EXPLAINING CAMBODIA (OR TRYING TO, ANYWAYS)

Trying to explain Cambodia is like trying to explain yourself. Only with yourself you have a lifetime in which to examine and extend the contours of your peaks and valleys, whereas with Cambodia I have only this particular post. The history, geography, culture and language are beyond my means, but I shall dive into the deep end of what remains while I am still young enough and foolhardy enough to try.

At one point in time, long ago, Cambodians actually ruled southeast Asia. They built the incredible, incomparable Angkor Wat series of temples, and their culture was rich and deep, varied and exquisite. As the centuries passed, Cambodia traded places (and blows) with neighbouring Siam (now Thailand) and Vietnam for supremacy. Cambodians hate the Thais and the Vietnamese, and vice versa, and there’s centuries of historical precedent to back up their grievances. (Think how fast people on reality TV learn to hate each other; these folks had millenia, for chrissakes. Imagine what grudges could be carried within this period of time.)

Of course, the real history that anybody talks about regarding Cambodia only took place within my lifetime. Actually, almost exactly within my lifetime, because it was in October of 1975, I believe, the month I was born, that the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and evacuated the city. Think about it. A city of millions, evacuated.

Why? Pol Pot and his minions decided they wanted to create an agrarian, socialist utopia. Everyone would farm the same fields and eat the same food; there would be no hierarchical social systems in place for one class to dominate the other. (Except, of course, for the folks with guns in charge.) The entire country was forced into the fields for four years. Most people had little, if any, idea of who was in charge. Their job was to farm, and that was it. They were told who to marry. If they wore glasses, they were killed. If they had a high school education, they were killed. If they were doctors, they were killed. Any sign of education was a sing of bourgoise indoctrination. All that mattered was ‘angkar’, this mythical allegiance to a new, pure Cambodian state. Each night you would have to gather with the other cadres and ‘rat’ on the other folks you worked with, relating what ‘bad’ act that somebody other than yourself had committed. Father against son, brother against brother. It was, in short, hell.

After four years, the revolution turned in on itself, as they all do. The boys at the top started to kill each other, and when that happens, the game is over, and there are no parting gifts for the second and third place winners. In the end, Cambodia was ‘saved’ by its most hated neighbour, Vietnam, who had expansionist, imperialist tendencies of its own.

Imagine it. Between two, three million people dead. No electricity. No phones. No newspapers. No media. No government. No money. No laws. No hospitals. No police. An entire country of twelve million people reduced to absolutely nothing, ruled over by their most hated foes, who now demanded allegiance to Vietnam, who forced them to learn Vietnamese and Russian, but not English. Never English. (A Khmer friend of mine told me of how he used to sneak out at night to study English by a dim light with a small group of friends, the penalty being probable death, all of this taking place while I discovered Stephen King and wondered if Back To The Future II could possibly live up to the original.)

What saved Cambodia from Vietnam was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was funding Vietnam, so when the Soviets fell, so did the money for Vietnam. Cambodia was no longer on the top of their agenda.

In came the UN for three years, with UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority) running the country. This was the first time in the history of the UN that the global organization actually ran an entire country. They had a mess on their hands. They still have a mess on their hands, but back then was abominable. Refugees who had fled to the Thai border. A system in shambles. A people demoralized. On and on and on.

It was a holocaust, and that is not an exaggeration. An entire civilization destroyed. An entire people savaged, forced to turn against one another, to breed distrust, to trade in betrayal as if it were fruits at the market. And all of this, within my lifetime. While I collected comic books and licked popsicles and scanned the sky for odd-shaped clouds.

Whenever I get tired of Cambodia, of its poverty, of its recklessness, of its incompetence, I remember what they’ve been through. In my lifetime. I look at the faces of middle aged people and realize that they would have been young men and women when all this insane shit was going down. They would have seen their parents and brothers and sisters kill; they might, even now, live next to door to former Khmer Rouge soldiers. It is still, in so many ways, a country defined by death, but there is so much light, so much sheer goodwill, that I cannot give up on it yet. I do not know if the future is bright, but the young people I see on a daily basis are bright, and that will have to be enough. In a country ravaged by poverty, in a country where only thirty percent of people have clean drinking water, that light will have to be enough. There is no other choice.

Attempting to describe this country is like attempting to describe you. I can find the words if I look hard enough, but words are not enough. They are the blind man groping in the dark, these words, and whether there will soon be light enough for me to see and understand is something that I think about all the time. Whether the light from my students' eyes will be enough to guide them through the dark days I fear still lay ahead for this small and cursed, enchanting and blessed land.

EH?

As a kid growing up in Canada I had any number of American comic books delivered right to my door on a monthly basis, from Amazing Spider-Man to G.I.Joe, from X-Factor to Star Brand, but there was only one title that I subscribed to sight unseen, simply because I glimpsed the cover of its premiere issue at the comic shop and thought: This has to be mine. The cover featured a plethora of Marvel's finest heroes standing back and letting the leader of Alpha Flight, Vindicator, take control of the hostile situation. For those not in the know, Alpha Flight was Marvel's team of Canadian superheroes -- and Vindicator's costume was a red and white configuration of the maple leaf that adorns our flag. I saw the costume, and I was hooked.

The origins of patriotism are hard, if not impossible to define, but I had it early, even at age eight or nine. The fact that the stories were set in Canada and featured Canadian heroes was, well, too cool for words. (The first issue of Alpha Flight even had Vindicator hobknobbing with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, for God's sakes!) The realization that an actual Canadian expat, John Byrne, wrote and drew the book was a sign that my fellow citizens could go out and conquer the comics world like any other Yankee. The idea that I could open up any issue at random and, potentially, find a reference to Lake Ontario or the CN Tower was almost beyond belief. These were super heroes, and they were in Canada, my home. 'Nuff said.

A larger issue at play, of course, is that I was ecstatic that American comics were featuring Canadians. The dirty little secret about Canadians is that they secretly have an inferiorty complex regarding their neighbours to the south. We like to believe that we're bigger, stronger, better, in no need of Viagara, more peaceful, tolerant, sexier, you name it, we want to believe it. It's not easy living in the shadow of Tom Cruise, but that's what we do. (Oh, and did you know that Tom Cruise, Tom Green and Bryan Adams all went to the same junior high school in Ottawa, albeit at different times. That's a fact. Cruise lived in the Ottawa area for a few years during junior high school. And the fact that I know the Canadian residential patterns of Hollywood superstars tells you something about how deep our -- okay, my -- neurosis runs. Like when Conan O'Brien hosted a week of shows from Toronto, featuring Canadian guests, and the place, went, ballistic. Americans coming up to mock our culture and our people! Right on!!!)
Because we love it, love it when our Canadian actors and artists head on down south and kick some cultural ass. (Can you say: John Candy, Michael J.Fox, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Mike Myers, Dan Ackroyd, Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland? I didn't even mention Pamela Anderson. Do you care? Probably not. But us Canucks do. And hey, Bernard Ebbers, the greedy bastard who brought down WorldCon, is also a Canadian, which proves that we, too, can be conniving and mendacious. You better watch out for us Canadians.) We don't really care if they succeed at home, no, but if they're in a hit movie down south, woo-hoo!

Not that this is a particular Canadian thing, this loving and loathing of our neighbours. The great realization (one of many) that I've had while living abroad is that everybody hates their neighbours, from the Japanese hating the Chinese to the Cambodians hating the Thais and Vietnamese. The little guys are scared and envious of the big guys. Each thinks they're better than the other, but is secretly afraid that they're not. It's human, is what I've realized, so it puts Canada's own somewhat odd compulsions and neuroses into a larger global context that makes them seem normal, quaint, almost sedate. Nobody in Canada is really causing anybody down south any harm, so the Americans leave us alone. (And yet, I wonder what would happen if a terrorist entered the States from Canada and did some serious harm. I wonder if our otherwise friendly border relations would suddenly take a darker, more cynical turn, becoming similar to other countries around the world. I don't know.)

What I do know is that I loved Alpha Flight as a kid. I loved the fact that in Superman II they were on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. (Especially since my hometown is about ten minutes from Niagara Falls.) I loved Ben Johnson kicking some ass in Seoul and even loved him when he came back from his drug suspension and tried to kick ass again, but failed, miserably. (One of the most surreal moments of my life was resting between reps on the indoor track at York University during the winter track season and having Ben Johnson come and sit down on the high jump mat beside me, the two of us taking a breather from our respective workouts, him saying nothing, me saying nothing. This was a guy whose picture used to be in my locker, and now he had become the dude I saw working out every day at the track. Life takes us places, doesn't it.) I loved anything with the Canadian flag that proved that we were good, strong, able.

I'm older now. I see the dark side of patriotism, the onslaught of nationalism. I wonder if it's ultimately even necessary, this identification we have with the lands of our births. I'm starting to see the world as my home, which may be naive, or it may be mature.

But still. You can take the kid out of Canada, and all that. Because coming up soon it's the Winter Olympics, see, and Canada has a hockey gold to defend, right, and, well, let's just say that I won't be putting down the flag anytime soon. That would be unpatriotic, eh?

