Identical twin brothers are taking a break from painting their father's fence. On the radio is another report about the latest clean-up efforts related to the tsunami.
ATHEIST: Further proof.
BELIEVER: What is?
ATHEIST: That there's no God.
BELIEVER: What's further proof?
ATHEIST: The radio. The tsunami. The, what is it now, two hundred thousand dead?
BELIEVER: So?
ATHEIST: What do you mean, 'so'? You honestly think, if there was a God, He'd let this happen?
BELIEVER: First of all, there is a God, and he didn't let anything happen. It happened. Period. End of story.
ATHEIST: Okay. Let's say you're right, God exists, He's a good guy, the whole deal. You're saying he didn't let this happen?
BELIEVER: Of course not.
ATHEIST: If he didn't, who did, then?
BELIEVER: Nobody. Weather's weather.
ATHEIST: God doesn't control the weather?
BELIEVER: No.
ATHEIST: Well, he made weather, didn't He?
BELIEVER: Of course.
ATHEIST: But he doesn't control it.
BELIEVER: No. You made your daughter, didn't you? Do you control everything she does?
A pause.
ATHEIST: You're pretty sure about all of this.
BELIEVER: I'm not, actually, but I have faith.
ATHEIST. Right. 'Faith'. Forgot about that. (Takes a swig of Coke). And where did you get that from again?
BELIEVER: My father. My family. The Bible.
ATHEIST: And how do you know the Bible tells the truth?
BELIEVER: Because it's the divine word of God, transcribed by man.
ATHEIST: So, God says it, man writes it.
BELIEVER: Not quite like that, but close enough.
ATHEIST: And how do you know this book is 'divine'?
BELIEVER: Because the Bible says it is.
ATHEIST: Wait. The Bible is the word of God. How do we know? Because the Bible says it is. Isn't that a kind of circular logic?
BELIEVER: Not at all. It's called faith.
ATHEIST: In other words, you've made a leap of faith that what the book says is true?
BELIEVER: Right.
ATHEIST: Even though there's no way to verify its' truth.
BELIEVER: Right.
ATHEIST: So I could say that I found a document that says a teapot is the centre of the universe, the creator of life, and, when questioned by non-believers, I can say: Hey, it may sound kooky, but it's a leap of faith.
BELIEVER: Well, I guess so, but I think you've been reading too much Richard Dawkins.
ATHEIST: You know Dawkins?
BELIEVER: Of course. Famous evolutionist. The Blind Watchmaker, amongst others.
ATHEIST: So you believe in evolution.
BELIEVER: Of course not.
ATHEIST: Why not?
BELIEVER: Well, I haven't dismissed it entirely. Proof of intelligent design, perhaps.
ATHEIST: So God designed everything, which is why almost 99 % of species that have ever lived have died out. Nice design job. Good job with the oceans, too.
BELIEVER: If you blame God for the tsunami, as I think you're still trying to do, you might as well blame Him for the door that you stubbed your toe against this morning.
ATHEIST: I do, actually. Or would, if I believed in Him.
BELIEVER: Why do YOU think I believe in God?
ATHEIST: I think it's because you were raised in a culture and family that stressed this belief. If you were in the Middle East, you'd probably be a Muslim. If you were in Cambodia, you'd be a Buddhist. Religion is geography and tradition, nothing more.
BELIEVER: As opposed to non-belief, which isn't influenced by geography or tradition at all, right? But let me ask you this: Don't you think atheism, as a 'theism', is a kind of belief system in and of itself?
ATHEIST: Yes. It's a belief in non-belief.
BELIEVER: That's a contradiction. So you think when we die, we die?
ATHEIST: Yes.
BELIEVER: There's nothing more?
ATHEIST: Right. I think the afterlife is something we've devised to get us through this life in one piece. Something that people could hang onto when they're own lives went awry. Like all the slaves in the American south, hanging onto heaven because they knew there would be no justice in this life.
BELIEVER: You don't think of heaven as a real place, then?
ATHEIST: Of course I do. I just think it's here, on earth. Everything is here, on earth. The slaves did find heaven, and it was called 'Canada'. You ever read a 'A Place Called Heaven', by Cecil Foster? African-Canadian writer. The Underground railroad took those slaves to heaven, and their God was Harriet Tubman. This is all we've got, the here and now, so we might as well just get on with it.
BELIEVER: You think Canada's heaven? You ever read about what happened to Japanese-Canadians in WWII? And did you know that Harriet Tubman lived for many years in St.Catharines, Ontario, the hometown of the dude who's writing this post?
ATHEIST: What do you mean, 'post'?
BELIEVER: You think we're conducting this conversation of our own free will? You think nobody up above is having a hand in what we're saying?
ATHEIST: I still don't get what you mean by 'post'.
BELIEVER: Forget it. Whether there is a God, or whether there isn't, our break time's over, and that fence still needs to be painted. Let's get to work.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE I LEARNED RUNNING CROSS-COUNTRY: A FORMER HIGH SCHOOL RUNNER'S RANT (AN ELEGY AND REBIRTH)
When I was fourteen and forced to take Phys Ed, my Grade 9 gym class had to run around the outdoor gravel track eight times (two miles, total), and, since I wasn't exactly sure that I'd be able to do it, I decided to run in the Blossom Festival Race down in Niagara Falls that my brother and father were already going to be competing in, just because it would be good training for me, for my gym class, and for my self-esteem.
I ended up running it with my friend from Fort Erie, Mike, and we actually did pretty good. Not top-ten, mind you, but okay. Decent. Respectable. (Meaning, we finished without puking -- always the barometer of success, in my opinion. In racing and in life.)
This was in May 0f 1990 (pre-Internet, pre-CSI, pre-Pauly Shore), and I ended up running all summer, just for the fun, the novelty, the exercise. It was something different than reading comic books and Stephen King and watching movies. It was a little bit of alternative exercise, this pounding on the pavement was, since hockey season finished around March and I usually didn't do jacksquat in the summer. I soon realized how, well, difficult it was, this running thing, this exercising-on-a-regular basis gig I suddenly had going on. (As Mallory's dim-witted boyfriend Nick said to Alex so eloquently on Family Ties, talking about school, but the sentiments of which apply equally to running: "It's a lot harder than sitting around doing nothing.") It took me out of myself and into the streets of my city. Initially, I thought that if I could just make it from the driveway of my house to my old elementary school (Pine Grove) and back, that would be something; that would be an accomplishment of Olympic proportions. That was my barometer, that two-mile jaunt.
