On the corner of 8th Street and Wandale Avenue, in the small town of Freemont, Ontario, there stands a house. (As a visitor to Freemont, you can't miss it; it won't let you.) Large and gray, boastful and expansive, it has stood, silent and watchful, in the centre of town for longer than the town itself has existed. There were rumors around Ontario for many years that the house was built by native Canadians around the turn of the nineteenth century, but rumors travel far and travel often in Freemont; to give voice to them, let alone confirm them, is a gamble that few are willing to take. (Freemont is not, and has never been, despite the casino, a gambling town.) Even if such gossip is limited to homebuilders and houses, history and myth, its potential potency remains suspect. To walk the streets of Freemont and stare at the elderly, Victorian-style houses that act as awkward second cousins to their elder, domineering blood relative, or to gawk at the startlingly ugly, brown and bland housing projects that have popped over the past year or two is enough. Enough to satisfy your curiosity. You will not find any answers, and especially not to those questions regarding that one specific house, the one bordering 8th and Wandale. You will walk these streets and think: How could this town have borne that house? It is both too grand and too ostentatiously forbidding for a town as a bland and glumly forlorn as Freemont. It is the place that makes you a child, in all the worst ways, for all the most craven of reasons. It is the house that you hurry past on a cold, moonless December evening, when the sky is black, the air crisp, the snowfall steady but slight. Yes, you hurry past, and you do not look back, and when you mention it again -- that feeling, that December feeling -- the next morning, as you pick up your juice and Lotto 649 ticket at Becker's on Main and Cromwell, the balding cashier, Henry, elderly and retreating, retreats even further. All the way to the other side of the counter, near the chips and the Lik-M-Aid, three for a buck. Visitors don't come all that often to Freemont, truth be told, and when they do, they usually ask. About the house. And the locals, they retreat. To the other side of the counter, or to the storage room, or even just one aisle over. Doesn't matter where.
You shouldn't ask about that house.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
IN A SIMILAR SPACE
The other day I saw a small Cambodian boy standing on the side of the road. By himself. Talking to himself. Head bopping. A slight smile on his lips. Happy.
All around him, cars were buzzing, dust was flying, foreigners were staring, the sky was falling. (Not literally, no, because the Cambodian sky is vast and deep, but his country is falling. Sinking. Or drifting -- let's say drifting. It is not for me to say if this wounded land sinks or swims, but I can recognize drift.)
But he is a boy. These are not his concerns.
He was thinking about something. Perhaps a day at school, half-remembered, the details already fading away but still strong enough to bring a smile to his lips. Or something his sister said. Yes, that must be it. Something his sister said that morning, over breakfast, as they drank their water and ate their rice. She said something silly and strange because that is what sisters do. Often he does not like his sister but at moments like that, breakfast moments, she can say something silly and strange and all is forgiven. (Until lunch.)
Even now, the boy is fading from my memory. I can't clearly remember his features. No matter. He was in his own headspace, the space that only kids inhabit. Anything can happen in there. Aliens can land, animals can fly, cars can speak.
When I was a child, in a similar space, I used to choose one rock to kick all the way home, and I would imagine that that particular stone was alive and sentient, that it was aware, in pain, and I was kicking it further and further away from home, and for a stone, a small stone, the distance was quite far, and its family, assuming it had one, would never see it again. And though I sometimes felt bad for that rock, I still would kick it, again and again, until I reached home, because I knew, after all, that it was just a rock.
(Oh, but still. There was one that one part. That one part of my brain. The part that allowed aliens to land and animals to fly and pigs to speak. The part that suspected that I had committed a malicious and contemptuous act, though I would not have used those exact words, not knowing what they meant. Did the rock have feelings? Had I taken it away from its family? Listening to the rain against my window, this is what I wondered.)
He was just a boy on the side of the road. But I'm quite certain that something strange and wonderful is going on inside of his head even as I type these words. Something divorced from politics, and finance, and development, and coercion. Something intricate and layered.
All around him, cars were buzzing, dust was flying, foreigners were staring, the sky was falling. (Not literally, no, because the Cambodian sky is vast and deep, but his country is falling. Sinking. Or drifting -- let's say drifting. It is not for me to say if this wounded land sinks or swims, but I can recognize drift.)
But he is a boy. These are not his concerns.
He was thinking about something. Perhaps a day at school, half-remembered, the details already fading away but still strong enough to bring a smile to his lips. Or something his sister said. Yes, that must be it. Something his sister said that morning, over breakfast, as they drank their water and ate their rice. She said something silly and strange because that is what sisters do. Often he does not like his sister but at moments like that, breakfast moments, she can say something silly and strange and all is forgiven. (Until lunch.)
Even now, the boy is fading from my memory. I can't clearly remember his features. No matter. He was in his own headspace, the space that only kids inhabit. Anything can happen in there. Aliens can land, animals can fly, cars can speak.
When I was a child, in a similar space, I used to choose one rock to kick all the way home, and I would imagine that that particular stone was alive and sentient, that it was aware, in pain, and I was kicking it further and further away from home, and for a stone, a small stone, the distance was quite far, and its family, assuming it had one, would never see it again. And though I sometimes felt bad for that rock, I still would kick it, again and again, until I reached home, because I knew, after all, that it was just a rock.
(Oh, but still. There was one that one part. That one part of my brain. The part that allowed aliens to land and animals to fly and pigs to speak. The part that suspected that I had committed a malicious and contemptuous act, though I would not have used those exact words, not knowing what they meant. Did the rock have feelings? Had I taken it away from its family? Listening to the rain against my window, this is what I wondered.)
He was just a boy on the side of the road. But I'm quite certain that something strange and wonderful is going on inside of his head even as I type these words. Something divorced from politics, and finance, and development, and coercion. Something intricate and layered.
Monday, June 27, 2005
WHAT I WANT VERSUS WHAT YOU NEED, or WHY, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE WORLD IS A RATHOLE, WE STILL NEED TO WATCH JON STEWART EVERY NOW AND THEN
What do you owe yourself and what do you owe the world around you?
I ask because I'm reading Thomas Friedman's new book The World Is Flat, which details how, in this brave new interconnected world, you had better continually upgrade who you are and what you can do or else you will be left in the competitive dust of those around you who are not necessarily climbing the corporate ladder, but just hanging onto a rung by any means possible.
I also ask because recently I read a book called Citizen Nader, written in 1972, about social crusader Ralph Nader, a man who, even thirty-five years ago, was recognizing certain tendencies in American society that he deemed trivial and wasteful -- namely, watching t.v., chilling out, playing mah-jong, having fun. In a world and a society at the mercy of major corporations and governments who do not necessarily have the people's best interests at heart, it is not enough to just vote; you have to engage.
I tend to read between the lines and find things that usually aren't there to begin with, but what the hell. Reading these two books, this is what I found.
You have the individual who must prepare himself to engage in an increasingly interconnected and difficult job-market, society, world. This takes planning, intelligence, time and strategy. If you want to have even a middle-class life, you have to be prepared to strategically position yourself to potential employers. And you will have to keep doing this to survive -- to buy the car, the house, the flat-screen TV.
And yet, Nader is pointing to loftier goals. He is saying look, all that shit won't make you happy. It's advertisers and governments way of forcing you to continually keep up with the Joneses; it's society's way of playing your neuroses like a harp. The key to a good life and a healthy life and a happy life is to fight injustice any way that you can -- in your society, your city, your neighbourhood. Don't waste time on trivial things; think of what you can contribute to society.
Which is the better choice -- the career and the family and the inevitable path that those structures necessitate, or the more laborious, less ostentatiously fulfilling road of social engagement? How do you balance your own needs, which are, by their very nature, inherently selfish, with the notion that you could be putting your own energies to better, more nobler uses? And to what end? You can end up divorced, paying alimony to an ex-wife to you hate and with kids who barely know you, or end up like Ralph Nader, alone at seventy, no wife, no family, no companions, driven by work?
Is there a middle ground?
I'm oversimplifying things, obviously, but it's something I often think about. I don't have a car, or a house, or a flat-screen TV. Do I want those things? I dunno. I do know that I want to engage in work that contributes something to the world around me, but I'm not sure that a single-minded, blind pursuit aimed at solving society's ills will necessarily result in contentment. An hour spent watching The Daily Show: Global Edition is an hour that I could have spent tutoring some poor kid in the slums. But just as Doestoevsky's Underground Man said that it's sometimes fun to smash things, so do I say that it's sometimes fun to chill out in front of Jon Stewart. Where do you balance the insatiable needs of the ego with the more humane tendencies that truly lift us up and take us to another level of humanity?
If teaching taught me anything, it's that you can see the effect, instantly, every day, that you have on another people. If you're pissed, it changes the texture and tone of the class. (I mean, of course, 'pissed' in the Canadian and American sense, not 'pissed' in the, you know, British sense. I'm aware that coming to class plastered out of your mind could change the mood of the room.) Alone in your cubicle, your mood only affects your own psyche. Standing in front of thirty nineteen year olds, your mood determines whether the next hour will be heaven or hell. (Or, as is usually the case, at least purgatory.)
No answers from me, only questions. Perhaps there's a middle ground, somewhere that satisfies our own selfish natures and allows the better parts of goodwill an outlet to the world at large.
I just wonder if settling for the 'middle ground' has ever created any lasting, resonant change -- in the world, or in ourselves.
I ask because I'm reading Thomas Friedman's new book The World Is Flat, which details how, in this brave new interconnected world, you had better continually upgrade who you are and what you can do or else you will be left in the competitive dust of those around you who are not necessarily climbing the corporate ladder, but just hanging onto a rung by any means possible.
I also ask because recently I read a book called Citizen Nader, written in 1972, about social crusader Ralph Nader, a man who, even thirty-five years ago, was recognizing certain tendencies in American society that he deemed trivial and wasteful -- namely, watching t.v., chilling out, playing mah-jong, having fun. In a world and a society at the mercy of major corporations and governments who do not necessarily have the people's best interests at heart, it is not enough to just vote; you have to engage.
I tend to read between the lines and find things that usually aren't there to begin with, but what the hell. Reading these two books, this is what I found.
You have the individual who must prepare himself to engage in an increasingly interconnected and difficult job-market, society, world. This takes planning, intelligence, time and strategy. If you want to have even a middle-class life, you have to be prepared to strategically position yourself to potential employers. And you will have to keep doing this to survive -- to buy the car, the house, the flat-screen TV.
And yet, Nader is pointing to loftier goals. He is saying look, all that shit won't make you happy. It's advertisers and governments way of forcing you to continually keep up with the Joneses; it's society's way of playing your neuroses like a harp. The key to a good life and a healthy life and a happy life is to fight injustice any way that you can -- in your society, your city, your neighbourhood. Don't waste time on trivial things; think of what you can contribute to society.
Which is the better choice -- the career and the family and the inevitable path that those structures necessitate, or the more laborious, less ostentatiously fulfilling road of social engagement? How do you balance your own needs, which are, by their very nature, inherently selfish, with the notion that you could be putting your own energies to better, more nobler uses? And to what end? You can end up divorced, paying alimony to an ex-wife to you hate and with kids who barely know you, or end up like Ralph Nader, alone at seventy, no wife, no family, no companions, driven by work?
Is there a middle ground?
I'm oversimplifying things, obviously, but it's something I often think about. I don't have a car, or a house, or a flat-screen TV. Do I want those things? I dunno. I do know that I want to engage in work that contributes something to the world around me, but I'm not sure that a single-minded, blind pursuit aimed at solving society's ills will necessarily result in contentment. An hour spent watching The Daily Show: Global Edition is an hour that I could have spent tutoring some poor kid in the slums. But just as Doestoevsky's Underground Man said that it's sometimes fun to smash things, so do I say that it's sometimes fun to chill out in front of Jon Stewart. Where do you balance the insatiable needs of the ego with the more humane tendencies that truly lift us up and take us to another level of humanity?
If teaching taught me anything, it's that you can see the effect, instantly, every day, that you have on another people. If you're pissed, it changes the texture and tone of the class. (I mean, of course, 'pissed' in the Canadian and American sense, not 'pissed' in the, you know, British sense. I'm aware that coming to class plastered out of your mind could change the mood of the room.) Alone in your cubicle, your mood only affects your own psyche. Standing in front of thirty nineteen year olds, your mood determines whether the next hour will be heaven or hell. (Or, as is usually the case, at least purgatory.)
No answers from me, only questions. Perhaps there's a middle ground, somewhere that satisfies our own selfish natures and allows the better parts of goodwill an outlet to the world at large.
I just wonder if settling for the 'middle ground' has ever created any lasting, resonant change -- in the world, or in ourselves.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH, BUT IS LIVE-8?
As the world gets ever more interconnected, as our lives become intertwined with friends and family and strangers in electronic ways requiring ever more heightened degrees of sophistication and complexity, the world, in turn, will have to provide us with more complex solutions to our problems -- which is why the increasing hype around the upcoming LIVE 8 series of concerts devoted to ending 'extreme poverty' in Africa has me worried. They're a reprisal of the LIVE AID concerts that took place more than two decades ago, which followed up on America's 'We Are the World' and Canada's 'Tears Are Not Enough' pop songs that raised money for Ethiopia. (I distinctly remember watching the first Live-8 concert at the age of ten one summer morning, while waiting for the car to be packed for the start of our week-long vacation to Muskie Bay, Ontario. Strange, what the mind can remember.)
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for these concerts, designed to not only to raise money for poor African countries but also to intended to convince the G-8 countries to cancel the outstanding debts owed by these very same countries. Anything that brings Bryan Adams and Dan Ackroyd to Barrie, Ontario is a good thing; Barrie could use a little celebrity lovin', if you ask me. Anything that highlights charity, that gives to those in need, is, in and of itself, a good thing. An ennobling thing.
(Oh, and you sure as hell must sense the 'but' coming, right? Get ready. Arm yourselves. Here...it...comes...)
But what worries me is the relatively simple-minded presentation of these concerts, which seems at odds with the relative complexity of the modern world that we live in. The myriad connections to the Internet available in multiple countries, the changing face of international business and commerce (skillfully depicted by Thomas Friedman in his new book The World Is Flat), the speed at which technology develops -- all are indicators of a world that is remarkable not only for its innovation, but also for its expectations. People expect more now; as a result, companies, corporations and innovators are expected to deliver.
What aren't the organizers of Live-8 delivering?
Nuance. Realism.
Here's what I would like Bob Geldof to say at the beginning of these concerts to his world-wide audience:
"Good afternoon, everybody! I hope you're ready for a fantastic show! I hope you've brought along plenty of bottled water, because you're going to need it under this blistering sun. Millions of people in Africa will never drink a clean glass of water in their entire lives, and this concert won't change that. Much of the money you donate to us will simply go into the pockets of the government workers of various indigent countries. You only have to look at the lack of reconstruction going on in countries affected by the tsunami to realize that there are a lot of venal, craven people in power who have no qualms whatsoever about keeping money specifically designated to help others. They prey on people's generosity. They take what we give. That's what we've been asking you to do -- give. That's what this is all about. You give money, and we save Africa. Fine. Charity is always good. It ennobles the human spirit.
"But what are we asking of Africans? It is not enough to give somebody something; you have to teach them how to make it themselves. It is not enough to just hand over money and think that you've achieved something grand and worthwhile; you have to teach people how to make money themselves. If you don't, you create a culture of dependency. You create a culture that takes advantage of your goodwill.
"I admit -- I fucked up. I should have been more specific when I started these series of concerts. I should have laid out, precisely, which countries the money you donate would go to, which government departments, and how we can ensure that this money will go to specific programs -- AIDS, education, law, construction. I should have indicated how we plan to monitor this money's progress to make sure that it reaches the people's themselves. I should have stated what capacity building programs we have instigated.
