- Mentally disabled people, the kind we used to call 'retarded', aren't really the mentally challenged ones in our society at all. They're the normal ones, and we're the ones that are messed up. It would explain a lot. A lot of autistic kids are operating on a significantly higher plane of intellectual existence than the rest of us, right? Maybe they've reached a level of intellectual development that is optimal for homo sapiens; by comparison, we're still at the infant stage, clawing at the crib.
- We're all actually supposed to be left-handed. All of you righties may be in the majority, true, but so what? The majority rules, yes, but that just means that there are more of you guys, that's all. (Us lefties are more agile and crafty, however.)
- When we sleep, that's life. What we think of as the living part -- waking up, eating breakfast, going to school, watching Ricki Lake, fighting with our landlord -- is actually the dreaming part.
- Speaking of dreams, I suspect that we're all part of someone else's dream. I'm serious. Me, you, the guy who takes your subway token, the biology prof who smells like smoke -- we're all illusionary images, nothing more than the manifestations of the mental wanderings of a sleeping god (or what we could call god; her husband would dub it 'Ethel') who is suffering from a bad case of indigestion.
- There is a finite end point to the universe. Nothing can ever just begin, and nothing can ever not end, can it? (Except for Ulysses; that book is huge, and there's no end in sight for that baby, and I ain't cracking its spine any time soon.) Accordingly, I believe that there is, somewhere in the shadows of space, light years from here, an actual, honest to God finish line, kind of like the shimmering blue energy stream known as the Great Barrier that the Enterprise discovered in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, except that that was located at the centre of the universe, not the end. Beyond this universal, galactic finish line is, well, hopefully, whatever created us all. Or whatever's left of it, anyways. (Because I also suspect that, if God did exist, He died a long time ago. Which would explain a lot of things. Or maybe He's just resting. And who knows? He may end up even looking a little bit like George Burns. Or Morgan Freeman.)
- Jerry Springer, despite the moron-level intensity and insanity of his show, is actually really, really smart. (He's the former mayor of Cincinatti. And any city that can even inspire such an inspired show as WKRP in Cincinatti could surely produce somebody like Springer.)
- I suspect I haven't spelled 'Cincinatti' correctly.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger is also really, really, really smart, and, if they change the Constitution, will one day become President of the United States.
- Pauly Shore is really, really, really not that smart.
- Cambodia will have another coup, sometime within the next ten years. I won't be here to witness it. (But I may take part in it.)
- Spike Lee will someday make his Jackie Robinson movie. I read the script for it a few years ago, and it's really good, and the trials, tribulations and triumphs of that man's life need to be told on the silver screen again, because a) it would make a great, great movie and b) I don't think modern America truly understands the pivotal role he played in moving that country forward. No man before or since had to go through what he went through, and the country progressed because of it. (And he played for the Montreal Royals before the Brooklyn Dodgers, and it would be cool to see 1940's Quebec on the big screen.)
- The really, really true account of J.F.K.'s assassination will never be written.
- The really, really true account of R.F.K's assassination will be written someday.
- Canada will have a minority/woman prime minister within the next twenty-five years. (We already had a female one. For awhile, anyways. A short while.)
- Everything we think we know to be true in this year of 2005, ranging from science to medicine to computers to philosophy, will, in a hundred years time, be viewed as hopelessly archaic,
naive and ill-conceived. (Not to mention laughably primitive.)
- Stallone will make Rocky VI.
- That feeling we get when our feet 'fall asleep' will be bottled and available for use as mace.
- Stallone will not make Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot II.
- 99% of UFO sightings are complete bogus. It's that other 1% that intrigues me...
- Most people, down deep, are actually pretty good. (It's poverty that makes morality irrelevant.)
- Most people, down deep, don't really care that Dan Rather is retiring.
- Most people, down deep, haven't really missed this past hockey season. (Though they have missed Don Cherry.)
- Most theories and predictions, including mine, wither and crumble when faced by the strange and invincible quirks of life.
What's your theory? Or prediction?
Monday, March 07, 2005
THE DWARF IN THE WHEELCHAIR
Let's imagine, just for imagination's sake, that you don't get what you want. Your dreams die a long and lingering, sad and lonely death. You do not become rich, famous, or even self-sufficient. Your name does not appear in lights, even Christmas ones. You will always be in debt. You will die unloved. Hungry. Alone.
Does it matter?
I ask because I went for a run last night along the river, and I ran into a little lady that I hadn't seen in a long, long time, because I usually run in the mornings, when she's not there.