I didn't talk about my running much, because my brother was a really good high school runner, and my dad had run a couple of marathons, and who I was I to talk, anyways?
Somewhere in the course of the summer I decided to go and run cross-country in the fall. My school didn't have much a team, being an arts-and-music school, but that was fine by me because I wasn't much of a runner, either.
At the starting line of my first race, I figured I had an advantage over all of those other guys; after all, I'd been running all summer. How hard could it be? I had heard from my brother who the top runners were; I figured, what the hell, I'll just try to keep with these dudes.
To express how clueless, ignorant and utterly over-my-head my fourteen year old self was is redundant.
But sometimes, as they say, ignorance is bliss.
Long story short -- I stayed with the front pack and ended up finishing in the top ten. My brother was stunned. He thought I'd just been bopping around all summer, jogging here and there. (Which I kind of was.) After that race, he realized that he'd have to be my coach.
In order to qualify for the Ontario cross-country championships, I had to finish in the top three in the qualifying race. Near the end of that race, at Queenston Heights, I was tired. Wiped. Finished. One of my brother's school's teammates was up ahead of me, in third. If I beat him, I would go to the provincial finals. As I ran, some anonymous supporter on the side of the course yelled out at me: "C'mon, you can catch that little guy!"
Sometimes, I wonder: Would I be where I am if not for that dude, if not for his random comment? Because he yelled at me, and I figured, what the hell, I'll try and catch the guy, and I did, and I finished third, and I went on to OFSAA, the provincial championships, were I finished 21st, I think, out of a field of a couple of hundred.
After that, I trained. My brother trained me. I ran outdoor track the next year, reaching the provincial finals in the 1500 metres and the 800 metres, and the next fall I won the Southern Ontario cross-country championships, made top-twenty in the all-provincials, then ran track the following spring, making it to the provincial finals for the 3000 metres, then ran cross-country the following fall for the final time, once again lucky enough to finish in the top-twenty.
That January I was in the middle of a race in Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, when I felt a twinge in my leg, and I dropped out of the race, and that was that. I didn't run another high school race, cross-country or track, for the rest of high school. Injuries, rehab, the whole deal.
What a wild, chaotic blur those two and a half years were! At one point I tried to transfer from my high school to my brother's school, St.Catharines Collegiate, because they had a really stellar team, but I found out that if I transferred only for athletic purposes I would have to give up a year of eligibility; I wouldn't be able to run for a year. So that option went out the window. I had considered, too, trying to get a running scholarship to a school down in the States -- I'm sure somebody would have taken me. (One of my main rivals, Andy Bosak, got a scholarship in America and did really well down there.) That also went out the window when I was injured and missed my senior year.
Ah, the glory of the faded, has-been athlete, eh?
But not all was lost.
I ended up recovering and eventually running on the cross-country and track teams for York University during my junior year, which was a real highlight, a real joy, especially since I had trained so hard the year before but had been unable to run because I got a stress fracture in my right foot (the pain of which still lingers to this day.) It was nice to run just for fun, really; nice to be part of a team. (We did alright, too -- placing third at the Ontario finals, but not too well at the nationals in Montreal, or at least I didn't, anyways, finishing at the back of the pack.)
Oh, and incidentally, it was very, very instructive, being both a Creative Writing major and a member of the cross-country and track teams, because the smartest, craziest people I've ever met have been either writers or runners. I've found that elite runners are either straight-arrow honor roll students or complete kooks. (Same goes for writers, actually). To go and pound your brains out on the pavement is a little nuts; to sit and create imaginary worlds out of symbols on paper is also a little kooky. To be someone who does both is, well, interesting, if not recommended. Caused a kind of schism, actually, because I thought that you couldn't be both, a writer and a runner; that you had to choose. No wonder that I identified so much with the title character in John Irving's brilliant The World According to Garp. I was young enough to believe that life is either/or. Of course, I won't speak for my former teammate and Creative Writing alumnus Brian Gibson, who was a much better runner and writer than me, anyways -- check out www.bleedingdaylight.ca for more info...)
You never want to get somebody talking about their days as a high school or college athlete, because they'll never stop. (My apologies. Thank-you for your patience...) The achievements of our adolescent selves remain primal and authentic; they shaped who we are and what we do. And these benchmarks, however transitory they proved to be, were founded and forged via a mysterious alchemy of sweat and stamina, of cool autumn afternoons running through the wilderness and hot spring mornings sprinting around an oval circle. Maybe the resonance can be explained by the fact that, in the madhouse that is modern-day adolescence, athletics allow you to win. You can conquer, stand proud, clearly and unequivocably know where you are, if only for a day, if only for a moment. (The rest of life doesn't offer such certainty.)
Running has been a steady, constant benchmark since I was fourteen; it's taught me everything I know. How to transform myself, believe in myself, push past myself. How not to allow others to limit you or your perceptions of what you can do. It's allowed me to put on weight and then take it off. It's given me the ability to amaze myself again and again. It's spiritual, is what it is; it's redemptive.
Running's a lot like writing, actually. Every time you do it, it's different. You have an idea of where you're going, but you never know what's going to happen along the way, what detours will pop up. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The longer you stop doing it, the rustier you get. They're both internal odysseys that lead you back into the self.
When I run, I'm connected to that fourteen year old kid who was just starting out; when I write, I'm connected to the child who would watch Star Trek, then make up his own stories.
So, my fondest wish for you is: Run. Many people say that they've tried to do it before, and they're weak, they have no stamina, but the great secret of running is: nobody has stamina starting out. You do a little bit today. Two minutes. Then the next day you three minutes. If you do this for a month, you'll be at thirty minutes. And so on. It isn't easy -- no, I can't bullshit that -- but it is possible.
