"Why do people in the West have children?"
I've heard a lot of questions in a lot of classrooms over the years, ranging from the defining characteristics of Canadian death metal to what all that blue stuff is on the map, but this was one was strange simply because it didn't feel that strange to me. So its' strangeness was its' lack of strangeness. (Which is kind of strange.)
I had been discussing the differences between Westerners and Easterners, Canadians and Cambodians, white people and Asian people. The student was a Korean staff member in his mid-twenties; he'd been away from home, from Korea, for a few years. We were talking about the reverence for elders in Asia, the fountain of wisdom that they represent, the necessity of their prescence to the well-being of the entire family. In the East, in the Orient, for the most part, it's not uncommon to have three (or four) generations of families living together, fighting together, loving together, growing old together. In the west, we want to leave our home at eighteen and never look back, unless it's to find out the necessary contact information needed to ship our parents off to the old-folks home. ("Such a nice facility," we say. "Just look at the walls!")
So, yes: Why would we have children? Children are there to nourish and grow so they can become part of the nucleus of the family, so that they will take care of us when we can no longer take care of ourselves.
A stupid question, actually, but it's usually the stupid questions that have the most truth, and are the hardest, ultimately, to answer.
I finally spouted out the usual platitudes: that we have children for the same reasons as all humans do -- to see extensions of ourselves, to continue our line, to provide companionship and love.
And yet, my answer didn't satisfy me.
It felt pat. Contrived. Somewhat robotic.
People in the East sometimes see those of us from the West as a little, well, decadent, might be the word. We travel the world, get divorces, do what WE want, when we want it, screw everybody else, this lane is mine, mothefucker. Japan and Cambodia and the Philippines are all group countries; the group is the boss. The individual is subordinate to the greater needs of everyone else. Where I'm from, well, it just...ain't...like that.
Again, I tried to say something else, something unique. But the class was ending, and the late-afternoon monsoon rain was getting stronger, and I had to get home.
"Why do people in the West have children?"
A simple question. Are we that remote and alien, us Westerners? Do we seem that callous?
I thought about it as I walked home, through the rain, the sky darkening from a gentle charcoal grey to a firmer shade of black.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
AN (ALMOST!) REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
A curious emotion I had, this morning in the library at school. Curious because I couldn't quite place what I was feeling, or trying to feel, or attempting to remember. Curious because it seemed like the smell of old books was trying to tell me something, was leading me to some kind of remembrance. Smells take us back, somehow, and the scent of old pages, new pages, broken spines and brittle pages hinted at something...
Elusive.
I stood there, between the stacks, thinking of all the libraries I've known -- in St.Catharines, where I grew up; in Toronto, where I studied; in Japan, where I taught; in Cambodia, where I taught some more; in Baguio, where I learned, only recently, that you cannot check out books from the library -- you can only read them there, in the building. I stood there, trying to will that smell to lead to the memory it was attempting to unearth.
Only, nothing.
I looked around the library. It was empty, the only sounds the muted laughter of Korean students outside, in the sun. I wanted to stay, to linger, to search for something that could not be found.
Elusive.
I stood there, between the stacks, thinking of all the libraries I've known -- in St.Catharines, where I grew up; in Toronto, where I studied; in Japan, where I taught; in Cambodia, where I taught some more; in Baguio, where I learned, only recently, that you cannot check out books from the library -- you can only read them there, in the building. I stood there, trying to will that smell to lead to the memory it was attempting to unearth.
Only, nothing.
I looked around the library. It was empty, the only sounds the muted laughter of Korean students outside, in the sun. I wanted to stay, to linger, to search for something that could not be found.
Monday, May 22, 2006
SCHOOL DAYS
On the weekend my old alma mater, Laura Secord Secondary School, held its 40th anniversary celebration. I was there for the last celebration, in 1989, when I was fourteen years old. Or rather, I should say that I was there at the school, if not the event. A friend of the family (and fellow alumni) attended the weekend festivities back then; for him, meeting all of his old teachers was an exercise in disbelief and nostalgia. For me, at the time, it would have been redunant, because everything was all new for me --the place and the staff, the faculty and the hallways. Everything still gleamed.
