all over again.
The same strip malls.
The same stores.
The same lifeless layout.
Grass, if it exists at all, is perfectly mowed into submission—except maybe in Illinois.
Or was it that stretch between Goreville and Metropolis where the highway department always seems to run out of budget?
For a country that’s so big—almost 4 million square miles, 340 million people—you’d think there’d be more variety.
But the sprawl always follows the same formula.
The same generic buildings, the same endless six-lane roads, the same oversized parking lots.
There’s barely any height to anything—except for the towering chain store signs, rising up like beacons so you can spot them from… everywhere.
America, what have you done to yourself?
Somewhere along the way, your American dream stopped being about community—about living in connection with others.
Instead, it became about isolation—sitting alone, surrounded by all this soulless ugliness.
And then there was yesterday, downtown Nashville.
More concrete. More asphalt. More chains and vape lounges and generic eateries, all mashed together in some kind of Frankenstein urban planning experiment.
And not a single person sitting on a bench under a tree, listening to a bird.
Instead, they were lost in their AirPods, eyes glued to screens, social interaction reduced to swipes and taps.
A whole city of people drifting past one another, lost in their own bubbles, barely acknowledging each other’s existence.
But there’s still one place that remembers how it’s supposed to feel: Maggie’s.
A bench under a blooming tree, purple buds catching the light.
The birds aren’t background noise — they’re part of the day.
And if you’re lucky, they’ll come close enough to share your crumbs.
John Keats once wrote, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
I doubt he had a strip mall in mind when he said that.
But the point still stands—beauty isn’t just about appearances; it’s about something genuine, something with a soul.
And yet, here we are, surrounded by places designed for convenience, not connection.
Places that exist, but don’t mean a thing.
America, when and why did you mistake endless expansion for freedom?
Just because you can build something doesn’t mean you should.
Having too much of everything has created a landscape that feels both overwhelming and empty at the same time.
America, you’ve built endlessly, yet somehow left out the one thing that makes a place feel like home—belonging.
Sjeeh… am I just getting old?
Or maybe I just want a place where benches outnumber vape shops.
Preferably under a tree. With birds.
© NEXPATS / 2025. All rights reserved. This work is protected by international copyright law and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. It is a satirical, transformative creation intended for commentary and parody.
All characters, institutions, and brand names are fictitious or intentionally parodic. Any resemblance to real persons or entities is either entirely coincidental or deliberately satirical in nature.
Stealing it would be rude. Citing it would be cool. And if you truly must rip it off—at least buy me a beer and cite your source like a civilized dissident.
I really enjoyed this! Sobering words!