The greatest thing about running: You go from here to there. You go out, and you come back. Your route is clear and defined and visible, every step of the way. Within that simplicity lies the essence of life.
Believe it. Try it. Slap on some shoes. Open the door. Take a breath. Take a step.
You have the ability to amaze yourself.
I ended up running it with my friend from Fort Erie, Mike, and we actually did pretty good. Not top-ten, mind you, but okay. Decent. Respectable. (Meaning, we finished without puking -- always the barometer of success, in my opinion. In racing and in life.)
This was in May 0f 1990 (pre-Internet, pre-CSI, pre-Pauly Shore), and I ended up running all summer, just for the fun, the novelty, the exercise. It was something different than reading comic books and Stephen King and watching movies. It was a little bit of alternative exercise, this pounding on the pavement was, since hockey season finished around March and I usually didn't do jacksquat in the summer. I soon realized how, well, difficult it was, this running thing, this exercising-on-a-regular basis gig I suddenly had going on. (As Mallory's dim-witted boyfriend Nick said to Alex so eloquently on Family Ties, talking about school, but the sentiments of which apply equally to running: "It's a lot harder than sitting around doing nothing.") It took me out of myself and into the streets of my city. Initially, I thought that if I could just make it from the driveway of my house to my old elementary school (Pine Grove) and back, that would be something; that would be an accomplishment of Olympic proportions. That was my barometer, that two-mile jaunt.
I didn't talk about my running much, because my brother was a really good high school runner, and my dad had run a couple of marathons, and who I was I to talk, anyways?
Somewhere in the course of the summer I decided to go and run cross-country in the fall. My school didn't have much a team, being an arts-and-music school, but that was fine by me because I wasn't much of a runner, either.
At the starting line of my first race, I figured I had an advantage over all of those other guys; after all, I'd been running all summer. How hard could it be? I had heard from my brother who the top runners were; I figured, what the hell, I'll just try to keep with these dudes.
To express how clueless, ignorant and utterly over-my-head my fourteen year old self was is redundant.
But sometimes, as they say, ignorance is bliss.
Long story short -- I stayed with the front pack and ended up finishing in the top ten. My brother was stunned. He thought I'd just been bopping around all summer, jogging here and there. (Which I kind of was.) After that race, he realized that he'd have to be my coach.
In order to qualify for the Ontario cross-country championships, I had to finish in the top three in the qualifying race. Near the end of that race, at Queenston Heights, I was tired. Wiped. Finished. One of my brother's school's teammates was up ahead of me, in third. If I beat him, I would go to the provincial finals. As I ran, some anonymous supporter on the side of the course yelled out at me: "C'mon, you can catch that little guy!"
Sometimes, I wonder: Would I be where I am if not for that dude, if not for his random comment? Because he yelled at me, and I figured, what the hell, I'll try and catch the guy, and I did, and I finished third, and I went on to OFSAA, the provincial championships, were I finished 21st, I think, out of a field of a couple of hundred.
After that, I trained. My brother trained me. I ran outdoor track the next year, reaching the provincial finals in the 1500 metres and the 800 metres, and the next fall I won the Southern Ontario cross-country championships, made top-twenty in the all-provincials, then ran track the following spring, making it to the provincial finals for the 3000 metres, then ran cross-country the following fall for the final time, once again lucky enough to finish in the top-twenty.
That January I was in the middle of a race in Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, when I felt a twinge in my leg, and I dropped out of the race, and that was that. I didn't run another high school race, cross-country or track, for the rest of high school. Injuries, rehab, the whole deal.
What a wild, chaotic blur those two and a half years were! At one point I tried to transfer from my high school to my brother's school, St.Catharines Collegiate, because they had a really stellar team, but I found out that if I transferred only for athletic purposes I would have to give up a year of eligibility; I wouldn't be able to run for a year. So that option went out the window. I had considered, too, trying to get a running scholarship to a school down in the States -- I'm sure somebody would have taken me. (One of my main rivals, Andy Bosak, got a scholarship in America and did really well down there.) That also went out the window when I was injured and missed my senior year.
Ah, the glory of the faded, has-been athlete, eh?
But not all was lost.
I ended up recovering and eventually running on the cross-country and track teams for York University during my junior year, which was a real highlight, a real joy, especially since I had trained so hard the year before but had been unable to run because I got a stress fracture in my right foot (the pain of which still lingers to this day.) It was nice to run just for fun, really; nice to be part of a team. (We did alright, too -- placing third at the Ontario finals, but not too well at the nationals in Montreal, or at least I didn't, anyways, finishing at the back of the pack.)
Oh, and incidentally, it was very, very instructive, being both a Creative Writing major and a member of the cross-country and track teams, because the smartest, craziest people I've ever met have been either writers or runners. I've found that elite runners are either straight-arrow honor roll students or complete kooks. (Same goes for writers, actually). To go and pound your brains out on the pavement is a little nuts; to sit and create imaginary worlds out of symbols on paper is also a little kooky. To be someone who does both is, well, interesting, if not recommended. Caused a kind of schism, actually, because I thought that you couldn't be both, a writer and a runner; that you had to choose. No wonder that I identified so much with the title character in John Irving's brilliant The World According to Garp. I was young enough to believe that life is either/or. Of course, I won't speak for my former teammate and Creative Writing alumnus Brian Gibson, who was a much better runner and writer than me, anyways -- check out www.bleedingdaylight.ca for more info...)
You never want to get somebody talking about their days as a high school or college athlete, because they'll never stop. (My apologies. Thank-you for your patience...) The achievements of our adolescent selves remain primal and authentic; they shaped who we are and what we do. And these benchmarks, however transitory they proved to be, were founded and forged via a mysterious alchemy of sweat and stamina, of cool autumn afternoons running through the wilderness and hot spring mornings sprinting around an oval circle. Maybe the resonance can be explained by the fact that, in the madhouse that is modern-day adolescence, athletics allow you to win. You can conquer, stand proud, clearly and unequivocably know where you are, if only for a day, if only for a moment. (The rest of life doesn't offer such certainty.)