WHY THE SIMILAR HAIRCUT STYLES OF LANCE ARMSTRONG AND THE DALAI LAMA CONTAIN THE KEY TO LIFE

I had my hair hacked off yesterday, giving my freshly shorn scalp an even shorter appearance than my usual Michael-J.-Fox-in-Casualties-of-War cut. Part Lance Armstrong, part Dalai Lama, is how I look at it. A few of the folks around town who recognized me from before -- shop clerks, street kids -- gave a little giggle when catching sight of my awesome new fro. This is the shortest they've ever seen my hair, and, hell, it's the shortest I've ever seen my hair, outside of baby pictures; not to laugh would almost be an insult, I suppose. Besides, as a foreigner in a foreign land, you get used to the laughter of strangers. You better, anyways, because you're going to get a lot of it.

Living abroad, you hear that laughter (or its kinder, more subdued counterparts) quite often; it's part of the deal. Not only expected, but necessary. Necessary because it reminds you that you are not one of them. I could learn as much Japanese or Cambodian as a native speaker, marry a native, dress and walk and talk like a native, perfecting even the accent, but I would never, ever belong. Period. Plain and simple.

But isn't that what we all want? To belong? The older I get, the more I realize that so much of humanity's acts of empathy and aggression are designed to show that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, or long to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and will whatever it takes to acheive those goals. We are all too often on the outside of those concentric rings, and we desperately want the people inhabiting those rings to notice us. To accept us. To crave us. And if that acceptance does not come forth, well, welcome to the wonderful world of neuroses, ladies and gentleman. Check your sanity at the door and make yourself comfortable. There's plenty of space, and plenty of company.

Not that it has to be like that. For some reason or another I've stumbled across the work of Albert Ellis, a 94 year old psychoanalyst trained in the Freudian tradition and now about as far away from Freud as one can possibly imagine. Put simply, he believes that most of man's problems arise from the fact that we are thinking creatures who dwell on what we think about. Who ponder and obsess over problems, so that the problems we have are not the actual problems themselves, but our own problematic and perpetual investigation of that initial problem. (Got that?)

Ellis believes that, based on our own values and belief-systems, we've developed a number of erroneous ideas about ourselves and our own interior lives, which can bascially be boiled down to: We need acceptance and love from others in order to have value; we need to achieve to attain inner peace; and the world is an unfair place, and this is not right.

Ellis's solution? Get over it. Accept yourself (and others) unconditionally, regardless of any outside accolades you may or not may not receive. In other words, what matters is what you love, not what loves you (to quote Nicolas Cage in Adaptation). The world is an unfair place? Why, yes. So it is. To think otherwise is to see ourselves at the centre of the world's whims and plans, and that is folly indeed, so far better to accept that life is all too often cruel and unfair, and adjust your own expectations accordingly.

Sounds simple, his philosophy does, but I prefer the word pragmatic. So much of our lives -- whether it be through relationships or work -- seems to centre upon how we want others to perceive us. It's an odd game of inverted mirrors that leads to a measurement of self-worth entirely reliant upon other people's views of ourselves. It's like we're all constestants on Trump's The Apprentice, eager and anxious and striving to show that we are smarter, more beautiful, more on-the-ball than anyone else, and for what? The great prize on The Apprentice is that you get the soul-enhancing award of helping Trump design apartments for rich people who don't need another apartment anyways. The great prize in life? We get to spend our days and our years constantly trying to assert our own individuality and ambition to strangers who aren't even thinking about us at all in the first place, because they're too busy trying to assert their own individuality and ambition to the stranger that is us, who isn't worried about them, either. It's like we're a people obsessed with the accolades and awards rather than the achievements themselves; we'd rather have the Academy Award than the work that won it.

The answer?

Not sure.

But Ellis is cool, that man is, 94 and going strong. Unconditional love and respect for yourself. Understanding that so many of our problems have to do with our own embellishment of the original problem. Realizing that life is harsh and unfair, but we can deal with that by altering how we encounter and asses this cruel and indifferent world.

Now I'm starting to see why this haircut of mine works for Lance Armstrong and the Dalai Lama. When you're on the bike, nobody gives a shit about your hair; it's the performance that counts (which is why cyclists keep short hair in the first place, to gain windspeed.) When you're the Dalai Lama, you know that people aren't flocking to your talks to check out your mane; it's the words that count.

Simple.

Simple is good. Life is so hard, so complex, that perhaps it's better that we keep ourselves (and our hair) as simple as possible.

PAPER BIRDS

Early this morning I awoke from a strange and distant dream. Already fading, it is, like cotton candy on my tongue. So sweet. So transient.

(Please! Please stay. This is what I would say to this dream, if it were a person, if it were tangible. If this dream goes, dissolves, fades, then I fear that a piece of me will go as well, to where I know not. To that place where dreams go to die, I suppose, that section of our soul that is reserved for all those late-night thoughts and theories that die a short and lonely death, blinded by the harshness of morn. That place we access, occasionally, in those lonely hours before the rise of dawn. That place I long to understand and translate. That place.)

I had returned to my old elementary school's gymnasium, except that it wasn't the one that I actually remember, the one I used to play crabwalk soccer in, the one that housed my Grade 6 graduation dance, but another one, a dream-one, yet somehow even more authentic than its real-life counterpart. Up on stage, my father and other fathers were doing a little dance to the delight of the audience. At a certain point Joyette Heron, all grown up, approached me as I sat in my chair. (Joyette, the only black girl who attended my elementary school, and one who once, near the soccer posts, lifted up her t-shirt and, unsolicited, flashed me a glimpse of her tiny, burgeoning breasts, giving my eight year old self his first up close and personal sight of female nipples.) She handed me a rather clumsily constructed paper bird. I thanked her with a great deal of emotion, realizing, for the first time, that it must be my birthday. Why else would she be giving me paper birds?

The dream was so vivid, so real, so dense, that I did not want to awake. I wanted to wallow in this dreamstate for another, two three hours -- not because that particular dream itself was particularly alluring, no, but because it was other, and that otherness has a depth and a clarity that the 'real' world lacks. That the 'real' world rejects. I wanted to run down the corridors of that dreamschool and knock down its walls, gain entry to the basements and cellars that dwelled within.

My groggy, almost-sleeping mind started to make connections, forge links, construct theories. I imagined a series of corridors connecting dreams to dreams, visions to visions. Those moments of clarity we have in dreams, those intensities of insights -- they are not random, I thought, and they are not lost. They can be found, those moments, and they can be harnessed, and, upon awakening, can be used to alter the very nature of reality itself. If we walk down the corridors long enough, dream will give way to dream, one after the other, each blending into the next, each adding a layer of complexity and confusion that will form their own intrinsic alchemy. If our subsconscious selves are nothing more than the eclectic brew of the twisted madmen that populate our dreams, then perhaps that potion can be digested and synthesized, and ultimately utilized for a larger, nobler purpose.

These were the thoughts I had, insane but logical (as dreamthoughts always are), as the soft pull of sleep tried in vain to tug me further down, while the light of morning, dim but insistent, urged me to rise up and face a more harsh and tactile world.

IF BOBBY HAD LIVED

If Bobby had lived, he would have done it all: ended the war in Vietnam, rescued the underclass from another generation's worth of poverty and despair, united a country that was fundamentally at odds with its own conception of itself. If Bobby had lived, there would have been no Watergate, no IranContra scandal, no Monica, no Iraq. If Bobby had lived, America would have been rescued from itself by itself, by this man, this Kennedy. If Bobby had lived.

These are the kinds of sentiments one has after reading Arthur Schlesinger Jr's. 1976 biography of Robert F.Kennedy, the man he knew so well. (Schlesinger was an adviser to both J.F.K. and R.F.K.) It is almost astonishing to read about how loved, if not revered, Robert Kennedy became in some quarters of the United States; those who think that Bill Clinton or George W.Bush are the focus of a certain hysterical level of hero worship should go on back and check out what Bobby Kennedy lived through in the final years of his life. (This is not to say that Bobby Kennedy was universally beloved; like Clinton, Kennedy had his fair share of detractors, too. But boy, did Bobby Kennedy become something else.)

What allowed Bobby Kennedy access to the hearts and minds of so many Americans? His name, of course; the afterglow from his brother's premature death, most certainly. But it was more than that, deeper than that. Kennedy was the first American leader to show a concerted, passionate engagement with the poor. With those left behind. Not only in America, but all over the world. He had a will and a voice that gave voice to those who had, until then, remained voiceless. He had an aim, Kennedy did, and it was not directed at power for power's sake, but power for the elevation of the underclass.

As somebody living in the early cusp of the twenty-first century, and as a Canadian, no less, it's difficult, if not impossible, to truly understand the intensity of the late sixities in American life, but Schlesinger's book paints a pretty convincing portrait of a nation looking for a leader, almost desperate for a leader. Lyndon Johnson was stubbornly sticking to the war in Vietnam, and it's clear that America was, by then, not buying what he was trying to sell.

Kennedy agonized over whether to run for President against Johnson; his brother, Teddy, told him that now was not the time. When Johnson finally decided not to seek reelection, it was clear that a gap had opened, a gap that Kennedy could, if he defeated his own Democratic rivals for his party's nomination, fill.

