All of Cambodia's political elite were out in full force this morning for the wedding of Prime Minster Hun Sen's daughter. I know because I live right across the park from Hun Sen's palatial residence, and so this morning, while I waited for the van that conveniently picks me up and takes me to work, there was a parade of, oh, two hundred or so men and women slowly making their way down the closed-off streets, all clad in their Wednesday morning best, kissing the ass of the man who could crush their lives like an ant.
I know, I know. I'm being a bit harsh. I'm sure Hun Sen's daugther and her fiancee are kind, lovely people, wise and funny, deserving of their own, Cambodian version of Friends. And I'm sure all of the guests are just ecstatic to be there. Would willingly lay down their lives for the bride's father, no questions asked.
The thing is, weddings are weird here, as I discussed a week or so back. I haven't figured them out. Funerals either, for that matter. There's lots of people dressed really nice, in jewelry and gowns, traditional shirts and ceremonial gowns, and a lot sure happens, yes, morning processions and oh so much more, but I'm not entirely certain of what it all means.
Ah, but that's par for the course in a foreign country. You can't figure some things out. No. You can't figure most things out.
When I was kid, vacationing in Myrtle Beach or Florida, we could bop into a 7-Eleven and buy a can of Coke and that mother was big, I mean large, because the Canadian kind of cans were long, thin cylinders, but the American version was, like, angular, and thick, and why couldn't Canada get its act together like that? It eventually did, round about my ninth birthday. (All praises due to Allah.)
Coming from Canada to America, you noticed the small, little differences. (Like the fact that comics and books were a hell of a lot cheaper.)
Coming from Canada to, let's say, I don't know, Japan or Cambodia, you notice the big stuff. Right away. Straight in your face.
A lot of it has to do with the Asian approach to life and death, symbolized, for me, by weddings and funerals, with Hugh Grant nowhere in sight. Weddings are big and bold and glitzy and colourful; so are ones back home, true, but Asian ones have a certain, I don't know, inbred majesty to them. Maybe it's because I'm foreign, but they have a certain, solemn dignity that is inherent in the whole enterprise. (Of course it's contrived and insincere, but Asians at least present their insincerity a hell of a lot more effectively than those back home.)
It could be because I'm a hick Canadian, but one of the fundamental differences simply seems to be a view of life itself that is more mature, realistic, pragmatic, and yet, at the same time, undeniably mystical at its core. Myth and magic and superstition and tradition all seem to battle it out over here on a daily basis; they've been around, these people have, and hard-wired into their character seems to be this subtle, perhaps unnoticed approach to life that recognizes and validates its unknowable, uncontrollable nature.
Maybe that's b.s. I don't know. All I do know is that Asia -- meaning the parts I know, Japan and Cambodia -- seems to connect to something inherent in existence that we aren't connecting with back home. I can't put my finger on it, but it's there -- this elemental, inexplicable acknowledgement of life's glories and heartaches.