Running has been a steady, constant benchmark since I was fourteen; it's taught me everything I know. How to transform myself, believe in myself, push past myself. How not to allow others to limit you or your perceptions of what you can do. It's allowed me to put on weight and then take it off. It's given me the ability to amaze myself again and again. It's spiritual, is what it is; it's redemptive.
Running's a lot like writing, actually. Every time you do it, it's different. You have an idea of where you're going, but you never know what's going to happen along the way, what detours will pop up. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The longer you stop doing it, the rustier you get. They're both internal odysseys that lead you back into the self.
When I run, I'm connected to that fourteen year old kid who was just starting out; when I write, I'm connected to the child who would watch Star Trek, then make up his own stories.
So, my fondest wish for you is: Run. Many people say that they've tried to do it before, and they're weak, they have no stamina, but the great secret of running is: nobody has stamina starting out. You do a little bit today. Two minutes. Then the next day you three minutes. If you do this for a month, you'll be at thirty minutes. And so on. It isn't easy -- no, I can't bullshit that -- but it is possible.
The greatest thing about running: You go from here to there. You go out, and you come back. Your route is clear and defined and visible, every step of the way. Within that simplicity lies the essence of life.
Believe it. Try it. Slap on some shoes. Open the door. Take a breath. Take a step.
You have the ability to amaze yourself.
ECLIPSES, OVERLAPS, AND WHAT'S LEFT BEHIND
You stub your toe. You curse your teacher, boss, lover. You swear at the Lord up above (or below) for your misfortunes.
What comes out of your mouth?
Words?
What kind of words?
Bad words.
Where do they come from?
Well, they...come. They emerge. They exist. They are. You don't question their source, shape, texture. An emotion is triggered; a feeling is born. You need a way to express that feeling, preferably quickly, preferably now.
Out comes the word.
I think language is wild. We take it for granted. We are born with it, raised with it, live with it. It expresses who we are and what we want. It gives voice to those primitive, primal impulses that dwell within our hearts and souls, lurking, begging to be released.
But what is it? Language itself, in all it's manifestations?
It's strange symbols on a page that are no longer strange (at least to us), and sounds emerging from our mouths.
That's all.
I like words. Love words. I think when you grow up with a love of reading, you don't pay attention to the lanuage too much -- you're in it for the story, the high, the kick that you get when you come to the end of the tale. (Not realizing, of course, that it's the language that makes all of this possible.)
Comic books helped me to read. When I was twelve, I discovered Stephen King, and, literally, read everything that he wrote, one book after the other, until there were no more books left to read. (I know, I know -- he published, like, a book every six months back then, but still -- six months is a long time to wait for a twelve year old.)
But I liked his brand of horror and humanism, terror and fantasy; I wanted more. And I noticed that his name could often be found sprawled across the backs of other books by other authors, one of whom was Peter Straub, a fellow fantasist, and so I read his books, and they were, well, harder. The language and storytelling was more layered, more intricate. You had to work a bit more.
And thus it begins -- the life of a reader. You start to pay attention to the language. You start to identify authors by the way they do things with the language, deciding that Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert, being Brits, have a distinctly formal way with the language that somehow particularly suits the gothic nature of dark fantasy, while Stephen King and Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury have a flowing, American looseness to their prose that somehow suits what they do well, while, in more lit'ry circles, Joyce Carol Oates has a manic, go-for-broke pace that never compromises the story she's telling or the way she's telling it, and Norman Mailer has a muscular solidity to his style that creates a wonderworld of a phrase every page or so, and Elmore Leonard's style is so transparent that it's almost invisible (which is usually the hardest kind to do, this type of 'effortless' writing), and Toni Morrison has a simultaneous grace and resoluteness to her prose that makes it dense, and Alice Munro has a way of telling a story that never allows language to intrude on her themes, her emotions, even though you do notice, now and then, the way she handles a phrase, the wisdom in the phrase, and you gotta give her some props for that.
In other words, you respond to the writers you like based on the way they jiggle and shake and piece together the words, the letters, the English.
And then I moved to Japan, avoided studying Japanese the same way I once avoided Full House reruns, for two whole years, before finally giving in and taking three-times-a-week, ninety-minutes-per-session- group lessons at the Association for Japanese Language Teaching (www.ajalt.org) in downtown Tokyo, where I slowly, incrementally started to get off on the fundamentally bizarre strangeness of acquring (or trying to) even the most rudimentary basics of another language.
You start off as a child, basically. You don't know how to read, write, speak. Then, eventually, you begin to see how it is that we learn language, how it is that we start to build vocabulary.
In the beginning, for example, if I was excited in Japanese, or angry, or dismayed, well, there were no words for those feelings inside of me. There was no outlet in Japanese.
Then you pick up a word here, there, everywhere. You listen to the radio. You eavesdrop on schoolgirls' conversations on the last-train-home. You begin.
It's fun and fascinating and frustrating and just downright cool, this learning of another language (even if I've forgotten a lot of what I learned). I believe, now, that you are missing out on something fundamentally human if you only speak one language. You are exempt from the shades and tones of perception that another language allows you to possess.
Those same 'shades' are what make Japanese such a fascinating language, a maddening language, a complex language. I have the utmost, super-duper respect for the dudes and dudettes who translate Japanese literature into English, and vice versa. They don't get enough credit. Even beginning to learn about why and how different languages express emotions and ideas in different ways has been an experience for me; as someone who loves to read, who can read some (rudimentary) Japanese, even imagining what it would take to shift back and forth from one language to the next, trying to preserve the author's original integrity, is mind blowing.
One of the translators of Marquez put it much better than I can: That when you translate, it's like looking at an eclipse; the English word and the Spanish word for 'horse', for example, each share a similar meaning, but there's another aspect, a slight nuance, that is only available in the original language, that they don't both possess. There is an overlap between the words, but there is always something left behind, too.