"Because it's not enough to think of Africa as this blob of humanity designed to receive our aid every twenty years or so. It's not enough to go to a concert in the park every twenty years or so and feel like you've actually contributed something. Contribution starts when enable people to enable for themselves.
"This concert will help do that. Thank you and enjoy the show."
I write these words not as someone who begrudges charity, but as someone who has worked in a UN organization and seen the ways that money is stolen, diluted and put aside by the very governments who are supposed to be doing something with it. I write these as someone who has spent two years living in a country that was voted as the tenth-worst country to live in for women and children. I write these as someone who witnesses a generation of children who associate foreigners as "someone who gives me money."
This is not blame, but realism. A country like Cambodia did not ask for genocide, or corruption, but here it is, overt and enduring, and it must be dealt with. Many countries in Africa are going through the same thing.
For me, the important things are:
a) Ensuring that whatever aid money is given, whenever it's given, this week and next year and the year after, as often as possible, ends up directly with the people who need it. It is inevitable, absolutely certain, that much of the money will be stolen by the respective governments. The only way to combat this is to create series of 'watchmen' who will monitor what money is given to whom, and what is done with it. I don't know if it is feasible -- but it is necessary.
b) Ensuring that money is not just given to people, but used to create projects designed to train people, allow them to acquire skills, continue their education. That old cliche maxim is true: "Give a man to fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a life." Many countries, Cambodia included, are literally living off the aid industry -- for jobs, for support, for money. The whole point of aid groups is to help people first, and then enable them to help themselves. This takes years, and the progress is slow, and the evaluation is difficult, but it is absolutely essential. Money from donations raised over the coming years should go into specific programs in specific areas designed for specific problems in specific countries -- education, engineering, computer repair, medicine, you name it. Governments can be very, very, very corrupt; unless there are safeguards in place, checking-mechanisms in place, the corruption will continue, whether or not their debts are cancelled.
I know it's just a concert designed for a good cause. I know it's a way to mobilize the world.
But for most people, that's what it will be -- a series of cool concerts, a pleasant diversion on a Saturday afternoon. They will listen to the bands and cheer on Africans and drink some water and go on home and try to catch the end of Saturday Night Live, even if it is a repeat.
The countries, though, are real. The people are real. Their misfortune is extreme. Their prospects are dim. These are difficult, complex problems that require real, lasting, intricate solutions. To not acknowledge some dismaying realities, to not propose concrete, viable plans that are then laid bare for the public to criticize and enhance, not only belittles our own collective intelligence but is also, in this interconnected world, asking for too little from us. People (myself included) who spend hours figuring out websites, downloading music onto i-pods and composing blogs should be able to spare a few moments to listen to different theories regarding African aid -- what we should be doing, with whom, why, and what the next step is. Anything less is an insult to us and an affront to all those less fortunate countries that require a little bit of help to eventually get to a state where they, too, are at a level to set up aid concerts of their own, where they, too, can all afford to buy a bottle of mineral water, parasite-free, and chill out for a few hours, under the sun, listening to music.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for these concerts, designed to not only to raise money for poor African countries but also to intended to convince the G-8 countries to cancel the outstanding debts owed by these very same countries. Anything that brings Bryan Adams and Dan Ackroyd to Barrie, Ontario is a good thing; Barrie could use a little celebrity lovin', if you ask me. Anything that highlights charity, that gives to those in need, is, in and of itself, a good thing. An ennobling thing.
(Oh, and you sure as hell must sense the 'but' coming, right? Get ready. Arm yourselves. Here...it...comes...)
But what worries me is the relatively simple-minded presentation of these concerts, which seems at odds with the relative complexity of the modern world that we live in. The myriad connections to the Internet available in multiple countries, the changing face of international business and commerce (skillfully depicted by Thomas Friedman in his new book The World Is Flat), the speed at which technology develops -- all are indicators of a world that is remarkable not only for its innovation, but also for its expectations. People expect more now; as a result, companies, corporations and innovators are expected to deliver.
What aren't the organizers of Live-8 delivering?
Nuance. Realism.
Here's what I would like Bob Geldof to say at the beginning of these concerts to his world-wide audience:
"Good afternoon, everybody! I hope you're ready for a fantastic show! I hope you've brought along plenty of bottled water, because you're going to need it under this blistering sun. Millions of people in Africa will never drink a clean glass of water in their entire lives, and this concert won't change that. Much of the money you donate to us will simply go into the pockets of the government workers of various indigent countries. You only have to look at the lack of reconstruction going on in countries affected by the tsunami to realize that there are a lot of venal, craven people in power who have no qualms whatsoever about keeping money specifically designated to help others. They prey on people's generosity. They take what we give. That's what we've been asking you to do -- give. That's what this is all about. You give money, and we save Africa. Fine. Charity is always good. It ennobles the human spirit.
"But what are we asking of Africans? It is not enough to give somebody something; you have to teach them how to make it themselves. It is not enough to just hand over money and think that you've achieved something grand and worthwhile; you have to teach people how to make money themselves. If you don't, you create a culture of dependency. You create a culture that takes advantage of your goodwill.
"I admit -- I fucked up. I should have been more specific when I started these series of concerts. I should have laid out, precisely, which countries the money you donate would go to, which government departments, and how we can ensure that this money will go to specific programs -- AIDS, education, law, construction. I should have indicated how we plan to monitor this money's progress to make sure that it reaches the people's themselves. I should have stated what capacity building programs we have instigated.
"Because it's not enough to think of Africa as this blob of humanity designed to receive our aid every twenty years or so. It's not enough to go to a concert in the park every twenty years or so and feel like you've actually contributed something. Contribution starts when enable people to enable for themselves.
"This concert will help do that. Thank you and enjoy the show."
I write these words not as someone who begrudges charity, but as someone who has worked in a UN organization and seen the ways that money is stolen, diluted and put aside by the very governments who are supposed to be doing something with it. I write these as someone who has spent two years living in a country that was voted as the tenth-worst country to live in for women and children. I write these as someone who witnesses a generation of children who associate foreigners as "someone who gives me money."
This is not blame, but realism. A country like Cambodia did not ask for genocide, or corruption, but here it is, overt and enduring, and it must be dealt with. Many countries in Africa are going through the same thing.
For me, the important things are:
a) Ensuring that whatever aid money is given, whenever it's given, this week and next year and the year after, as often as possible, ends up directly with the people who need it. It is inevitable, absolutely certain, that much of the money will be stolen by the respective governments. The only way to combat this is to create series of 'watchmen' who will monitor what money is given to whom, and what is done with it. I don't know if it is feasible -- but it is necessary.
b) Ensuring that money is not just given to people, but used to create projects designed to train people, allow them to acquire skills, continue their education. That old cliche maxim is true: "Give a man to fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a life." Many countries, Cambodia included, are literally living off the aid industry -- for jobs, for support, for money. The whole point of aid groups is to help people first, and then enable them to help themselves. This takes years, and the progress is slow, and the evaluation is difficult, but it is absolutely essential. Money from donations raised over the coming years should go into specific programs in specific areas designed for specific problems in specific countries -- education, engineering, computer repair, medicine, you name it. Governments can be very, very, very corrupt; unless there are safeguards in place, checking-mechanisms in place, the corruption will continue, whether or not their debts are cancelled.
I know it's just a concert designed for a good cause. I know it's a way to mobilize the world.
But for most people, that's what it will be -- a series of cool concerts, a pleasant diversion on a Saturday afternoon. They will listen to the bands and cheer on Africans and drink some water and go on home and try to catch the end of Saturday Night Live, even if it is a repeat.
The countries, though, are real. The people are real. Their misfortune is extreme. Their prospects are dim. These are difficult, complex problems that require real, lasting, intricate solutions. To not acknowledge some dismaying realities, to not propose concrete, viable plans that are then laid bare for the public to criticize and enhance, not only belittles our own collective intelligence but is also, in this interconnected world, asking for too little from us. People (myself included) who spend hours figuring out websites, downloading music onto i-pods and composing blogs should be able to spare a few moments to listen to different theories regarding African aid -- what we should be doing, with whom, why, and what the next step is. Anything less is an insult to us and an affront to all those less fortunate countries that require a little bit of help to eventually get to a state where they, too, are at a level to set up aid concerts of their own, where they, too, can all afford to buy a bottle of mineral water, parasite-free, and chill out for a few hours, under the sun, listening to music.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
DESPITE WHAT YOUR PARENTS TOLD YOU, ALWAYS TALK TO STRANGERS (ESPECIALLY WHEN DYING OF THIRST)
I totally, absolutely believe that kids should never talk to strangers, but when you're completely lost in the wilderness, seemingly abandoned by your boy scout troop, having not eaten anything or drank anything for four freaking days, I think exceptions should be made. Call me crazy.
Have you heard about this? Brennan Hawking, a boy scout, got lost while hiking with his troupe. Got lost for four days. Didn't eat anything. Didn't drink anything. And they found him, alive and well.
Great story. Marvellous story. Almost makes me want to become a Mormon, given that that's the kid's religion. (And he hails from the impossibly idyllic sounding town of Bountiful, Utah.)
Maybe I've got a weird sense of humor, and maybe I tend to find humor where it's not supposed to be found, but some of the comments from his parents just struck me as, well, funny.
One thing they said was that Brennan was born premature, so he's therefore a bit socially immature.
Wait a second. Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't 'being born premature' mean that you're born at, like, six or seven or eight months, instead of the normal nine? And, if that's the case, given that the kid is now eleven, hasn't he had enough time to get over it? I those first three or four months of life are tough, but get over it. And wait another second -- why should being him being born premature mean that he's socially awkward? I mean, shit -- he had a head start on the world, if anything. The kid had two, three more months than the rest of us to scope out the land, check out the chicks, get that whole 'pissing' and 'shitting' thing down to a science.
(Oh, wait. I just realized: maybe being born premature means that you also look a little young, forever, and, come to think of it, he did look a little small for an eleven year old. So I've just gone and mocked a kid who probably has image problems already. Damn, I can be a cruel and heartless bastard sometime. But it was an accident, I swear!)
The parents also told the kid to never talk to strangers, and to always stay on the trail. When a horse or an SUV came by looking for the kid, he didn't flag them down or beg for a Slurpee or hop on the horse like the Lone Ranger looking for action. Instead, he hid from the homies looking to save his ass, and then resumed rambling down the trail where they were off in the distance.
Wow. I mean, you would think the 'never talk to strangers' rule could be bypassed on this special occasion. But maybe the kid's brain shortcircuited -- 'stay on the trail' would have meant 'talking to strangers', and he wasn't supposed to do that, so he had to choose one rule to violate, I guess.
Also noted by his proud pappy was the fact that perhaps the kid didn't go screaming for help because the strangers wouldn't have had the 'secret password' that the family shared. But you would think, being lost in the desert (or mountains, or wherever), thirsty as hell, hot as hell, the kid would have been tempted to toss aside those rules for the present.
But he didn't. Those rules were so ingrained in his brain that he couldn't do it, even when his life was in danger.
I find that fact interesting, and it dovetails with a comment made by Thomas 'tommy-boy' Friedman in a recent column in The New York Times. He noted that, as children, we're taught not to talk to strangers, but that, as adults, it's absolutely essential that we do so. You have to talk to strangers to understand the world and your own place in it.
Perhaps the source of all of society's ills comes down to that simple maxim shoved into our heads by our well-meaning elders: Don't talk to strangers. That's the first thing we learn. We internalize it, fetishize it, and make it our own unconscious mantra. The result being that, as adults, we're locked into our own little universes, convinced we're right, desperate to be right, and not interested in what other, stranger people have to say.
Well, I'm here to say: Talk to strangers. Repeatedly. Every day. You'll learn something.
Especially if you're lost in the desert. (You might even get some water, too.)
Have you heard about this? Brennan Hawking, a boy scout, got lost while hiking with his troupe. Got lost for four days. Didn't eat anything. Didn't drink anything. And they found him, alive and well.
Great story. Marvellous story. Almost makes me want to become a Mormon, given that that's the kid's religion. (And he hails from the impossibly idyllic sounding town of Bountiful, Utah.)
Maybe I've got a weird sense of humor, and maybe I tend to find humor where it's not supposed to be found, but some of the comments from his parents just struck me as, well, funny.
One thing they said was that Brennan was born premature, so he's therefore a bit socially immature.
Wait a second. Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't 'being born premature' mean that you're born at, like, six or seven or eight months, instead of the normal nine? And, if that's the case, given that the kid is now eleven, hasn't he had enough time to get over it? I those first three or four months of life are tough, but get over it. And wait another second -- why should being him being born premature mean that he's socially awkward? I mean, shit -- he had a head start on the world, if anything. The kid had two, three more months than the rest of us to scope out the land, check out the chicks, get that whole 'pissing' and 'shitting' thing down to a science.
(Oh, wait. I just realized: maybe being born premature means that you also look a little young, forever, and, come to think of it, he did look a little small for an eleven year old. So I've just gone and mocked a kid who probably has image problems already. Damn, I can be a cruel and heartless bastard sometime. But it was an accident, I swear!)
The parents also told the kid to never talk to strangers, and to always stay on the trail. When a horse or an SUV came by looking for the kid, he didn't flag them down or beg for a Slurpee or hop on the horse like the Lone Ranger looking for action. Instead, he hid from the homies looking to save his ass, and then resumed rambling down the trail where they were off in the distance.
Wow. I mean, you would think the 'never talk to strangers' rule could be bypassed on this special occasion. But maybe the kid's brain shortcircuited -- 'stay on the trail' would have meant 'talking to strangers', and he wasn't supposed to do that, so he had to choose one rule to violate, I guess.
Also noted by his proud pappy was the fact that perhaps the kid didn't go screaming for help because the strangers wouldn't have had the 'secret password' that the family shared. But you would think, being lost in the desert (or mountains, or wherever), thirsty as hell, hot as hell, the kid would have been tempted to toss aside those rules for the present.
But he didn't. Those rules were so ingrained in his brain that he couldn't do it, even when his life was in danger.
I find that fact interesting, and it dovetails with a comment made by Thomas 'tommy-boy' Friedman in a recent column in The New York Times. He noted that, as children, we're taught not to talk to strangers, but that, as adults, it's absolutely essential that we do so. You have to talk to strangers to understand the world and your own place in it.
Perhaps the source of all of society's ills comes down to that simple maxim shoved into our heads by our well-meaning elders: Don't talk to strangers. That's the first thing we learn. We internalize it, fetishize it, and make it our own unconscious mantra. The result being that, as adults, we're locked into our own little universes, convinced we're right, desperate to be right, and not interested in what other, stranger people have to say.
Well, I'm here to say: Talk to strangers. Repeatedly. Every day. You'll learn something.
Especially if you're lost in the desert. (You might even get some water, too.)
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
DAMN YANKEES, RALPH NADER, AND HOW I FINALLY FOUND OUT JUST WHAT THE HELL A 'BENJAMIN' IS
I’ve always admired about Americans what others around the world tend to resent – their ambition, moxie, gall. It’s almost a brand of assertiveness that says: This is who I am, and if you don't like it, tough. (In varying degress of intensity.)
Before living abroad, the only time I actually, like, spoke to Americans was when I travelled to Disney World or Myrtle Beach, and the conversations one has at age seven or fifteen are not usually ones conducive to contemplation of nationalistic similarities (or differences).
