The War Raging All Inside

 

We just returned from a trip to Europe for the first time in five years. Things have changed, or maybe I have changed, or maybe just a bit of both. But whatever the cause, this trip was different than any other. Fear is ascendant. The time of fear seems so overwhelming around us that our trip mostly made us miss home and wonder what we're all fighting for?
 
America's unilateral actions have angered the world, and the ironic thing was that they are as angry as I have been. Yet this time their anger was at least partially directed at me.
 
Like it or not, we come with labels. We come with boxes. You exist in a set of concentric circles, each a more specific or broader label of your gender, race, family, economic power, marketing niche, nationality, interest or historical actions. We like to think we can escape them, but can you really?
 
Landing in Amsterdam, the sticky sweet mouth of airplane naps and airport food for the past twenty hours still fresh in us, we grabbed our first of silent cab rides into the city. One of my favorite parts of traveling in the past was the colorful information and impressions you would first get from a local cab driver, used to many foreigners and eager to share their thoughts, if for nothing more than to make their day easier.
 
Was the silence some kind of message of its own? or was it me? Attempts to start conversation fell flat enough times that I gave up and sat back and watched the squat brown and green landscape rolling by. Holland is beautiful but swampy and odd in its own way. The people are a very diverse collection of labels themselves, but there is a clear national pride based on respect and equality.

How ironic that as Americans, we were seen abroad as a people opposed to respect and equality. To me, a clear consequence of acting unilaterally in a world where all people are made equal and the world is, by our own dreams, to be governed by the people and for the people as a whole. Just like the holy war raging between Muslim fundamentalists and American fundamentalists, there is a war raging inside all people who believe in equality and respect because of America's actions.

Can I somehow explain away my automatic label of "Waring American" to the foreigners I meet. Should I wear my "Miserable Failure" shirt with W's picture on it to let those that just look at me know that from the beginning I have opposed this bloody ignorant and selfish war? Would they then label me some other kind of American more to my liking? or would they still think me vulgar and powerless?

Like it or not, we were stuck with the "American" label throughout our trip, and it was actually great in Amsterdam as compared to Paris. In France, the palpable anger with America was everywhere. As four gay Americans, we were definitely not alone in enjoying the City of Lights, but we were also seldom mistaken for locals or even Europeans or Canadians.

The French are remarkedly similar to Americans, including their penchant for jumping to conclusions and being judgmental with strangers or outsiders, and so I found that like most of the average Americans I meet, I did not like most of the French people that I encountered, nor do I think they liked us (or really even gave us a chance).

Of course, there were truly some amazing people that we met, and don't get me wrong, we enjoyed them immensely and (I hope) shared an understanding of the difference between us as individuals and the actions and stereotypes of our nation. In all places, in all nations, among all populations I believe there are people winning the war raging inside. They do not wait for the world to change, but instead change their own hearts inside. They are the light to our future.

But more then anything, this trip reminded us of how blessed we are here in Portland with just such people. We have the sensibilities of respect and equality duly represented and honored by a vocal majority of our Northwest brethren, and although the war rages here within people too, we are committed to working on that war--and working on it together too. Not just as individuals, but also as a community, a city and even a State.

I cannot blame anyone for being angry at America because of how it has acted in the past six years, and by the end of this trip, we just had to embrace the fact that to some of the people we encountered on our travels we represented nothing more than an easy target for all of their negativity directed at our nation. I didn't want to take it from them, and I wanted to fight back. But then I realized that in the day, I'm not all together myself, but I'm getting there. Looking for the light, taking in the scenery and knowing love.

Squashed between Jose and Will in a stuffy smelly French taxi, we careened through the Parisian streets for about forty minutes before finally finding a freeway on the outskirts of Paris to take us to the airport. Wedged between two of the most important people in my world, I watched the butchers and bakers and pharmacies stream by outside the window as Paris woke up to its midweek day, the scooters and incessant honking and old and lonely hobbled and rambling down the clean streets. People are people, and they are all beautiful underneath their labels and their need to label.

You've gotta gird yourself before you fly internationally these days, but as we rode I began saying goodbye to Paris in my head, perhaps my last visit in an ever accelerating life, I watched the bright colors of the multicultural masses of the that great city flow by in the limited boxes allowed out the Audi's windows.

The cab driver once picked up Lenny Kravitz he tells us and offers my friend Steve a day-old copy of USA Today. This driver is really a nice guy, and he knows we are Americans. People are people, and I wonder if all people just worry about how beautiful others think or don't think they are too much. Always a bit awkward making small talk in a foreign language, across a cultural divide, but the reward in is in the trying, the journey not the destination and all that.

We laugh together at a few lame jokes and then the conversation drifts back into silence. Each of us weary homesick travelers taking in our last impressions of being there, and perhaps the driver wondering if my guitar case puts us into a class of better Americans (thanks Lenny!). I hope something does, but until this war is truly done, I accept it may not.