If nothing else, being aware of ideas like this, being conscious of other languages, trying to utilize them in your everyday life, simply gives you touchstones, moments of connection, that you can't find in your own language. Six months ago I stood on a streetcorner here in Phnom Penh, chatting in Japanese with my Cambodian Japanese teacher, when I had a sudden, almost out of body experience: Me, this Canadian kid in Phnom Penh, talking in Japanese, with a Khmer.
Life (for me) doesn't get much weirder than that, friends and neighbours.
(Unless, of course, I started to study Khmer in earnest. But it seems so hard...)
What comes out of your mouth?
Words?
What kind of words?
Bad words.
Where do they come from?
Well, they...come. They emerge. They exist. They are. You don't question their source, shape, texture. An emotion is triggered; a feeling is born. You need a way to express that feeling, preferably quickly, preferably now.
Out comes the word.
I think language is wild. We take it for granted. We are born with it, raised with it, live with it. It expresses who we are and what we want. It gives voice to those primitive, primal impulses that dwell within our hearts and souls, lurking, begging to be released.
But what is it? Language itself, in all it's manifestations?
It's strange symbols on a page that are no longer strange (at least to us), and sounds emerging from our mouths.
That's all.
I like words. Love words. I think when you grow up with a love of reading, you don't pay attention to the lanuage too much -- you're in it for the story, the high, the kick that you get when you come to the end of the tale. (Not realizing, of course, that it's the language that makes all of this possible.)
Comic books helped me to read. When I was twelve, I discovered Stephen King, and, literally, read everything that he wrote, one book after the other, until there were no more books left to read. (I know, I know -- he published, like, a book every six months back then, but still -- six months is a long time to wait for a twelve year old.)
But I liked his brand of horror and humanism, terror and fantasy; I wanted more. And I noticed that his name could often be found sprawled across the backs of other books by other authors, one of whom was Peter Straub, a fellow fantasist, and so I read his books, and they were, well, harder. The language and storytelling was more layered, more intricate. You had to work a bit more.
And thus it begins -- the life of a reader. You start to pay attention to the language. You start to identify authors by the way they do things with the language, deciding that Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert, being Brits, have a distinctly formal way with the language that somehow particularly suits the gothic nature of dark fantasy, while Stephen King and Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury have a flowing, American looseness to their prose that somehow suits what they do well, while, in more lit'ry circles, Joyce Carol Oates has a manic, go-for-broke pace that never compromises the story she's telling or the way she's telling it, and Norman Mailer has a muscular solidity to his style that creates a wonderworld of a phrase every page or so, and Elmore Leonard's style is so transparent that it's almost invisible (which is usually the hardest kind to do, this type of 'effortless' writing), and Toni Morrison has a simultaneous grace and resoluteness to her prose that makes it dense, and Alice Munro has a way of telling a story that never allows language to intrude on her themes, her emotions, even though you do notice, now and then, the way she handles a phrase, the wisdom in the phrase, and you gotta give her some props for that.
In other words, you respond to the writers you like based on the way they jiggle and shake and piece together the words, the letters, the English.
And then I moved to Japan, avoided studying Japanese the same way I once avoided Full House reruns, for two whole years, before finally giving in and taking three-times-a-week, ninety-minutes-per-session- group lessons at the Association for Japanese Language Teaching (www.ajalt.org) in downtown Tokyo, where I slowly, incrementally started to get off on the fundamentally bizarre strangeness of acquring (or trying to) even the most rudimentary basics of another language.
You start off as a child, basically. You don't know how to read, write, speak. Then, eventually, you begin to see how it is that we learn language, how it is that we start to build vocabulary.
In the beginning, for example, if I was excited in Japanese, or angry, or dismayed, well, there were no words for those feelings inside of me. There was no outlet in Japanese.
Then you pick up a word here, there, everywhere. You listen to the radio. You eavesdrop on schoolgirls' conversations on the last-train-home. You begin.
It's fun and fascinating and frustrating and just downright cool, this learning of another language (even if I've forgotten a lot of what I learned). I believe, now, that you are missing out on something fundamentally human if you only speak one language. You are exempt from the shades and tones of perception that another language allows you to possess.
Those same 'shades' are what make Japanese such a fascinating language, a maddening language, a complex language. I have the utmost, super-duper respect for the dudes and dudettes who translate Japanese literature into English, and vice versa. They don't get enough credit. Even beginning to learn about why and how different languages express emotions and ideas in different ways has been an experience for me; as someone who loves to read, who can read some (rudimentary) Japanese, even imagining what it would take to shift back and forth from one language to the next, trying to preserve the author's original integrity, is mind blowing.
One of the translators of Marquez put it much better than I can: That when you translate, it's like looking at an eclipse; the English word and the Spanish word for 'horse', for example, each share a similar meaning, but there's another aspect, a slight nuance, that is only available in the original language, that they don't both possess. There is an overlap between the words, but there is always something left behind, too.
If nothing else, being aware of ideas like this, being conscious of other languages, trying to utilize them in your everyday life, simply gives you touchstones, moments of connection, that you can't find in your own language. Six months ago I stood on a streetcorner here in Phnom Penh, chatting in Japanese with my Cambodian Japanese teacher, when I had a sudden, almost out of body experience: Me, this Canadian kid in Phnom Penh, talking in Japanese, with a Khmer.
Life (for me) doesn't get much weirder than that, friends and neighbours.
(Unless, of course, I started to study Khmer in earnest. But it seems so hard...)
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
WHAT I LIKE
Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II. He has a love of performing and a palpable glee that the camera loves. (Kevin Spacey has it, too, but it's distracting in a drama.)
Running in the five a.m. darkness of a Phnom Penh morning.
Sleeping in and not running in the five a.m. darkness of a Phnom Penh morning.
The hot fudge sundaes you get at Mcdonald's. (Actually, everything you get at Mcdonald's.)
The sound of the starter's pistol.
The moment before the present is unwrapped.
The smiles of Cambodian children.
The moment the airplane takes off, and you realize that there's no going back.
The moment the airplane lands, and you realize that you're here, you've made it, it's real.
My parents.
Waiting for my INBOX to open.
The first drink of Gatorade after a run.
When the lights go down in a movie theatre.