So it always is, I guess. As adults, we move on, then forward, while our adolescent brethren continue to walk the same halls we once did, chastised by the same teachers, pulling the same stupid pranks. We move away, but the structure remains inert. Time stands still in schools, I think; no matter how much technology changes, a thirteen year old is still a thirteen year old.
And sometimes I wonder if schools are, if not haunted, at least possessed by the remnants of those who go away. The hallways and bathrooms and classrooms and cafeteria bear silent witness to generations of goofy, awkward kids and their burning, intense dreams. Surely some emotional residue is left behind in those walls. There must be a trace of who we were, an inkling of psychic energy somehow locked between the lockers.
When I was at Laura Secord, I use to carve or write my initials anywhere I could. I'm not sure why. Perhaps to show that I was once there, in that place, at that time. I imagined returning to the school years later, looking for those same marks, a validation of who I was and where I went.
Maybe some other time. Last weekend's reunion has come and gone. The school still stands there, in that place. (Perhaps my shorthand signatures do, too -- in the library carrels, the cafeteria tables, the bathroom walls, above the urinals.) I'm over here, in this place.
What would I have seen, had I gone back? What would I have felt? Could my fifteen-year old self, or a disembodied facsimile thereof, still be roaming those halls, carting his monstrous, messy gym-bag around like a dead carcass?
I suppose so.
I guess, for now, I won't know.
But that's fine. That's okay. Secord is there, in that place, and I am here, in this place. It's still standing, somehow, after all these years.
So am I.
For now, I think that's enough.
So it always is, I guess. As adults, we move on, then forward, while our adolescent brethren continue to walk the same halls we once did, chastised by the same teachers, pulling the same stupid pranks. We move away, but the structure remains inert. Time stands still in schools, I think; no matter how much technology changes, a thirteen year old is still a thirteen year old.
And sometimes I wonder if schools are, if not haunted, at least possessed by the remnants of those who go away. The hallways and bathrooms and classrooms and cafeteria bear silent witness to generations of goofy, awkward kids and their burning, intense dreams. Surely some emotional residue is left behind in those walls. There must be a trace of who we were, an inkling of psychic energy somehow locked between the lockers.
When I was at Laura Secord, I use to carve or write my initials anywhere I could. I'm not sure why. Perhaps to show that I was once there, in that place, at that time. I imagined returning to the school years later, looking for those same marks, a validation of who I was and where I went.
Maybe some other time. Last weekend's reunion has come and gone. The school still stands there, in that place. (Perhaps my shorthand signatures do, too -- in the library carrels, the cafeteria tables, the bathroom walls, above the urinals.) I'm over here, in this place.
What would I have seen, had I gone back? What would I have felt? Could my fifteen-year old self, or a disembodied facsimile thereof, still be roaming those halls, carting his monstrous, messy gym-bag around like a dead carcass?
I suppose so.
I guess, for now, I won't know.
But that's fine. That's okay. Secord is there, in that place, and I am here, in this place. It's still standing, somehow, after all these years.
So am I.
For now, I think that's enough.
Monday, May 15, 2006
A FRAGILE SORT OF VICTORY
Last night, lying in bed, snug as a bug in a rug, I heard the gentle evening wind outside of the window, and for the briefest of moments I believed I was in a tent.
I'm not sure why. It's been awhile since I've been in a tent, outdoors, camping. But when you are in a tent the wind is a close and fragile thing; it seems powerful, yes, ready and willing to tear the fabric of that artifical enclosure apart withs its invisible jaws, but it also seems rather distant. Almost alone. The sound of a wind on a tent is the sound of someone pleading to come in.
Last night's sound was similar. It is cool here now, the Philippines' rainy season beginning with a burst of rain and breeze, and the nights are damper than usual, with a wind that seems anxious to announce its presence.
I lay there, and listened to the wind, and closed my eyes, and for a moment I could not be sure where I was -- not with any certainty, in any event. I might have been in Ontario on a late September evening. I might have been in Japan in early November. In the dark, with your eyes closed, with the sound of the wind, time and distance become irrelevant, almost laughable. One can listen to the wind in the dark, listen to it aching to come in, and feel something close to guilt at ignoring its futile requests.
The wind must stay outside. Inside it is warm, if not hot, and the night is long, if not forever, and for the moment, if not eternity, the wind must be kept outside.
