My Apologies
Apologies are a good thing. To apologize is to convey the best side of ourselves: our humility, compassion and grace. When we apologize for some past action we've committed, it is also a sign of strength as we have overcome our pride.
However, there is another, quite different, kind of apology -- one which I find quite repulsive. But before getting into that, a character study:
Pierre might be considered strange for any number of reasons: his alpha-male attitude towards women clothed in decidedly zeta-male trappings; his whiny eccentricism; his career as a 42 year old traveling day-trader; his obnoxious manner and cultural solipsism whilst living in different countries; or, of course, his Canadianess. All of these things make him an interesting character, but it is his remarkable obsession with silver that puts him over the top.
It was buying old, tarnished silver on Ebay, and then selling it to the melter -- an 'economic inefficiency,' to put it politely, that very few seemed to be aware of -- that gave him the capital necessary to become a traveling investor. And, as an investor specializing in the resource sector, he is well versed in the various extraction technologies and commodity trends connected with the valuable metal. ("Gold gets rarer as you dig deeper, silver more plentiful. Soon, silver will eclipse gold in price." "It's the best electrical conductor in existence." "It's the world's best antibiotic.").
Pierre became interested in the hostess at the hostel where we were staying, Helen, and bought her a bouquet of flowers. I certainly can't blame him on this one: All four of the women who worked at the desk were smokin' hot, a fact which might have led you to certain conclusions about the Australian owner of the place... if you hadn't walked the streets of Odessa and found yourself on your knees thanking God for leading you, at long, long last, to the land of milk and honeys.
Anyway, Pierre (The AGgravating AGoraphile... I can hear the groans already.) brought flowers each day for Helen. He also brought flowers for Tanya, who complained about the lack of attention being shown her --an action which was looked upon none too favorably, let me tell you, by Helen. Helen changed the water in the vase one day and I casually mentioned it to Pierre.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Unless someone else brought her flowers, yeah," I grunted.
"Damn."
I looked at him quizzically.
"I put silver in the water... it helps the flowers last longer."
I was at an underground (literally and metaphorically) bar with Pierre and Maria, a sweet, bubbly, quadrilingual girl from Moscow also visiting Odessa. Pierre, who you might have mistakenly thought to be Quebecois, is very monolingual.... if that. What I mean is, every sentence he speaks in intoned as though it were coming from a six year old boy complaining to his mother because she won't let him have ice-cream for dinner.
No really, it goes like this:
Pierre had a way with woman. He would approach them with his whiny English, hoping he would find someone he could talk to. To the Romanian from Transylvania who spoke a little English, he pulled down his collar, exposing his neck, inviting the woman to bite him. To the Ukrainian babe who didn't speak English, he pointed to her, then to himself, and then pressed his hands together flat under his tilted head.
Towards the end of the evening, sitting in a group of natives (most Ukrainians in this region speak Russian), Maria and I lowered our eyes as Pierre made an ass of himself. Or maybe I'm projecting, Maria doesn't really seem like the time to be embarrassed of another person -- she's far too good natured for that. One of the natives kept telling Pierre how much he loved him (whether because he is an extremely amicable drunk, or because those are the only English words he knew, I'm not sure). Another of the group kept talking trash to him in Russian -- something Maria and I both neglected to translate.
When we got outside the trash-talker, himself quite trashed, punched Pierre on the forehead - a solid blow, but too drunk to be well-aimed. He responded in the same Ice-Cream-wanting petulant voice "Oww... What was that for?" as he ran away. Trash-talker's friends grabbed him and pulled him away.
Earlier in the night I had said to Maria, "I'm sure we're embarrassing you."
"What?" she didn't hear.
"Nothing."
Part of me was gratified to have a Canadian drawing the stigma of the obnoxious Anglophone away from the American and towards himself. Another part of me felt indicted just the same.
But that's not right. Nor would it have been no matter how close the connection. I'm hardly a rugged individualist, disconnected from bonds of culture, country, or family. But it seems to me that feelings like guilt and shame are only properly emoted when one feels guilty or shameful for one's own actions. And, paradoxically, I think it's the person who feels collectivist guilt that is the most solipsistic. To him, nothing matters except how the actions of his kin, countrymen, or civilizational brethren affect him. That there might be another person who thinks and feels and acts in a certain way for a certain reason is unimportant and unconsidered. It's a craven, and ineffectual way to live one's life...
... and I'm embarrassed for all you who think that way.