The smell of books. New books, old books, used books, bad books -- all smell great.
Dreams, as in the sleeping ones.
A blank screen.
My grandparents.
The comic books of the 1980's.
Dreams, as in the aspirational ones.
The black-and-white Spider-Man suit that caused quite the controversy when I was a kid.
The original Spider-Man suit.
The fact that I won the 1991 Southern Ontario Junior Boy's Cross-Country Championship on the same course, on the same day, that my brother won the Southern Ontario Senior Boy's Cross Country Championship, because he was my coach, and he deserved all the fruits of those successes, his and mine.
The smell of root beer.
My brother and his wife.
Pushing buttons. (Literally.)
Speaking words in a foreign language, forgetting that it's foreign, not noticing that it's foreign.
Listening to words in a foreign language and not understanding what they mean.
The original final episode of Magnum P.I., before the producers found out it'd been renewed, where Magnum is shot and he wanders around limbo and he gets to see how much his friends love him.
The episode of Magnum P.I. where they (plausibly) brought him back from the dead.
The memories of going to the comic book store with my mom.
www.awfulplasticsurgery.com
Meeting celebrities and having them be very, very cool (or at least civil) to me (Samuel L.Jackson, Oliver Stone, Al Pacino, Pierre Trudeau, Norman Mailer, Charles Bronson, Spike Lee and Tom Hanks).
Meeting regular people and having them be very, very cool (or at least civil) to me (too many to list -- almost everybody, really, except my Grade 11 Math teacher, who I still don't really like).
Taking out your winter coat in the fall and finding a five dollar bill in one of the pockets.
The cinemas of my hometown.
The goodwill of orphans.
The writers who inspire me.
What failure teaches you.
The cinemas of Tokyo, because, when you buy a ticket, you can look at a little map and choose where you want to sit because they have numbers on them, the seats do, and that's cool.
The green fields of Cambodia.
The streets of my hometown.
The fact that people sometimes take a chance on you, even though you don't deserve it.
The last couple of pages of The Autobiography of Malcom X, where he says that he wished he had studied languages more, because he thought that Chinese and Arabic would be the languages of the future, because it makes me wonder what kind of a man Malcolm would have been had he only lived to forty, and beyond, and what he would have done with his time.
The kindness of strangers.
John Irving's The Cider-House Rules.
The feel of a good indoor track beneath your feet.
Do the Right Thing.
The last line of a book.
The first line of a book.
Japanese punctuality.
www.artsandlettersdaily.com
All of Oliver Stone's stuff.
Joyce Carol Oates.
The last couple of pages of Don Robertson's Paradise Falls.
Pierre Trudeau, especially his "Just watch me."
Trying to remember Japanese kanji.
www.moviecitynews.com
The Canadian flag.
Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, probably my favorite movie.
Forgetting Japanese Kanji, then remembering it again, then forgetting it again.
The fact that when J.FK. visited Berlin, to express his solidarity with the Berlin people, he said, famously, "Ich bin ein Berliner", when he should have said "Ich bin Berliner", because 'ein Berliner' was a casual term for 'jelly donut', so what he actually said, translated, was something like: "Let the word go forth, that the proudest thing a man can say is that today, I...am...a jelly donut!"
Writing.
Reading.
Having someone read what I've written.
Running in the five a.m. darkness of a Phnom Penh morning.
Sleeping in and not running in the five a.m. darkness of a Phnom Penh morning.
The hot fudge sundaes you get at Mcdonald's. (Actually, everything you get at Mcdonald's.)
The sound of the starter's pistol.
The moment before the present is unwrapped.
The smiles of Cambodian children.
The moment the airplane takes off, and you realize that there's no going back.
The moment the airplane lands, and you realize that you're here, you've made it, it's real.
My parents.
Waiting for my INBOX to open.
The first drink of Gatorade after a run.
When the lights go down in a movie theatre.
The smell of books. New books, old books, used books, bad books -- all smell great.
Dreams, as in the sleeping ones.
A blank screen.
My grandparents.
The comic books of the 1980's.
Dreams, as in the aspirational ones.
The black-and-white Spider-Man suit that caused quite the controversy when I was a kid.
The original Spider-Man suit.
The fact that I won the 1991 Southern Ontario Junior Boy's Cross-Country Championship on the same course, on the same day, that my brother won the Southern Ontario Senior Boy's Cross Country Championship, because he was my coach, and he deserved all the fruits of those successes, his and mine.
The smell of root beer.
My brother and his wife.
Pushing buttons. (Literally.)
Speaking words in a foreign language, forgetting that it's foreign, not noticing that it's foreign.
Listening to words in a foreign language and not understanding what they mean.
The original final episode of Magnum P.I., before the producers found out it'd been renewed, where Magnum is shot and he wanders around limbo and he gets to see how much his friends love him.
The episode of Magnum P.I. where they (plausibly) brought him back from the dead.
The memories of going to the comic book store with my mom.
www.awfulplasticsurgery.com
Meeting celebrities and having them be very, very cool (or at least civil) to me (Samuel L.Jackson, Oliver Stone, Al Pacino, Pierre Trudeau, Norman Mailer, Charles Bronson, Spike Lee and Tom Hanks).
Meeting regular people and having them be very, very cool (or at least civil) to me (too many to list -- almost everybody, really, except my Grade 11 Math teacher, who I still don't really like).
Taking out your winter coat in the fall and finding a five dollar bill in one of the pockets.
The cinemas of my hometown.
The goodwill of orphans.
The writers who inspire me.
What failure teaches you.
The cinemas of Tokyo, because, when you buy a ticket, you can look at a little map and choose where you want to sit because they have numbers on them, the seats do, and that's cool.
The green fields of Cambodia.
The streets of my hometown.
The fact that people sometimes take a chance on you, even though you don't deserve it.
The last couple of pages of The Autobiography of Malcom X, where he says that he wished he had studied languages more, because he thought that Chinese and Arabic would be the languages of the future, because it makes me wonder what kind of a man Malcolm would have been had he only lived to forty, and beyond, and what he would have done with his time.