He never got the chance, of course, slain by an assassin's bullet immediately after winning the
California primary. (Or was it multiple assasins? I, a certified conspiracy nut, will remain mum on this one.) Kennedy was fatalistic about the possibilities of his own murder; he knew, all too well, what had happened to his older brother, and he knew what could happen to him, and if it did, well, so be it. Life was not about fearing death.

From my perch in Phnom Penh, I've become more and more attuned to the manner in which politics plays a part in people's lives, the way that leaders can shift and sway the tide of history itself. This is a country where, if I even mention the prime minister's name in my class, the air stops, and the tension emerges, and the anticipation mounts: What will be said, and why, and to what end? It starts from the top, is what I'm trying to say, and everyone here, at every level, knows that the top is corrupt and craven and something to be feared, not loved.

Robert Kennedy was loved. I'm not saying a leader necessarily has to be loved, but Kennedy was not loved for something insubstantial or photogenic -- his looks or his family's legacy -- but rather for what he stood for, and what he died for. He was loved because he had a genuine concern for those most of society neglected to acknowledge, let alone advocate for. He was loved because he seemed to embody, to personify, what a leader should be and can be.

As I scan the world's landscape of leaders, from the Putins and the Paul Martins, the Bushes and the Hun Sens, the Chavezes and the Blairs, I see leadership, yes, and madness, certainly, but do I see somebody to love? Do we need somebody to love? Perhaps not. Perhaps looking for love in a leader is akin to looking for control in a parent: necessary, yes, but not the fundamental requriement for the job.

And yet.

It starts at the top. When we see the best in ourselves represented, if only fleetingly, in the eyes and actions of our leaders, something alters. Something within us implores us to do more and be more. A leader should represent not what the country is, but what the country can be. Politics is a game, and politics is power, this I know, but politics is also the means by which a citizen can understand what they and their brethren are supposed to eventually evolve into. When I read a biography of somebody like Robert F.Kennedy, and the eloquent eulogy given by his brother Edward Kennedy (who has, all too often, given eloquent eulogies for his fallen family members), and I scan the present-day political landscape, and I see who leads us, who guides us, it makes me mourn all the more for what could have been and has now been lost.

A PILLOW NOT YOUR OWN

This is one of those mornings. When I already have two, three blogs written out in longhand in a journal lying around in my pocket-sized apartment somewhere, 'important' postings on 'important' topics, but I have forgotten the journal, which means that the blogs remain dormant, undecipherable to anyone but those select few who can painstakingly translate the hieroglyphics that pass for this left-hander's handwriting, those 'select few' being me and me alone, so what you have before you is what passes for a blog entry: random, rambling sentences typed out merely for the pleasure of hearing my fingers tapping keys.

This means that the posting can go anywhichway I please. I could talk about the fact that the Cambodian summer is winding to an end, which doesn't mean much really, because it isn't truly 'summer' at all here, only the rainy season, and, truth be told, I expect it to last a little while longer. Or I could talk about the odd programming habits of 'Star World', a TV station beamed out of god-knows-where, but whose radius encompasses all of Southeast Asia, I suspect, which is odd because all of the shows on offer for lonely, homesick expats, by and large, amount to such scintillating fare as Becker and 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, and was it odd, slightly eerie to see John Ritter on my screen again, a year or so after his death? I think it was.

Or I could go deeper, or try to. I could talk about the dream I had last night, where a couple of Cambodians robbed me. They pointed a gun at my face, and asked for money, from me and my compadres, and I gave them my wallet, and even though I knew it was a dream, the way you know that all dreams are dreams when you are having them, it did not lesson the fear, or the shock, or the suspense in seeing if he would, in fact, implant a bullet into my skull. He didn't, and I think my dream then segued into something involving Kermit the Frog and Condoleeza Rice, but that's another dream, for another day.

(Is that my definition of going 'deeper' you ask -- allusions to amphibious muppets and Secretaries of State? I guess it is.)

I suppose you could say that this particular post is flailing and failing, going against every single rule that I painstakingly try to implant in my students' heads: Brainstorm your work; plan your work; revise your work. I've done none of those things here, but I suppose that's the glory of blogging -- no editor to oversee our trials and errors, and no magazine deciding what is and isn't suitable for public consumption.

And who knows? Maybe my crack about Kermit the Frog will make you remember something about your childhood, something you've long forgotten. The night you were sitting on the couch in your rec room watching The Muppet Show, marvelling at the hosting prowess of John Travolta, while above you, in the kitchen, your parents argued about the weekend plans, something about a grandmother, something about a waste of time, their voices rising and rising until you decided that the volume of the TV, too, needed to rise and rise, forcing you to get up and stand up and walk over to hike up the sound, louder, then louder still, until your mother yelled at you to turn it down, for God's sakes, your brother is sleeping, and you said a silent thank-you to the Muppets for taking your parents out of their angered state, if only for a second or two.

Or maybe my offhand remark about my dream from last night will force you, unwillingly, to remember your own dream from last night, the one that dissolved like cotton candy the moment after awakening, but still lurks, craven but shy, at the corners of your waking mind. You will be walking down the street later today, and a memory from that dream will suddenly appear, complete and pristine, at the front of your mind, as clear as the flatscreen TV you have been thinking about buying for two, three months. You will remember that dream for only a moment or two later today, and only its shape, not its content, and then it will pass, as dreams do. You will return to the world of bank accounts and traffic lights. Ten, eleven years hence, the dream will return, at midnight, on a pillow not your own, and you will welcome it back with such warmth and energy that its very absence all of these years will seem like an aberration, a void, that has finally been filled. Then sleep will come, and rob you once more of that dream, and you will awaken in the morning fulfilled but askew, trying to remember what it was you were thinking about before you drifted off to sleep. But bagels are in order, followed by juice, apple and orange, and so you must leave sleep behind, and once more the dream will drift away, sullen and neglected.

This is one of those mornings.

WHAT, EXACTLY, A 'TANNING SALON' IS

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon browsing around Monument Books, checking out the handful of new books written regarding Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge era, and an even better part of the evening trying to teach my teenage students what, exactly, a 'tanning salon' is, and why, precisely, Coca-Cola is so popular with westerners.

The books look interesting, well-written, informative and insightful; they always are. A few are psychological examinations of why the Khmer Rouge killed the way they did; others are personal memoirs of growing up under, and after, that horrific era. The tenured academics and political pundits continue to pump out the books, and people like me continue to read them, intrigued, mortified, and, ultimately, fascinated by what this country has been through, and why, and for what ultimate purpose.

The young people, though, don't necessarily give a shit.

You can see this as a positive or a negative. I see it as a little bit of both. (As I see most things in life, come to think of it.)

The poor young Khmers are not concerned with the past; they are concerned with getting something to eat and finding a job to feed their family. The rich young Khmers are also not concerned with the past; they are concerned with learning English and trying to figure out, in a few years time, how to find some kind of a job, any kind of a job, in corrupt, scandal-ridden Phnom Penh.

I don't know the inner workings of the average Cambodian family. I've never talked, one on one, face to face, in any great detail, about Pol Pot's regime with any specific Cambodian individual. But I do know, from talking with others who have, that the older generation doesn't talk much, if at all, about what they went through. They keep it inside: bottled up, wound tight.

Think about it. We're talking about people who saw family members slaughtered and killed. People who worked for years under the hot unforgiving sun harvesting rice, their only reward another day of life. People who, quite possibly, were in the Khmer Rouge themselves, who murdered children, who betrayed colleagues. When genocide is less than a generation old, the people who lived through it are, well, still living through it. It goes on, underneath, but it's too painful to articulate, so they just go on living. What else can they do?

The young people are not a literate people. They don't read much, and the TV they watch is usually composed of karaoke-type talent shows, and the websites they frequent centre on chatrooms. They are smart people, however, and I know that they do have questions, many questions, about what their parents went through, and why, and for what final end. These are the questions that the academics are pursuing, and people like me are intrigued by.

The students, though, are interested in, well, life. The future. In wondering why white westerners want dark tans, and spend substantial amounts of money laying under artificial light in order to achieve such an odd and unusual look. And Coca-Cola -- what's the deal with that? I mean, the shit tastes good, sure, but westerners lap that stuff up like it's the elixir of life. They ask these questions, and hang with their friends, and make jokes in class, and do what young people do.

A generation ago, their parents were wondering if they would live to see the sunrise the following week, or the week after that; these kids wonder if the English lesson will be as boring as yesterday.

That's progress.

The books will still be written, the questions will still be asked, the memories will still lay buried. The country may still be poor, yes, but for some, perhaps only a privileged few, the questions regarding tomorrow centre upon what shirt to wear with what skirt. And, in this country, that kind of incremental progress, however incidental and frivolous, is something to applaud.

SOMETHING AKIN TO MUSIC

Just imagine. A father and son, both Japanese, both seated on metal folding chairs in a small conference hall filled with people, both silent. The son drops his videogame console on the floor, a loud thwack reverberating throughout the tiny room. The father flashes his son a sidelong scowl. The boy picks up his game and resumes his game, nonplussed. Moments later, down goes the game one more time, slipped out from between the boy’s fingers yet again, wobbling for a moment or two before attaining an equilibrium of stillness on the floor. The boy reaches to pick up the game, while at the same time the father reaches out his left hand and firmly thwacks the boy upside the head. The father’s eyes remain fixed on the speaker at the front of the room. The boy picks up his game, again, and continues his play. The afternoon goes on, indifferent. I know this.