Now that I've lived abroad for a great while I've picked up the habit of studying different people from different cultures and trying to figure what they often tend to do, and why. I’m always amazed when the Americans I meet just commence to, well, announce their political beliefs, their moral beliefs, their personal beliefs, whatever, right off the bat, without even knowing my nationality, or whether I might be offended. Canadians are more cautious; we feel people out. Americans dive right in. That always jars me, every time. (I remember one American who came to my old university sitting in the teacher's lounge -- or our version of a teacher's lounge -- just ranting and raving about Bush, and what a prick he was, and he didn't know if we were Americans, or Republicans or Democrats, and I suspect he wouldn't have cared one way or the other. He was going to say what he was going to say, period.)
On a (kind of?) related note, the other day I was in an Internet café and an Asian-American girl was trying to break some change.
“What are you trying to break?” I asked.
“A Benjamin,” she said.
“I’m Canadian,” I said. “I don’t know how much that is.”
She probably heard my accent and assumed I was American. That happens all the time here. I’ll ask somebody where they are from and they’ll say ‘Chicago’ or ‘Detroit’ or ‘Los Angeles’ – not ‘the United States’. Most other foreigners tell you the country they’re from; Americans tend to name the city, or the state, assuming either: a) you’re American, or b) you’ll know the city or state, regardless.
This doesn’t bother me the way it bothers other foreigners. I've learned that every culture has its stereotypes, that a lot of the stereotypes are true, and that, most importantly of all, you really gotta cut people some slack, people.
The reality is, especially in Cambodia, Americans have a somewhat poor reputation, one that has more to do with their own individual policies than the policies of their country. Some language schools or universities won’t even hire Americans. Why? Because they do their own thing. They don’t play the game. They won’t adapt. They tend to have a fixed view of things, are stubborn as hell, and cut loose when things don't go their way. (That's what people in managerial positions here have told me, anyway.) When I started teaching at the University of Cambodia at its inception, four of the people in high management positions didn’t last longer than six months at the place; a few didn't even last three. All of them quit, and all were American.
This is not an indictment by me -- I swear. I just find Americans, well, curious; they are somewhat similar to Canadians in tone and temperament but are possessed by a confidence, an assertive poise, that Canadians simply don’t have. I can usually tell within five seconds of talking to a person over here if they’re Canadian or American, and accent has nothing to do with it; attitude does. A boldness to their personalities. The world as a whole has been so bombarded by American media that Americans themselves, as people, as individuals, have become lost in the electronic morass of their cinematic substitutes; trying to figure out who they actually are, divorced from any pre-conceived media conceptions, has been difficult, but I'm betting that 'boldness' would definitely be on my top-three-adjective-list-of-American-character-traits.
I’m thinking about all of this because I’m reading an old hardcover book I picked up in a used bookstore over here called Citizen Nader, written in 1972, chronicling the remarkable rise of that quintessentially American rabble-rouser Ralph Nader. He had barely been on the scene a decade when the book was written, and he was already a legend.
I say ‘quintessentially’ American because, to me, a Canadian, Nader possess what I sense most Americans possess – a form of boldness that us Canucks lack. Nader does his own thing. He doesn’t give a flying fuck what anybody thinks. I absolutely agreed with his presidential ambitions, and I found it disgusting that everybody was telling him to drop out of the race in order to save the nation from Bush and his cronies. If America is what it purports to be, what it presents itself to be, then Nader had every right in the world to run for President; he had an obligation to do so, one could say. And to all those who said that he was ‘stealing’ votes from Gore, I say: Do people not have their own minds and their own intentions? People can vote for whoever the hell they want to vote for, and if they choose Person A over Person B, you can’t fault Person A simply because he’s in the race to begin with. If anything, you should fault Person B for not putting up a more attractive argument.
I’m rambling. I tend to do that when I write or talk about something that not a lot of other people agree with. The truth is, all of the Americans I have met, both in Japan and Cambodia, have been good, decent, likeable people. Jon Stewart was dead wrong on The Daily Show when he recently responded to Russel Crowe’s plea for more Americans to travel, to see the world, by saying: “Dude, if we traveled, people would hate us even more.”
A funny line, sure, but I don’t think it's necessarily the case. I would hate to think that that's the case, anyway. As Crowe also said, the only advertisement Americans have for America are themselves. Period. Americans have gotten a bum rap based on the actions of their warlords back home. Americans as individuals – like the Swedes I’ve met, the Finns I’ve met, the Cameroons I’ve met, the Filipinos I’ve met – have something to offer to the world. (And to me.) Something different and uniquely their own. Something we can, if we choose, even seek to emulate. The more Americans travel, the more other people around the world will see them as people, with the same faults and virtues that we all possess, the better we'll all be.
In the end, I'm not sure if Canada could produce somebody like Ralph Nader. Somebody with that much chutzpah. That much passionate, informed rebelliousness. Living abroad, you will find out how (insert nationality here) you really are; I can see Canada more clearly from a distance, its people and its form, and I wonder about the possibility of a Nader-like Canuck. Are we doomed to forever be the emotional and psychological denizens of our home and native lands? Can we sample and integrate the qualities of other nationalities that we'd like our own to wield?
Not sure.
But living abroad, I've learned, is a hell of a good way to try and find out.
Before living abroad, the only time I actually, like, spoke to Americans was when I travelled to Disney World or Myrtle Beach, and the conversations one has at age seven or fifteen are not usually ones conducive to contemplation of nationalistic similarities (or differences).
Now that I've lived abroad for a great while I've picked up the habit of studying different people from different cultures and trying to figure what they often tend to do, and why. I’m always amazed when the Americans I meet just commence to, well, announce their political beliefs, their moral beliefs, their personal beliefs, whatever, right off the bat, without even knowing my nationality, or whether I might be offended. Canadians are more cautious; we feel people out. Americans dive right in. That always jars me, every time. (I remember one American who came to my old university sitting in the teacher's lounge -- or our version of a teacher's lounge -- just ranting and raving about Bush, and what a prick he was, and he didn't know if we were Americans, or Republicans or Democrats, and I suspect he wouldn't have cared one way or the other. He was going to say what he was going to say, period.)
On a (kind of?) related note, the other day I was in an Internet café and an Asian-American girl was trying to break some change.
“What are you trying to break?” I asked.
“A Benjamin,” she said.
“I’m Canadian,” I said. “I don’t know how much that is.”
She probably heard my accent and assumed I was American. That happens all the time here. I’ll ask somebody where they are from and they’ll say ‘Chicago’ or ‘Detroit’ or ‘Los Angeles’ – not ‘the United States’. Most other foreigners tell you the country they’re from; Americans tend to name the city, or the state, assuming either: a) you’re American, or b) you’ll know the city or state, regardless.
This doesn’t bother me the way it bothers other foreigners. I've learned that every culture has its stereotypes, that a lot of the stereotypes are true, and that, most importantly of all, you really gotta cut people some slack, people.
The reality is, especially in Cambodia, Americans have a somewhat poor reputation, one that has more to do with their own individual policies than the policies of their country. Some language schools or universities won’t even hire Americans. Why? Because they do their own thing. They don’t play the game. They won’t adapt. They tend to have a fixed view of things, are stubborn as hell, and cut loose when things don't go their way. (That's what people in managerial positions here have told me, anyway.) When I started teaching at the University of Cambodia at its inception, four of the people in high management positions didn’t last longer than six months at the place; a few didn't even last three. All of them quit, and all were American.
This is not an indictment by me -- I swear. I just find Americans, well, curious; they are somewhat similar to Canadians in tone and temperament but are possessed by a confidence, an assertive poise, that Canadians simply don’t have. I can usually tell within five seconds of talking to a person over here if they’re Canadian or American, and accent has nothing to do with it; attitude does. A boldness to their personalities. The world as a whole has been so bombarded by American media that Americans themselves, as people, as individuals, have become lost in the electronic morass of their cinematic substitutes; trying to figure out who they actually are, divorced from any pre-conceived media conceptions, has been difficult, but I'm betting that 'boldness' would definitely be on my top-three-adjective-list-of-American-character-traits.
I’m thinking about all of this because I’m reading an old hardcover book I picked up in a used bookstore over here called Citizen Nader, written in 1972, chronicling the remarkable rise of that quintessentially American rabble-rouser Ralph Nader. He had barely been on the scene a decade when the book was written, and he was already a legend.
I say ‘quintessentially’ American because, to me, a Canadian, Nader possess what I sense most Americans possess – a form of boldness that us Canucks lack. Nader does his own thing. He doesn’t give a flying fuck what anybody thinks. I absolutely agreed with his presidential ambitions, and I found it disgusting that everybody was telling him to drop out of the race in order to save the nation from Bush and his cronies. If America is what it purports to be, what it presents itself to be, then Nader had every right in the world to run for President; he had an obligation to do so, one could say. And to all those who said that he was ‘stealing’ votes from Gore, I say: Do people not have their own minds and their own intentions? People can vote for whoever the hell they want to vote for, and if they choose Person A over Person B, you can’t fault Person A simply because he’s in the race to begin with. If anything, you should fault Person B for not putting up a more attractive argument.
I’m rambling. I tend to do that when I write or talk about something that not a lot of other people agree with. The truth is, all of the Americans I have met, both in Japan and Cambodia, have been good, decent, likeable people. Jon Stewart was dead wrong on The Daily Show when he recently responded to Russel Crowe’s plea for more Americans to travel, to see the world, by saying: “Dude, if we traveled, people would hate us even more.”
A funny line, sure, but I don’t think it's necessarily the case. I would hate to think that that's the case, anyway. As Crowe also said, the only advertisement Americans have for America are themselves. Period. Americans have gotten a bum rap based on the actions of their warlords back home. Americans as individuals – like the Swedes I’ve met, the Finns I’ve met, the Cameroons I’ve met, the Filipinos I’ve met – have something to offer to the world. (And to me.) Something different and uniquely their own. Something we can, if we choose, even seek to emulate. The more Americans travel, the more other people around the world will see them as people, with the same faults and virtues that we all possess, the better we'll all be.
In the end, I'm not sure if Canada could produce somebody like Ralph Nader. Somebody with that much chutzpah. That much passionate, informed rebelliousness. Living abroad, you will find out how (insert nationality here) you really are; I can see Canada more clearly from a distance, its people and its form, and I wonder about the possibility of a Nader-like Canuck. Are we doomed to forever be the emotional and psychological denizens of our home and native lands? Can we sample and integrate the qualities of other nationalities that we'd like our own to wield?
Not sure.
But living abroad, I've learned, is a hell of a good way to try and find out.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Virsna Yoeung Oudam (1982-2005)
I first met him when I first moved to Cambodia. He was one of the young Cambodian chaps working for another Canadian compatriot of mine in the Marketing department at the University of Cambodia. He was good natured, friendly, always ready with a laugh and a smile, as Cambodians often are. Sometimes, when I was about to go home from work, he would spot me and say: "Oh, Scott, where are you going? To go somewhere, to do something, with someone?" And then he would laugh. I saw him every day for about a year; sometimes he would have to interrupt one of my lessons to speak to the class about this or that school announcement, or I would see him in the library, or in the halls. He was one of the dozens, hundreds, thousands of people who formed a backdrop to my life.
He died the other day. Killed by a drunk driver. Heading home to a party at his house where everyone was waiting for him. A party he never got the chance to attend.
He was not my best friend, or even a good friend, but he was someone that I knew. Someone I had shared a goodnatured moment or two with quite often over the past year or two.
I saw him for the last time about a month ago. He had moved on to another job, as had I. He gave me his card for his new job, and we discussed the possibility of me working for the same place at some point in the near future. I shook his hand, slapped him on the back, said see ya. Phnom Penh is a small town; I would see him again.
Every so often the ordinariness of life is upended. We are jolted and reminded that our time here is short, our options few, our guarantees nil. A world that takes a young man not yet twenty-four is not a fair one, or a balanced one, but it is a real one, and it is the realness of the real world that I have not yet begun to grasp or comprehend. I hope I never do.
Harlan Ellison once wrote: "Nobody should go down into the darkness with too few words."
I fear that these meager words are far too few to give justice to a life. Hell, I know that they are. But I humbly offer them with the hope that the news of the death of this young Cambodian man in a foreign land you will never visit, just starting out in life, will remind you of all those people in your own life -- at school, at work, at the supermarket --who you talk to on a regular basis, who you pass in the halls with a smile and a nod, who ask after your children, who you know little of other than that they are kind and good and pleasant. I hope that you will consider them. I hope that you will appreciate what they give you, however small it is. It's the small things in life that cushion us and accumulate.
He died the other day. Killed by a drunk driver. Heading home to a party at his house where everyone was waiting for him. A party he never got the chance to attend.
He was not my best friend, or even a good friend, but he was someone that I knew. Someone I had shared a goodnatured moment or two with quite often over the past year or two.
I saw him for the last time about a month ago. He had moved on to another job, as had I. He gave me his card for his new job, and we discussed the possibility of me working for the same place at some point in the near future. I shook his hand, slapped him on the back, said see ya. Phnom Penh is a small town; I would see him again.
Every so often the ordinariness of life is upended. We are jolted and reminded that our time here is short, our options few, our guarantees nil. A world that takes a young man not yet twenty-four is not a fair one, or a balanced one, but it is a real one, and it is the realness of the real world that I have not yet begun to grasp or comprehend. I hope I never do.
Harlan Ellison once wrote: "Nobody should go down into the darkness with too few words."
I fear that these meager words are far too few to give justice to a life. Hell, I know that they are. But I humbly offer them with the hope that the news of the death of this young Cambodian man in a foreign land you will never visit, just starting out in life, will remind you of all those people in your own life -- at school, at work, at the supermarket --who you talk to on a regular basis, who you pass in the halls with a smile and a nod, who ask after your children, who you know little of other than that they are kind and good and pleasant. I hope that you will consider them. I hope that you will appreciate what they give you, however small it is. It's the small things in life that cushion us and accumulate.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
WHY GETTING HOOKED ON SOLVING THE JONBENET RAMSEY MURDER CASE IS REALLY, REALLY NOT A GOOD IDEA SHOULD YOU VALUE SLEEP
I think the mother did it. I honestly do. Or it could have been the brother. I believe that's a possibility, though not as likely. Either way, the father helped cover it up. But that doesn’t explain the motive: why? Why would a family kill its six year old daughter? And the ransom note left on the stairway – there was no fingerprints, no folds, no creases. Pristine. How is that possible? (But how would an intruder know to place it so carefully on the back staircase that Patsy used every morning?) And the unidentified DNA in the child’s panties – whose was it? And that palm print on the cellar door – unknown.
I’m hooked.
See, this is the thing. I could be reasonably happy alone in a room for the rest of my life, provided that I had a supply of good books. If the books happened to be true-crime stuff, I would be in heaven. Usually, this is a genre that gets a bad rap, and deservedly so; exploitive, lurid junk, most of it is. It is a genre, however, that has also given us Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD and Norman Mailer’s THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG – two books that are about as good as books can get.
Mailer’s researcher on THE EXECTUIONER’S SONG, Laurence Schiller, wrote PERFECT MURDER, PERFECT TOWN, which I recently read, a 1999 true-fiction account of the JonBenet Ramsey case that gripped the United States back in 1996 and 1997.
You remember it. Probably vaguely. I was in university at the time, and didn’t pay much attention to all the media shenanigans surrounding it. I knew the outlines of the case, roughly: A wealthy family, a beauty-queen child, the girl killed, the parents under suspicion. Whatever.
Oh, but let me let you in on a secret. Come closer. Don’t be shy. This is no ‘whatever’ story. This is one of the most fascinating, infuriating, maddeningly unsolvable cases I’ve ever encountered. I read the 600 page book in two days flat. Couldn’t get enough. No movie could make this up. No case could be more tragic.