When I say 'little lady', I mean that, um, literally. She's a dwarf, little person, midget. (Not sure which is currently the proper term.) She is in a wheelchair, and she has no legs.
I may have even written about her before on this blog; I can't remember. She seems to me to be this weird kind of Cambodian omen (or prophet) that pops up in my life from time to time to remind me of...
Well, I'm not sure.
Is it condescending to pity another person like this? I suppose it is; she doesn't ask for pity. She just wants what we all want -- something to eat, a person to talk to.
I ran over and told her that I had no money, and she smiled, and I shook her hand, and oh aren't I in touch with the wretchedly poor of Cambodia. I go back to my nice apartment; she stays down by the river, wheeling her wheelchair, asking for money.
Most poor people in Phnom Penh are left behind and out of the loop, but to be a dwarf with no legs in modern day Cambodia -- karmically, is there anything lower than that?
Oh, but who says it's 'low'? This is my western-bred mind speaking, the one that says you have to be all that you can be, utilize all of your abilities, strive for the unreacheable or die trying. This is the mentality that says good enough is not enough, that you have to be the best, the one, the man. You have to succeed where others fail. You have to have the house and the car and the wife and the lifetime membership to a golf course whose name you always forget but whose valet service parking is very, very cool.
But what if you can't? What if you've been behind the eight ball since you were a fetus? What if you're a homeless, friendless, legless dwarf in Cambodia?
Is it bourgeoise to even ask these questions? Maybe so, but I have to ask them, knowing that there is no answer, knowing that having even the time and luxury to ask, to consider, to ponder these ideas is, in itself, a luxury that most of the world can't partake of, or even understand. I have to try to believe that her life has a meaning, that existence her in and of itself is enough. She will live and breathe and die alone, crippled, and there is no justice, no fairness, no redemption in that situation, no, but there is humanity, and that has to be enough. It must be, or else what we consider human has to be redefined.
I think that our lives must be made to have meanings and purposes, regardless of our lots. (A view I've picked up on from Viktor Frankl, and his wonderful notions of man's search for meaning.) That woman by the river -- this is the only life she's got, and this is how she's spending it. It's not fair, and it's easy, but it is what it is. She does not worry about its meaning; she is what she is, and she is trying to live, and that is that is that is that. End of story.
Is it a sign, a signal from up above that, every so often, our paths intersect? (A silly, naive notion, true, but I worry that if I don't make sense of her, or at the very least attempt to, then something valuable will have been knowingly, eagerly cast aside or lost, something intangible inside of me, some barometer of morality that will be cracked forever, to the extent that thirty, forty years from now, I will at some point look back on my time here, in this godforsaken place, and it will all be a hazy, heat-stricken fugue, a memory of a memory, and what I learned, or sought to learn, will have been neglected, forgotten, eagerly disregarded without a second thought, in favor of well-cut lawns and soft-touch carpets and flat-screen TVs, flawless to a fault.)
We may not get what we want. Life may (or may already) have socked us in the gut like that kid in Montreal did to Houdini all those years ago, an unexpected sucker punch that stole what little time he had left. We may end up sick and alone an deceprit, and she reminds me of this fact, and I have to make sense of that. I don't know why, but I just do. We look to art, to movies, to books, for our queries and consolations, but rarely to life itself, and maybe that is what I'm doing, allowing life in.
Maybe, just maybe, she's been placed in my life to remind me to chill out, lay off the ambitions, stop worrying about next year, and the year after next. She worries about today, and the day after next. She goes to whatever she calls home and somehow makes it from her wheelchair to her bad.
Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe I've been placed in her life for some unknown reason that will remain unknown to me (at least in this life). Maybe me meeting her and her meeting me is supposed to teach both of us a lesson. (Although I believe, deep down, it's up to me and me alone to make sense of it all; no answers will drop from the sky and no evangelical
e-mails will arrive in my inbox, explanations attached.)
I'm not sure what she's learning from me, if anything.
But I'm learning from her.
Does it matter?
I ask because I went for a run last night along the river, and I ran into a little lady that I hadn't seen in a long, long time, because I usually run in the mornings, when she's not there.
When I say 'little lady', I mean that, um, literally. She's a dwarf, little person, midget. (Not sure which is currently the proper term.) She is in a wheelchair, and she has no legs.
I may have even written about her before on this blog; I can't remember. She seems to me to be this weird kind of Cambodian omen (or prophet) that pops up in my life from time to time to remind me of...
Well, I'm not sure.