That game falling, its tinny, metallic thwack. Limited to the confines of that hall, that day, four years ago. It lasted only a moment or two, that moment did. I’m quite certain that neither the father, now approaching middle-age, nor the son, now entering adolescence, ready or not, remembers that incident. It approached, came, passed. It happened. It occurred. Simple. I realize this. (And believe none of it, because that sound, that thwack, echoes still, now, infinitely.)

Having read some of William Shawcross’s book The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience, I’m intrigued by his perplexity at a modern world in which two, three million Cambodians can be killed while, mere miles away, similar people of a similar age, people who love and laugh and run and write and shit and fuck as loudly and as humanly as their Cambodian counterparts, can sit in awe in a darkened theatre watching bright lights flicker on a silver screen, as Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford try their best to defeat an imperial army bent on their destruction. While babies were being whacked against trees, their blood and brains forming a red and grey mosaic distinctly, grotesquely at odds with the soft amber hues of Cambodian bark, others were stretching out multi-coloured beach towels on single-coloured sand, applying white lotion to whiter skin, thinking about grocery lists and tan lines and whether or not the lawn really needed to be cut twice this week, despite the rather raggedy length, because two lawn-cuts in one week was, well, if not decadent, at least a little ostentatious, if not anal.

If all of those events occurred simultaneously (as I’m sure they did), and all of them happened in parallel, if not tandem, streams of space and time (as I firmly believe to be true), then what does that signify, in human terms? If millions can go starving in Niger and the Sudan while the rest of us can shop till we drop for shoes and pick our noses and scratch our asses and lick nipples other than our own in front of plasma TVs on layaway, only sixty bucks a month, call now, well, what does that truly mean?

Parallel lives.

Like the Toronto Star article I recently read, detailing the alarming rise of gun violence in recent years in tee-oh, creating a Toronto that is becoming more segmented and divided, a Toronto that has black Canadian youths killing each other with handguns imported from the States, by and large, while white Canadian businessmen and their trophy wives check out the latest shows downtown, because it’s good theatre, affordable theatre, with production values rivaling, if not surpassing, their Broadway brethren in New York, and don’t even get me started on the cuisine around the Royal Alex theatre, which is simply to die for

(pass the ammo)

especially that new Italian place down by the Hummingbird Centre

(going to smoke his cracker ass)

which has a strawberry shortcake dessert type thingee that is, I swear, capable of putting weight on you just by looking at it

(fucking popped him two times, right in the face)

so help me God, it’s true.

Parallel lives.

Like the Cambodia that exists within and beyond the Phnom Penh that I inhabit. The one behind those half-open doors that slide shut when dusk starts to fall, leaving only a slice of light peeping through, with half-glimpsed girls wearing bright blue dresses and dark red rouge, their pimp, handler, owner, lifeline gently smiling my way, tilting his head. Or the police round-up I read biweekly via the Phnom Penh Post, a laundry list of drunken stabbings, enraged strangulations, violent rapes and out of control axe-attacks, all unleashed within the narrow confines of the tiny villages I pass through by bus on my way to that golden weekend beach, that pool-chalk blue sky. And the kids that sell me my morning newspapers, the young girls, already losing, almost daily, their spunk and spark, their cabbage-patch cuteness, who will, all too soon, enter another realm of existence, squalid and sordid, punctuated by bed-spring squeaks and early-morning memories, dim but sweet, of sunlight on skin, warm and soothing, a counterpoint to the stranger, sweatier feel of counterfeit flesh.

Oh, the temp0 of life that pulses and sways as I write these words, that lies beneath and above and between and within the sound of that father’s thwack, the lessons being taught, the roads being built, the knees being scabbed, the oranges being peeled, the cunts being fucked, the scabs being picked, the brows being wiped with cool white cloths, the faces being punched, the lips being kissed, the doors being shut, the dicks being sucked, the bullets piercing skin, the jobs being lost, the legs being broken, the nails being chewed, the arms being raised, the love being borne, the babies being born, all of it simultaneous, unique, unprecedented. Take away the labels: loving, heinous, crude, refined, virtuous, evil, redemptive, condemning. Take away anything but the acts themselves, and we are left with the human condition, period. Sights and smells and tastes and sounds. That sound.

Picture them, that father and son. I do. I still hear that thwack, even if they don’t. That sound, so eerily similar to the sound my own head made while whumping against my high school gymnasium floor, fifteen years ago, my body somehow flying free from the high bars and missing the large blue mat, followed by blackness, and the sound of my phys-ed teacher flashing me two fingers and asking how many, how many, how many do you see?

If I can still hear that sound, whether it be the father striking the child, or my head hitting the floor, then perhaps others can, too. Perhaps that father and son –Japanese, bland, suburban – unknowingly let loose a riptide of condensed emotion that caused a pinprick sized hole in the very temporal fabric of the space-time continuum itself. Not a gigantic hole, no, nor even a large one, but one big enough and wide enough to distort the spaces between us and them, between you and me, between then and now, one just big enough to allow all sights and all sounds to travel at maximum speeds with minimum delay. Everywhere.

Listen.

Can you hear it?

A woman in Niger hears that sound, that thwack, and thinks it is the sound of her own stomach, its hungry, angry growl. A young black male in Toronto, alone in bed, thinking about the Geography test he will have in less than twelve hours time, wondering if he is ready, sure that he is not, hears that sound and thinks that it is a trigger being cocked, a gun being pointed, causing him to sit up straight, the drool from his mouth still stretching in one long, unbroken line of spittle from his bottom lip to his dented pillow, and he vows, heart thumping, to be better than his friends, his environs, his teachers’ expectations. A young prostitute in Phnom Penh, exhausted after her night’s work, slumps in the green-felt chair that sits beside the bathroom in the whorehouse she calls home, and for her that sound is the click of her grandfather’s fingers, the sound he would make while waiting for dinner to cook, and while she can no longer remember his voice or his face, she can remember his smell, dirt and cigarettes and rice, and the memory of his snapping fingers is too much for her, too real for her, forcing tears for the first time in a long time to slowly trace their way down her hollow cheeks. A young boy in St.Catharines, Ontario, falling to the floor, missing that mat, hears that thwack, and just before blacking out, thinks: The universe is folding in on itself.

A lover’s sigh in Belgium; a soldier’s shriek in Burma. The same sound? Emitted from a single source, merely altered and twisted by wormholes of time, emotion, memory?

I am not saying it’s likely; I am not even suggesting it is probable. But in the aftermath of a Cambodian downpour, in the smile of a newborn child, in the thwack of a stranger’s hand, I sense a commonality, a bond, that may begin as nothing more than noise, dissonance, aural and spiritual, but gradually, over time, reveals its true, rhythmic beat -- something akin to music, something lasting and melodic and soothing.

DO NOT RUSH SPOCK BEFORE HIS TIME

I noticed a door I had never seen before the other day. Just down the hall from my classroom. The hour was late and my class was about to start, but I moved foward, intrigued.

The doors were long and wide, clear but opaque. A logo on the door indicated what lay beyond, what lay inside -- a Japanese NGO, having something or other to do with arms reduction in Cambodia.

As I stood there, staring at the logo, the door opened. A Khmer man in his mid-thirties, wearing glasses and a tie and white dress shirt similar to my own, asked if he could be of assistance. He was smiling and friendly and speaking English that rivalled my own, if not surpassed it.

We talked the way strangers talk -- politely, smilingly, each wondering who the other is, and what it is that they want. Turns out that this particular organization, funded by the Japanese government, helps gather together guns in small villages around Cambodia, exchanging the arms for economic assistance. (There are a lot of weapons left over from the Khmer Rouge era still floating around this country.) I asked about the possibility, perchance, of employment with this organization. I told him of my four years in Japan; he told me of his acquaintances in Toronto. Stranger talk, when you grope to find common points of interest. (I have found that if you try to do so, you will usually succeed.)

Made me think, those doors did. They had been there all along, just down the hall, a hop, skip and a jump away, but I never noticed them until that day. Never bothered to notice them. Never ventured that far down the hall.

I can have tunnel vision sometimes, seeing only what I want to see, and nothing more. (I can still remember the disbelieving cry of my mother as I walked out of my bedroom and into the hallway, looked up, and noticed the skylight that had somehow remained undetected by me over the past year that we had lived in the house. ¨When did we get a skylight put there," I muttered to myself. Cue the fainting mom.)

Living in Japan, working in Cambodia -- the stuff of adventure, you could say. I know this to be true, yes, and it certainly has been that, an adventure, but I rarely ever see it that way, think of it that way. I kind of stumbled into where I am and who I am. Despite living in the exoctic environs of ancient Asian countries, I am still suprised to find myself a creature of habit. I find the places I like, the stores I like, the restaurants I like. I fear returning to Canada only because I worry that I will instantly revert to familiar patterns and well-known roads. I try to daily remind myself to go to new places, see new things, meet new people. In June I travelled to Vietnam -- only a four hour drive away! And yet, what an alternate universe. Right next door, all that time. I should have gone sooner.

