Finally, Cafe Days

(click for full-size image)

Two days in a row of sun and temperatures in the high 50s have the city smiling. The cafes have set out sidewalk tables, the bikepaths are clear, the children and dogs run toward the parks. We all know we're in for a few more thrashings of the dying winter, but no one could mistake the smell of warming earth and the clarity of the sky for anything other than real spring.

Yesterday I did a bit of cafe sitting myself, near the Mont Royal metro station. Everyone was out, in various stages of weather-accommodation: girls in parkas and scarves and wool hats next to girls in next-to-nothing, baring their ample decolletages to the sun. I watched a CBC news crew interviewing people on the street, all of whom seemed to answer with Canadian ease. It made me happy that the warm weather had opened up the streets to people who've no doubt had trouble all winter; a disabled elderly man covered by a granny-square afghan was pushed across the street in his wheelchair by a friend, and then they sat in the sun and watched the pedestrians and traffic, while another man in a self-propelled wheelchair perused the street, balancing a huge telephoto lens on his lap.

We submitted our American and Canadian tax forms, too; it's the first year we won't be paying nearly half of every tax dollar to support the American military. While it feels like a personal weight has lifted, I know that I cannot read news like today's from Iraq and sit in a safe, lovely cafe -- halfway around the world from those that are shattered by bombs -- with the carefree ease of my Canadian neighbors, or cheer for the local hockey team as if it were the most important thing in the world. I'll probably never be able to do that. This country, in spite of its minor present role in Afghanistan, in spite of past wrongs against native people, in spite of environmental damage, has earned the right to live with a less-guilty conscience and less anxiety than America. Ironically, those Canadians sitting in the cafe's reading their newspapers are generally considerably better-informed and more concerned about the world than most of their southern counterparts. Here in Quebec, opposition to war and military spending have a long history. So does a compassionate social compact that provides health care and old-age benefits for all, along with much greater per-capita expenditure for social services, parks, support of the arts...it's a long list. That extra fifty cents per dollar goes far.

I read the news and viewed the BBC's photos from Iraq today, and came close to weeping: so many innocent people destroyed as they sat in the sun, drinking coffee, reading a paper, eating kebab: living their simple daily lives as each human being on earth surely has the right to do. I'm not blaming all of this violence on the United States, that would not be accurate or fair, but neither am I willing to ignore my complicity in the perpetuation of a violent world, or the ways in which that violence and its effects seep into my own spirit. I feel, to my core, that I am a different person than my Canadian neighbors, and marked forever by this legacy of decisions in which I had no active part.  I am also a different person from the many immigrants who have fled here for refuge, those who bear in their bodies and minds the scars of knowing the violence of war first-hand. And yet here we all are, welcoming the spring, and those first moments of forgetting and relaxing into the universal warmth of the sun.

(I'm breaking my own prohibition against political posts here, because I need to express some of my own sadness and ambivalence today. It's not my intention to invite rancorous debate here. I am, as always, anxious to hear your views; but please keep your comments polite and respectful or they will not be posted.)

Comments

[Bonnie]

I'm also enjoying these first days of real spring, though sometimes having to almost will myself to ignore what's happening elsewhere, in other people's spring sunshine.

It's especially hard to shut down that train of thought when my own country bears such a heavy responsibility for so much of the suffering in the world, whether through commission or omission.

Oddly, just a couple of nights ago, Steve and I were wondering if you two feel more American or more Canadian with regard to issues like Iraq. And now you've answered that question, with your usual thoughtfulness.

[Kaycie]

I was appalled when I watched Bush take office for his first term. I believed Al Gore had actually won, and I threatened to move to Canada or to the UK. I honestly thought he'd be a one termer like his father. As it turns out, he is nothing like his father.

The second term has been even worse. I am sick in my soul from the atrocities committed by this administration. When we've gone abroad, first to England, then to France, I made a concerted effort to NOT seem American. It is horrible to be ashamed of one's government and its actions.

I have wondered if I'd feel less American if we had really moved. From your post tonight, I suppose I probably would not.

[beth]

It's interesting - we've made friends with a number of Canadian Americans, many of whom have lived here for decades. And they're all still somewhat emotionally American - in that they still follow and care about the country, wishing it the best, wanting it to be what it can and should be, feeling proud of the good things and appalled by the bad ones. Maybe that's natural. I don't know - I never immigrated before. But especially at my age, I very much doubt that I'll ever stop feeling American or identifying with America and its deeds, no matter how comfortable I become with living in Canada or being part of Canadian society. But some of that is just my personality too; others do shed their former identity much more readily, and maybe never felt as enmeshed in social and political responsibility as I always have.

[marja-leena]

It's interesting for me, as a Canadian, to read about your feelings living in Canada. It's natural that you will not stop feeling American when you've lived there a great part of your life for I think all immigrants retain some measure of love and loyalty to their native countries, even if they don't like living there anymore. This sadness is why you left, but are fortunate that you can still go back for quick visits.

[Jean]

I'm interested to note that you wrote 'I've never immigrated before', not 'I've never emigrated before', which seems the right way to look at it.

[Nancy]

I've lived abroad for 20 years now, but I still read the NYT on the net every day, and agonize over what is going on in America, and in the world, in part because of American policies. I don't know if I want to end my life in my adopted country, but America seems less and less like a home that I would like to return to. I hope that America changes course -- but the fact that it has been on this course for eight years now is not encouraging. And if it were to change, would it just pretend none of this ever happened? That was certainly the case in the past -- after Allende, after x or y dictator, or coup, or war ... The worst part is that for many people, even to say these things makes one a traitor.

I like it when you write about politics -- you did, when I first started reading you. You often clarify things that I have somewhere, half-formed, in a back corner of my mind. I hope you will continue to do it once in a while, at least.

[Kat]

This morning in the barn, NPR gave me a litany of bombings, shootings, crashes, deaths of all sorts with greater or lesser connections to my country and its choices. I had sudden tears in my eyes and also a sudden urge to impale myself on the horns of the grumpy steer. So much suffering, and so much of it backed by my tax dollars.

Really, we're hoping that Vermont will secede.

[beth]

Kat, yeah, of all the states Vermont is the closest in attitude and culture to Quebec - it may be silly, but the little secessionist movement there indicates real dissatisfaction with the federal path, and that's always hopeful.

Marja-Leena and Jean, you both make such good points, and I thank you for being empathetic.

Nancy, hearing how you still agonize about and follow American policy is really helpful and, frankly, comforting, to me. I think I worry about becoming complacent, and I don't want to: I want to remain politically engaged in the real issues of our time. Thanks too for encouraging me to keep writing about politics, since it is really a major interest of mine and I just avoid it because of the snarkiness and meanness - as well as the repetitiveness - of so much political debate on the internet, as well as wanting to make a space here that talks about the fullness and beauty of life too.

[Lucy]

I'm glad you wrote about it too, and hope you didn't get any snarkiness on account of it.

I suppose there are some parallels for us coming here from the UK; I think perhaps being somewhere with a different language will always make more of a gulf, even when one becomes reasonably competent in it. I still identify with Britain, though I can often feel glad to be out of it and paying our taxes here, and we go back very little. I suppose this can lead to complacency, having the best, (or indeed the worst), of both worlds - there are certainly many things about France I wouldn't want to be associated with. I think it's easier to live in a rather disconnected bubble in a country which will never really be one's own, for us anyway. There's also a danger that we become too negative about the country we came from, because almost all we hear about it is the reported news, which gives a distorted view...