A fragile sort of victory, I suppose, this childish denial of the wind's demands. But it doesn't feel that way at night, when the day is over and the dreams are waiting.
I'm not sure why. It's been awhile since I've been in a tent, outdoors, camping. But when you are in a tent the wind is a close and fragile thing; it seems powerful, yes, ready and willing to tear the fabric of that artifical enclosure apart withs its invisible jaws, but it also seems rather distant. Almost alone. The sound of a wind on a tent is the sound of someone pleading to come in.
Last night's sound was similar. It is cool here now, the Philippines' rainy season beginning with a burst of rain and breeze, and the nights are damper than usual, with a wind that seems anxious to announce its presence.
I lay there, and listened to the wind, and closed my eyes, and for a moment I could not be sure where I was -- not with any certainty, in any event. I might have been in Ontario on a late September evening. I might have been in Japan in early November. In the dark, with your eyes closed, with the sound of the wind, time and distance become irrelevant, almost laughable. One can listen to the wind in the dark, listen to it aching to come in, and feel something close to guilt at ignoring its futile requests.
The wind must stay outside. Inside it is warm, if not hot, and the night is long, if not forever, and for the moment, if not eternity, the wind must be kept outside.
A fragile sort of victory, I suppose, this childish denial of the wind's demands. But it doesn't feel that way at night, when the day is over and the dreams are waiting.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
THEN AND NOW: FUDGSICLES AND MAD MAGAZINE AND WHAT A WORLD IT WOULD BE IF I COULD READ YOUR MIND, AND YOU, MINE
I'm always astonished at how often childhood memories will suddenly and strikingly flash in front of my eyes, out of my psyche and into my present.
Just yesterday I was walking along, bopping along, thinking of nothing at all, and then I remembered buying a chocolate-mint fudgesicle from the Becker's convenience store on Lake Street in St.Catharines when I was six, seven years old, and before I left the store I flipped through the pages of a Mad magazine that was eyeing me from the rack, and inside was a parody of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the memory was so vivid and clear, potent and improbable, refreshing and intense, that it seemed like not time had passed at all since that moment, long ago, and this moment, here and now. Icould taste the mint and the chocolate. I could see the interior of the store. Icould laugh, again, decades later, at Mort Drucker's renditions of Kirk and Spock and Bones. I could feel, wistfully so, the sunshine of my childhood, so commonplace then, so out-of-reach now. I was seven years old and thirty years old, at one and the same time.
Why did I think that thought at this time?
Who knows.
And then I wondered:
What would happen if all of our memories, and I do mean all, collectively, simultaneously rose to the surface of our psyches at one and the same time? I mean, what if I could see yours and you could see mine? What if we weren't limited to our own brains and minds and hearts and hopes? Could our consciousness even begin to withstand that onslaught of nostalgia and horror and half-remembered hopes?
And then, to further this unlikely scenario even more, what would happen if my memories overlapped with your memories? And not only you, but the guy next door, the old guy, the one who gurgles Scope Wintergreen mouthwash all day long? If I could see what he felt, know what he remembered, if I could view his memories like a Flicker slideshow, would it make me more empathetic to him, the world, ourselves, or less? My memories are always bittersweet and tinged with my own, emotional gloss; they take me back and force me down. But what if you felt mine, and I felt yours, and not only felt them, but understood them? What if the world was nothing more than one communal orgy of memory? Could we all handle it? Could the present withstand it? Would we become lost and abandoned in the senselessness of our past and our present? The memories happened then; they are returning now.
I don't understand it when it happens to me, but together, perhaps together, we could trace the arc of our lives and see where I intersect with You, and where They converge with Us. Memory would no longer be a private shame and a personal glory. It would belong to all of us, united, and braced with such strange, arcane and transcendent knowledge, we might, on some level, be able to understand each other just a little bit more.
Which might be enough.
And now I wonder: If I had not ate the Fudgsicle all those years ago, on that fine spring day, the sunlight dwindling towards dusk, and if I had not flipped through that Mad magazine, so tempting on the rack, would I be writing these words? Would you be reading them? Would it matter? That memory would be gone, and this post would be eradicated, and would I feel their absence somehow? Would I know, on some deep, hidden level, that something had been lost, something that would have connected this man to that boy, this writer to some invisible reader?