In brief: Jon Benet Ramsey and her family went to a Christmas party on December 25th, 1996. They came home, went to bed. The next morning, the police received a phone call: a kidnapping had taken place. They arrived at the home of wealthy Boulder socialites John and Patsy Ramsey. A ransom note had been found by Patsy Ramsey on the back staircase, asking for $118 000 for the safe return of their daughter. The note stated that the kidnappers would call later that morning. They never did. Sometime in the early afternoon, the father, John, searches the house once again. He finds the body of his dead daughter in a wine cellar in the basement. She is wrapped in one of her favorite blankets. A noose is around her neck. A garrote has been fashioned around her neck.
And that’s just the beginning.
What makes this case so fascinating is the physical evidence, and the human evidence, and all the things that should add up but don’t. The fact that the ransom note was the ‘war and peace’ of ransom notes, as the police put it, when most ransom notes are short and to-the-point. The fact that the amount of money asked for in the ransom note is $118 000, which just happens to be the amount of John Ramsey’s Christmas bonus. The fact that the note was written using a Sharpie pen and a pad of paper that were already in the house. The fact that a Bible was found open in the Ramsey’s bedroom to psalm 118, which talks about giving a sacrifice unto God. The fact that the house was so large and so winding that there was no way anyone unfamiliar with the house could have located the wine cellar where the body was found. The fact that a neighbour heard a scream in the night, but the parents didn’t. The fact that the parents said that their son, Burke, was not awakened until after the police had arrived and the body had been found, and yet, on an aural enhancement of the original 911 call placed by the mother, in the distant background, you can hear the son’s voice asking: “What do I do now?” The father, John: “We’re not talking to you.” The son: “What DID you find?” The fact that, despite the ransom note stating that if anyone was notified about JonBenet’s disappearance their daughter would be killed, the family instantly phoned not only the police but their priest and closest friends and invited them over to the house. The fact that, only thirty-five minutes after finding the body of his dead daughter, John Ramsey phoned his private pilot to try and arrange for his family to fly out of state that evening. The fact that some experts declared the sexual abuse evident from examination of the vagina determined that JonBenet had been the long-term victim of abuse, while others stated it had happened for the first time the night of the killing. The fact that a flashlight was found on the kitchen counter that could have been used to knock her unconscious. The fact that it was proven that Patsy Ramsey purchased material from a hardware store the month before that was the same exact price as the rope and duct tape used in the killing. The fact that the role of duct tape was not found at the house. The fact that fabric from the outfit Patsy Ramsey wore the night of the party was found on the duct tape plastered across the daughter’s mouth. The fact that it was proved the duct tape was placed on the girl’s mouth after she was already dead. The fact that she was found wrapped in her favorite blanket and near her Barbie outfit, indicating that the killer wanted her to feel comforted. The fact that the ransom note uses phrases like “and hence”, the same exact phrase that the Ramsey’s themselves used in a thank-you message to their church the following Christmas. The fact that handwriting experts could not exclude the mother from writing the ransom note. The fact that a linguistic expert, after examining various samples of the mother’s writing, determined that she wrote the ransom note. The fact that two experienced investigators, viewing the same evidence, came to opposite conclusions: one determined an intruder had killed the girl; another determined it was the parents.
And all of that is just the beginning.
I’m losing sleep, I’m telling you.
See, I’m the deluded type of guy that actually thinks: I can figure all this out. I can crack the case, given enough time. In high school, I became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination, reading every book ever written on the subject that I could find, culminating in my Grade 13 History Independent Study that was supposed to be eight pages and ended up being thirty. (I haven’t figured that one out yet, not completely, but I have my theory, more or less, and I’m sticking to it.)
Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor? It’s the rule stating that, all things being equal, the simpler explanation for an unexplained event is usually the correct one.
When a child is murdered in the home, it is usually the parents who do it. That’s a fact. All of the circumstantial evidence in this case, and the parents’ behavior, indicates that one or both of them were in on it. (The evidence for an intruder, I think, is quite scant.)
So, bearing that in mind, my two cents:
As one interesting article I read recently on the Internet postulated: If you stop thinking of it as a ‘murder’, and instead think of it as an ‘accidental death’, then things become clearer.
I think either the mother or the brother accidentally killed JonBenet.
If it was the mother: The little girl had a history of wetting her bed, and still wanted to be wiped by others after using the bathroom. Perhaps the mother got angry, wiping too hard, resulting in the vaginal tears that the autopsy found. They later determined that the type of head injury she had was consistent with a fall on a bathtub or the floor. So the mother accidentally kills the daughter, panics, awakens her husband, and the two decide to make it look like a murder to save their own skin. (This could account for why the husband and wife acted completely distant from each other the morning of the murder, never once seeking to console the other.)
Or, if you believe the other experts who insist that the girl had been sexually abused for quite some time…
If it was the brother: The brother sometimes slept in the bed with JonBenet. The fact that the parents did not tell the police that the brother was awake and aware when they made the initial phone call indicates that they did not want to implicate the brother in any way. The anger in the father’s voice audible in the aural enhancement of the phone call – “we’re not talking to you” – indicates he was pissed at the son. Perhaps the parents found out that night that the brother had been molesting JonBenet. (A photo from the crime scene shows a dictionary open to the ‘I’ section, and the page folded so that it points towards the word ‘incest’.) The angry mother takes JonBenet into the bathroom, accidentally whacks her, kills her, and the scenario plays itself out again.
This case, I’m telling you…
It’s not an open and shut case, by any means, and I’ve left out a bunch of evidence, a ton of evidence. It’s almost ten years later, and nobody’s been charged. If you’re at all intrigued by what I’ve written (and if you’re still awake by this point in the post), I recommend the book PERFECT MURDER, PERFECT TOWN. It draws you into these people’s lives, their community, their loss. It’s a fair and multifaceted and balanced look at a heartbreaking, tragic story, as the saying goes, and I can’t pretend to have it all figured out.
But I’m working on it.
I’m hooked.
See, this is the thing. I could be reasonably happy alone in a room for the rest of my life, provided that I had a supply of good books. If the books happened to be true-crime stuff, I would be in heaven. Usually, this is a genre that gets a bad rap, and deservedly so; exploitive, lurid junk, most of it is. It is a genre, however, that has also given us Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD and Norman Mailer’s THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG – two books that are about as good as books can get.
Mailer’s researcher on THE EXECTUIONER’S SONG, Laurence Schiller, wrote PERFECT MURDER, PERFECT TOWN, which I recently read, a 1999 true-fiction account of the JonBenet Ramsey case that gripped the United States back in 1996 and 1997.
You remember it. Probably vaguely. I was in university at the time, and didn’t pay much attention to all the media shenanigans surrounding it. I knew the outlines of the case, roughly: A wealthy family, a beauty-queen child, the girl killed, the parents under suspicion. Whatever.
Oh, but let me let you in on a secret. Come closer. Don’t be shy. This is no ‘whatever’ story. This is one of the most fascinating, infuriating, maddeningly unsolvable cases I’ve ever encountered. I read the 600 page book in two days flat. Couldn’t get enough. No movie could make this up. No case could be more tragic.
In brief: Jon Benet Ramsey and her family went to a Christmas party on December 25th, 1996. They came home, went to bed. The next morning, the police received a phone call: a kidnapping had taken place. They arrived at the home of wealthy Boulder socialites John and Patsy Ramsey. A ransom note had been found by Patsy Ramsey on the back staircase, asking for $118 000 for the safe return of their daughter. The note stated that the kidnappers would call later that morning. They never did. Sometime in the early afternoon, the father, John, searches the house once again. He finds the body of his dead daughter in a wine cellar in the basement. She is wrapped in one of her favorite blankets. A noose is around her neck. A garrote has been fashioned around her neck.
And that’s just the beginning.
What makes this case so fascinating is the physical evidence, and the human evidence, and all the things that should add up but don’t. The fact that the ransom note was the ‘war and peace’ of ransom notes, as the police put it, when most ransom notes are short and to-the-point. The fact that the amount of money asked for in the ransom note is $118 000, which just happens to be the amount of John Ramsey’s Christmas bonus. The fact that the note was written using a Sharpie pen and a pad of paper that were already in the house. The fact that a Bible was found open in the Ramsey’s bedroom to psalm 118, which talks about giving a sacrifice unto God. The fact that the house was so large and so winding that there was no way anyone unfamiliar with the house could have located the wine cellar where the body was found. The fact that a neighbour heard a scream in the night, but the parents didn’t. The fact that the parents said that their son, Burke, was not awakened until after the police had arrived and the body had been found, and yet, on an aural enhancement of the original 911 call placed by the mother, in the distant background, you can hear the son’s voice asking: “What do I do now?” The father, John: “We’re not talking to you.” The son: “What DID you find?” The fact that, despite the ransom note stating that if anyone was notified about JonBenet’s disappearance their daughter would be killed, the family instantly phoned not only the police but their priest and closest friends and invited them over to the house. The fact that, only thirty-five minutes after finding the body of his dead daughter, John Ramsey phoned his private pilot to try and arrange for his family to fly out of state that evening. The fact that some experts declared the sexual abuse evident from examination of the vagina determined that JonBenet had been the long-term victim of abuse, while others stated it had happened for the first time the night of the killing. The fact that a flashlight was found on the kitchen counter that could have been used to knock her unconscious. The fact that it was proven that Patsy Ramsey purchased material from a hardware store the month before that was the same exact price as the rope and duct tape used in the killing. The fact that the role of duct tape was not found at the house. The fact that fabric from the outfit Patsy Ramsey wore the night of the party was found on the duct tape plastered across the daughter’s mouth. The fact that it was proved the duct tape was placed on the girl’s mouth after she was already dead. The fact that she was found wrapped in her favorite blanket and near her Barbie outfit, indicating that the killer wanted her to feel comforted. The fact that the ransom note uses phrases like “and hence”, the same exact phrase that the Ramsey’s themselves used in a thank-you message to their church the following Christmas. The fact that handwriting experts could not exclude the mother from writing the ransom note. The fact that a linguistic expert, after examining various samples of the mother’s writing, determined that she wrote the ransom note. The fact that two experienced investigators, viewing the same evidence, came to opposite conclusions: one determined an intruder had killed the girl; another determined it was the parents.
And all of that is just the beginning.
I’m losing sleep, I’m telling you.
See, I’m the deluded type of guy that actually thinks: I can figure all this out. I can crack the case, given enough time. In high school, I became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination, reading every book ever written on the subject that I could find, culminating in my Grade 13 History Independent Study that was supposed to be eight pages and ended up being thirty. (I haven’t figured that one out yet, not completely, but I have my theory, more or less, and I’m sticking to it.)
Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor? It’s the rule stating that, all things being equal, the simpler explanation for an unexplained event is usually the correct one.
When a child is murdered in the home, it is usually the parents who do it. That’s a fact. All of the circumstantial evidence in this case, and the parents’ behavior, indicates that one or both of them were in on it. (The evidence for an intruder, I think, is quite scant.)
So, bearing that in mind, my two cents:
As one interesting article I read recently on the Internet postulated: If you stop thinking of it as a ‘murder’, and instead think of it as an ‘accidental death’, then things become clearer.
I think either the mother or the brother accidentally killed JonBenet.
If it was the mother: The little girl had a history of wetting her bed, and still wanted to be wiped by others after using the bathroom. Perhaps the mother got angry, wiping too hard, resulting in the vaginal tears that the autopsy found. They later determined that the type of head injury she had was consistent with a fall on a bathtub or the floor. So the mother accidentally kills the daughter, panics, awakens her husband, and the two decide to make it look like a murder to save their own skin. (This could account for why the husband and wife acted completely distant from each other the morning of the murder, never once seeking to console the other.)
Or, if you believe the other experts who insist that the girl had been sexually abused for quite some time…
If it was the brother: The brother sometimes slept in the bed with JonBenet. The fact that the parents did not tell the police that the brother was awake and aware when they made the initial phone call indicates that they did not want to implicate the brother in any way. The anger in the father’s voice audible in the aural enhancement of the phone call – “we’re not talking to you” – indicates he was pissed at the son. Perhaps the parents found out that night that the brother had been molesting JonBenet. (A photo from the crime scene shows a dictionary open to the ‘I’ section, and the page folded so that it points towards the word ‘incest’.) The angry mother takes JonBenet into the bathroom, accidentally whacks her, kills her, and the scenario plays itself out again.
This case, I’m telling you…
It’s not an open and shut case, by any means, and I’ve left out a bunch of evidence, a ton of evidence. It’s almost ten years later, and nobody’s been charged. If you’re at all intrigued by what I’ve written (and if you’re still awake by this point in the post), I recommend the book PERFECT MURDER, PERFECT TOWN. It draws you into these people’s lives, their community, their loss. It’s a fair and multifaceted and balanced look at a heartbreaking, tragic story, as the saying goes, and I can’t pretend to have it all figured out.
But I’m working on it.
Friday, June 17, 2005
SLIM JIM, TUNNELLING THROUGH VIETNAM, AND A CANADIAN TODDLER, DEAD IN CAMBODIA
It was Slim Jim who took us to the tunnels. His real name was Thong, Thong the tour guide, but everyone called him Slim Jim, because he ate like a bird, smoked like chimney, and drank like a fish. That’s what he said. He said lots of funny things, strange things, the things that learners of a foreign language love to say. He freely admitted that he learned much of his English from an Aussie slang book somebody gave him. “I’m as busy as a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest!” he said. Or: “I’m sorry to tell you that the air conditioner is no longer active, as it is FUBAR.” Then, later, in an aside to one of the Aussie ladies: “Do you know what FUBAR means? ‘Fucked Up Beyond All Reocognition’!” He laughed, turned around, flashed me a grin. (I knew what it meant because I watched TANGO AND CASH a long time ago.) Earlier we had chatted outside of the Cao Dai temple, whose worshippers combine Daoism, Buddhism and Catholicism into their own religious hybrid, one that features three saints whom they worship: a Vietnamese, a Chinese, and, no shit, Victor ‘Les Miserables’ Hugo. “When I was young, we were so hard done by,” he told me, referring to his life in the South. “Do you know that phrase – ‘hard done by’? I learned it from Elton John! ‘It’s No Sacrifice.’ Good song." Slim Jim began to softly sing the words. In the background, I could hear the worshippers chanting, humming, praying to their Gods. Praying to Victor Hugo.
The Vietcon tunnels at Cu Chi are located near Black Lady mountain, which served as the stopping point for the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam war. The town of
On this day, this rainy day, there were no bombs -- only Canadians and Filipinos and Poles and Brits and Chinese and Aussies.
The tunnels were designed for protection. Americans could bomb and bomb and bomb some more, but the Vietcong could hide, underground, in their own, elaborate network of twists and turns.
We were allowed to crawl through a portion of the tunnels. They had been widened a bit for Westerners; they had been readjusted for the tourist dollar. Before we did this we watched in awe as Slim Jim, who leds into the middle of the forest, introduced one of the workers. The ground looked like ground does: brown and leaf-covered and ordinary. Slim Jim kicked aside some dirt, revealing a secret hole. The worker, clad in a military style uniform, cheerfully lowered himself into a whole that looked, from my vantage point, no bigger than a postage stamp. Moments later, behind my back, there he was! Another hole in the ground, and up he came, smiling, alive. The rain began to fall. The air was hot. I thought: I am standing in a jungle in
Then we were all given the chance to crawl 120 metres through a tunnel dug by the Vietcong before I was born.