Is it condescending to pity another person like this? I suppose it is; she doesn't ask for pity. She just wants what we all want -- something to eat, a person to talk to.
I ran over and told her that I had no money, and she smiled, and I shook her hand, and oh aren't I in touch with the wretchedly poor of Cambodia. I go back to my nice apartment; she stays down by the river, wheeling her wheelchair, asking for money.
Most poor people in Phnom Penh are left behind and out of the loop, but to be a dwarf with no legs in modern day Cambodia -- karmically, is there anything lower than that?
Oh, but who says it's 'low'? This is my western-bred mind speaking, the one that says you have to be all that you can be, utilize all of your abilities, strive for the unreacheable or die trying. This is the mentality that says good enough is not enough, that you have to be the best, the one, the man. You have to succeed where others fail. You have to have the house and the car and the wife and the lifetime membership to a golf course whose name you always forget but whose valet service parking is very, very cool.
But what if you can't? What if you've been behind the eight ball since you were a fetus? What if you're a homeless, friendless, legless dwarf in Cambodia?
Is it bourgeoise to even ask these questions? Maybe so, but I have to ask them, knowing that there is no answer, knowing that having even the time and luxury to ask, to consider, to ponder these ideas is, in itself, a luxury that most of the world can't partake of, or even understand. I have to try to believe that her life has a meaning, that existence her in and of itself is enough. She will live and breathe and die alone, crippled, and there is no justice, no fairness, no redemption in that situation, no, but there is humanity, and that has to be enough. It must be, or else what we consider human has to be redefined.
I think that our lives must be made to have meanings and purposes, regardless of our lots. (A view I've picked up on from Viktor Frankl, and his wonderful notions of man's search for meaning.) That woman by the river -- this is the only life she's got, and this is how she's spending it. It's not fair, and it's easy, but it is what it is. She does not worry about its meaning; she is what she is, and she is trying to live, and that is that is that is that. End of story.
Is it a sign, a signal from up above that, every so often, our paths intersect? (A silly, naive notion, true, but I worry that if I don't make sense of her, or at the very least attempt to, then something valuable will have been knowingly, eagerly cast aside or lost, something intangible inside of me, some barometer of morality that will be cracked forever, to the extent that thirty, forty years from now, I will at some point look back on my time here, in this godforsaken place, and it will all be a hazy, heat-stricken fugue, a memory of a memory, and what I learned, or sought to learn, will have been neglected, forgotten, eagerly disregarded without a second thought, in favor of well-cut lawns and soft-touch carpets and flat-screen TVs, flawless to a fault.)
We may not get what we want. Life may (or may already) have socked us in the gut like that kid in Montreal did to Houdini all those years ago, an unexpected sucker punch that stole what little time he had left. We may end up sick and alone an deceprit, and she reminds me of this fact, and I have to make sense of that. I don't know why, but I just do. We look to art, to movies, to books, for our queries and consolations, but rarely to life itself, and maybe that is what I'm doing, allowing life in.
Maybe, just maybe, she's been placed in my life to remind me to chill out, lay off the ambitions, stop worrying about next year, and the year after next. She worries about today, and the day after next. She goes to whatever she calls home and somehow makes it from her wheelchair to her bad.
Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe I've been placed in her life for some unknown reason that will remain unknown to me (at least in this life). Maybe me meeting her and her meeting me is supposed to teach both of us a lesson. (Although I believe, deep down, it's up to me and me alone to make sense of it all; no answers will drop from the sky and no evangelical
e-mails will arrive in my inbox, explanations attached.)
I'm not sure what she's learning from me, if anything.
But I'm learning from her.
THE LEARNING CURVE
At what point do you put down your pens, paper, textbooks and glasses and say: That's it, I'm finsihed, I'm done.
With learning, that is.
Growing up, you're constantly, almost relentlessly, learning -- how to go to the bathroom, how to make your bed (still haven't mastered that one yet), how to count to ten, how to tie your shoes, how to shift from printing to writing, how to drive a car, how to write a test, how to write an essay, how to do a job interview, etc., etc., etc.
Then come the certificates. The licenses. The pretty little pieces of paper that certify that you, who were previously an incompetent moron, are now, officially, a learned person. You can do something; you have abilities. (That old, politically incorrect childhood taunt, "What are you, a retard?", esssentially means: "Don't you know how to do this plain and simple thing? Don't you have even a little bit of abillity?)