Memory is a mystery, and awareness an enigma.
Just yesterday I was walking along, bopping along, thinking of nothing at all, and then I remembered buying a chocolate-mint fudgesicle from the Becker's convenience store on Lake Street in St.Catharines when I was six, seven years old, and before I left the store I flipped through the pages of a Mad magazine that was eyeing me from the rack, and inside was a parody of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the memory was so vivid and clear, potent and improbable, refreshing and intense, that it seemed like not time had passed at all since that moment, long ago, and this moment, here and now. Icould taste the mint and the chocolate. I could see the interior of the store. Icould laugh, again, decades later, at Mort Drucker's renditions of Kirk and Spock and Bones. I could feel, wistfully so, the sunshine of my childhood, so commonplace then, so out-of-reach now. I was seven years old and thirty years old, at one and the same time.
Why did I think that thought at this time?
Who knows.
And then I wondered:
What would happen if all of our memories, and I do mean all, collectively, simultaneously rose to the surface of our psyches at one and the same time? I mean, what if I could see yours and you could see mine? What if we weren't limited to our own brains and minds and hearts and hopes? Could our consciousness even begin to withstand that onslaught of nostalgia and horror and half-remembered hopes?
And then, to further this unlikely scenario even more, what would happen if my memories overlapped with your memories? And not only you, but the guy next door, the old guy, the one who gurgles Scope Wintergreen mouthwash all day long? If I could see what he felt, know what he remembered, if I could view his memories like a Flicker slideshow, would it make me more empathetic to him, the world, ourselves, or less? My memories are always bittersweet and tinged with my own, emotional gloss; they take me back and force me down. But what if you felt mine, and I felt yours, and not only felt them, but understood them? What if the world was nothing more than one communal orgy of memory? Could we all handle it? Could the present withstand it? Would we become lost and abandoned in the senselessness of our past and our present? The memories happened then; they are returning now.
I don't understand it when it happens to me, but together, perhaps together, we could trace the arc of our lives and see where I intersect with You, and where They converge with Us. Memory would no longer be a private shame and a personal glory. It would belong to all of us, united, and braced with such strange, arcane and transcendent knowledge, we might, on some level, be able to understand each other just a little bit more.
Which might be enough.
And now I wonder: If I had not ate the Fudgsicle all those years ago, on that fine spring day, the sunlight dwindling towards dusk, and if I had not flipped through that Mad magazine, so tempting on the rack, would I be writing these words? Would you be reading them? Would it matter? That memory would be gone, and this post would be eradicated, and would I feel their absence somehow? Would I know, on some deep, hidden level, that something had been lost, something that would have connected this man to that boy, this writer to some invisible reader?
Memory is a mystery, and awareness an enigma.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
LIFE, VALIDATED or WHY I LIKE STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER BUT NOBODY ELSE DOES
What did everybody do when they weren't doing the strange and cool and funny and bizarre stuff, the stuff that shifted the story, the stuff that made things move?
That's what I wondered, when I was a kid, watching The Fall Guy and Three's Company and The Dark Crystal and Superman III. The shows on TV always showed you the exciting parts, the parts you needed to know to understand what, exactly, was going on. The movies existed on a level of pure dramatic or comedic tension; there was no boring, diluted middle ground.
But that, I realized, wasn't what life was all about. Life was all middle ground, as far as I could see. You got up and pissed and showered and ate, went to school, ignored the teachers as best as you good, partied at recess as best as you could, came home, watched TV, maybe did some homework, hit the sack. Period. End of story. Rise again, repeat again.
There was none of that shit in the movies or on the tube. Bo and Luke Duke were always getting into mischief; Marty McFly was always on the run, bopping through time, solving space-time paradoxes. Me? I was waiting in line at the cafeteria, hoping the burgers, drab as they were, hadn't been sold out.
I used to daydream a lot, and wish a lot, and hope that one day, some day, there would be a movie that featued all the cut-out parts. The real-life parts. I knew that it would be boring, and not much would happen, but that's what I wanted to see. All the mundane shit that I did, I wanted to see Luke Skywalker do. I wanted to see Darth Vader have to go for a piss, or Frank and Ponch from C*H*I*P*S get a flat tire, curse the ground, wait around for AAA to come bail them out.