I used to run track – the 800 and the 1500 and the 3000 metre races; I’m currently (half-heartedly) training for a marathon. 120 metres? Pleeeease. Not. A. Problem.
Note to self: The next time you are told that you are going to crawl through a hole in the ground in former Vietcong territory, you pray to Buddha, God, Victor Hugo, George Burns, whoever. You pray hard, and you pray long.
Because let me tell you. I don’t give a shit if this tunnel has been widened for western dopes like me – 120 metres, on your hands and knees, in three-quarters darkness, in a space no bigger than a matchbox (it seemed) is enough to make a grown man cry. I didn’t cry, but man. I didn’t have a panic attack, but Jesus.
It was one of those moments in life. Impossible to describe. At various points I have been a reader and a runner, a writer and a teacher, a student and a hockey player. We all live various lives within our real lives; we all have moments in time that resonate.
This was one of those moments. At a certain point – five years from now, ten years from – I will be at a desk. I will be paying a bill. I will be changing lanes. And I will remember that moment – crawling through a VC tunnel in the jungles of
Or to me, anyways.
A short trip, only three days, mostly spent in and around Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), but invigorating nevertheless.
Coming by bus from
A Canadian kid was killed in an international school in Siem Reap the other day, as you may have seen on the news. A hostage situation gone awry. A group of Cambodians taking a group of rich people hostage. They asked for money – a thousand dollars – and other various weapons, and a van, and perhaps something else. I don’t have all the details. I don’t need all the details. A three year old is dead. Everything else is window dressing.
It’s easy -- living here, working here -- to become superior. To feel superior. Even the amount of money that the hostage takers asked for – one thousand dollars – sounds ridiculous to us. One thousand dollars! Reminds me of the first Austin Powers movie, when Dr.Evil, just revived from thirty years of suspended animation, demands ONE…MILLION…DOLLARS for his scheme, not realizing that that isn’t much money.
Bullshit. One million dollars is an insane amount of money. I saw on the net today that a lottery winner in the States, who won over a hundred million dollars, has decided that he wants to be a billionaire, so that he can "take care of his family, give back what I've received." Right. And one hundred fucking million dollars won't allow you to take care of your family, or give you that kind of security. We in the west have lost all perspective. In
Word is that the hostage takers simply wanted some money from some people who had some.
People wonder what leads to crime. To murder. To vengeance. And after living here for two years, I can say, with true conviction, that it does not involve video games, or violent movies, or animated cartoons.
Poverty leads to crime. Living in villages that have no electricity and where the death rate for children is so high that babies die by the week leads to crime.
I’m not justifying what happened. A murdered kid needs no justification. It is what it is, and I hope who did it is punished for years and years and years.
The thing is, you can see it here. You can feel it. When people have nothing, absolutely nothing, they have nothing to lose. You can’t lose what you haven’t got. Criminals here who steal motorbikes are often caught by other moto-drivers. These moto-drivers stomp these criminals to death. Happens all the time. Every week. And yet the thieves take their chances. Why? Because they have nothing to lose.
All this: besides the point. A three year old Canadian kid is dead in
The country deserves better. The people deserve better. That three year old Canadian deserves a life. And I’m left. Left wondering why working in this country has given me the opportunity to become bigger than myself, while others, Cambodian and Canadian, have only become smaller, finite, gone.
COMING SOON...
In case anyone's wondering, I survived my Saigon excursion.
Tomorrow I'll write my thoughts on Vietnam, as well as the recent killing of a Canadian child in an international school in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Probably the first and only time I will ever see a headline featuring Cambodia on Canada's www.thestar.com.)
Tomorrow I'll write my thoughts on Vietnam, as well as the recent killing of a Canadian child in an international school in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Probably the first and only time I will ever see a headline featuring Cambodia on Canada's www.thestar.com.)
Sunday, June 12, 2005
EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VIETNAM I LEARNED FROM SYLVESTER STALLONE AND CHUCK NORRIS, or WHY JON STEWART NEEDS A PASSPORT
Watching a little bit of Jon Stewart interviewing Russel Crowe on The Daily Show the other day made me think about my own upcoming jaunt to Vietnam, a country that was once, for me, simply the repository of Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone get-em'-back-alive POW movies and has now become, within the blink of an eye, a place I can actually, physically enter.
Let me explain.
Crowe somehow got Stewart to admit that he (Stewart) didn't have a passport. Which I found surprising. And troubling. And not that it should even matter, because Stewart is, after all, just a comedian, yes, absolutely, but he's also a comedian who's a sharp and witty commentator on foreign events and policies and politics; the fact that he's never been out of the country, and that only 14% of Americans actually have passports, troubles me for some reason.
Maybe it's because I often feel that I didn't know anything about the world, anything, until I exited my world, Canada; I often think that everything you read in a newspaper or a magazine has little, if any, resonance unless you've actually been there, done that.
(That's why the idea of foreign policy 'experts' like Condoleeza Rice has always troubled me, too; a Soviet expert she is, supposedly, and yet, how much time has she actually spent there? She's never lived there; she's never worked there. Never hung out in a corner pub and shot the shit with a bunch of drunken Siberians. The same goes with the people who so nonchalantly rearrange geographical history and priorities; call me crazy, but I don't think Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld had ever spent all that much time in the Middle East before deciding to do a little bit of bombing. I'm not saying this is essential, this first hand knowledge; I am saying that it's illuminating, that's all.)
Not that this is an exlusively American issue; I would bet that most Canadians don't have a passport either, and I think, by and large, on the whole, with the understanding that there are always exceptions, the majority of Canadians haven't travelled out of the country all that much.
Don't get me wrong. Travelling abroad, living abroad, doesn't necessarily make a you a saint, or a prophet, or even a good person. You don't have to leave your homeland to have a satisfactory life, a fulfilling life, a generous and useful life. You can be happy and healthy and wise merely by living down the street from where you grew up. I believe this. I do.
But I also know that I loved, absolutely loved all of those 80's Vietnam flicks that dealt with American POWs being held behind enemy lines: Rambo: First Blood Part II, Uncommon Valor (starring Gene Hackman as a dad who goes to Vietnam to find his captive son), the Missing In Action trilogy featuring Chuck Norris. (And I am a firm believer that Missing in Action II: The Beginning, is a rockin' prequel, and that Braddock: Missing In Action III, has its moments, few and far between as they admittedly are, and I will fight to the death anyone who says otherwise, anyone who is judging Chuck Norris firmly on the legacy of Walker: Texas Ranger, without even considering how he once gave Bruce Lee a good cinematic run for his money. Chuck is good people.) These films, in a sense, got me thinking about Vietnam, about foreign countries, about the globe. Not in any kind of intellectual way or even, I guess you could say, sane way, if a nine year old even can be sane, but they did get me thinking about something beyond Canada. But not enough to make me want to explore; not enough to make me want to escape my own childhood comforts. I would have to wait for that.
And, come to think of it, practically everything I knew about Asia pretty much descended from the above mentioned flicks. (Which, also come to think of it, is pretty freakin' scary.) My image of the Vietnamese was basically: somebody who Stallone killed to bring to the Americans home. Which worked perfectly well for me at nine, but at twenty-nine, well, it leaves something to be desired.
And now I've read a lot of books about Vietnam, and I've lived next door to the country in Cambodia going on two years now, but I've never, you know, been there. Never seen the traffic. Never slept in a bed within its borders.
So really, truthfully, in actuality, I don't know diddly-squat about the place.
When we allow our knowledge of the world and all its shades and textures to come from a little box in the corner of the room, something happens, as Joseph Heller might say. We substitute uninformed opinion for direct observation. We become cocooned in rationalizations that we have not discerned for ourselves. We become lesser people. We shrink rather than expand.
So, Wednesday I'll take the bus to Vietnam for a few days. I'll pass through the border. I'll be nervous and scared and wondering what the hell's going to happen. What I once knew only from Hollywood action movies will now, at last, twenty years later, have the weight and ferocity of life. The boy inside of me will hope that Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris will, against all odds, be around to come bail me out should the shit hit the fan -- but I will also be ready, alert and aware and curious, above all, curious to see what will happen to me if their rescue mission fails and I'm left alone (albeit with a friend or two) to try to comprehend this brave new world on my own.
Let me explain.
Crowe somehow got Stewart to admit that he (Stewart) didn't have a passport. Which I found surprising. And troubling. And not that it should even matter, because Stewart is, after all, just a comedian, yes, absolutely, but he's also a comedian who's a sharp and witty commentator on foreign events and policies and politics; the fact that he's never been out of the country, and that only 14% of Americans actually have passports, troubles me for some reason.
Maybe it's because I often feel that I didn't know anything about the world, anything, until I exited my world, Canada; I often think that everything you read in a newspaper or a magazine has little, if any, resonance unless you've actually been there, done that.
(That's why the idea of foreign policy 'experts' like Condoleeza Rice has always troubled me, too; a Soviet expert she is, supposedly, and yet, how much time has she actually spent there? She's never lived there; she's never worked there. Never hung out in a corner pub and shot the shit with a bunch of drunken Siberians. The same goes with the people who so nonchalantly rearrange geographical history and priorities; call me crazy, but I don't think Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld had ever spent all that much time in the Middle East before deciding to do a little bit of bombing. I'm not saying this is essential, this first hand knowledge; I am saying that it's illuminating, that's all.)
Not that this is an exlusively American issue; I would bet that most Canadians don't have a passport either, and I think, by and large, on the whole, with the understanding that there are always exceptions, the majority of Canadians haven't travelled out of the country all that much.
Don't get me wrong. Travelling abroad, living abroad, doesn't necessarily make a you a saint, or a prophet, or even a good person. You don't have to leave your homeland to have a satisfactory life, a fulfilling life, a generous and useful life. You can be happy and healthy and wise merely by living down the street from where you grew up. I believe this. I do.
But I also know that I loved, absolutely loved all of those 80's Vietnam flicks that dealt with American POWs being held behind enemy lines: Rambo: First Blood Part II, Uncommon Valor (starring Gene Hackman as a dad who goes to Vietnam to find his captive son), the Missing In Action trilogy featuring Chuck Norris. (And I am a firm believer that Missing in Action II: The Beginning, is a rockin' prequel, and that Braddock: Missing In Action III, has its moments, few and far between as they admittedly are, and I will fight to the death anyone who says otherwise, anyone who is judging Chuck Norris firmly on the legacy of Walker: Texas Ranger, without even considering how he once gave Bruce Lee a good cinematic run for his money. Chuck is good people.) These films, in a sense, got me thinking about Vietnam, about foreign countries, about the globe. Not in any kind of intellectual way or even, I guess you could say, sane way, if a nine year old even can be sane, but they did get me thinking about something beyond Canada. But not enough to make me want to explore; not enough to make me want to escape my own childhood comforts. I would have to wait for that.
And, come to think of it, practically everything I knew about Asia pretty much descended from the above mentioned flicks. (Which, also come to think of it, is pretty freakin' scary.) My image of the Vietnamese was basically: somebody who Stallone killed to bring to the Americans home. Which worked perfectly well for me at nine, but at twenty-nine, well, it leaves something to be desired.
And now I've read a lot of books about Vietnam, and I've lived next door to the country in Cambodia going on two years now, but I've never, you know, been there. Never seen the traffic. Never slept in a bed within its borders.
So really, truthfully, in actuality, I don't know diddly-squat about the place.
When we allow our knowledge of the world and all its shades and textures to come from a little box in the corner of the room, something happens, as Joseph Heller might say. We substitute uninformed opinion for direct observation. We become cocooned in rationalizations that we have not discerned for ourselves. We become lesser people. We shrink rather than expand.
So, Wednesday I'll take the bus to Vietnam for a few days. I'll pass through the border. I'll be nervous and scared and wondering what the hell's going to happen. What I once knew only from Hollywood action movies will now, at last, twenty years later, have the weight and ferocity of life. The boy inside of me will hope that Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris will, against all odds, be around to come bail me out should the shit hit the fan -- but I will also be ready, alert and aware and curious, above all, curious to see what will happen to me if their rescue mission fails and I'm left alone (albeit with a friend or two) to try to comprehend this brave new world on my own.
Friday, June 10, 2005
AN AMATEUR ALL OVER AGAIN
I suspect that there's something about living in a city, any city, that leads one to forget about, ignore, and basically take for complete and total granted every car, corner and condominium that may or may not come into urban focus.
You live in a place. You work in a place. Said place has roads and streetlights and a postal box on the corner, shiny and red. You get used to it. It accentuates your life the way a sitcom's laugh track-does: always there, yes, but after awhile you don't even notice it anymore.
Same old story.
My third year Creative Writing teacher, a kind man and even kinder novelist named Richard Teleky, was trying to get at something like that when he assigned my class, for our first assignment no less, the altogether dreary and tedious task of describing a place in Toronto, any place, with as much detail and colour as we could. (I would give the same assignment seven years later, minus the 'Toronto', to my students in Cambodia.)
Me, not yet twenty-one, didn't see much of the point. I wanted to write stories, period, and so for the assignment I tossed off a philosophical and metaphysical exploration of my night at the Toronto Film Festival a few days back, arguing, when it came time to discuss my piece, that this was more than merely a 'physical' space, it was a mental one, a psychological one, this convergence of ordinary fans and legendary filmmakers that collided with angst and awe and raw, human sweat.
I remember him looking at me. Not buying it. Hell, I'd wrote the piece, and I wasn't buying it either. (Is there any feeling in the word like the one when a teacher sees right through you? There should be a word for it.)
The thing was, Teleky was a draft-dodger from the States, thirty years on. He'd come to Toronto from Cleveland; he saw the city, still, well past middle age, as an outsider. I viewed it as a kid from the (relatively) small city of St.Catharines who was in awe of any sort of town that actually had a subway system and more than one McDonald's in a three block radius. That spelled c-u-l-t-u-r-e to me, with a capital 'k'. His voice was the first to point out that, truth be told, downtown Toronto was, is, and probably forever would be, pretty damn ugly.
And I thought about it.
And I thought: He's right.
Every since, I've tried not to take a 'place', any place, for granted.
I still do, because I'm human, and that's we humans do with our lives, take things for granted. It's part custom, part ritual, part, I don't know, habitual. It's what we do.
Even the poverty of Phnom Penh, which awed me, I mean fucking AWED me when I first came here on a short trip, almost three years ago, has become familiar. The stink and the crowds and the street kids. I've allowed myself to become accustomed. Shame on me.
And I mean that.
I should know better.
There's always a building I haven't seen before. A street I haven't been down. A restaurant I haven't tried. (Jesus, I still haven't even been inside the National Museum or the King's Palace for Christ's sake, which is what most tourists pop off in a single afternoon, and here I am, two years later, still wondering when I'm going to set a date for these admittedly damn-close excursions.)
Maybe it's a good thing, though, this accustomization, I guess you'd call it. (Or I guess I'd call it -- not sure about you.) It's proof, of some silly sort, that we can adapt. We can lodge ourselves onto things and into things. We can take the obtuse and make it bla-bla-bla, whatever. We can find ourselves in something foreign and impenetrable. We can inhabit.
I'm used to the heat and the motos and the streetlights and chaos. I've seen it all here, yes, but there's still so much more to see. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
And what about you?
At some point in the really-recent future -- tonight, tomorrow morning -- you will leave your house and trod down familiar streets. You will see what you have always seen, or see what you expect to see.
But I implore you, as you get the keys out for the car, or do the laces up on your shoes:
Look closer. Before it's too late and you're too old.
Watch, linger, inspect.
You may find something new.
Something layered.
