Heading Out

January 18, 2011

While flying over Greenland it was clear to me why I felt the way I did about America when I looked at the small Starbucks cup sitting on my tray. We loved to make a name for ourselves. Something that everyone wanted. Only it came tasting more terrible then any coffee you could get around the world and it costed twice the price.

The quality of life at home is grand. But when you got down to the brass tacks you could see that it was made fast and not to last. Empires where built in days. But a legacy was hard to come by anymore.

When I was walking around the gardens of Versailles I saw just how much detail and passion was put in to every stone, picture, and flower. They build a legacy for a reason. To honor what was in the past and make sure that the future understood that an empire could take hundreds of years to make perfect.

We are a young nation. And if I’ve learned anything over the past few years is that when your young you think you know everything. When people that have been around much longer then you say, “this sounds fun now but in a few years you might regret it,” I didn’t want to listen. Just like many parts of the world have told my home to take it slow.

Watching the news in Brussels made me see our country changing. There’s tugging from all corners. Little tares and snags here and there, 9/11, Iraq War, healthcare, The Dream Act, immigration, Tea Party’s, global warming, gangs, poverty, and a high unemployment rate. The thing is little tares and snags slowly wither away the fabric that held us all together in the first place.

I think we need to slow down. Sit down, hell breath. We might have a lot of money to help people all over the world but right on our own soil, people need something to once again make sure that the life they are living can one day be seen as a legacy, not just a number 2 on a quick menu.

I enjoyed going down a street and seeing different kinds of business run by all kinds of people. Seeing and shopping for different things around every comer. Not just a Target, Kmart, Wal-Mart, or Whole Foods. I liked knowing the man who made my crepe and where he got his mushrooms and why he opened his shop. It was more like a home then walking into a Starbucks that are on almost every street corner in Chicago. With the same pictures, hung in the same spots, and a credit card from the corporation to top it.

In a few hundred years maybe we’ll learn. Learn that we have all the time in the world, and if that we personally don’t then the people around us will. I’m not naïve, I know that we need money to make the world go round, but we can at least spend it wisely. Some how we keep running out of it in the U.S. only to all the sudden find more. Like the White House has this giant couch, that they keep finding change under the cushions, every time they turned the channel and people where unhappy with the way things where going.

It’s not left or right, white or black that should guide us, but it ultimately our passion to make a place we can call home.

The more I see the more I think that America is not quit ripe enough for me. We have not been thru our mid-life crises or down on our luck yet. And it’s not up to one person to decide when that is to happen or why.

I learned something….you just gotta let happen……

Red Light

January 16, 2011

It wasn’t the slip of money….or the knock on her small red door that was so surreal to watch. It was the awkward exchange of glances that led to a few minutes of tension and release.

She stood in her black bra and panties guarding her tiny 3 by 7 foot red room. A mirror on her left where she peered to steal a few glances, making sure the product was up to par.

The door cracked open and the glances started.

He shrugged to see if she was open, she scrunched her face together as to say he better pay well if he was going to come into her one room home.

He said a price, she lifted her eyebrow, and he dropped twenty more.

The velvet curtain closed….

Another women has just opened her curtain with a look on her face as if it was time for a coffee break.

The man put himself together they chatted about…well I can’t imagine….not about another date, or a drive-in, probably not even a phone number.

She gently opened her door as to say, “Thank-you for the business.”

I always wanted to know how this human need in us blooms into an urge so bad we go window-shopping for a quickie. When did the laughing group of teenage boys turn into the well-educated men of the night?

Did she feel happy here? The girls from Chicago didn’t seem to think so. I questioned whether she was forced or willing to sell her body. I thought how crazy she must be if she wanted this for a life. Then I thought people would do anything to survive. It was a game of cat and mouse played in my head the whole night.

To me it was very sad. Sad that a woman had to sell the one thing in this world that is truly hers. Sad that many girls didn’t have a choice. Sad that people need the sensation so bad.

I needed to see more. Next time. It’s not hard to find…..it’s all over the world.

ICC

January 17, 2011

For three years I waited to sit in this seat. To look into the eyes of a person that was in a long list of criminals I wanted to personally understand more.

He sat behind the glass but only 20 feet away, and next to me his mother.

The image of a woman watching her son go thru the International Court tried as a murder and rapist is something I never would have imagined seeing about until today. As much as I wanted to pound the thick sheet glass and ask him why he directed so many men in the wrong direction, his mother was standing in the way.

She put a human note on a situation I thought only people who where inhuman could be involved in.

The woman hidden behind the witness protection blinds is telling her story how three men raped her and stole her things. How she was held down by one man and violated by another, and like a ride they took turns. We couldn’t see her or hear her voice in its natural state. She was a voice for the thousands of women taken advantage everyday in the Central African Republic. Her story was sad but I know that other victems stories can be one hundred times more tragic then hers. The judges spoke to her with such care. They made sure she felt safe when her murders commander sat only 10 feet away. Bembe couldn’t see her. In fact he slept.

I was finally in a place I had dreamed of seeing for years. Confirming that this was the kind of work I wanted to do. Finding what made people human, both the good and bad side. It feels like it will be an endless search for me. Something that I will never stop looking for. A drive for one answer that is in constant passing.

Sitting in the quant hotel lobby at 3 am working. Watching my fellow students roll in from a night out on the soggy streets. Some had a great night and some had wished for a better outcome.

It was rainy. The first stop was a small little bar straight and then a right. Walking in with sponges for shoes and ready to dance.

The French reggae music played in the background like a friendly reminder that somewhere 6,000 miles away people in my hometown where sharing a common beat.

A weird vibe had settled into the group tonight. Everyone wanted to drink together but be alone. Explore this beautiful city with a close friend and not attached to dislikes or sick stomachs.

Somehow the group fizzled across town and left with me with three lovely ladies looking for a good old slumber party. A trip to the small grocery and six different cheeses later we where sneaking food into one of our rooms. Also, since eating and drinking was a sin in the hotel we had no knives, but we managed to key up a great solution.

It was warm. It was like I was 10 again. Whispering so no one could hear us thru the paper-thin walls, digging into Nutella, and sharing secrets about boys that surprisingly turned out to be of a different breed.

And now I sit in the quant hotel lobby. Dried out and more willing to work then I have in months. There was something about this town that made me feel like I was home again. A feeling that I had only really felt in summer’s spent with my family in Poland. I am genuinely happy…and wish that the one I love could join me.

DAY 2

PAris,

The color red was on everybody’s mind. The sheets, the curtains, the wine. Our first day in Parie was…well…a wonderful mess. We all got lost, but found that the people of this city had done things right for hundreds of years.

In America we often hear the French are rude and out of line, but in Paris how they live their life is something sublime. For instance the Metro makes the CTA look like a 3^rd world train wreck.

I also realized that French news has a much larger worldview then any American news show I have ever watched. It made me so happy to walk off the plane and see what was happening in Africa when waiting in the surprisingly fast customs line.

There was only one thing I would change about France…. McDonald’s, Subway, and Starbucks………..

Hour of sitting on the curb to get one good shot.....

Cutting the Strings....

Disconnect....cut the strings....let go of my culture to sink into another. The rumbling of the plane always helped to shake things up.

It always makes me always feel anxious...a trip. Too much to look forward to, or just not knowing what I'm going to get into.

Getting thrown from one world to another. It doesn't take month's to get to a new destination like it used to. Only a few short hours to prepare yourself for a new place.

Is it this quick transition that has made our world so vulnerable to changing and accepting new cultures like they where in our own back yard? Has culture spread as fast as fast food? Could this be bad? Or just different..........