All that time! That time that in life is always there, unavoidably so, but in movies is always gone, absent. Most of it so trivial; most of it ordinary. But because it was denied me, on the screen, inversely, or perhaps perversely, I wanted it. I wanted that silver screen to reflect my own life. It couldn't be, just couldn't, that only movies held the magic elixir of excitement and romance and intrigue. If it wasn't on the screen, in my mind, it wasn't valid. So that meant life, in a very real sense, wasn't valid.
I wanted to pay for my ticket and plunk my ass down in a chair and slurp my Coke and wait for the tediousness of everyday life to take hold. I would have watched, happily, Kirk and Spock just shoot the shit for hours on end. It's probably why I like Star Trek V and nobody else does (except for Canadian sci-fi writer Robert Sawyer.) We get to see Kirk and Spock and Bones camping. We get to see them arguing about nothing at all. We get to see them sing, or attempt to sing, old songs. Badly. We get to see life, the small parts of life, played out.
And by seeing them in that fictional form, on the big screen, life itself, or maybe just my life, became validated.
Which, depending on how you look at it, is kind of a cool thing or a sad thing.
That's what I wondered, when I was a kid, watching The Fall Guy and Three's Company and The Dark Crystal and Superman III. The shows on TV always showed you the exciting parts, the parts you needed to know to understand what, exactly, was going on. The movies existed on a level of pure dramatic or comedic tension; there was no boring, diluted middle ground.
But that, I realized, wasn't what life was all about. Life was all middle ground, as far as I could see. You got up and pissed and showered and ate, went to school, ignored the teachers as best as you good, partied at recess as best as you could, came home, watched TV, maybe did some homework, hit the sack. Period. End of story. Rise again, repeat again.
There was none of that shit in the movies or on the tube. Bo and Luke Duke were always getting into mischief; Marty McFly was always on the run, bopping through time, solving space-time paradoxes. Me? I was waiting in line at the cafeteria, hoping the burgers, drab as they were, hadn't been sold out.
I used to daydream a lot, and wish a lot, and hope that one day, some day, there would be a movie that featued all the cut-out parts. The real-life parts. I knew that it would be boring, and not much would happen, but that's what I wanted to see. All the mundane shit that I did, I wanted to see Luke Skywalker do. I wanted to see Darth Vader have to go for a piss, or Frank and Ponch from C*H*I*P*S get a flat tire, curse the ground, wait around for AAA to come bail them out.
All that time! That time that in life is always there, unavoidably so, but in movies is always gone, absent. Most of it so trivial; most of it ordinary. But because it was denied me, on the screen, inversely, or perhaps perversely, I wanted it. I wanted that silver screen to reflect my own life. It couldn't be, just couldn't, that only movies held the magic elixir of excitement and romance and intrigue. If it wasn't on the screen, in my mind, it wasn't valid. So that meant life, in a very real sense, wasn't valid.
I wanted to pay for my ticket and plunk my ass down in a chair and slurp my Coke and wait for the tediousness of everyday life to take hold. I would have watched, happily, Kirk and Spock just shoot the shit for hours on end. It's probably why I like Star Trek V and nobody else does (except for Canadian sci-fi writer Robert Sawyer.) We get to see Kirk and Spock and Bones camping. We get to see them arguing about nothing at all. We get to see them sing, or attempt to sing, old songs. Badly. We get to see life, the small parts of life, played out.
And by seeing them in that fictional form, on the big screen, life itself, or maybe just my life, became validated.
Which, depending on how you look at it, is kind of a cool thing or a sad thing.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
A SEPARATE PEACE
Do we ever really change?
I ask because recently I checked out the new Michael Douglas secret-service thriller The Sentinel, and playing the part of one of the youngest members of his staff was an actor by the name of Josh Peace, who just happened to have been in my Grade 8 homeroom class at Dalewood Public School in St.Catharines, Ontario.