And you know that feeling, the feeling you get when you move into a new neighbourhood? The one that signals a comple and utter absence of any sort of first-hand knowledge of sushi joints, cinemas, laundromats and video shops?
It may, it might, it could come back.
Just think.
If you're aware, and alert, and try hard enough, you can become an amateur all over again.
You live in a place. You work in a place. Said place has roads and streetlights and a postal box on the corner, shiny and red. You get used to it. It accentuates your life the way a sitcom's laugh track-does: always there, yes, but after awhile you don't even notice it anymore.
Same old story.
My third year Creative Writing teacher, a kind man and even kinder novelist named Richard Teleky, was trying to get at something like that when he assigned my class, for our first assignment no less, the altogether dreary and tedious task of describing a place in Toronto, any place, with as much detail and colour as we could. (I would give the same assignment seven years later, minus the 'Toronto', to my students in Cambodia.)
Me, not yet twenty-one, didn't see much of the point. I wanted to write stories, period, and so for the assignment I tossed off a philosophical and metaphysical exploration of my night at the Toronto Film Festival a few days back, arguing, when it came time to discuss my piece, that this was more than merely a 'physical' space, it was a mental one, a psychological one, this convergence of ordinary fans and legendary filmmakers that collided with angst and awe and raw, human sweat.
I remember him looking at me. Not buying it. Hell, I'd wrote the piece, and I wasn't buying it either. (Is there any feeling in the word like the one when a teacher sees right through you? There should be a word for it.)
The thing was, Teleky was a draft-dodger from the States, thirty years on. He'd come to Toronto from Cleveland; he saw the city, still, well past middle age, as an outsider. I viewed it as a kid from the (relatively) small city of St.Catharines who was in awe of any sort of town that actually had a subway system and more than one McDonald's in a three block radius. That spelled c-u-l-t-u-r-e to me, with a capital 'k'. His voice was the first to point out that, truth be told, downtown Toronto was, is, and probably forever would be, pretty damn ugly.
And I thought about it.
And I thought: He's right.
Every since, I've tried not to take a 'place', any place, for granted.
I still do, because I'm human, and that's we humans do with our lives, take things for granted. It's part custom, part ritual, part, I don't know, habitual. It's what we do.
Even the poverty of Phnom Penh, which awed me, I mean fucking AWED me when I first came here on a short trip, almost three years ago, has become familiar. The stink and the crowds and the street kids. I've allowed myself to become accustomed. Shame on me.
And I mean that.
I should know better.
There's always a building I haven't seen before. A street I haven't been down. A restaurant I haven't tried. (Jesus, I still haven't even been inside the National Museum or the King's Palace for Christ's sake, which is what most tourists pop off in a single afternoon, and here I am, two years later, still wondering when I'm going to set a date for these admittedly damn-close excursions.)
Maybe it's a good thing, though, this accustomization, I guess you'd call it. (Or I guess I'd call it -- not sure about you.) It's proof, of some silly sort, that we can adapt. We can lodge ourselves onto things and into things. We can take the obtuse and make it bla-bla-bla, whatever. We can find ourselves in something foreign and impenetrable. We can inhabit.
I'm used to the heat and the motos and the streetlights and chaos. I've seen it all here, yes, but there's still so much more to see. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
And what about you?
At some point in the really-recent future -- tonight, tomorrow morning -- you will leave your house and trod down familiar streets. You will see what you have always seen, or see what you expect to see.
But I implore you, as you get the keys out for the car, or do the laces up on your shoes:
Look closer. Before it's too late and you're too old.
Watch, linger, inspect.
You may find something new.
Something layered.
And you know that feeling, the feeling you get when you move into a new neighbourhood? The one that signals a comple and utter absence of any sort of first-hand knowledge of sushi joints, cinemas, laundromats and video shops?
It may, it might, it could come back.
Just think.
If you're aware, and alert, and try hard enough, you can become an amateur all over again.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
EVERYTHING THE COUNTRIES THEMSELVES ARE NOT
The following is an excerpt from THE CORRECTIONS by National Book Award Winner Jonathan Franzen, in which the archetypal Middle American Mother, frustrated by her own elderly husband's lack of ambition, lack of mobility, compares him to a friend of theirs in a similar position who retains the zest and pep of life:
...He can't write anymore but he sent us an 'audio letter' on a cassette tape, really thoughtful, where he talks about each of his grandchildren in detail, because he knows his grandkids and takes an interest in them, and about how he started to teach himself Cambodian, which he calls Khmer, from listening to a tape and watching the Cambodian (or Khmer, I guess) TV channel in Fort Wayne, because their youngest son is married to a Cambodian woman, or Khmer, I guess, and her parents don't speak any English and Gene wants to talk to them a little.
It's a funny little passage, don't get me wrong. Provides some nice insight into the mind of the mother. It's clever and rings true.
(You can sense the 'but' coming can't you? Get ready for it...)
But here's the deal.
From a North American perspective, the word 'Cambodia' probably conjures up little more than vague, slightly cloudy and refracted images of THE KILLING FIELDS and Richard Nixon on TV announcing that he's going to bomb the hell out of it, and little else. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of countries in the world that I know jacksquat about (Bhutan, anyone?), and we can't expect everyone to know everything about every little place on the planet.
When you live in a place for a long time, though, that vague and unknown place becomes real. It exists. It has a tangible reality to it, defined by roads and weather and the greeter at the Wal-Mart who seems not to realize that she has a moustache, and a full one, too. If you live in the small town of Dildo, Newfoundland, then that poorly-named place is not just the butt of a million jokes -- it's real, with roads and schools and undertakers and children dying young and elders dying old and letter carriers carrying their letters.
(That's a real place, by the way -- Dildo, Newfoundland. I swear. You think I could make that up? Google it and prove me wrong.)
Cambodia is a place, too. A real place. The people here have their own language. They have a history. A civilization.
So the rational part of my brain applauds Franzen for constructing a witty little conversation. He chose Cambodia, I'm sure, because it's relatively obscure, Cambodia is, and so the fact that this particular character in Indiana is learning the Cambodian language acquires an even more potent comic charge.
But of course, Cambodia isn't obscure at all. Cambodia's been around for thousands and thousands of years -- longer than America, or Canada, or even EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. Because of its poverty and relative isolation from the world community, Cambodia has a culture that is as rich and as dense as any I've ever come across.
To see the country I've lived in for two years reduced to a punch-line in a book doesn't really offend me, or sadden me; I felt the same way after watching LOST IN TRANSLATION, admiring the writing and directing and acting, completely and totally empathizing with the main character because I, too, had felt her exact same emotions in those exact same places in Tokyo, but frustrated, nevertheless, because it reduced Japanese culture to this kitschy, cutesy, incomprehensible glob whose whole purpose was simply to accentuate how lonely and distant these two overseas Americans felt.
For cultures as fascinating and multifaceted as Japan and Cambodia are, to see them serve only as glittery comedic backdrops for Bill Murray's mopy face (as much as I love that face)or Franzen's jab at America's zest for obscure hobbies, well, it simply makes me even more aware of how bizarre and cloistered humans can sometimes behave, thinking 'this' place, the one we're in now, the one we're born into, is the barometer by which humanity (and empathy, and comedy) should be judged.
It's a funny feeling, that's all, to be sitting in a car in Cambodia, reading the quintessential modern American novel, and find this reference to Cambodia used so sparsely and humorously. It definitely works, that reference, in that context. It's funny. It's slight. It's somewhat absurd.
Everything the country itself is not.
...He can't write anymore but he sent us an 'audio letter' on a cassette tape, really thoughtful, where he talks about each of his grandchildren in detail, because he knows his grandkids and takes an interest in them, and about how he started to teach himself Cambodian, which he calls Khmer, from listening to a tape and watching the Cambodian (or Khmer, I guess) TV channel in Fort Wayne, because their youngest son is married to a Cambodian woman, or Khmer, I guess, and her parents don't speak any English and Gene wants to talk to them a little.
It's a funny little passage, don't get me wrong. Provides some nice insight into the mind of the mother. It's clever and rings true.
(You can sense the 'but' coming can't you? Get ready for it...)
But here's the deal.
From a North American perspective, the word 'Cambodia' probably conjures up little more than vague, slightly cloudy and refracted images of THE KILLING FIELDS and Richard Nixon on TV announcing that he's going to bomb the hell out of it, and little else. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of countries in the world that I know jacksquat about (Bhutan, anyone?), and we can't expect everyone to know everything about every little place on the planet.
When you live in a place for a long time, though, that vague and unknown place becomes real. It exists. It has a tangible reality to it, defined by roads and weather and the greeter at the Wal-Mart who seems not to realize that she has a moustache, and a full one, too. If you live in the small town of Dildo, Newfoundland, then that poorly-named place is not just the butt of a million jokes -- it's real, with roads and schools and undertakers and children dying young and elders dying old and letter carriers carrying their letters.
(That's a real place, by the way -- Dildo, Newfoundland. I swear. You think I could make that up? Google it and prove me wrong.)
Cambodia is a place, too. A real place. The people here have their own language. They have a history. A civilization.
So the rational part of my brain applauds Franzen for constructing a witty little conversation. He chose Cambodia, I'm sure, because it's relatively obscure, Cambodia is, and so the fact that this particular character in Indiana is learning the Cambodian language acquires an even more potent comic charge.
But of course, Cambodia isn't obscure at all. Cambodia's been around for thousands and thousands of years -- longer than America, or Canada, or even EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. Because of its poverty and relative isolation from the world community, Cambodia has a culture that is as rich and as dense as any I've ever come across.
To see the country I've lived in for two years reduced to a punch-line in a book doesn't really offend me, or sadden me; I felt the same way after watching LOST IN TRANSLATION, admiring the writing and directing and acting, completely and totally empathizing with the main character because I, too, had felt her exact same emotions in those exact same places in Tokyo, but frustrated, nevertheless, because it reduced Japanese culture to this kitschy, cutesy, incomprehensible glob whose whole purpose was simply to accentuate how lonely and distant these two overseas Americans felt.
For cultures as fascinating and multifaceted as Japan and Cambodia are, to see them serve only as glittery comedic backdrops for Bill Murray's mopy face (as much as I love that face)or Franzen's jab at America's zest for obscure hobbies, well, it simply makes me even more aware of how bizarre and cloistered humans can sometimes behave, thinking 'this' place, the one we're in now, the one we're born into, is the barometer by which humanity (and empathy, and comedy) should be judged.
It's a funny feeling, that's all, to be sitting in a car in Cambodia, reading the quintessential modern American novel, and find this reference to Cambodia used so sparsely and humorously. It definitely works, that reference, in that context. It's funny. It's slight. It's somewhat absurd.
Everything the country itself is not.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
WORD OF MOUTH
It's not every day that you see an attempted robbery.
This one didn't involve gunfire or banks or men-in-black suits wearing Richard Nixon masks. (There wasn't a befuddled, elderly security guard in sight.)
And even though I know, rationally, that Phnom Penh is not exactly Barry's Bay, Ontario, in terms of its safety, I often forget. Strike that, counsellor -- I ALWAYS forget.
Typical story: Me, on the back of a moto, heading for lunch.
(An aside: Living in Japan for four years, I took the train, literally, every day. Living in Cambodia for two years, I have not taken a train once, but I've taken a moto, literally, every day. That means something. I'm not sure what, but it means something.)
In front of me was a motorized tuk-tuk -- basically a comfy little couch, with a roof, on the back of a moto. Two foreigners, a man and a woman, were sitting in the back, travellers, tourists, the woman clutching her enormous knapsack, the kind that must be handed out automatically at the airport upon arrival.
Good thing she was clutching it, too.
Two young Khmers on a moto, both male, pulled up beside the tuk-tuk. The passenger reached out his arms and grabbed the woman's knapsack. (It's an open space, so it's easy to do.) He tugged once. The woman looked confused. He tugged twice. The woman started to get that look, the one that says: "Wait a minute -- I'm being fucking ROBBED here." The kid tugged one last time, and the woman held tight.
And that was it.
The moto with the two young punks sped off. The woman turned to her male companion with a "can you freakin' BELIEVE this?" look. My motodriver smiled and shook his head.
Once again, I'm faced with how clumsy and mundane and bewildering true crime is, the real stuff, not the Hollywood fiction, the stories we've been told for so long that we rarely, at any level, even recognize as stories.
Real crime is awkward and direct and out-of-the-blue.
And it always, always has repercussions.
You can bet your ass that that woman's view of Cambodia has forever been altered by that simple, brief encounter. Here she is, probably her first day in town, and wouldn't you know it -- somebody tries to rob her. She will fly back to Canada or America or England or Australia and that will be the centrepiece of her story, how Phnom Penh is a dangerous place, how even in broad daylight she was a victim of an attack, how she wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a place for women travellers to chill out.
And that's how countries get the reputations they get. (And people, too.)
One person does something to another person. The other person reacts, resists, survives. Lives to tell the tale. And that tale is passed on to others, mouth to mouth, word to word.
I don't know where the two dudes on the bike scurried off to. Don't know where the undoubtedly-frightened tourists ended up either, for that matter. Back to their hotel, maybe. Or a bar for a stiff drink, perhaps.
Me? I went to lunch.
We move on, all of us, the perpetrators and the victims and the spectators.
What else can we do?
This one didn't involve gunfire or banks or men-in-black suits wearing Richard Nixon masks. (There wasn't a befuddled, elderly security guard in sight.)
And even though I know, rationally, that Phnom Penh is not exactly Barry's Bay, Ontario, in terms of its safety, I often forget. Strike that, counsellor -- I ALWAYS forget.
Typical story: Me, on the back of a moto, heading for lunch.
(An aside: Living in Japan for four years, I took the train, literally, every day. Living in Cambodia for two years, I have not taken a train once, but I've taken a moto, literally, every day. That means something. I'm not sure what, but it means something.)
In front of me was a motorized tuk-tuk -- basically a comfy little couch, with a roof, on the back of a moto. Two foreigners, a man and a woman, were sitting in the back, travellers, tourists, the woman clutching her enormous knapsack, the kind that must be handed out automatically at the airport upon arrival.
Good thing she was clutching it, too.
Two young Khmers on a moto, both male, pulled up beside the tuk-tuk. The passenger reached out his arms and grabbed the woman's knapsack. (It's an open space, so it's easy to do.) He tugged once. The woman looked confused. He tugged twice. The woman started to get that look, the one that says: "Wait a minute -- I'm being fucking ROBBED here." The kid tugged one last time, and the woman held tight.
And that was it.
The moto with the two young punks sped off. The woman turned to her male companion with a "can you freakin' BELIEVE this?" look. My motodriver smiled and shook his head.
Once again, I'm faced with how clumsy and mundane and bewildering true crime is, the real stuff, not the Hollywood fiction, the stories we've been told for so long that we rarely, at any level, even recognize as stories.
Real crime is awkward and direct and out-of-the-blue.
And it always, always has repercussions.
You can bet your ass that that woman's view of Cambodia has forever been altered by that simple, brief encounter. Here she is, probably her first day in town, and wouldn't you know it -- somebody tries to rob her. She will fly back to Canada or America or England or Australia and that will be the centrepiece of her story, how Phnom Penh is a dangerous place, how even in broad daylight she was a victim of an attack, how she wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a place for women travellers to chill out.
And that's how countries get the reputations they get. (And people, too.)
One person does something to another person. The other person reacts, resists, survives. Lives to tell the tale. And that tale is passed on to others, mouth to mouth, word to word.
I don't know where the two dudes on the bike scurried off to. Don't know where the undoubtedly-frightened tourists ended up either, for that matter. Back to their hotel, maybe. Or a bar for a stiff drink, perhaps.