Whenever I am feeling, well, sedate, I try to find a copy of Travels, by Michael Crichton, a non-fiction book relating his various adventures in various exotic lands. I first read it during my first few weeks in Japan, and it encapsulates so well the disorientation of the traveler, the exotic allure of the unknown, the lessons we can learn, dare we try. My favorite part of his introduction relates to his notion of a kind of received wisdom that we all share, meaning: we want to know everything about an experience before we have it. We want to read the reviews of the movie before we go. We want to hear from our friends if that new restaurant, the one next to the mattress shop, is any good. We want to check out the widest variety of brochures to determine which vacation spot looks cheaper, funner, better.

As Crichton points out, there is a great, almost holy value in simply experiencing something as it happens, without any preconceived ideas foisted upon us by others. I moved to Japan and Cambodia without knowing jackshit about either country, and my experiences and life have been all the richer because of it. Blown away because of it.

As a child, I read the comic-book adaptation of Star Trek III: The Search For Spock before watching the film, which taught me a valuable lesson: Do not rush Spock before his time. Let things come to you, or you to them, but do not read the Coles Notes first. Do not read the back of the book before buying. Do not learn about the plot. Do not avoid the movie because somebody said it sucked. If you are intrigued, that is enough -- read, watch, go. Period.

It is the doors, you see.

The ones we do not even know are there. The ones just down the hall, across the street, across the road. Those are the ones you have to find, and, if not open, at least knock on.

Find that door. Knock on that door. See who opens, and what lies inside.

LOVE HAS ALREADY GONE AWAY FROM THERE

We were talking about other stuff before the conversation shifted, as conversations do. Sitting in the teacher's lounge, killing those last ten, fifteen minutes before class starts, those in-between minutes, when nothing new ever seems to get done, or even started. Empty time.

Earlier that morning during my run I had noticed small groups of Cambodian students clustered around a few of the myriad photocopy shops that litter what passes as Phnom Penh's landscape. My mind flashed back to a CAMBODIA DAILY article I had read earlier in the week, about the ease with which Cambodian students cheat on high school exams. Paying off the supposed 'monitors'. Having their parents throw, yes, throw copies of the answer sheets over the gates of the school, tossing the sheets of paper like bouquets at a wedding. Crazy shit like that. Cambodian shit like that.

A Cambodian colleague, twenty-five years old, nodded his head solemnly as I told him about all this stuff. As a young student, all of his classmates had cheated -- but not him. They would ask him for the answers, him being the smart one, but he would say no, no, you have to do it on your own, and then they'd be pissed. Riteously so.

He did the right thing. That's what he said, and I believe him. He looks like the kind of fellow who wants to do the right thing, a distinct rarity in a country where everyone so often seems to be doing the wrong thing. Always.

The late-afternoon sun feebly shone its way through the window. Everything in the room seemed blue and gray, and I liked that. I took a sip of water. I listened to the air conditioner, felt its chill. Cold. Cold and direct.

It's strange. How the things and topics we talk about can so readily bend and break and reassemble themselves into new formations only ostensibly composed of earlier, related components. Somehow I found myself talking about what it's like to live alone. No parents. No faimly. In Japan and Cambodia. Starting anew.

He longed for that experience, this teacher did. It didn't even have to be in a foreign country; a foreign house would do just fine. He lived with his older brother and his sister-in-law. The brother always told him what to do and when to do it, all the time, constantly. Was it the same in Canada, he wanted to know. That's what so many Khmers ask: Is it the same over there? Are you different? Is it just us? (Isn't that what we all want to ask?)

I nodded. Thought about it. Said that it was somewhat the same, yes, but more people in Canada live on their own, away from their families. They see them on weekends, or every other month. The children put their parents away in a 'special' place when they get too old and they smell too bad.

He sighed.

"That's what I want," he said. "Space. I don't need to see my brother and his wife every night. Telling me to clean the house. I am a teacher, not a cleaner. I see them enough. Love has already gone away from there."

I nodded, thinking how often I've heard Khmers say phrases that sound somewhat odd but are true nevertheless.

Of course, if he lived alone, he would have to do everything for himself, without his brother's help; there was that to consider, he said. And besides, he was still a baby, crying to his sweetheart, begging her forgiveness, enduring his taunts. If that was life, well, so be it.

"I'm twenty-five now," he said, smiling slightly. Gathering his papers and fixing his tie. "I'm a man now."

I gathered my papers and fixed my tie.

The sun was faded now, a muted, half-assed pink. The ash-grey, early evening light dimly lit the dark blue room. The air conditioner was still on high, and I felt it. I stood up and picked up my bag and followed him out of the room.

I'VE BEEN TAGGED

I've been 'tagged' by Christa over at www.christabro.blogspot.com, which means I have to answer the questions that she's asked, which amount to a timeline of the last ten years (and other assorted questions, most of which I answered,) so here goes:

10 YEARS AGO TODAY: I was 19 years old, living in Manotick, Ontario. My parents had moved from my hometown of St.Catharines, Ontario, seven hours north to this small town just outside of Ottawa, Canada's capital. I was finishing up a novel I had been writing since that February, about a talented young teenager who was both a phenomenal hockey player and an amazing young novelist. (This was heavily, heavily, heavily derivative of John Irving's The World According To Garp. Then again, at nineteen, pretty much everything you do in life is derivative.) Having just completed my first year of university as a film major, I was seriously considering switching to Creative Writing. (Which I did; later that year, I would ask my teacher if she would take a look at my rather ragged first novel, and she very politely said, well, no.) I was also running a lot, hoping to try out of the York University cross-country team later that fall. (I would end up getting a stress fracture in my right foot and missing out on the season.)

5 YEARS AGO TODAY -- I was living in Sagamihara, Japan, just outside of Tokyo, teaching English. Had been in Japan one year. Was just getting comfortable there, after six or seven months of wondering where the hell I was and what the hell I was doing. Had yet to take Japanese lessons or travel anywhere around the country.

1 YEAR AGO TODAY -- Living in Phnom Penh. Ecstatic that I had been offered a consultancy with UNICEF that would start in October and could take a break from five years of teaching. Scared shitless wondering what I would actually have to do there. Contemplating when to tell my boss at the university that I was quitting. Wondering what I would say at my brother's wedding back in Canada a month later.

YESTERDAY -- Taught my morning class and evening class at school. Went for a five a.m. run, at which time I saw groups of young Khmers huddled around photocopy shops. (See an upcoming post.) Read some of Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem. Thought about the paradox: One's individual way of interacting with a higher being is an essential component of so many people's lives, and yet it has also created so much friction and heartache through the century, on continent after continent. Watched some of ROCK STAR INXS. Wondered whether anyone gives a shit about INXS anymore. Watched some of Erin Brockovich, which was kind of weird, because earlier in the day I had read Kevin Smith on his blog at www.silentbobspeaks, and the movie he's currently acting in is being directed by the woman who wrote Brockovich, and he watched it recently and was amazed that it held up so well, but while watching it again I thought that, while entertaining, it's more of a showpiece for Julia Roberts, a vanity piece, a simulation of this kind of movie rather than the real, honest thing. (But I could be wrong.)

TOMORROW -- Run, teach, read.

5 BAD HABITS I HAVE -- Picking my nails. Eating junk. Judging people. Not listening to any cool music. Not living in the present.

5 THINGS I LIKE DOING -- Reading, writing, running, thinking, and watching movies to see whether or not the actor in the scene blinks, because they usually don't, which gets kind of freaky after awhile.

5 MOVIES I LIKE -- Heaven and Earth, Without Limits, Spartan, The Godfather I-III, Empire Of The Sun.

5 FAMOUS PEOPLE I'D LIKE TO MEET -- Vladamir Putin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nelson Mandela, Stephen King, Steven Spielberg.

SCARS

I noticed the scar again yesterday. The one on my left arm, sperm-shaped, bracketing my bicep. I looked at it and remembered how I got it and turned the page in my book and forgot about it. That's what we do with scars, right? Forget about them. They're there if we need them, after all.

I watched the sky and worried about the possibility of rain. About getting back before dusk. (I do not relish the idea of being on Cambodian roads after night falls.) In the car with me were Filipino friends of mine, all of us headed out to an orphanage in Kandal province, a few hours from Phnom Penh. Traveling with us was a middle-aged Cambodian Christian woman, who helps fund the orphanage. The trunk held two gigantic bags full of used clothes for the kids. I, being neither a Christian nor a contributor to the aforementioned sack of clothing, felt more than a little bit superflous. That's fine. In a foreign country, one is supposed to feel superflous; that's why you're there.

A typical Cambodian trek it turned out to be. The mandatory breaking-down-of-the-car on the side of the road in the middle of the countryside. The wait for the replacement car. I've been there, done that, so I wasn't too worried. My motto in Cambodia has come to be: If it can go wrong, it probably will go wrong. So I read my book. Pissed in the brush. Watched the faces of the Cambodian locals as they watched mine. A Cambodia day.

From my vantage point riding shotgun I heard the elder Cambodian woman in the backseat narrate the events of her life: the priviledged upbringing in a wealthy family; the daily life lived during the catastrophic Khmer Rouge era, when the work was fierce and the food was scarce; her struggle to serve God and help the children who needed help most. She had intended to visit the orphanage the week before, but it rained, rained hard. She prayed to God for no rain this weekend, and no rain there was. The sky was wide and blue and clear. I listened to her speak some more. It was, indeed, a life.

