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.)

Les Orchidees

An orchid shop on rue T. in Paris (by night).

An Orchid Grows in Beaune (Part 2)

So last night, it all sort of caught up to us. You can’t really escape your life, the realities of your how’s and why’s – not even on vacation. Over dinner (Thai food, a decided break from the rich cuisine Bourgignone), we got into a bit of a melee over matters of money, personal and global. Being in France, we of course notice a different attitude toward the world and one’s place in it, toward values which we Americans take for granted, toward globalism and capitalism and international politics, and the notions of profit and progress in general. A Tunisian shopkeeper in Paris – well-spoken in English – had engaged us in a late-night discussion about French complacency v. Chinese industriousness. The Chinese, he argued, are willing to do what is necessary to progress, to move forward economically. More and more, they are being brought in to foreign countries to build and produce; they are seen as the best bang for the buck, they are willing to move and adjust to a new culture. The French, on the other hand, are staid, aloof, nostalgic. They love all things of the past, they are not interested in participating in the future, the way the future is going. They will – they are – falling behind.

At dinner, J. argues for free-market capitalism and globalism. It’s what there is, it’s the only path of innovation and progress. Competition is the driving force of humanity; laziness looms as our downfall. I am here, he argues, enjoying this vacation, these experiences, because a multi-national corporation has offered me credit, at an interest rate I couldn’t refuse. Company X competed for my business and got it. The credit market makes the world go ‘round.

Yes, yes, we are all complicit… but still…it’s predatory, I argue. I have been snookered by credit card companies before. With this particular card, I made three different phone calls to three different customer service agents, documenting the terms over and over, presenting each one with different scenarios, to make sure I fully understood the terms. This, after receiving in the mail a 10-page document (tiny print) describing, supposedly, terms and changes in terms and disclosures. “You need a f*&%ing PhD in economics to understand all this,” I said at the time. I was mad then, and I’m mad now, talking about it. (I am gesticulating and spitting and the madame Thailandaise keeps coming over and smiling and asking if we are all right, as if I am going to murder J. in cold blood with a butter knife at any moment.) I am an educated, middle-class, fairly critical thinker, and there’s no WAY I am going to understand the terms of a credit card document. And the folks defaulting in the sub-prime mortgage market, they also got snookered; their lenders knew damn well that a critical mass would default, that they were borrowing beyond their means and it would catch up to them. The structures of the lending packages were designed with that percentage of default built in, part of the business plan; or else they never would have offered them so freely. Health insurance terms are similar: people profiting off of other people’s vulnerability and limited means – not incidentally, but by design. (At this moment especially, as a foreigner in a land where I speak the language not-quite-fluently, I recognize how vulnerable to fine print are those in the US without fluent English-language skills.) This is progress? This is the American ideal? Capitalism in all its glory? Corporate profit momentum and get-up-n-go towards what exactly?

(Grotesquely, it occurs to me sometimes that George W. Bush does in fact intend for us all to put food on our families.)

Ok, so what’re you gonna do about it? J. challenges (holding his own butter knife). This is his way. If you don’t like something, fix it.

No, I think. It’s too big, and I’m too tired. Corporate message and consumer hegemony honestly wear me out. (I once had something like a panic attack – short of breath, dizziness, emotional surge – standing at the foot of the Great Wall of Utensils at Bed, Bath & Beyond. What was I looking for? A spatula maybe? Whatever it was, there was a Great Wall of them, all over-priced, and none of which really fit what I needed). Maybe I can get up the gumption to holler at customer service people on the phone now and again (poor Indian souls, earning their wage, they don’t know what's got me all riled up), but then what? Class action suit? Economic literacy courses? Nah. I’m moving to France, like John Berger and R. Crumb. Or Canada. I’m leaving the city, the States, the whole damn thing. Am I just lazy? Well…

No, I don’t think that’s it, quite. Generational malaise? Likely. Too old to be a Deanie Baby, too young for a Baby Boomer. I want to make a difference, but a real one, which somehow to me means a small one. It’s all I can really envision, in the face of so much I cannot get a grip on.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
--Annie Dillard

The day is always his who works in it with serenity and great aims.
--Emerson

I’ll keep up with the news. I’ll go to the polls. I’m donating. I will live a minimal-footprint life in the country. I will recycle and drive a gas-efficient car and grow droopy plants in the Bronx. I will always aim to be kind. Boy, it’s not much to speak of, is it.

An Orchid Grows in Beaune (Part 1)

Four or five of them, actually. The moth orchid has plentiful blossoms, the others have gone dormant. I look up from the breakfast table and notice them only after I’ve had my croissant et café noir. Prior to that there has been much else to observe here in the 200 year-old breakfast room of Mme. Rousseau.

I found Mme. Rousseau and her hotel bon marché in a couple of different guide books. Beaune is an expensive tourist town, and hers is the best bargain around. For 40E a night, you (and your traveling partner) get a lovely country room, spacious and furnished with family antiques (sans douche – if you’d like a shower, it’s 3E extra), which opens onto a courtyard jardin; along with le petit dejeuner – a homemade croissant, a large carafe du café, une tartine avec beurre et confiture – served cheerfully each morning by Mme herself, who I would guess has somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 years behind her. Mme is cheerful, yes, but taciturn. She’s got a definite twinkle in her eye; you can tell she’s got a story.

The house may be older than 200 years, but it’s been in la famille Rousseau for that long. Mme’s parents started up the hotel 50 years ago, and she’s continued it, along with a large garden, voluminous houseplants, at least two cats, and beaucoup des oiseaux – cooing and chirping upstairs. The paint and wallpaper are peeling here and there, but all the appliances are new and top-notch. And Mme seems quite adept with technology; I made my reservation by email and found directions on her Web site.

Of course I scope out all of her plants. In the courtyard she is growing mostly potted flowers, and I marvel at the mixture of sun-and-shade-lovers: hollyhock and begonias, dahlias and a number of foliage plants. She’s also growing a lemon tree – incroyable! – in the center, out of an old tin pale.

We are here in Burgundy – wine country – for two days, after three days in Paris. City and country, country and city. I was so happy to see the orchids; travel fatigue had begun to set in, I’d been away from my writing brain for too long. Seeing those plants made me perk up and reminded me of something… something basic about living things and their environments, their ability to adapt (or not), the work of nurture and health, seasons of bloom and dormancy. Modern life seems to crowd out these basic ideas, squeezes them out of one’s bloodstream in favor of always-on entertainment and ambition and consumption. It’s a daily endeavor to dwell in a different kind of space.

I don’t know why we’re here exactly. No good reason, really, unless you believe in travel for travel’s sake (which I do less and less). We made the plans a while back, not very well-considered, and beyond our means (i.e. borrowed credit). At this moment, seeing the world from a non-American perspective, I can think of a hundred better reasons for spending this money – Presidential underdogs, Burma, family needs. Somehow, though, it seemed worthwhile at the time.

Alors... we are here, we are pilgrims of the planet, we are drinking it in, so to speak. We are ingesting and processing the gifts of exploration, of stimuli etrangers; and we are eating quite well, of course...

(This post to be continued...)