Me? I went to lunch.
We move on, all of us, the perpetrators and the victims and the spectators.
What else can we do?
Sunday, June 05, 2005
LIFE IS BUT A DREAM: HOW ACCESS HOLLYWOOD AND TUOL SLENG CONSPIRE TO KEEP OUR DREAM SELVES BEHIND LOCKED DOORS
I always get offended when somebody tells me: “Hey, you were in my dream last night!”
Why do I get ticked off?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we like to think of ourselves as ourselves: autonomous and in control. When somebody else is dreaming about us, it’s as if our own independence has been taken away from us. Robbed from us.
Oh, but I think it’s more than that.
I think that when we appear in somebody else’s dreams, and they appear in ours, something’s going on. Something’s. Going. On.
Perhaps our spirits are crossing in the night. Perhaps ephemeral fragments of our personalities slip loose from their bearings and cross over psychic boundaries that remain dormant during the day. Elements of our consciousnesses get entangled with one another, intentionally or inadvertently, in the slip-stream of two a.m., when the dark is absolute, rationality is absent, the moon is full.
Then again.
Perhaps this is all a dream. My whole life. Especially the last little bit. And anyone claiming to have witnessed a piece of me, a part of me, in their own nocturnal wanderings has therefore blown my rational cover, and discovered, along with me, though I sometimes deny it, that life is but a dream.
I used to think that way as a kid. (And I guess I still do.) The end of the school year would finally arrive -- the last class, the last test -- and as my pencil dropped from my cold, feeble fingers my brain would instantly revert to of its slightly odd, eminently comfortable daydreams, in which I conceived, in vivid technicolor, the fantasy of my choosing. Said fantasy involved me, emerging from sleep; my mother, her hands shaking my sleep-luvin' shoulders; her voice, saying: "Get up Scott, or else you'll be late for your first day of (insert grade number here)!"
But maybe that childish nightmare was right on the money.
Maybe the whole shebang – my four years in Japan, my two years in Cambodia -- is nothing more than another element of fantasy, whimsy, nighttime, masturbatory magic dust in the sandbox of my (admittedly) skewed life.
When you read a lot as a kid, fiction and comics, and watch a lot of movies, narrative and documentary, the real world around you simultaneously folds in on itself. You notice how maddeningly ordinary and two-dimensional it is. And yet, if you’re lucky, if you allow yourself access to those corners of the brain that others neglect to investigate, you begin to suspect that there are layers beneath layers; that there are, hidden from sight, tucked away from reality, buried treasures of insight to be found at the local convenience store, or within the weary, middle-aged sigh of your science teacher, which audibly hints, even announces, a life derailed, a dream deferred.
Oh, and then if you fast-forward ten, twelve years, and you find yourself living for the better part of six years in ancient cultures on the far side of the world, amongst people uttering words that, even if you acquire the capability to comprehend, remain stubbornly foreign despite your best efforts, the world itself, not just your world but ‘the’ world, becomes a tragicomic funhouse of distortion, defeat and exaltation that bears little, okay no resemblance to the reality that your Grade 10 guidance counselor so diligently tried to prepare you for (with foldable brochures to boot).
Life is a tragedy to those who think and a comedy to those who feel, as the saying goes. (Or is it the other way around? And if it is, does it even matter? If I’ve screwed up the phrase, inverted its intent, couldn’t some semblance of meaning be found, regardless? I’d like to think so. Because if you believe in the potency of truisms, accept their somewhat cliché but transitory insight, then surely the tweaking of them could reveal another level of wisdom, unintended but ennobling nonetheless.) To think and to feel may be mutually exclusive domains that occasionally overlap, but I would like to think, would hope to think, that they are one and the same, not different sides of the same coin but the substance of the coin itself.
And the coin itself may be the stuff of which dreams are made.
When you think and feel, feel and think, allowing each to sway the other, the world does, indeed begin to seem like a dream. How else can one explain a world where Lindsey Lohan and legless land-mine victims continue to co-exist? Can you explain that? Would you deign to try? Dare to try?
I can’t.
I guess it’s no surprise that sometimes, on again, someone dreams about me. Or I dream about them. Perhaps all of us, in our (so-called) waking states are just at various levels of REM consciousness. Perhaps Lindsay Lohan and Dr.Phil and the anchors of Entertainment Tonight are just the actualizations of a legless Cambodian’s drunken night of dreams. They, the anchors, drift in and out of the depths of his unconsciousness; he, the Cambodian, occasionally flickers through Mary Hart’s mind after a night of tequilas-by-the-pool.
I’m not saying this is the way it is.
I’m just saying.
And tell me.
This world contains Access Hollywood. It also contains the Tuol Sleng museum -- a hop and a skip and a five minute moto ride away from me -- where people were held and tortured and slaughtered for years on end.
If you randomly came across the word ‘reality’ in your leatherbound, hardback copy of WEBSTER’S dictionary, would these examples of the definition suffice? Access Hollywood and Tuol Sleng? You’d laugh them off the page.
But there they are.
You may be in my dreams tonight. I may be in yours. I may think that I catch a glimpse of your face, lit by the faint but aqua glow of your computer screen. In the morning it will fade, this image, but I will feel sad, though I won’t be able to express why.
There will be nothing left for me to do but step out the door and into the day, confront ‘reality’, go to work and pay my bills.
But somewhere, inside my head, that dream-you will hide. Will lurk. When we cross paths in dreams, perhaps we get closer to finding the fundamental pathways that link us all. Perhaps our waking-selves that trip-wire these DreamDoors block access to the true selves that unleash themselves via our sleeping, sentient selves.
I hope, almost pray, that I will keep searching to find the key to that door -- the key that links the night to the day, the dreams to the reality, the 'me' to the 'you'.
Whether I find it is irrelevant.
The search is not.
Why do I get ticked off?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we like to think of ourselves as ourselves: autonomous and in control. When somebody else is dreaming about us, it’s as if our own independence has been taken away from us. Robbed from us.
Oh, but I think it’s more than that.
I think that when we appear in somebody else’s dreams, and they appear in ours, something’s going on. Something’s. Going. On.
Perhaps our spirits are crossing in the night. Perhaps ephemeral fragments of our personalities slip loose from their bearings and cross over psychic boundaries that remain dormant during the day. Elements of our consciousnesses get entangled with one another, intentionally or inadvertently, in the slip-stream of two a.m., when the dark is absolute, rationality is absent, the moon is full.
Then again.
Perhaps this is all a dream. My whole life. Especially the last little bit. And anyone claiming to have witnessed a piece of me, a part of me, in their own nocturnal wanderings has therefore blown my rational cover, and discovered, along with me, though I sometimes deny it, that life is but a dream.
I used to think that way as a kid. (And I guess I still do.) The end of the school year would finally arrive -- the last class, the last test -- and as my pencil dropped from my cold, feeble fingers my brain would instantly revert to of its slightly odd, eminently comfortable daydreams, in which I conceived, in vivid technicolor, the fantasy of my choosing. Said fantasy involved me, emerging from sleep; my mother, her hands shaking my sleep-luvin' shoulders; her voice, saying: "Get up Scott, or else you'll be late for your first day of (insert grade number here)!"
But maybe that childish nightmare was right on the money.
Maybe the whole shebang – my four years in Japan, my two years in Cambodia -- is nothing more than another element of fantasy, whimsy, nighttime, masturbatory magic dust in the sandbox of my (admittedly) skewed life.
When you read a lot as a kid, fiction and comics, and watch a lot of movies, narrative and documentary, the real world around you simultaneously folds in on itself. You notice how maddeningly ordinary and two-dimensional it is. And yet, if you’re lucky, if you allow yourself access to those corners of the brain that others neglect to investigate, you begin to suspect that there are layers beneath layers; that there are, hidden from sight, tucked away from reality, buried treasures of insight to be found at the local convenience store, or within the weary, middle-aged sigh of your science teacher, which audibly hints, even announces, a life derailed, a dream deferred.
Oh, and then if you fast-forward ten, twelve years, and you find yourself living for the better part of six years in ancient cultures on the far side of the world, amongst people uttering words that, even if you acquire the capability to comprehend, remain stubbornly foreign despite your best efforts, the world itself, not just your world but ‘the’ world, becomes a tragicomic funhouse of distortion, defeat and exaltation that bears little, okay no resemblance to the reality that your Grade 10 guidance counselor so diligently tried to prepare you for (with foldable brochures to boot).
Life is a tragedy to those who think and a comedy to those who feel, as the saying goes. (Or is it the other way around? And if it is, does it even matter? If I’ve screwed up the phrase, inverted its intent, couldn’t some semblance of meaning be found, regardless? I’d like to think so. Because if you believe in the potency of truisms, accept their somewhat cliché but transitory insight, then surely the tweaking of them could reveal another level of wisdom, unintended but ennobling nonetheless.) To think and to feel may be mutually exclusive domains that occasionally overlap, but I would like to think, would hope to think, that they are one and the same, not different sides of the same coin but the substance of the coin itself.
And the coin itself may be the stuff of which dreams are made.
When you think and feel, feel and think, allowing each to sway the other, the world does, indeed begin to seem like a dream. How else can one explain a world where Lindsey Lohan and legless land-mine victims continue to co-exist? Can you explain that? Would you deign to try? Dare to try?
I can’t.
I guess it’s no surprise that sometimes, on again, someone dreams about me. Or I dream about them. Perhaps all of us, in our (so-called) waking states are just at various levels of REM consciousness. Perhaps Lindsay Lohan and Dr.Phil and the anchors of Entertainment Tonight are just the actualizations of a legless Cambodian’s drunken night of dreams. They, the anchors, drift in and out of the depths of his unconsciousness; he, the Cambodian, occasionally flickers through Mary Hart’s mind after a night of tequilas-by-the-pool.
I’m not saying this is the way it is.
I’m just saying.
And tell me.
This world contains Access Hollywood. It also contains the Tuol Sleng museum -- a hop and a skip and a five minute moto ride away from me -- where people were held and tortured and slaughtered for years on end.
If you randomly came across the word ‘reality’ in your leatherbound, hardback copy of WEBSTER’S dictionary, would these examples of the definition suffice? Access Hollywood and Tuol Sleng? You’d laugh them off the page.
But there they are.
You may be in my dreams tonight. I may be in yours. I may think that I catch a glimpse of your face, lit by the faint but aqua glow of your computer screen. In the morning it will fade, this image, but I will feel sad, though I won’t be able to express why.
There will be nothing left for me to do but step out the door and into the day, confront ‘reality’, go to work and pay my bills.
But somewhere, inside my head, that dream-you will hide. Will lurk. When we cross paths in dreams, perhaps we get closer to finding the fundamental pathways that link us all. Perhaps our waking-selves that trip-wire these DreamDoors block access to the true selves that unleash themselves via our sleeping, sentient selves.
I hope, almost pray, that I will keep searching to find the key to that door -- the key that links the night to the day, the dreams to the reality, the 'me' to the 'you'.
Whether I find it is irrelevant.
The search is not.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
AHNULD, SOME TROUBLING FAULT LINES IN THE INDIVIDUAL'S APPROACH TO DEMOCRACY IN THE WEST, AND THE (POSSIBLE) TITLE OF MY FUTURE AUTOBIOGRAPHY)
Call me crazy, but I really, really like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I like his drive, his ambition, his sense of sheer and focused will that has enabled him to succeed and dominate anything and everything he has put his mind to. I also find his reign as governor fascinating, if only because it exposes certain interesting, flawed aspects of democracy that would otherwise remain overlooked. Recently, everywhere he goes, Arnold has been followed by a traveling troupe of nurses, teachers and firefighters who are opposed to his policies. Fine. All well and good. In a democracy, you are more than entitled to voice your opinion and campaign for your individual voice to be heard. (You are expected to, come to think of it.) And yet, sometimes that’s what bothers me. That individual voice. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you are a teacher, and you are pissed off at Arnold for doing whatever it is that he’s planning to do to the school system in California. (I’m not completely up on all the issues, but cut me some slack – I’m not a Californian, only a Canadian. Shit. Wait a minute. Hold the phone. Maybe that can be the title of my autobiography: ‘Cut Me Some Slack: Not A Californian, Only a Canadian’. You think?) And so to show that you are pissed you travel around the state and campaign around the state and do whatever it is that you think is necessary to ensure that the Austrian Oak won’t be elected again. All well and good. But let’s just say, hypothetically speaking, that in all other regards, all other respects, Arnold is a whammo, bammbo, super-duper guv. Let’s imagine that his policies are, on balance, when you consider the whole, exactly what the State of California needs. Would you still not vote for the guy, if only because his policies are going to affect your job in an adverse, negative way? I’m betting that you wouldn’t voite for him. If he’s doing stuff that directly affects you personally, there’s probably no way in hell that you’re going put an X beside his hard-to-pronounce name. Sometimes that troubles me. Because in a democracy, an open society, we have the freedom to look out for ourselves. And yet, all too often, that becomes our rallying cry, our mantra, our credo: Me, me, me. This is natural. This is human. This kind of individuality is to be celebrated. Mostly. Living in Asia is a crash-course on how to give up your own desires for the sake of the common good. Countries like Japan do not exalt and elevate the individual; they embrace and expect contributions to the whole of the society. What you feel about a certain matters as an individual is irrelevant; what matters is your family, your job, your culture. ‘You’ bring up the rear. It’s not that I’m against all those folks protesting Arnold. They’re looking out for their own interests. They’re fighting the good fight as they see fit. I just wonder, sometimes. Sometimes, so much of what we anatagonize against are forces that affect us and us alone. Me, my family, my block. Somebody is bad because they are doing things that affect me; the fact that those same actions may very well benefit the person down the street, or the long-term nature of the community as a whole, well, too bad. Fuck ‘em. So I’m hoping Arnold can bring people together, is what I’m saying. I don’t think it’s likely – but, then again, was it likely that that little boy from an Austrian village would somehow transform himself, step by step, curl by curl, into the best bodybuilder in the world, the biggest movie star in the world, the governor of the most powerful state in the United States? It wasn’t likely. It came about through individual will, a will that was indifferent to the numerous naysayers that stood in the way of his unlikely path to success. A will that must now do battle with all of those citizens who disagree with who he is and what stands for. A will that somehow must harmonize and find a happy-medium for all of those other individual wills that are pleading that their concerns, their unions, their jobs, are what matter. Theirs and theirs alone. Sometimes I’m with Churchill (or was it Cher?) who said, I think, more or less: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” |
Friday, June 03, 2005
THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR
Sometimes I wonder.
About the knock on the door.
(Can you hear it?)
About the grid.
(Can you sense it?)
About life. About our purpose. About the fact that we are here on this earth for, maximum, one hundred and ten years, and, that being the case, how should we spend our time? Is it better to wander the globe searching for the points of intersection between people and cultures, or is it better, saner, to crash out on the couch in the living room, chilling to Oprah's rhythmic, calming, soothing voice, her reassuring vibe?
Then I think: No. That is selfish. That is unproductive. That is inertia transformed into religion. That path does not lead to wisdom, only to Pringles. There are others out there, entities beyond my fragile self, and they are part of something simultaneously grander and more intimate, and it is my duty, your duty, to become one with those fellow organisms that are searching for some sense of serenity. (However brief.)
And so now I'm here. In this place. And there you are. In your place. The sun is shining here, and perhaps the moon is glowing there. It's the same world, with the same moon and stars separating us. All around me is the hustle and bustle of Cambodian life, its dusty, grinding, chaotic flux, and all around you is...
Well.
That, I don't know.
