Americans in Paris [on experiencing the greatest moment in our countries modern history abroad]

I’ve heard it said before, though I don’t really recall where, that being in a foreign place gives you a better understanding not only of the culture in which you are immersed, but also of your own culture. I’ve had a taste of this in the past, while I was traveling through Europe with a group of friends. We spent months in Germany, France, and Spain, sometimes in a large group, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes alone. We learned how life worked, how people saw the world, how cultures both differed from and aligned with our own. We learned what made us who we are, by what we noticed about others.

Arriving here in Toronto, I expected there to be some differences between the social and political norms I’m used to and those I would experience here. I also, however, expected these differences to be small, nominal at best; after all, we share a border, a language, a common history (in many ways) and even an accent. Or so I thought….

I’ve been noticing some small things day to day in the way Canadian life and culture varies from my Californian history (as you might have noticed). The commercials are cheesier. The business names are more up-front (descriptive, perhaps). And the people are nicer. Not necessarily in the go-out-of-your-way-to-say-hi-and-strike-up-small-talk way, but in the (in my opinion) deeper always-looking-out-for-your-fellow-man-way. As in, “I pay more taxes so that you can have health care because it’s just the right way to live.”

It wasn’t until the inauguration this week, however, that I really started to feel like a foreigner. It has been, I must admit, a feeling that has faded as politics has receded from the forefront of conversation. But it did have quite an impact on me. There is no doubt that I was not the only one excited about the inauguration of President Obama. We were all excited for various reasons: for Not George Bush; for a different direction in foreign policy; for a young hopeful figure in office; and for the first African American president. For me, however, it seemed a bit deeper than that.

For the last two years, throughout the campaign, Obama has consistently reminded me of the Kennedy family. His words, image, tone, and message of hope, the joy he inspires in people, his young family all carry for me a feeling of Kennedy legacy, from Jack to Bobby, even through Teddy, though I could scarcely claim to have been influenced firsthand by the former two. The legacy, I believe, is of the idea that change is possible, that hope can be real, and that the nation should be governed for the good of the common man, in the face of hope and adversity. As I have become an adult, as my social and political consciousness has matured, I’ve come to realize that the political world in which I have been raised has been at best indifferent to the needs and hopes of the people, and at worst actively pursuing the benefit of the priveledged at the expense of everyday people. I have learned to dislike Reagan, to tolerate Johnson, to pity H.W. Bush, and wish for more from Clinton. Even more, I’ve learned what politics meant to my parents, and many other people of their generation. The idea of politics as having the ability to change the way we live is something that is foreign to me, and yet would not be in to my parents in the 1960s.

In the 1960s, they saw the rise of young liberalism, the fight for civil rights, the challenge to war-mongering, and with all of these, strong faces and personalities giving them life. They also saw the death of Martin Luther King, JFK, and Bobby Kennedy; the end of the summer of love (and innocent freedom), the 1968 DNC riots in Chicago, the continuation of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In 1969, political hopes were crushed. My father was drafted. All the hopes for change, the belief that their expression of this need for change would be heard and addressed, had been killed with Robert Kennedy. The hope that any real change would ever come was beaten out of them in Chicago. Hope, simply put, wore out. What do you do when everything you’ve ever put faith in fails?

And yet forty years later, here is this man with a fresh face, a young family, speaking the words of hope that we’ve all been longing to hear, some of us for our entire lives. Our new president speaks of change for all, not just advancement of some. He embodies the idea that life can be good for all of us, that we can be the change we wish to see. Rather than telling us to abide, to cope, that we’re the best and that’s all, he tells us to hope, to dream, to work, to change. We have been waiting forty years for you.

And this idea, this complex notion that Obama is not just our president now, but also their president then, was simply not present in the minds of my coworkers as we watched the inauguration. They, like me, were moved by the beauty in his rhetoric, the promise of change, and yet were somehow not invested in it. Yes, the foreign policy of the United States affects Canada much more than it does most other countries. Yes, American politics get much more attention in Canada than Canadian politics do. Yes, he is the first African American president in the Western World. But missing was the weight of history and the sense of urgency, that if this change had not happened now, we would not be able to last another forty years.

And perhaps more than history it is our spirit that differs. Not one person here has been able to give me a convincing argument for why Canada still has a queen. The best I’ve heard is, “What’s wrong with the queen – what has she done to us lately?” followed closely by “it would be soooo expensive to take her name and face off of everything.” Along the same line, I’ve never met an American who understands why Canadians don’t just secede. Having a queen in England who has the authority veto political decisions is kind of like letting your parents tell you what to do once you’ve moved away from home and started your own family. It’s nice to be nice to them, but someday you have to cut the cord.