The kindness of strangers.
John Irving's The Cider-House Rules.
The feel of a good indoor track beneath your feet.
Do the Right Thing.
The last line of a book.
The first line of a book.
Japanese punctuality.
www.artsandlettersdaily.com
All of Oliver Stone's stuff.
Joyce Carol Oates.
The last couple of pages of Don Robertson's Paradise Falls.
Pierre Trudeau, especially his "Just watch me."
Trying to remember Japanese kanji.
www.moviecitynews.com
The Canadian flag.
Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, probably my favorite movie.
Forgetting Japanese Kanji, then remembering it again, then forgetting it again.
The fact that when J.FK. visited Berlin, to express his solidarity with the Berlin people, he said, famously, "Ich bin ein Berliner", when he should have said "Ich bin Berliner", because 'ein Berliner' was a casual term for 'jelly donut', so what he actually said, translated, was something like: "Let the word go forth, that the proudest thing a man can say is that today, I...am...a jelly donut!"
Writing.
Reading.
Having someone read what I've written.
EVERYTHING ELSE, IF ONLY FOR A NIGHT
The other night I dropped by the university where I used to teach. It's just down the road from where I live, near the Independence Monument, in the 'heart of Phnom Penh', as the tourist brochures would say.
I'd always vowed that I'd never be a teacher, and yet it's the first real thing that I did after graduating from university, teach, for four years in Japan, one year here in Cambodia. (Okay, I did do a summer stint at the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology in Toronto, and a stint washing dishes at Caddyshack's Bar and Grill in Manotick, Ontario, but I'm not counting those. And you shouldn't, either. Please.)
I think it's always good to do the things that you said you would never do, because it points out aspects of your character that you wouldn't have unearthed otherwise. It's also pretty wild to do these things in foreign countries. Through the students you learn about the culture and the language, the customs and the history. You see what young people are like, people who have never heard of Brad Pitt or Johnny Carson or even John F.Kennedy. (Although most young Cambodians do know David Beckham.) You enter into a world where it's possible, even probable, to have twenty-one year old students ask you what the blue part on the map means.
So I stood there, outside of the school, letting the warm Cambodian night do its familiar dance across my skin. The students were pleasant, and kind, and smiling, as Cambodian students always are. They talked about their future, unsure of what to do next. (As I once did; as I do now. I didn't have the heart to tell them that it doesn't get any easier, although I wish somebody had told me that.) They asked about my new job, and how it was going, and why I left the university. They told me they missed me and liked my teaching, which made feel good, made feel as I'd created something lasting and resonant. I said good-bye as they drove off into the dark and busy streets on their motos, eager to escape academia, if only for a night.
It was just one of those nice moments, that's all. A series of them, actually.
Watching the news on a daily basis, it's so easy to get the impression that the world is a cesspool of danger and despair, of heartache and agony.
So it is; I'm not denying that.
But there's everything's else, too, the stuff that doesn't make the news -- students carrying books, chatting with old instructors, wishing them good luck. The stuff that fills up life and makes it tolerable, if only for a night. The everyday, trivial, real and lasting human stuff that bobs and weaves between the darkness, unwittingly giving off light, and texture, and meaning.
I'd always vowed that I'd never be a teacher, and yet it's the first real thing that I did after graduating from university, teach, for four years in Japan, one year here in Cambodia. (Okay, I did do a summer stint at the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology in Toronto, and a stint washing dishes at Caddyshack's Bar and Grill in Manotick, Ontario, but I'm not counting those. And you shouldn't, either. Please.)
I think it's always good to do the things that you said you would never do, because it points out aspects of your character that you wouldn't have unearthed otherwise. It's also pretty wild to do these things in foreign countries. Through the students you learn about the culture and the language, the customs and the history. You see what young people are like, people who have never heard of Brad Pitt or Johnny Carson or even John F.Kennedy. (Although most young Cambodians do know David Beckham.) You enter into a world where it's possible, even probable, to have twenty-one year old students ask you what the blue part on the map means.
So I stood there, outside of the school, letting the warm Cambodian night do its familiar dance across my skin. The students were pleasant, and kind, and smiling, as Cambodian students always are. They talked about their future, unsure of what to do next. (As I once did; as I do now. I didn't have the heart to tell them that it doesn't get any easier, although I wish somebody had told me that.) They asked about my new job, and how it was going, and why I left the university. They told me they missed me and liked my teaching, which made feel good, made feel as I'd created something lasting and resonant. I said good-bye as they drove off into the dark and busy streets on their motos, eager to escape academia, if only for a night.
It was just one of those nice moments, that's all. A series of them, actually.
Watching the news on a daily basis, it's so easy to get the impression that the world is a cesspool of danger and despair, of heartache and agony.
So it is; I'm not denying that.
But there's everything's else, too, the stuff that doesn't make the news -- students carrying books, chatting with old instructors, wishing them good luck. The stuff that fills up life and makes it tolerable, if only for a night. The everyday, trivial, real and lasting human stuff that bobs and weaves between the darkness, unwittingly giving off light, and texture, and meaning.
Monday, February 28, 2005
I DARE YOU: BECOME THE HERO OF YOUR OWN LIFE
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anyone else, these pages must show.
-- Charles Dickens
DAVID COPPERFIELD
A few years ago, when I worked in Japan, I was waiting to take the late-train home from Shin-yurigaoka, where I worked, to Sagami-Ono, where I lived, when I suddenly saw a drunken Japanese salaryman stumble and fall onto the tracks, the light from the oncoming train creating an eerie glow of doom that lit up the night.
I thought: This is the time, the moment, when my authentic humanity will be tested, where I will be called upon to sacrifice myself and my life for a total stranger. I will have to crawl on the tracks and hope that there is time, enough time, to push him and me out of safety. I will see what I am made of, or die trying.
Didn't come to that. The drunk dude quickly rushed to the side of the platform and hurled himself over its edge. The train was still a little ways back. His life might not even have been in danger. Hard to say.
Still.
Made me think.
Am I living the life I'm supposed to be living?