Sometimes I think that the separation of me from you is a lie, a gross, distorted untruth hoisted upon us by family, society, religion. 'I am an autonomous entity,' I say, but if there is no hearer to assess the validity of such a claim, then how can it possibly contain even a rumor of truth?
Such a random, crowded, connected world this is! All of our passports and borders do such a fine job of keeping us contained and diverted, but I'm starting to believe, beginning to understand, that such containments, arbitrary as they are, necessary as they are, are merely smaller sections of a larger grid.
It is that grid that I've been searching for, unconsciously; it is that grid, arbitrary as it may be, imaginary as it may be, that lies within the ground beneath our feet.
I'm not sure what that grid is, precisely. Its origin, contours and endpoint remain maddenginly elusive, like a half-remembered word lying dormant on my tongue. (I can grasp, barely, its meaning, but not its shape.) There's a book by Herman Hesse called Magister Ludi and The Glass Bead Game; I've read part of that book, not all of it, but I think contained within its pages lies something that approximates an eternal, lasting truth, a map to the map to the map that leads to the memory of the grid, if not to the grid itself.
Patriotism, nationalism, xenophobia, racism: the very concepts that divide us as people are also what, ironically, bring us closer together, for in their universal prejudice we find our common bond. The fear of the other; the fear of the neighbour. Americans resent Mexico and Canada resents America and Cambodia can't stand Thailand and Thailand can't stand Cambodia and Japan is pissed at China and China is freaked over Japan and on and on and ON it goes.
And so it goes, as Vonnegut would say.
You, reading these words, are scared of many things. Your past, your future, your present. If I were to combine all of those fears, personify them in the form of a single man knocking on the door of your home, if I were to do that, would you open that door? Would you be able to confront those fears? If you heard that knock -- once, twice, three times -- could you open that door? Would you dare?
Outside, on a busy street, there are no such doors, true, but there is a man. Tired, lonely, hot. I do not know his name. He does not know mine. If I were to pass by him on the road, he would, most likely, stare. Stare in wonder and curiosity and disgust. Who knows. But if I were to smile at this man, he would smile back. Of that I am sure. Maybe not in Canada, or Japan, but in Cambodia, yes. He would smile back.
That's one section of the grid, that smile. One small, almost minute molecule of the skin on the finger on the hand of that person knocking on your door. (That persistent knock.)
I'm still searching for all of the other interlocking circuits that make up this global, imaginary (?) grid of mine, but that one, that smile, I'm certain, I'm convinced, is one of them.
Sometimes I wonder.
About the knock on the door.
(Can you hear it?)
About the grid.
(Can you sense it?)
About life. About our purpose. About the fact that we are here on this earth for, maximum, one hundred and ten years, and, that being the case, how should we spend our time? Is it better to wander the globe searching for the points of intersection between people and cultures, or is it better, saner, to crash out on the couch in the living room, chilling to Oprah's rhythmic, calming, soothing voice, her reassuring vibe?
Then I think: No. That is selfish. That is unproductive. That is inertia transformed into religion. That path does not lead to wisdom, only to Pringles. There are others out there, entities beyond my fragile self, and they are part of something simultaneously grander and more intimate, and it is my duty, your duty, to become one with those fellow organisms that are searching for some sense of serenity. (However brief.)
And so now I'm here. In this place. And there you are. In your place. The sun is shining here, and perhaps the moon is glowing there. It's the same world, with the same moon and stars separating us. All around me is the hustle and bustle of Cambodian life, its dusty, grinding, chaotic flux, and all around you is...
Well.
That, I don't know.
Sometimes I think that the separation of me from you is a lie, a gross, distorted untruth hoisted upon us by family, society, religion. 'I am an autonomous entity,' I say, but if there is no hearer to assess the validity of such a claim, then how can it possibly contain even a rumor of truth?
Such a random, crowded, connected world this is! All of our passports and borders do such a fine job of keeping us contained and diverted, but I'm starting to believe, beginning to understand, that such containments, arbitrary as they are, necessary as they are, are merely smaller sections of a larger grid.
It is that grid that I've been searching for, unconsciously; it is that grid, arbitrary as it may be, imaginary as it may be, that lies within the ground beneath our feet.
I'm not sure what that grid is, precisely. Its origin, contours and endpoint remain maddenginly elusive, like a half-remembered word lying dormant on my tongue. (I can grasp, barely, its meaning, but not its shape.) There's a book by Herman Hesse called Magister Ludi and The Glass Bead Game; I've read part of that book, not all of it, but I think contained within its pages lies something that approximates an eternal, lasting truth, a map to the map to the map that leads to the memory of the grid, if not to the grid itself.
Patriotism, nationalism, xenophobia, racism: the very concepts that divide us as people are also what, ironically, bring us closer together, for in their universal prejudice we find our common bond. The fear of the other; the fear of the neighbour. Americans resent Mexico and Canada resents America and Cambodia can't stand Thailand and Thailand can't stand Cambodia and Japan is pissed at China and China is freaked over Japan and on and on and ON it goes.
And so it goes, as Vonnegut would say.
You, reading these words, are scared of many things. Your past, your future, your present. If I were to combine all of those fears, personify them in the form of a single man knocking on the door of your home, if I were to do that, would you open that door? Would you be able to confront those fears? If you heard that knock -- once, twice, three times -- could you open that door? Would you dare?
Outside, on a busy street, there are no such doors, true, but there is a man. Tired, lonely, hot. I do not know his name. He does not know mine. If I were to pass by him on the road, he would, most likely, stare. Stare in wonder and curiosity and disgust. Who knows. But if I were to smile at this man, he would smile back. Of that I am sure. Maybe not in Canada, or Japan, but in Cambodia, yes. He would smile back.
That's one section of the grid, that smile. One small, almost minute molecule of the skin on the finger on the hand of that person knocking on your door. (That persistent knock.)
I'm still searching for all of the other interlocking circuits that make up this global, imaginary (?) grid of mine, but that one, that smile, I'm certain, I'm convinced, is one of them.
Sometimes I wonder.
THAT LINGERING, ELUSIVE SMILE, AND THREE OTHER SHAPSHOTS FROM A THURSDAY PHNOM PENH EVENING
Four moments in time, gone but preserved:
I) There was nothing special about her smile, unless all smiles are considered special. I was on the back of a moto, waiting at the light; she was on the side of the road, in front of a shop, a random shop, with her family, her friends. She was young -- perhaps thirty, or thirty-five, although the age of Khmers is hard to pinpoint. Something made her laugh, and she smiled, and I watched her smile broaden, diminish, disappear. It made me feel very sad and elated at one and the same time, watching that smile do what smiles are supposed to do: engage, then evaporate.
II) As I was leaving Hurley's Cantina, where I'd spent an hour munching tacos and occasionally eyeing Al Rockoff at the other table (Rockoff being the character John Malkovich played in THE KILLING FIELDS, the real-life version of whom still haunts Phnom Penh on a seasonal basis,and THE KILLING FIELDS being a movie I still haven't seen, despite having lived in Phnom Penh for two years, and despite having visited the real-life killing fields, but there you go), a Western dude in his early twenties, Canadian or American, slowly approached and in his most sincere and plaintive voice began to ask me for a little bit of money, seeing as how he'd been robbed and all, and while I have no qualms about giving Khmers money every now and then, any foreigner who's dressed better than me who's asking for change is a dope fiend, plain and simple, and I started to reject him, politely, but he didn't even stick around for the 'polite' part of the rejection, just walked away as soon as my 'no' left my lips and entered the air.
III) At D's Books, a used-bookstore down by the river, I found a book about the history of Tokyo called HIGH CITY, LOW CITY, by noted translator Edward Seidensteicker, and I suddenly felt a sharp, stinging stab of homesickness for Tokyo, where I lived for four years, before Cambodia, and for a moment, just a moment, while looking at the maps that spread throughout the book like bread crumbs leading me home, I was convinced that Tokyo really was my home, that it was where I was supposed to live, learn and die, but that was just a moment, and it passed, but I'm hoping, somewhat secretly, that it will return.
IV) On the back of a moto once again, I notice a banner spread across Norodom Boulevard that reads END CHILD LABOR; POVERTY, and normally I love and endorse and embrace the use of the semi-colon, an archaic point of punctuation that only John Irving seems to hold the proper respect for, but here, in this instance, it sickened me, disgusted me, since, quite clearly, the government of Cambodia does not give a flying fuck about ending child labor or poverty, and that single semi-colon, with its elevated sense of importance, its rendering of 'poverty' as merely another adjunct to child labor itself, its linguistic sense of concern and empathy and compassion that had no concrete connection to actual palpable policies made me rethink my whole exaltation of what a semi-colon can and should be, for what is it worth, a semi-colon, unless it can have a viable impact on who we are and where we are going?
I) There was nothing special about her smile, unless all smiles are considered special. I was on the back of a moto, waiting at the light; she was on the side of the road, in front of a shop, a random shop, with her family, her friends. She was young -- perhaps thirty, or thirty-five, although the age of Khmers is hard to pinpoint. Something made her laugh, and she smiled, and I watched her smile broaden, diminish, disappear. It made me feel very sad and elated at one and the same time, watching that smile do what smiles are supposed to do: engage, then evaporate.
II) As I was leaving Hurley's Cantina, where I'd spent an hour munching tacos and occasionally eyeing Al Rockoff at the other table (Rockoff being the character John Malkovich played in THE KILLING FIELDS, the real-life version of whom still haunts Phnom Penh on a seasonal basis,and THE KILLING FIELDS being a movie I still haven't seen, despite having lived in Phnom Penh for two years, and despite having visited the real-life killing fields, but there you go), a Western dude in his early twenties, Canadian or American, slowly approached and in his most sincere and plaintive voice began to ask me for a little bit of money, seeing as how he'd been robbed and all, and while I have no qualms about giving Khmers money every now and then, any foreigner who's dressed better than me who's asking for change is a dope fiend, plain and simple, and I started to reject him, politely, but he didn't even stick around for the 'polite' part of the rejection, just walked away as soon as my 'no' left my lips and entered the air.
III) At D's Books, a used-bookstore down by the river, I found a book about the history of Tokyo called HIGH CITY, LOW CITY, by noted translator Edward Seidensteicker, and I suddenly felt a sharp, stinging stab of homesickness for Tokyo, where I lived for four years, before Cambodia, and for a moment, just a moment, while looking at the maps that spread throughout the book like bread crumbs leading me home, I was convinced that Tokyo really was my home, that it was where I was supposed to live, learn and die, but that was just a moment, and it passed, but I'm hoping, somewhat secretly, that it will return.
IV) On the back of a moto once again, I notice a banner spread across Norodom Boulevard that reads END CHILD LABOR; POVERTY, and normally I love and endorse and embrace the use of the semi-colon, an archaic point of punctuation that only John Irving seems to hold the proper respect for, but here, in this instance, it sickened me, disgusted me, since, quite clearly, the government of Cambodia does not give a flying fuck about ending child labor or poverty, and that single semi-colon, with its elevated sense of importance, its rendering of 'poverty' as merely another adjunct to child labor itself, its linguistic sense of concern and empathy and compassion that had no concrete connection to actual palpable policies made me rethink my whole exaltation of what a semi-colon can and should be, for what is it worth, a semi-colon, unless it can have a viable impact on who we are and where we are going?
Thursday, June 02, 2005
DEEP THROAT: THE THRILL IS GONE
I take it all back.
I want the mystery. The suspense. The relentless intrigue.
Long-time readers of this blog (all three of you) may remember that awhile back I stated that I wished all of life's mysteries, the ones I find mystifying, confounding, or just plain cool, solved. Either in this life or the next. I want to know, goddamnit. The pyramids, J.F.K.'s assassination, Deep Throat, Stonehenge, Richard Simmons' hair -- I wanted answers for all of them.
Well, we've got one now, at any rate.
The other day it was revealed that the former number two man at the F.B.I., Mark Felt, was, is, and shall forever be, Deep Throat -- source of much of the information that led to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's series of articles for The Washington Post that led, in turn, to Nixon resigning.
Deep Throat -- alive at 91.
Never thought I'd see the day.
The thing is, Woodward and Bernstein had pledged not to reveal the identity of Deep Throat until the man's death. They kept their word. It was Felt's family who gave an interview to Vanity Fair; perhaps they were motivated by money, but so what? Who can blame them?
Still.
This was one of those things that you could count on in the universe -- the fact that Deep Throat existed, was out there, alive and anonymous. There was something startlingly noble about the fact that Woodward and Bernstein knew -- they just weren't telling anyone. Somebody knew the mystery, but the rest of us didn't; there was a wonderful, almost literary symmetry to the whole thing.
And now he's here, smiling, revealing himself to one and all. Batman has taken off his mask and shown the whole world his face.
Don't get me wrong. I'm loving reading all of this stuff, including a recent article by Bernstein himself detailing how he met Felt as a young man, an article that chronicles their relationship over the years.
It's just...
The mystery's gone.
In this age, so much can be explained. We have the Internet. We have access to databases unheard of only ten years ago. We have Dr.Phil.
We need mystery, though.
It sustains us, keeps us going, and allows us access to areas inside our psyche that keep us childlike and inquisitive.
So, we know who Deep Throat is.
But let's just hold onto all those other mysteries for a little while longer, shall we?
Let's see.
That leaves us with Kennedy's assassination. And the pyramids. And Stonehenge. And Bermuda's triangle. And Amelia Earheart's disappearance. And the true identity of Shakespeare. And the ghost on the Queen Mary.
And...
I want the mystery. The suspense. The relentless intrigue.
Long-time readers of this blog (all three of you) may remember that awhile back I stated that I wished all of life's mysteries, the ones I find mystifying, confounding, or just plain cool, solved. Either in this life or the next. I want to know, goddamnit. The pyramids, J.F.K.'s assassination, Deep Throat, Stonehenge, Richard Simmons' hair -- I wanted answers for all of them.
Well, we've got one now, at any rate.
The other day it was revealed that the former number two man at the F.B.I., Mark Felt, was, is, and shall forever be, Deep Throat -- source of much of the information that led to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's series of articles for The Washington Post that led, in turn, to Nixon resigning.
Deep Throat -- alive at 91.
Never thought I'd see the day.
The thing is, Woodward and Bernstein had pledged not to reveal the identity of Deep Throat until the man's death. They kept their word. It was Felt's family who gave an interview to Vanity Fair; perhaps they were motivated by money, but so what? Who can blame them?
Still.
This was one of those things that you could count on in the universe -- the fact that Deep Throat existed, was out there, alive and anonymous. There was something startlingly noble about the fact that Woodward and Bernstein knew -- they just weren't telling anyone. Somebody knew the mystery, but the rest of us didn't; there was a wonderful, almost literary symmetry to the whole thing.
And now he's here, smiling, revealing himself to one and all. Batman has taken off his mask and shown the whole world his face.
Don't get me wrong. I'm loving reading all of this stuff, including a recent article by Bernstein himself detailing how he met Felt as a young man, an article that chronicles their relationship over the years.
It's just...
The mystery's gone.
In this age, so much can be explained. We have the Internet. We have access to databases unheard of only ten years ago. We have Dr.Phil.
We need mystery, though.
It sustains us, keeps us going, and allows us access to areas inside our psyche that keep us childlike and inquisitive.
So, we know who Deep Throat is.
But let's just hold onto all those other mysteries for a little while longer, shall we?
Let's see.
That leaves us with Kennedy's assassination. And the pyramids. And Stonehenge. And Bermuda's triangle. And Amelia Earheart's disappearance. And the true identity of Shakespeare. And the ghost on the Queen Mary.
And...
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