The lazy bubble

I remember my first year of undergrad at University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. There were many factors in why I decided to drop-out after freshman year, but one of them occurred to me as I took a bus from campus (a city within a city really) to south Minneapolis to hang out with friends I'd met at the Riverside Cafe (a co-op, hippie/punk restaurant - Mat invited me to the Scooby Don't house). I got on the bus and noticed so many people that didn't look like me or my compatriots I'd see on campus. Campus seemed to me a bubble filled with privileged, trying hard to look laid back, Caucasian kids who were all protected from reality and the real city. So many ingredients were already brewing inside me leading to my sabbatical, but this one seemed to ice the cake. I had to get out of the bubble.

Living in Buenos Aires as a teenager threw me out of any bubble of protection and into the raw reality of child beggars, poverty, inequality, and instability. Back in the States, in my final 2-1/2 years of high school, I felt the bubble again. Not that I regret it. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to grow up with all my needs met (albeit challenged), safe, loved, clothed, fed. But at some point one needs to challenge those things to recognize how those key, basic elements should be appreciated.

Visiting south Minneapolis on the bus, near the 'hood, drug dealers, marginalized peoples, crack houses, decrepitude abundant, forgotten people - these things changed me and pushed me and popped me out of the university globe. And, actually, right into that 3-story Scooby Don't house where we now tell stories of gunshots, tvs tossed out of windows, angry children with eyes that harden by 10 years old, a coldness developed not from the weather. And maybe we just continue to form bubbles wherever we are. Scooby Don't house could be considered its own bubble, although we kept its exterior rather porous to the neighborhood (to our detriment at times), to the punk rock community (oh, those basement shows!), to travellers (train hopping, couch crashers), to family, to elements outside the cozy blankets inside.

And again, here I am in another bubble. Yes, I see reality here in Paris - class separations, homelessness (incredibly less prevalent here though), inequalities between sexes and races, etc.. But I am still insulated. My apartment with the beautiful view (the skies are the most amazing in this city: pollution? longitude/latitude? particles?), the bus dropping down by the Louvre and over the Seine, the MPA courses up on the 3rd floor behind two big heavy doors within the trendy 7th arrondissmont (Armani Casa across the street), the metro buried below the dirt and grass and litter.

I had no idea. I have no TV. When I can, I catch the local radio or stream in Radio K, The Current, or KEXP. I grab the front pages of International Herald Tribune when they're laying around the school. I had no idea that Paris was burning up in the suburbs. We just got over complaining and focusing on the greve. I wasn't anticipating a new revolt. But it is. The youth, the immigrants, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the 'others' have been rioting against the police state. The divide between state and people has grown in the northern suburbs. Life is still grim.

I am fine. I am safe. I am in a protected bubble called Paris. "Suburbs" are not what we call "suburbs" in the USA. There are no gated communities with competition between lawn trimmings. Honestly though, I can't tell you what it looks like as I've never been there. I can't tell you what's going on really because I can't understand. I can only imagine. I know facts, but I am protected from facing them. Days go on here, further south where the sun is in the sky and it's in the 40F, where I'm consumed with agonizing over my policy paper. (I'm leaning toward comparing legalization/decriminalization/regulation of prostitution in Netherlands versus Sweden and its effects on the economy of the state and the health of the people.) If I thought I had time and it would do any good for the world, I'd go up there and take some photos. But I don't think that would help me or them or the world. It's not what I'm here to do, my mission. But it is a reminder to get more in tune with my surroundings. I'm not here just to learn about China, India, Europe or the globe, but to become acquainted with France and Paris and my neighborhood.

So, thank you for your concern and for thinking of me. I'm better than what you see on tv. Way, much better, and very safe.

We'll see if it does become like the 2005 riots and if it will catch on like wildfire across the country. Let's hope instead that it creates some kind of real, honest, healthy changes for the communities and dialogue between them and the police state.

Interesting reminder / take on the French and history and maybe why they are the way they are: Spaghetti Westerner.