. Meanwhile, Back in the States… …

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Meanwhile, Back in the States…

I wasn’t kidding about that cheeseburger.

I love when the buzzcut in the customs booth at Newark Airport tells me, yeah, I can come back in. The first time it happened, I was returning to college from a trip to England in January,1979. The trip was a bit of a smack-down. I had always believed that people in European countries would be just as happy to meet a visiting American as we are to meet them when they come visit us. I learned, of course, that such reciprocity is not to be expected. Many nights on that trip to England, marked as an American by my down coat, I had the entire Vietnam War blamed on me personally by well-dressed Britons in the Underground. The only friend I made was a creepy criminal exile from South Africa. I hated him.

Over the years I’ve experienced various levels of anti-Americanism, and plenty of friendliness and pleasantness in the many formats in which these things make themselves known across the European Theater. I have lots of English friends now, and I love London. Oddly—wonderfully, actually—I have found that the individual Yank is treated quite nicely these days. Europe’s problem is with the Bush Administration, and there is a sense that we are all in this together.

English has become the “lingua franca,” and even the French who speak it don’t mind, particularly. Business is business. It’s humbling. Like most people my age and in my situation growing up, I found the idea of ever doing a day’s work in France or Germany completely outlandish. Americans never really learned another language, unless it was spoken at home by a parent or grandparent. Most Europeans understand this, or at least let us slide. The fact is, there is something about America that has nothing to do with neo-conservatism and is clearly still admired abroad. Blue jeans, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and hamburgers. Our open, friendly, loudmouth, garish nature is despised only by hardcore bores and biggots. Let’s face it. You gotta love us!~,:^)

And we have to love the rest of the world.

I left France delighted yesterday morning. I spent the last few minutes looking at the screeching little black birds flit in the breeze between the chimney pots as I stood at the Pissarro Room window in the eaves of the Hotel Bersolys. I smiled and thought that my short yet extravagant stay was pretty much perfect. I had just enough of France and I was ready to leave. I can replay in my mind the view and sounds from the window before I closed and locked the door.

I went downstairs and saw for the first time the sign across the street saying that Max Ernst, the symbolist painter, lived there for the last twenty years of his life. I pointed this out to the desk man, who was well aware of the sign. He told me that Christian Dior’s top designer, John Galliano, has his studio right up the beautiful but unassuming street. My daughter Emily says Galliano looks like a pirate. Interesting. The Rue de Lille has been my Parisian address since 1993—I’ll be back in October. J’aime le Rue de Lille! Till then…

Honey, disconnect the phone,
Vanx

Photo: Verb-Ops