The kick of it for me is that guys from Mrs.Inneo's Grade 8 class are not supposed to be in movies starring Michael Douglas. And yet there he is, Josh Peace, having three, maybe four lines of dialogue, handing Michael Douglas a coffee in the beginning of the flick, good-naturedly giving his colleague the middle finger as he scratches his forehead, trying, unsuccessfully, to pick up Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria, cracking jokes during a polygraph test. He plays the young, smart-ass agent. Which is entirely appropriate, because when I remember Josh Peace, he was young, and, yes, a smart-ass.
He was a funny, screamingly funny twelve year old. He was the class clown, a joker, always ready with a quip or a condom on the overhead machine. (Don't ask.) Later, throughout high school, me and my friends would wonder what ever happened to Peace, and recount tales of his off-colour jokes and wit. (Once, chuckling to himself at the back of French class, our teacher asked him what was so funny. "Oh, nothing," Peace said. "I was just thinking about women." Which, when you're twelve, is an astonishingly adult thing to say.) While I was in university I watched a TvOntario segment on young actors and boom, there he was. Since then, he has been featured in a number of Canadian movies, and even had the privilege of being shot to death by Marky-Mark (minus the Funky Bunch) in The Big Hit, where Peace played, big surprise, a snarky, pushy wise-ass.
Strange. How who we are twelve, still reeling from the onslaught of puberty, can carry over into our other, later lives. For all I know, Peace could have played Shakespeare and Chekhov and O'Neill and Miller; he could have had hard-core, serious thespian training.
But when I saw The Sentinel, and watched him play out his few lines in his own, distinctive, smart-ass way, I thought: Nothing changes. We are who we were.
Do we ever change, mature, accelerate? Is who we are at twelve consistent with who we are at thirty? That person deep inside of us, that core -- does it mutate, or simply evolve?
I don't know.
But it's fun to think about. Fun to wonder what life gives us at birth, and what it takes away, and what it sometimes, against all odds, allows us to retain enough of.
Enough to be cast alongside Michael Douglas, at any rate, which has gotta count for something in the grand scheme of things.
I ask because recently I checked out the new Michael Douglas secret-service thriller The Sentinel, and playing the part of one of the youngest members of his staff was an actor by the name of Josh Peace, who just happened to have been in my Grade 8 homeroom class at Dalewood Public School in St.Catharines, Ontario.
The kick of it for me is that guys from Mrs.Inneo's Grade 8 class are not supposed to be in movies starring Michael Douglas. And yet there he is, Josh Peace, having three, maybe four lines of dialogue, handing Michael Douglas a coffee in the beginning of the flick, good-naturedly giving his colleague the middle finger as he scratches his forehead, trying, unsuccessfully, to pick up Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria, cracking jokes during a polygraph test. He plays the young, smart-ass agent. Which is entirely appropriate, because when I remember Josh Peace, he was young, and, yes, a smart-ass.
He was a funny, screamingly funny twelve year old. He was the class clown, a joker, always ready with a quip or a condom on the overhead machine. (Don't ask.) Later, throughout high school, me and my friends would wonder what ever happened to Peace, and recount tales of his off-colour jokes and wit. (Once, chuckling to himself at the back of French class, our teacher asked him what was so funny. "Oh, nothing," Peace said. "I was just thinking about women." Which, when you're twelve, is an astonishingly adult thing to say.) While I was in university I watched a TvOntario segment on young actors and boom, there he was. Since then, he has been featured in a number of Canadian movies, and even had the privilege of being shot to death by Marky-Mark (minus the Funky Bunch) in The Big Hit, where Peace played, big surprise, a snarky, pushy wise-ass.
Strange. How who we are twelve, still reeling from the onslaught of puberty, can carry over into our other, later lives. For all I know, Peace could have played Shakespeare and Chekhov and O'Neill and Miller; he could have had hard-core, serious thespian training.
But when I saw The Sentinel, and watched him play out his few lines in his own, distinctive, smart-ass way, I thought: Nothing changes. We are who we were.
Do we ever change, mature, accelerate? Is who we are at twelve consistent with who we are at thirty? That person deep inside of us, that core -- does it mutate, or simply evolve?
I don't know.
But it's fun to think about. Fun to wonder what life gives us at birth, and what it takes away, and what it sometimes, against all odds, allows us to retain enough of.
Enough to be cast alongside Michael Douglas, at any rate, which has gotta count for something in the grand scheme of things.
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