Breakfast in Scarborough

I was leaning on the counter at a nearby Canada Post Office, addressing a package to Missouri, when a man strode up to the two cashiers with a letter. He was shocked at how much it cost to send it express to the States. “I don’t understand why it costs 23 dollars just to send an envelope. When you send things from the States it costs next to nothing. I just don’t get it. Why does it cost so much? It’s the same country.” The clerks didn’t know and when he left to get some cash they rolled their eyes at each other. One said, “He should call customer service. Don’t ask me.”

When I approached the desk to weigh the parcel, I asked the cashiers if they thought price-challenging guy was American. I was curious, as an American in Canada myself. The older clerk said, “Yes, I’m sure he was. I can just tell.” “Was it the attitude?” “Yeah, though you can’t say that about all Americans.” The younger postal worker, who turned out to be from North Carolina, agreed. I said, “I’m from Missouri. We’re pretty laid back, too.” I think it’s good to ask why, but not in a “this is how we do it in the States” way. And why did the guy seem offended that Canada was a different country with different postal prices? Did he think Canada Post had no right to set its own prices?

I saw the postal customer as I walked home. I wish I had worked up the nerve to ask him where he was from and how long he’d been in Canada. I imagine he could have told me a lot about his impression of Toronto and if he was going to pay the 23 Canadian dollars after all.

I thought Enron might be on the boring side, but it really had me on the edge of my plush seat, leaning beyond the cup holders. What a medieval morality play! There were villains aplenty and not so many heroes. Is it really that easy to sell image and confidence over substance? Is it really only money that motivates people? I’d like to think it’s not true, but the sad thing is our society seems so spiritually bankrupt.

Joel Meyerowitz’s exhibit Aftermath: Images from Ground Zero is in Toronto. We saw it yesterday afternoon. As I studied the wreckage, a heavy numbness pressed on me, but the pictures of firemen and construction workers were comfortingly understandable. The grief in their eyes shows the way to feeling, even though it only hints at the trauma they experienced. When 9/11 exploded, I was living in Scotland. I felt so helpless and cut off, with the air space closed, phone lines overwhelmed. Seeing this exhibit made me feel more connected. It’s not often that I would say I feel proud to be an American, but looking at the emergency workers and thinking about how I share their nationality did make me feel proud.

The shredded buildings, smoky dusty hole in the ground also made me think about anger, how the feelings and beliefs of 19 men translated rage into action against twin symbols of power. I have heard that anger is like a shark, destroying the image of that which it hates. Burning testimony to the hellish power of fundamentalism of any kind — why do we persist in our illusions of heavenly reward?

I recently finished Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden Lives of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks. Parts of it seemed overly smug, like when Brooks talked about how gentle and tolerant her home country of Australia is. (Granted, she wrote it before asylum seekers sewed their mouths shut in an Australian detention camp, protesting their treatment.) But I learned more about the Prophet’s wives and how veiling wasn’t orginally meant to apply to all women.