At the end of the day on Tuesday, after being awed and moved and instilled with fierce pride, I also came away with a better understanding of myself and my country, and how patriotic I actually might be, however cynical I come across. Here we are, after so many years, doing what others thought could not or would not be done, believing again in the face of adversity and years of being trodden upon by our leadership. Here we are declaring our independence once again, declaring our difference and yet our common humanity. Here we are, showing the world the embodiment of our American dream: that the son of a Kenyan immigrant raised by a single mother, can become President on the merit and power of his dreams, and lead the nation, and in fact the world, into a new era.

And away we go….

Get Your OWN President

With inauguration-mania looming, Canadian news magazines are not going to be left out of the conversation. Day after day, newscast after newscast, the journalists and pundits pick apart Obama, his administration, what this all means to Americans and Canadians. They interview politicians, White House correspondents, “experts,” and people who have no obvious link to the subject. Today they talked with a series of comedians, trying to uncover what the comedic atmosphere will be in the coming four years. This is all well and good, except WHERE IS YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT?

Throughout all of this, there has never been a piece about Canadian politics, at any scale, in any regard. Do they not have a government here? I understand that the lives of these two countries are strongly intertwined, that what happens in the US affects Canada directly, but here Barack is discussed as if he will be the president of Canada, too.

My favourite part of this whole discourse, however, is how much everyone here is freaking out about the “possible protectionist rhetoric” of Obama. Starting a few weeks ago, the Sunday shows has pundits discussing the possibility that Obama might talk about making the borders tighter, and what that would/might mean for the economy here. But they never actually said anything concrete, never identified any real issues, never brought up the fact that nothing of a scale worth freaking out about would ever happen because that would affect the US too much, too. “Ooohhh, no, we don’t have president Bush to freak us out anymore, what are we going to freak out about now? I know, Obama mentioned something that sounded protectionist a year or so ago!” Get over it, Canada.

Land of Endearing Earnesty

When you’re walking around your city, do you often notice the names of the businesses you pass by? Are you surprised by/interested in/annoyed with the names of businesses advertised on TV? I’ve never really felt that way. Until I moved to Toronto.

Since arriving, I’ve been struck by the outright earnesty in the business names. At first I laughed, often because I was taken by surprise in conversation – “you’ll like that neighborhood. They have lots of fresh food and a healthy butcher.” Sounds good, right? The next day, when I was walking around the neighborhood, I passed The Healthy Butcher. It’s the name of the store, not just a positive descriptor.

Once this initial realization hit me, I began to notice more and more examples. “Sushi-2-Go,” “Trendy Fabrics,” “No-Frills Grocery Mart,” “The Social Club,” “Canadian Tire,” (which is actually more of a home depot) and it goes on and on.

I was laughing about this with a friend here, and her response was “Don’t hate, we’re just straight up here.” Yeah, or unimaginative ;)

But when they DO get imaginative, they go all the way. My favourite examples: Shanghai Cowgirl (diner), Bovine Sex Club (bar), Future Shop (like Circuit City)

I’ll keep you updated if I encounter more….

Today I saw...

a car getting a ticket in downtown Toronto. That is not surprising. What IS, is that the officer writing the ticket was on a horse. ON A HORSE. Picture this: downtown Toronto, skyscrapers, bustling traffic, crowded sidewalk, streetcars ringing their bells, a car and driver pulled to the curb in front of a fancy high-end organic grocery store. Behind the car, two police officers on horses, looking down into the rear windshield as the man on the right writes the ticket. HORSES.

How do you get pulled over by a horse? They didn't even have lights.

I really wish I had my camera with me.

Thanks for all that info, CBC…

I’ve had a lot of time in the past few days to watch TV. One would think that, due to the proximity of the city of Toronto to the US (and vice versa) that TV in general and local commercials specifically would be relatively close to what we see in the US. What I’ve found, however, is that this is not the case. TV here differs in many ways, from the obvious to the very subtle. I have a feeling this will be an on-going topic, but here are some of the highlights I’ve noticed so far:

Best TV show name and concept: “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” about a Muslim family in the territories.

Best commercial, so far, is the Double Double twins, for fast food. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7p-x46k07U. There are also a few awesome furniture store commercials, including one with some creepy old guy with a full beard: “the boxes are ooooooopening!!!!!”