Recently, there had been a Korean exchange student who had actually died doing what had only been a brief, almost-happened-but-thank-God-didn't interlude in my mind, rescuing a Japanese man who had fallen onto the tracks, giving up his life in the process of saving another.
He died a hero.
How do you live as a hero?
Isn't there something arrogant and self-serving in thinking that you can go around and right wrongs, make people's lives better, make a difference in the world? Who the hell are you, anyways, to think such thoughts?
There is the need to distinguish oneself from the pack; there is also the need to become a part of the pack. And in between those two needs is something else, this third, separate sense of self that is a combination of the two -- a martyr crossed with a hermit, a selfless soul who lives for others and an inward isolationist who exists for himself, and himself alone.
We always battle those two forces. We either hold the door open for someone, or we don't. We either thank the saleslady at the A&P, or we don't. We jump onto the tracks, or we don't.
It's a matter of degrees.
We may not be writing our own memoirs, as Dicken's Copperfield did, but the days and weeks and months and years we pass through will be the pages that show whether or not we will be the hero of of our own lives.
The only conclusion I've come to, the one that makes the most logical, moral, ambitious, human sense is: Do it. Be the hero of your own life, however you define 'hero'. Be the one who holds the door, even though nobody says 'thank-you'. Be the one that gets on the plane. Be the one who works where others won't, teaches where others won't. Be the one that steps out of the life of quiet desperation that your peers seem to expect, if not embrace. Be the guy or girl who doesn't park in the handicapped spot. Be the one who doesn't roll their eyes in sarcasm at someone else's kooky idea. Be the one who chooses blind optimism over unthinking cynicism. Be the one who believes that the Oscars are a good and noble thing. Be the one who walks through the open door into a strange and tempting room. Be that guy on the six o'clock news, the feel-good story they always end the broadcast with, the one that returned the money he found on the street, even though he could have kept it and become rich. Be the one who jumps on the tracks to help the girl who fell. Be the one who does the unnoticed things every day that nobody ever gives you credit for. Be the hero you suspect you might be capable of becoming someday, which may be today, for all you know. Why not?
"We're all here to do what we're all here to do," the Oracle tells Neo in The Matrix Revolutions.
I'm not sure what that means, to be honest, but it has a wonderful, ringing, koan-like logic to it.
We are here to do what we are here to do.
So do it.
Be the hero of your own life.
I dare you to.
-- Charles Dickens
DAVID COPPERFIELD
A few years ago, when I worked in Japan, I was waiting to take the late-train home from Shin-yurigaoka, where I worked, to Sagami-Ono, where I lived, when I suddenly saw a drunken Japanese salaryman stumble and fall onto the tracks, the light from the oncoming train creating an eerie glow of doom that lit up the night.
I thought: This is the time, the moment, when my authentic humanity will be tested, where I will be called upon to sacrifice myself and my life for a total stranger. I will have to crawl on the tracks and hope that there is time, enough time, to push him and me out of safety. I will see what I am made of, or die trying.
Didn't come to that. The drunk dude quickly rushed to the side of the platform and hurled himself over its edge. The train was still a little ways back. His life might not even have been in danger. Hard to say.
Still.
Made me think.
Am I living the life I'm supposed to be living?
Recently, there had been a Korean exchange student who had actually died doing what had only been a brief, almost-happened-but-thank-God-didn't interlude in my mind, rescuing a Japanese man who had fallen onto the tracks, giving up his life in the process of saving another.
He died a hero.
How do you live as a hero?
Isn't there something arrogant and self-serving in thinking that you can go around and right wrongs, make people's lives better, make a difference in the world? Who the hell are you, anyways, to think such thoughts?
There is the need to distinguish oneself from the pack; there is also the need to become a part of the pack. And in between those two needs is something else, this third, separate sense of self that is a combination of the two -- a martyr crossed with a hermit, a selfless soul who lives for others and an inward isolationist who exists for himself, and himself alone.
We always battle those two forces. We either hold the door open for someone, or we don't. We either thank the saleslady at the A&P, or we don't. We jump onto the tracks, or we don't.
It's a matter of degrees.
We may not be writing our own memoirs, as Dicken's Copperfield did, but the days and weeks and months and years we pass through will be the pages that show whether or not we will be the hero of of our own lives.
The only conclusion I've come to, the one that makes the most logical, moral, ambitious, human sense is: Do it. Be the hero of your own life, however you define 'hero'. Be the one who holds the door, even though nobody says 'thank-you'. Be the one that gets on the plane. Be the one who works where others won't, teaches where others won't. Be the one that steps out of the life of quiet desperation that your peers seem to expect, if not embrace. Be the guy or girl who doesn't park in the handicapped spot. Be the one who doesn't roll their eyes in sarcasm at someone else's kooky idea. Be the one who chooses blind optimism over unthinking cynicism. Be the one who believes that the Oscars are a good and noble thing. Be the one who walks through the open door into a strange and tempting room. Be that guy on the six o'clock news, the feel-good story they always end the broadcast with, the one that returned the money he found on the street, even though he could have kept it and become rich. Be the one who jumps on the tracks to help the girl who fell. Be the one who does the unnoticed things every day that nobody ever gives you credit for. Be the hero you suspect you might be capable of becoming someday, which may be today, for all you know. Why not?
"We're all here to do what we're all here to do," the Oracle tells Neo in The Matrix Revolutions.
I'm not sure what that means, to be honest, but it has a wonderful, ringing, koan-like logic to it.
We are here to do what we are here to do.
So do it.
Be the hero of your own life.
I dare you to.
POST ALERT! POST ALERT!
I posted three new free, extra-strength posts below the one entitled 'What I Want', ones you may not have read yet, assuming there's somebody out there reading this particular post, or any of my posts, for that matter, which is never a sure thing, but if there are, and you're bored by the latest Danielle Steel or Everybody Loves Raymond or even the latest Updike, who, let's face it, can be pretty boring sometimes, simply scroll down.
In any event, please read and feel edified, revolted, charmed or bored at your own discretion.
In any event, please read and feel edified, revolted, charmed or bored at your own discretion.
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