Once you're out of school (high school or college or university), there's the tendency to think: That's it. I'm out of here. Leave me the La-Z-Boy and the remote and let the sloth begin. I know all that I need to know to function in society, so leave me alone. Conan's on in five minutes.
The surprising thing about living abroad is realizing -- slowly, then rapidly, then daily, then minute-by-minute -- how much you don't know.
I landed in Japan's Osaka airport to a bunch of chirpy young Japanese airline employees trying to tell me, in Japanese, that my luggage had been damaged, that it wouldn't be with me on my flight to Tokyo. I had no idea what to do, or how to do it, and no Japanese language ability to back me up. Welcome to the real world, Spence.
I received my first phone bill in Tokyo and realized: Damn, I don't know how to pay it.
"How do I pay my phone bill?" I asked my manager.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean, what do I do? How do I do it?"
She rolled her eyes.
"You go to the convenience store, stupid!"
(Her name was Mikako, this manager, and her dream was to go work with whales out in California as a marine biologist. Wonder where she is now.)
The convenience store? It's true. All your bills can be paid at the convenience store. My phone was always getting cut off because I never paid the bill, and when I finally did pay the bill, at the convenience store, it was instantly reconnected. How was this possible?
The point is, when you live abroad, all the little things are not so little after all. How to buy a bus ticket, how to greet someone, how to not royally piss somebody off -- these are the things that define the way we live, and we have to learn how to get them right.
You're always learning, in other words. That's important, I think, to look at something new, different, strange and incomprehensible -- and then slowly, piece by piece, try to force it to make sense, at least to you.
Nobody's watching. Nobody will be there to applaud you. There will be no pats on the back, imaginary or otherwise. No framed certificates.
But you will have learned something you didn't know yesterday. And that's become more important to me as time goes on, now that I realize the limits that yesterday does, indeed, have, and the promise that tomorrow can offer, if you're willing to swallow your pride and tackle something new.
Or at least try, before reverting back to the remote.
With learning, that is.
Growing up, you're constantly, almost relentlessly, learning -- how to go to the bathroom, how to make your bed (still haven't mastered that one yet), how to count to ten, how to tie your shoes, how to shift from printing to writing, how to drive a car, how to write a test, how to write an essay, how to do a job interview, etc., etc., etc.
Then come the certificates. The licenses. The pretty little pieces of paper that certify that you, who were previously an incompetent moron, are now, officially, a learned person. You can do something; you have abilities. (That old, politically incorrect childhood taunt, "What are you, a retard?", esssentially means: "Don't you know how to do this plain and simple thing? Don't you have even a little bit of abillity?)
Once you're out of school (high school or college or university), there's the tendency to think: That's it. I'm out of here. Leave me the La-Z-Boy and the remote and let the sloth begin. I know all that I need to know to function in society, so leave me alone. Conan's on in five minutes.
The surprising thing about living abroad is realizing -- slowly, then rapidly, then daily, then minute-by-minute -- how much you don't know.
I landed in Japan's Osaka airport to a bunch of chirpy young Japanese airline employees trying to tell me, in Japanese, that my luggage had been damaged, that it wouldn't be with me on my flight to Tokyo. I had no idea what to do, or how to do it, and no Japanese language ability to back me up. Welcome to the real world, Spence.
I received my first phone bill in Tokyo and realized: Damn, I don't know how to pay it.
"How do I pay my phone bill?" I asked my manager.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean, what do I do? How do I do it?"
She rolled her eyes.
"You go to the convenience store, stupid!"
(Her name was Mikako, this manager, and her dream was to go work with whales out in California as a marine biologist. Wonder where she is now.)
The convenience store? It's true. All your bills can be paid at the convenience store. My phone was always getting cut off because I never paid the bill, and when I finally did pay the bill, at the convenience store, it was instantly reconnected. How was this possible?
The point is, when you live abroad, all the little things are not so little after all. How to buy a bus ticket, how to greet someone, how to not royally piss somebody off -- these are the things that define the way we live, and we have to learn how to get them right.
You're always learning, in other words. That's important, I think, to look at something new, different, strange and incomprehensible -- and then slowly, piece by piece, try to force it to make sense, at least to you.
Nobody's watching. Nobody will be there to applaud you. There will be no pats on the back, imaginary or otherwise. No framed certificates.
But you will have learned something you didn't know yesterday. And that's become more important to me as time goes on, now that I realize the limits that yesterday does, indeed, have, and the promise that tomorrow can offer, if you're willing to swallow your pride and tackle something new.
Or at least try, before reverting back to the remote.
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