By the time we finally arrived, the children were already gathered inside of the small, red-brick building that passed as a church. A handful of blue plastic chairs sat facing the hundred or more kids who were sitting on tiny chairs of their own. We were the special guests, so we got the special chairs.

They clapped and we sat and the children began to sing Christian songs in Khmer. They clapped some more. We clapped. They smiled. We smiled. They stared. We stared. A Cambodia day.

Out behind the church, eating a lunch of chicken and rice, water and tea, on the banks of the Mekong River. All of us, the guests. Two little boys stripped off their shirts and dived into the river, racing to see who was fastest. Every so often various women and children would wander down to the water to gawk and say hello. I saw my first set of Khmer twins. (Cambodians can have twins, too! I thought.) A few stray, dark clouds hinted at possible rain to come -- and, to me, at the journey home. The night to come.

Before leaving, we handed out the clothes in small plastic bags, one bag per child. It had been a long time, since last Christmas, that anyone had given them anything. They clutched their bags like life rafts. (There are few things in life I've seen as sad and wondrous as a Cambodian orphan.)

As we left, pictures were taken, poses were struck. I chatted with a few of the older boys who worked for the church -- teachers, teenagers. "Can I give you a hug?" one of them asked. The children surrounded the car, holding tightly their treasure of second-hand clothes, laughing and waving and smiling as the car drove down the dusty road ahead.

Heading home, I noticed again the scar on my left arm; I notice it all the time. I thought about the scars on my body: the one on my chin, from a childhood fall down a bunkbed ladder in our trailer home at Big Valley campsite; the small jagged one on the back of my head where hair now stubbornly refuses to grow, inflicted by the metal edge of my friend Mariano's stairs as I fell while shuffling the cards to an Italian game the name of which I can no longer recall; the off-white equal sign on the inside of my right thigh, remnants of my own skate blade that somehow pierced my skin as I fell during a hockey practice in my early teens; and that scar on my bicep, the result of a collision between myself and the spokes of a bicycle wheel on a spring day in my sixteenth (seventeenth?) year, when myself and James Spiece headed back on the road to look for our fellow running partner Ryan Kent, who we had worried had fallen victim to heatstroke and was laying somewhere on the pavement along Lakeshore Road. (There have been a lot of falls in my life, I'm realizing.)

The strange thing is, those were good days, the days I got those scars. Hanging out on bunkbeds with my brother. Playing cards with my best friend. Playing hockey. Running with other runners. My flesh now has permanent records of those particular moments in time I would otherwise have forgotten. After all, how many days of our lives do we forget? More than half, I'd say. At least. Yet those days, my scar days, I've held on to. They've become a ledger of my life.

As the car drove through the roadside villages of Cambodia, past the endless flow of fields and cows and highway snack shacks, I thought about those kids. About what they would remember. Most of them would probably have no physical scars from this day. It was a good day, a Sunday, a church day. There was no pain, physical or otherwise.

But will they remember it at all, in one or two or three years time? They will have long outgrown their present of clothes; their series of songs, so proudly performed, will be but a memory's melody.

I had a sudden impulse: better that they be scarred. Better that a cut, a slice, a falling brick maim their soft brown skin, because then they would remember this day, remember their own goodness and civility and brightness and innocence, remember their own pure, unsullied energy. There's a Cambodian world, a wide world, waiting to snatch it all from them. Soon. The afternoon sunlight can only last so long, and I fear that the day is already fading to dusk for many of them.

The car sped faster as we raced towards Phnom Penh. I grew impatient as the car stopped two, three times, the other passengers looking for fruit. I stayed in the car, so as not to arouse the expectations of the merchants. (White men are always welcome in Cambodian markets, bleeding green as they do.) We eventually made our way closer and closer to the city, inching our way against the inevitable darkness of night, as I wondered if we would beat the blackness that was spreading its dark-blue inkspots across the crouching sky.

We just made it.

SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN, or HOW I BECAME A FULL-ON, FLAT-OUT J.F.K. CONSPIRACY NUT

In the late autumn of 1963 my father, age fifteen, Canadian, compiled a scrapbook containing newspaper and magazine articles related to the recent killing of American President John.F.Kennedy on November 22. In the early autumn of 1991, twenty eight years later, I, age fifteen, found that scrapbook anew, and plundered its depths.

I'd seen it many times before -- a thick, red, hardbound scrapbook, its pages less than a quarter full. Until that fall, it had been fondled and fingered for its personal, rather than political, history; it was solid, demonstrable proof that my dad had, at one point in time, in the dark and distant past, against all conceivable odds, been a teenager like myself. A time capsule from the past, it was, helping me along that path child must walk alone, when he or she discovers that their parents are, and always have been, human. (And thus fallible. Which should engender forgiveness in us, but does it?)

That particular fall, though, it was not my father I was seeking, but J.F.K. -- the man, the movie, his assasination and its legacy.

I, being a rapidly burgeoning film nut, was getting psyched and stoked for Oliver Stone's soon-to-be-realsed film J.F.K. (A whole future post still awaits, a long one, on Oliver Stone, which will make some of you eager and many of you, I'm afraid, sick to your stomachs.) J.F.K's death was something I knew a little bit about, in that way abstract way (pre-Internet) that most teenagers in a televised society knew a little bit about almost everything, but I felt the need to preapre for the film. I would feel a similar desire the following year, awaiting release of Spike Lee's magnum opus Malcolm X. (I would read Malcolm's autobiography and a book on his assasination before the film's opening, which only whetted my appetite even more and raised my expectations for the movie itself; luckily, I was not to be disappointed.)

Via my father's scrapbook, I was thrilled to be able to read actual, authentic newspaper accounts, brittle and yellowed and aged, about Kennedy's assasination, his funeral, the arrest of Oswald and Oswald's own, subsequent assasination by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. I was ecstatic to discover that my dad also had an old copy of one of the first conspiracy books about the assasination, The Second Oswald, resting on the battered bookshelf in our basement toyroom, where all my dad's old books from the sixties and seventies were kept. (Mostly philosophy and true-life adventure stories.) I read the book straight through in one sitting, I think, instantly convincedby the book's hypothesis that Oswald had a double in Dallas in the months leading up to Kennedy's death, using his name, usurping his identity. It was a conspiracy, I thought, with something approaching awe.

I had read the scrapbook. I had read The Second Oswald cover to cover. I was ready for J.F.K., the movie.

I was wrong.

That film's impact on me, Oliver Stone's impact on me, must wait for a future post. (Again, you've been warned. After all, you're talking to a guy who really, really liked Alexander, so you know what you're in for.)

I walked into the movie theatre at the Pen Centre in St.Catharines, Ontario one person, and emerged as another. That may sound like an exaggeration, or adolescent hyperbole, but I can assure you, it's not. That film changed the way I thought about cinema, and it altered my overall perception on life itself.

Stone's film contemplates a theory so fast and sinister, so grand and Machiavellian, that its very hypothesis would seem outraegous were it not more rooted in reality than one would like to believe. Notice I said 'contemplated'; the film is a mosaic of speculations, hypotheses and 'what-ifs', something most of its fervent, even frenzied critics failed recognize. Actually, I have come to believe, after multiple viewings, that J.FK. isn't about the Kennedy assasination at all. It's about the forces that control our lives. It's about the dangers of relying on a government's word. It's about the way that we perceive the truth is kaleidoscopic in intent and execution. It's about the price and the value of committing to a cause greater than oneself, and what its gained and lost by such a vow. In its themes, metaphors, and sheer cinematic brilliance, the film was far, far ahead of its time -- and, fourteen years later, I believe that its now ahead of this time, too, both cinematically and philosophically.

But I digress.

The point is, I walked out of that screening an absolute, hard-core, frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy nut. Energized beyond belief by what I had seen, I was motivated to investigate further the spark that Stone had ignited inside of me. I was going to solve this conspiracy, once and for all. Why couldn't I? The St.Catharines Centennial Library, where I would soon get a job shelving books after school, was filled with tomes both old and new on the case. I was young. I had energy. I will avenge you Jack, I thought.

And so, I went to work.

I started with On The Trail of the Assassins by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner in the film), an account of his prosecution of Clay Shaw for the murder of John Kennedy. I then read Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs, also a source for the film, and a book that investigates any number of possibilities before settling rather uneasily on a conspiracy that essentially accuses Kennedy's successor Lyndon Johnson of, if not instigating the assassination, at least covering it up. I read High Treason and its sequel, High Treason II, by Harrison Livingstone and Robert J.Groden, an encylopedic examination of the case. I read Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F.Kennedy by John Davis, which exhaustively details the role of the legendary gangster in the killing. I read Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F.Kennedy by David S.Lifton, which details the controversial autopsy of J.F.K. I read J.FK: The C.I.A., Vietnam, and the Plot to Kill Kennedy by L.Fletcher Prouty, the former C.I.A. contact portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the film. I read Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed Kennedy by Bonnar Menniger claims that the final head shot that killed Kennedy was accidentally fired by a gunshot from his own secret service agent, George Hickey, riding behind him in the same motorcade car, standing just behind Jackie. I read and read and read.

