Aurevoir, Merci or "Tous Les Deux"

Forget re-entry shock, I am having exit shock. It took a full three hours – including four very unpleasant airport personnel, a complete re-packing of one bag and partial repacking of another (who knew mustard was a liquid?), the obligatory purchase of a Ziploc bag for dix centimes to protect the planet from my toothpaste and face cream – to get from the first security check-point to the flight gate at aeroport Charles de Gaulle. International travel these days can really suck, man. There’s no other way to say it.

One of the unpleasant four made some comment about “You may do whatever you like in your country, but here…”, as I tried to explain that my ticket was an e-ticket, and thus I was not required to present anything but my passport. Or so I was told. That single your-country-sucks comment set my mood for the entire rest-of-check-in experience, which was doomed, really, once this homme mechant blackballed me, i.e. marked my boarding pass so that at every checkpoint I was singled out for a full bag-and-person search.

I am pooped. I hate the French, and they hate me. We used to be so close, like this. What happened?

“We don’t hate Americans, not at all,” our new friend Pierre assures us. It’s our last night in Paris, and we start talking to Pierre at a sidewalk café, over whiskey and chocolate cake. He is here alone, in town visiting family. He lives in LA, he tells us, with his American wife and daughter. “This time, now, between America and France, it is too bad. But it is just a short time compared to so many years of love affair between these two countries. George Bush has made war against everybody and offended his friends, especially the French. But most French people, they love the Americans, they do not hate them, not at all. We hope that after George Bush, we can repair again our friendship with America.”

We believe Pierre, he seems like an earnest fellow. He tells us that life as a French American, an American Frenchman, is an interesting one. He feels he is able to see the strengths and weaknesses of both nations, both cultures. Somewhat apologetically, he offers his opinions on American weakness, including the fact that only 8% of Americans have passports. Often, he says, he feels unwelcome by Americans he meets who have never left the country, who know little of the world outside the U.S. – especially during travels in the middle states and the South, far from large cities. He concedes that the French can be the same way, especially in rural areas and the South of France.

We are city people, the three of us, sitting here on rue T. in Paris, eating and drinking and talking. We are exchanging stories of travel and mixed cultures (Pierre’s wife is Korean American) and business. We are the fortunate homeless – without a single place to call home, a place where we feel at home. On this night in Paris, sitting at these café tables and sharing our tales, we are, in fact, home. We are privileged in this way, we have chosen it mostly, and we are not complaining; Pierre seems especially happy to be living a life of constant “interest,” as he puts it.

I would guess that the majority of the passported 8% are city-dwellers. Many of them are perhaps immigrants to start. Pierre’s viewpoint is a particular one, and one that I might easily share, given my own life experiences. But: are those of us who move about the world necessarily more broad-minded, more sympathique, in any way wiser than those who stay put?

I was so hoppin-mad at those four airport personnel this morning. Something about that kind of petulance, that staunch soldierly-ness in all of them… indeed, I judge it as a kind of ignorance – a lack of diplomatic ability, of connection-making as opposed to enemy-making, of a penchant for effectiveness coupled with humane-ness. These folk were working strictly by principle.

How does one learn this kind of diplomacy, this wisdom of both/and on the planet? I recall now one of the first pieces of presidential biography that alerted me to George W. Bush’s ineptness for the job: he had limited exposure to foreign countries before taking the office of the Presidency of the United States. We also hear from close advisors and his current biographer Robert Draper that he is the sort of man of surrounds himself with a Circle of the Like-Minded, people who agree with him (or at least pretend to).

At any rate, despite passport demographics, I doubt this is a city-country issue; in the same way that the Blue State/Red State divide is not so simple as it appears. Certainly, you can move about as a sophisticate in a big city like New York completely cloistered and provincial, and you can open your mind and spirit to the multiplicity of the universe as a shopkeeper in Springfield (pick your state) or a Kentucky farmer.

Both/And is, I think, a kind of disposition. Some people got it and some people don’t, and I don’t know that there’s a formula for how you get it or develop it or lose it. It’s related to comfort zones and fear and opportunity and education and marginal-ness; I think on some level it is related to experiences of difficulty or suffering, which spawn empathy, along with the nurturing of the imagination (my plug for arts in education). And yes, travel is good, too. These days, it seems to me, in a world of violent face-off sectarianism, a gifted Both/And kind of leadership (and citizenry) is the only peaceful, progressive, healthful way forward. We need our friends and our love affairs, our "interest," our wisdom, our humane-ness.

(And now, I relinquish my butter knife.)