Daytime TV: Steven and Chris. I’m really sad I’m not at home at 2 pm to watch these guys. It’s like gay Oprah and gay Martha do a talk show together. Unbelievable.
http://www.cbc.ca/stevenandchris/

But I think the thing I especially love is the network ads for upcoming programming. I’m used to the US-short-attention-span-flashy-loud thing, where you get a few words and some pictures of hot chicks. Here, they do a full synopsis to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. Example: New season of the bachelor. Instead of the normal, “he got burned last year, but now he’s back,” they spend the full 90 seconds describing in detail the follies of last season, how he has recovered, and who the lucky ladies will be this season. Also, the CBC showed “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Even during the movie, there were 90 second promos about the plot: “Four young children venture into a world of ice and snow. Along the way, they encounter an array of wonderful creatures, and challenges beyond their wildest dreams….” Perhaps they expect viewers to be a bit slower here….

And I won’t even start in on the variety sketch shows. NOT FUNNY.

Maybe eventually I’ll speak enough French to understand what’s happening on those channels, too…..

Orion the Hunter

Four days after leaving home and my parents, I have arrived in Toronto. It is reasonably warm, around 30, with snow flurries. Big puffy snow flurries. I stand at the window and watch as the ground turns from grey to white.

Five hours ago, I was sitting on a stranger’s desk in a cubicle in the Canadian Immigration Office in the Toronto airport, crying on the phone with my mother. They won’t let me in the country.

Ten hours previous, I was in the guest room of a flat in Chicago, frantically unpacking and re-packing my suitcases, trying to determine what needed to go right away and what could wait awhile to be reunited with me. At 2 AM, I rest my head on a puffy vest and sigh.

Two days before this I was in the air somewhere over Nebraska. I had watched the sun go down over Colorado, the vermillion cliffs offset by blinding snow, the final glimmers of daylight illuminating the peaks of the Rockies. As we fly further east, the sky ahead grows darker, the lights below more sparse, until one magic moment when the horizon is no longer, and the lights of tiny towns on the plains and the glimmer of far distant constellations are interchangeable reflections of each other. In the quiet cabin with my face pressed against the window, I see the web of humanity, islands of lights floating in a dark sea like inflorescences of algal blooms at red tide, glowing filaments strung delicately between, silk threads with tenuous holds on their seemingly transient anchors.

Fixing my attention once again on the stars, I see Orion the Hunter. This is no surprise – he has long been the only winter constellation I recognize readily. This night he seemed to be more than just a familiar face, though, as the mythology of the constellation crept back into my consciousness. Orion, the hunter, won wide renown for his great beauty and hunting skills. And as would be natural, he believed every bit of it, to the point of boasting publicly (and at length) about his superiority over all creatures on earth. Anyone familiar with Greek mythology will not be surprised by what happens next: the easily annoyed gods decide to punish Orion for his arrogance by sending a scorpion to kill him (through a sting to the foot). And thus was the proud and boastful Orion felled by the lowly scorpion.

As for his position in the night sky, that is the doing of his long-time admirer Diana, who asked that his image be writ in the stars as an homage. And though often cruel, the gods respected his final wishes to never be near the scorpion again by placing him opposite scorpio, so that they never would share the night sky.

In accordance with the poetic turn my psyche has taken in the past few weeks, this usually insignificant noticing of a familiar constellation has stayed with me, has sat with my thoughts, retreating just long enough for me to forget before it resurfaces, demanding my attention once more. While I do not claim to be an Orion in any sense (I am most definitely a very poor hunter) it seems to me that the lessons imposed upon him are in many ways being imposed on me. Just when I begin to feel confident enough to become careless, the gods send me my scorpion (which has lately been in the form of huge government bureaucracies) and I end up in tears in a stranger’s cubicle in the Canadian Immigration Centre at the Toronto airport.

But I thank the gods for my own team of Dianas, who are my advocates, supporters, and reality checks, who tolerate my major and minor breakdowns with great grace and love, but who, unlike the Diana of myth, redirect my misguided wanderings and keep my feet free from as many scorpions as possible.

So here I am today, in a cozy apartment, with the TV on low, drained but not defeated. I hope that I have begun to learn some lessons, to know how to plan ahead even when my entire being resists.

Tomorrow is a new day, filled with college football and Suczynskis. It is sure to break the trend of “philosophical posts….”