One week I was convinced the C.I.A. did it. The next, it was the Mafia. After that, the F.B.I. -- had to be Hoover, I thought, HAD to be. After watching a PBS documentary I realized that imported assassins, expert marksmen, possibly from Marseilles, surely had a hand in the actual shooting. That notion soon bit the dust when I discovered that Cubans sent by Castro surely had a larger role than I had anticipated.

And so it went.

Many of the conspiracy related books commit the same cardinal sin -- they try to fit the facts into their theory, rather than looking at the facts themselves and seeing where (and where not) the dots connect. Many of these books tend to overlook and omit any evidence that would undermine their own, carefully constructed and elaborate theories. Which is why reading only one book on the case is not enough, and reading ten or fifteen is probably against all Surgeon General warnings, and not a recipe for lifelong mental health. (Exhibit A, right here.) One of my favorite lines from the film J.F.K. sums up the experience of immersing oneself in the body of literature related to the assassination that exists: "We're through the looking glass here, people," Kevin Costner says. "Black is white, and white is black." All too often, it can seem like no one, common link exists to unite all of these arbitrary, disparate, random and, quite often, loony theories.

Except one.

Oswald.

The most compelling, maddening, enlightening and frustrating books on the Kennedy assassination centre upon one Lee Harvey Oswald, that legendary name in American life. There is enough circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, in my opinion, to prove that Oswald was, at the very least, involved in the assassination, at some level. The madness of all the conspiracy theories revolve around the fascinating and abbreviated life that Oswald lived during his brief twenty-four years on this planet.

Oswald, the troubled loner. Oswald, the military man stationed overseas. (In Japan, I lived a short train ride away from one of the military bases that Oswald stayed at. There's even a picture I've seen of John Wayne visiting the troops at one of these stations, and who is that lurking in the background of the picture? Lee Harvey himself. That these two iconic Americans once occupied the same space and time is surely one of life's oddest ironies.) Oswald, the defector who was somehow able to move to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Oswald, who somehow was able to bring himself and a Russian wife back to the U.S. a few years later. Oswald, who almost certainly tried to assassinate an army general named Edwin Walker. Oswald, who, in the summer months leading up to the assassination, was witnessed associating with both pro and anti Castro groups in New Orleans, Louisiana. Oswald, who made appearances at F.BI. offices in America, and, possibly, Mexico. Oswald at the apex of everything and everyone. Oswald.

Three books are especially helpful in understanding the psyche of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the role that he did (or did not) play in Kennedy's death, and whether he was a tiny part of a larger puzzle or all the pieces in the puzzle himself.

Case Closed by Gerald Posner serves as a kind of rebuttal to the multi-layered conspiracy depicted in Stone's film. The rigorous nature of Posner's research is undeniable, and the book convincingly details the argument that Oswald, and Oswald alone, offed Kennedy. But even Posner, who wrote an equally convincing book on Martin Luther King Jr.'s alleged assassin James Earl Ray called Killing The Dream, falls victim to the loopholes that form the Kennedy assassination's own Bermuda Triangle. One tiny one: Posner states with certainty that Oswald did not even know David Ferrie, who was at the heart of the conspiracy portrayed in Stone's film (and played freakishly well by Joe Pesci.) And yet a FRONTLINE documentary crew showed Posner a picture that clearly shows Oswald as a part of a group of Air Cadets that Ferrie instructed. Does that prove anything? Not necessarily. But it shows the slippery slope of the assassination water slide -- you state one fact, only to have it refuted. You close one door, and another will open. If Oswald knew Ferrie, then there's certainly at least the possibility that Oswald took part in the anti-Castro training exercises Ferrie conducted. And if that possibility exists, well, what doesn't? I believe that Posner, too, perhaps unknowingly, fell victim to what all other writes of conspiracy books fall victim to -- beginning with a thesis, and marshalling the facts to fit that thesis, come hell or high water. And, like clockwork, a rebuttal book to Posner's book soon was released, called, you guessed it, Case Open.

Another fascinating book on Oswald was produced by one of America's greatest writers, period, Norman Mailer. At some point in time, I think, every real reader goes through a period where you devour Norman Mailer, and you're left either marvelling at his genius or embarrassed by his ego. I believe that he's a genius, and so I was overjoyed to hear that he was researching a book on Oswald, spending time in Russia, examining until-then classified KGB files on Oswald, and interviewing Oswald's widow, Marina. The resulting book, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery is an involving, masterful study of the man and his life. So many of the assassination books are written in that drab, bland, journalistic style that saps the life and vitality out of the English language like a mosquite sucking blood. And here was Mailer, one of the great chroniclers of the American psyche, livening the case with his muscular prose.

His verdict? Mailer, long a conspiracy-theorist himself, somewhat reluctantly comes to the conclusion that Oswald did, in fact, pull the trigger -- which doesn't rule out others being involved, no, but he uses Oswald as a fulcrum through which one can better examine what America was and where America is going. Mailer gives us a human Oswald, a real Oswald; he gives us his widow, as well, who was once convinced of Oswald's guilt but now believes that he was, at the very least, part of a conspiracy. And so it goes.

And then there's Lee, a long out-of-print memoir by Oswald's older brother, Robert, which I was lucky to find in the dusty stacks of my aforementioned hometown library. (I remember reading that book down in the cool of my basement, lost in its world.) It is a searching, painful and honest book, written only a few years after the assassination, by a sibling who comes to believe that his little brother did a terrible, terrible thing.

Thus:

"Scott, who do you believe was the mastermind of the assassination?"

I can still hear his voice. Mr Taylor, my Grade 13 History teacher. We sat together in his cramped office (or what he was using as an office), the two of us checking the progress of my Independent Study presentation on Kennedy's death. I had an answer to his question then, and I have an answer now. But it will remain mine.

But there is this, perhaps more important:

For many years I believed it was a grand conspiracy the likes of which the world had never seen before and would never see again. Then, as I left my teenage years behind, I became more pragmatic, more realistic, more mature. I realized that was Oswald, only Oswald, that young, lost, misguided soul now buried in a pauper's grave. But now, pushing thirty, I waver.

I've lived a bit. I've learned a bit. I've come back to my belief in conspiracy. Peter Pan may have believed in faeries, but I believe in patsies. I no longer necessarily see governments as benign agents of the people's will; I've seen too much that corresponds with and affirms a darker and more labryinth way of public life. I've aged.

There are some who say that those who believe in conspiracies are actually wishful thinkers: a belief in conspiracy implies a longing for a world and a history that has flow, and structure, and reason, and a + b equals c. There is nothing illogical or unplanned in such a world, they say. Young men with mail order rifles do not kill Camelot and alter history's ebb.

And then there is the other side, that those who subscribe to the lone nut theory are naive, not understanding that we live in a complex, venal world that strikes down those who upset and endanger the status quo. One need only look at history, at the word, to see evidence of conspiracy and all its heirs, they say.

I'm somewhere in between.

Some days, when I feel whipped left and right by the random whims of fate, I judge Oswald, condemn him, crucify him. Other days, Cambodia days, watching the methodical, corrupt nature of power and its denizens, reading histories of the C.I.A. and the K.G.B., I realize that the world is a much more complex place than I had imagined, and I cry out for Oswald's true conspirators to lay down their rifles for once and for all, to come forward, like men, and accept blame for the horror that they unleashed.

It's not every day, or week, or even month that I think about Kennedy's killing. There was a period of time, a younger time, when it mattered to me very much. By figuring out the truth, I could figure out life. By examining his death, I could find patterns that were absent in my day-to-day life, which rarely offered anything so grand, so tragic, so alive, even in its dissection of death. Kennedy's assassination, and my perusal of it, represents a time when the world was new and oddly intriging and slowly, methodically being uncovered by me and me alone.

But then I'll hear something on the radio, a recent revelation that both Nixon and Johnson had speculated upon Castro's role in the assassination. Or I'll be wandering through a used bookshop here in Phnom Penh, and I randomly spot the same hardback copy of Mark Lane's Plausible Denial, a compelling account of a trial of Watergate conspirator E.Howard Hunt, who sued a magazine in the 1980's for implying that he was involved in Kennedy's death -- a lawsuit, by jury trial, which he lost, as the jurors believed that there was enough evidence to nail Hunt in a possible conspiracy to kill Kennedy. I hear that news, and I see that book, and I'm back. Back in that endless maze that haunts me still. A maze that led me out of the fiction I usually read and into a larger, more complicated world, a world I am still in the midst of exploring.

And I think of a scrapbook started by a young, grief-stricken teenager in Fort Erie, Ontario over four decades ago, mourning the president of a country not his own. Why would a young Canadian, by way of England, mourn so strongly, strong enough to keep a scrapbook? (That's I would ask, as a teenage boy, about my father, not understanding, not yet, that parents once had and still have the same emotions, the same potential for empathy and curiosity, as us other mortals.) Something passed from the future father to his unborn son, neither knowing the doors it would open twenty-eight years later, the worlds it would unleash, the journey it would begin.

