FIVE YEARS

"Only two things will be different in your life five years from now -- the people you hang out with and the books you read."

-- unknown

Is that true?

I dunno. Let's see. Five years ago I was hanging out with a bunch of Japanese and reading, primarily, books about Japan -- history, philosophy, fiction.

Now my peers are Cambodians and people from everywhere but Japan (or Canada), and I'm reading a lot of history and a little bit of politics.

Maybe it's true.

In five years, things change. What's that weird fact -- that our body replaces itself every five years or so, regenerating new cells like Pampers generates diapers? (A bad comparison, but what the hell.) We are, literally, a new person. Why should our interests be the same?

(I think you can substitute 'the books you read' with the 'movies you watch' or the 'music you listen to' or the 'people you slaughter'. I mean, the 'people you like', not slaughter. That's, um, what I meant...)

Life shifts, moves, evolves.

So, how about it?

Is it true for you?

THE ONE AND ONLY (INSERT YOUR NAME HERE)

John Irving once said that you should never trust a novelist who writes a memoir, because they all fudge the facts a little bit, making this or that incident just a little more exciting, more interesting or even funnier than what actually took place in the so-called 'real' world. (This was before Irving wrote his own memoir, the wise and entertaining THE IMAGINARY GIRLFRIEND.) From a novelist's perspective, the opportunity to look back on his or her own life can be an opportunity too tempting to resist, a chance to give things a shape and a texture that it lacked the first time around.

We all are busy composing our own memoirs, whether we write them down or not, aren'twe? We remember things the way that we want to remember them; we pick and choose which details to emphasize in the photo-album of our brain, and pull out the pictures for another look whenever we are feeling down and out. The reality of events fades, but the impressions linger, and those impressions are what we try to embellish and brighten, if possible.

I'm reading a biography of Khruschev now, and the writer of the book, William Taubman, quotes generously from the Soviet leader's own memoirs. An interesting pattern develops: Taubman quotes Khruschchev's own written recollections of a certain event or incident, and then he instantly invalidates little Nikita's quote by saying, in essence: "But that's not what really happened..." So the version and validation of his existence that Khrushchev set down for posterity is being rewritten even after his death, by someone he never met. His own version of his own life is deemed to be suspicious, self-serving, inaccurate. History will not settle for one man's version of his own existence.

Most of us will not dictate into a tape recorder the events of our lives, or have our own, personal biographers watching and judging our every action from some future vantage point; we won't have to worry about somebody contradicting our take on events.

It's intriguing to think about, though. How would others write the story of your life? Not after you're dead -- I mean right now. How would your mother and father and boss and high school history teacher transform the daily details of your existence into words on paper? If you picked the same event -- let's say your first day at work in a new job -- would the narrative be the same? The emotions, the anxities, the small, unnoticed triumphs?

I'm guessing no. I'm betting that you would get as many different stories as there were partici-
pants.

And given that we're mired in the festive season (well, Cambodia isn't, but still), it's safe to say that, were Jesus's disciples asked to give a precis of the dude, a brief character sketch of who he was and what he accomplished, the results would have been uneven. The contradictions would have stood out. ("No, no, no, it wasn't wine that he turned water into -- it was apple juice, guy. No, man, he didn't walk across the water -- he boogie-boarded across it. Dude, I swear. I was there, alright?")

The point is, it's our world and our universe. We're dictating what we do and how we do it. But there's a million other people bumping and bopping off of us at any given point in time, and they're writing their own biography of each of us; they're compiling, subconsciously, their private databank containing information on the one and only (insert your name here).

Paul Theroux said that, like most people, his public self rarely matched his private self. (The Japanese recognize this more than others -- tatamae and honne, they call it.) We all have a face we show to the world and a face we look at each and every week while we brush our teeth. (That's a joke -- I know we're supposed to brush our teeth each and every day, not each and every week. It was a typo, I swear. I brush my teeth, like, all the time. Honest...)

We judge ourselves by the face in the mirror while everyone else renders a verdict based on the face they see in the classroom, the cubicle, the hallway, the street. We silently, wordlessly write our memoirs in our heads, not realizing that the people we're judging are doing the same. We're all the heroes of our own lives (if we're lucky), and that simple, grinning fool you see at Starbucks every day may have a life story that, were she to tell it, would take you out of your own biography and make you shake your head with awe, fear or even reverence.

You just have to ask to hear it.

CAMBODIAN WEDDING TRIVIA

One interesting (if mystifying) aspect of Cambodian wedding receptions:

While everyone else sits inside and dines on various courses and listens to the pleasant music provided by the live band, the bride and groom and their respective families wait outside the hall the whole time, greeting everyone who arrives, and they only join the reception near the end, after most people have finished eating and already left.

Which makes me, as a guest, feel very guilty about eating and enjoying myself while the guests of honor wait outside in the parking lot.