TANGLED UP IN ORANGES AND PISS, or THE CYCLE WILL BEGIN

I'll come back to the boy pissing into oncoming traffic in a moment. I feel that he is important, and I feel that his counterpart, elder and elite, similarly lost, but driven, is equally important.

First:

I don't claim to know jackshit about poverty (though it sometimes may seem like I claim to -- the dangers of blogging, I suppose), but I know what I do know what it's not: generic. A slogan. Part of a goal on a t-shirt two sizes too big.

Having just seen Michael Douglas on CNN proclaiming how important it is to end poverty and hunger by 2015, I'm a little bit, well, confused. I'm not against Douglas or Angelina Jolie or anybody else who does what they can to raise awareness for a worthy cause; if anything, I applaud them. They are stepping outside of themselves and opening themselves up to any and every blowhard with a forum. (Like, um, me.)

The thing is, it's insidious, poverty is. Almost benign. Yet somehow still devious and deceptive in its banal, everyday simplicity. Cambodia was recently ranked the 10th worst country in the world to live in for mothers and children, and I believe it. Henry Kramm, an American journalist steeped in Southeast Asia, wrote a concise, book on this country that I highly recommend called Cambodia: Notes from a Stricken Land. His ultimate summation? "Cambodia is a basketcase."

No dissenting opinion from these quarters. Things are so sometimes so comically inept here to feel as if they were merely the byproduct of maliciousness; things are too blatantly, blindly disorganized and chaotic, lethargic and inept. A 'basketcase' seems to sum up the country perfectly.

And yet.

That's the problem.

That phrase. That wittiness. That 'summing up'. That band on the stage. That roar from the crowd. That banner on the wall. That goal and that pledge and that deadline.

I don't know. I simply feel such, what's the word, disconnect between what the world and the media focuses on, and the ridiculously commonplace reality of the real issues. A month ago, it seems like, for many people in the West, 'poverty' meant going to a rock concert. There is, of course, something so wonderful in that unity of intent, and something else so wretchedly inappropriate, although what exactly that 'something else' is what I'm struggling to define.

Take today.

I saw a little girl, shirtless and shoeless, walking merrily along the hot pavement as he helped her mother push their garbage cart through the early morning streets. (They were collecting plastic bottles, cans, whatever.) The girl looked happy. I thought: She doesn't know she's poor, and she doesn't know her life is absolutely fucked. I know it, but she doesn't. But then I thought: Who the hell am I to think her life is screwed? After all, she looked happier than I normally do. She has a purpose. She has a mother who loves her. It's not my call to pronoune her happiness or sadness or trajectory in life.

And yet.

One of the girls who regularly begs in front of Lucky Supermarket -- now, suddenly, a teenager, and now, suddenly, pregnant. Still begging.

The cycle continues.

And later:

The motley crew of four or five young boys chasing after me as I hurried down the street with my bag of freshly bought oranges. I waved my hand, wooing them away. They weren't buying it; they could see the oranges' round outline through the white plastic bag. But I was adamant. These were my oranges, goddamnit.

But then, for nor reason, I relented. Reached into the bag. Plucked out a couple of oranges and tossed them to the boys. A regular Mother Teresa, I am. I mean, what. I can't spare two freakin' oranges for some street kids? And what, I'm going to tell them I cannot give you a single orange, because if I do, that will only endorse and thereby perpetuate the dependency you already an unwilling victim of? Fuck no -- at a certain point, you give away the oranges. Not every day, no, and not all the time, no, but there comes a time, like it or not, when the oranges go AWOL. It solves nothing, neither my western guilt nor their impoverished lives, but what the hell.

The cycle continues.

On that same corner, earlier today, the boy. (Remember him? The pissing one, from the top of the post?) I saw him as I rode on the back of a moto as we approached the traffic light, the moto watching the signal (I hoped), me noticing a four or five year old boy, pants around his ankles, nonchalantly pissing on the street, his spray lazily baptizing the blackened pavement. (Can one pee nochalantly? I think one can.)

At that moment, I felt like ringing Bob Geldof. I wanted to get him on the line and blurt: "You should not have had Paul McCartney open LIVE 8 by singing 'Seargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. You should have had this little boy, the one I just saw, the one receding into the distance of my moto's rearview mirror. You should have had this boy up on stage, knees around his ankles, pissing into the crowd. Not close enough to actually have the urine land on anybody, no, but close enough so that they could see and smell and trace the fall of its dribbling arc. That is what you needed." And I would have hung up, and felt like an ass, and wondered who the hell I think I am.

A childish plea, I know that. A nonsensical gesture -- I realize that, too.

It's just that, if the nature of some of these posts somehow inevitably find themselves touching on poverty, it's because it's something that inevitably sometimes touches on me in my daily life. (Or pisses on me, as the case may be.) There's good intentions and UN plans and rocks bands singing cool tunes, and there's a little boy who has nowhere to piss, so he chooses the street, and no one bats any eye. They keep on driving. How to reconcile these two sets of realities remains divided in my mind.

I would feel hopeless, but I sense and I believe in the power of belief. In possibility. In hope. Because right now, all through Phnom Penh, there are women being trafficked and little kids begging and mothers slowly, anonymously fading away, but there is also this: young men and young women studying English, studying business, learning computers. They are optimistic and in motion. They are staying up late and asking questions and wondering just when, exactly when, the corruption will end. And even if that optimism of mine is misguided, amplifying the numbers, then there is at least one. One person. Sick of their society's ills. Lost, but looking for the path. Willing to take their time, to study, to immerse themselves in a political and economic structure only now developing. In time -- ten, twenty, thirty years hence -- that person will emerge, fully formed, agile and focused. He has not heard of Bob Geldof, or the UN, or Scott Spencer, or you. He has been too busy for that. He will not save the country, no, but he will have found the courage to, by and large, here and there, save himself. He will have saved himself.

And a new cycle will have begun.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

I shouldn't be here. I should be back at home, in Canada, in a shack, writing books. Or no. Better yet. I should be in Canada, in a shack, writing books, while working to solve the world's problems with a super-secret, super-talented group of young, idealistic go-getters. That way I can create my own imaginary worlds and still participate in what we like to call the real world. Or wait. Scratch that. We all know that life is short and, death, as the saying goes, is so damn long, so it then makes much more sense to live life, enjoy life, conquer life. Better to be a surfer riding the waves off of some secluded beach in Hawaii. Open air always. Blue skies constantly. The sound of the tide and the rise of the moon. Nightly. Sweet. But still. Even hedonism has its limit. Better to be a monk. Alone. Grouped, yes, but alone. Contemplating contemplative stuff. Learning ancient, arcane languages. Chanting whatever it is that monks chant. Recognizing that life is an illusion, attachment a curse, detachment the key. Oh, but wait. Stillness breeds contempt, for oneself and for others. A nomad's life is the life for me. Wandering distant lands, living with the locals for a limited span of time, no more than a week, a month at most. Just long enough to grasp who they are and what what they want. Then I move. To the next country, the next province, the next town. It's just, nomads get tired, moving so much. Better to veg, come to think of it. I'll go back to my hometown, buy a hardware store, invest in stocks. Chill out on the weekends. Crash out in front of the tube. Get one of them plasma TVs everybody's talking about. Learn the rules of football, pick a favorite team, both NFL and CFL, because people tell me Canadian football's better. Call in to work every hour or so, not to nag, just to check things out. Bone up on hardware knowledge. Get a drill to drill stuff with. But, I don't know. What I'd drill, I mean. You can only drill so much, and besides, the store stays still. You have to be there, doing store stuff. There's no mobility. So a salesman's life would be ideal, come to think of it. Like a nomad, only plusher. I've always liked hotels. Beds freshly made, maids freshly bed. A mint on the pillow. Shampoo in the shower. Different cities, different rooms. The thing is, though. Continuity would be absent. All those room keys. All those swimming pools. The water would be nice, but water can be found almost anywhere. Better to seek out a stream, bordering rocks, overlooking a valley. I would have a place to sit and a place to swim and a place to, I don't know, graze. And yet. Nothing to read. I could compose a book in my head, word by word, line by line, and leave it for me and me alone to read and write. Not a confederacy of dunces, no, but at least a dictatorship, with myself as the only subject. I could read and write my way into myself. Lacking pen or paper, screen or keyboard, the going would get tough, but you know what they say in those circumstances. The tough get golden. The arches, I mean. I'd miss cilivization and food. Working at McDonald's would not be all that bad, all things considered. Discounts on the Big Macs. Free newspapers to read. A chocolate sundae now and then. I could get into that. A sleeping bag, of course. Easy to slip in to, they are. As long as it's long and soft, I could slip inside, at night, under the stars. Forget the franchise. Just me and the almighty, up above. Nobody to bother me. Maybe the occasional car or truck. Perhaps the odd cottage or shack in the distance. I'd be able to hear music coming from that shack, soft and melodic, and the smell of freshly baked cookies would drift through the night air, keeping me up. In the attic, I mean. There'd be enough space up there. Surrounded by boxes and books. Insulated in the way that attics are. Until, that is, I hear that voice calling me from down in the kitchen, the ageless, official one that says: "You shouldn't be here." To which I'd answer, with something approaching an epiphany, lowercase: "Hey, buddy, whether I should be here or not is irrelevant, because here is where I'm at. End of story."