Salvatore Lombino died the other day. So did Evan Hunter. Ed McBain, too.
They were all the same person, of course. Lombino was an Italian-American writer who changed his name early in his career because he felt authors of Italian heritage didn't get any respect. He became Evan Hunter, who wrote mainstream novels, and then transformed himself into Ed McBain, master of the mystery and the police procedural.
I discovered Ed McBain before Hunter. When I was twelve years old, I devoured anything and everything Stephen King wrote, only to find myself in a curious dilemma -- I had caught the literature bug, quite badly, and I needed a fix, but I had read all of King's stuff, so what was I to do? Panic set. Short-lived panic, fortunately. I soon discovered, while browsing through the bookshops, that King had 'blurbed' quite a number of books, giving his positive comments to any number of thrillers, chillers and, occasionally, serious works of literature. It was how I initially discovered Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Harlan Ellison, even John Irving.
And McBain. I even remember the first McBain books I read, back in 1988, purchased from the Avondale convenience store just down the road from my elementary school. It was a two pack -- a paperback copy of McBain's new release, Vespers, packaged alongside a reprinted edition of his very first 87th precinct novel, Cop-Hater, written in the early fifties.
I was hooked. Instantly. From the get-go. McBain's 87th precinct novels are set in the mythical city of Isola (modelled after New York), populated by fresh cops new to the force and lifers just waiting, dear God, for what the next day will bring. At the beginning of each mystery, there is usually a murder -- the rest of the book revolves around interviewing suspects, following leads, capturing the culprit.
Routine stuff, in other words. But oh, this is Ed McBain we're talking about here. His plots move, his characters are real, their pain is honest. These traits may sound obligatory for any good novel, and I suppose they are -- but how often do you find them? What separates McBain from all of the other suspense novelists out there is 1) character and 2) story. For a long time I didn't read any mystery novels, but I always read McBain; I cared about the people, who I followed from book to book, and I cared about the stories. And what stories! And so many! He started writing his 87th precint stories in the early fifties, usually at the pace of one or two a year, and I started reading them in the late eighties, so you can do the math -- that's a lot of fiction. A lot of fun.
(And I wasn't the only fan, either. McBain was generally considered the grandmaster of his field. The TV series Hill Street Blues was basically a carbon-copy of his 87th precinct books -- albeit without the credit to McBain, which ticked him off to no end. Stephen King even had one of McBain's perennial cops, Steve Carella, show up in the unexpurgated edition of The Stand, which I thought was a fun little 'tip of the cap'. Carella also pops up in the final novel of McBain's other series of books, the ones featuring private eye Matthew Hope. I'm telling you, I don't know when the guy slept.)
Oh, but wait. Ed McBain was only part of the equation. And not the first part, either.
Salvatore Lombino's first novel was written under the name of Evan Hunter, and that novel was The Blackboard Jungle. A stunning success, it was, about a young teacher in the inner city trying to do good. Became a hit movie starring Glenn Ford. And it holds up; I vividly remember reading the last line in my high school cafeteria, shutting the book, and saying: "Wow." (And I still remember that last line, too, though I won't tell you what it is.) Hunter also went on to write the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's great film The Birds.
The thing is, when writing as 'Evan Hunter', the novels were serious novels, often family novels -- what movies would call 'dramas'. Fathers and Sons traced a grandfather, son and grandson through life. Streets of Gold was probably the only novel I ever read told from the point-of-view of a blind person. A blind musician. It sounds gimmicky, but it isn't, because Hunter makes it real, and it's a great novel about the costs and sacrifices associated with the American dream. He wrote a moving novel of adolescence called Last Summer, and followed it up with an equally moving sequel, Come Winter. A story of father-daughter love, realistically told, was captured in Love, Dad. And just last fall, on a layover in Taiwan, I read most of his recent novel The Moment She Was Gone, which was advertised as a thriller but, instead, dealt sensitively and movingly with a young girl's mental illness, and the effect that it has on her family. (Most of his 'Evan Hunter' novels were written in the seventies, and are now, sadly, out of print; lucky for me, the St.Catharines Centennial Library, where I slaved and toiled for a few years in high school, had an excellent fiction section, so I was able to find most of his old work there. I still remember the smell of those books The yellowed paper. The black-and-white photos on the back. I remember reading Last Summer in the basement of my old house, because we did not have air conditioning and it was cool down there, cool and hidden. Tied up, tangled up in my adolescence, Hunter was...)
I always felt that the skills Hunter employed in his 'serious' novels, namely the depth of his characterization, were what made his 'Ed McBain' thrillers come alive and resonate; and, conversely, the storytelling skills he employed in his police procedurals also enabled his mainstream work to move and flow and not get stuck in the kind of endless navel-gazing that so much of modern fiction seems to dwell on.
(A few years ago, he published a book called Candyland under both of his pseudonyms, Evan Hunter and Ed McBain. The first half was written by Hunter, and felt like a mainstream novel; the second half was written by McBain, and felt like a crime book. Wonderful fun.)
Hunter/McBain was one of the first writers who showed me that writing was writing. If you were good, you could dip in and out of different genres with ease. If it was real, and true, then it didn't matter if the label was 'thriller' or 'drama' or 'fiction'; all that mattered was the story, and he was a master storyteller. And I will miss him.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Friday, July 08, 2005
LONDON
We are continually astonished by man's capacity to do harm. It jolts us, surprises us, awakens us. One would think that we would have been fully awakened by now, given all that has transpired in the last few years, the last hundred years, but no. We are jolted, again and again. The world is a mean and desperate place, but we have lives to live, do we not, so we go on, and on, until something, an act, an explosion, possibly four, reminds us of what we are capable of.
But we are capable of so much more! Yesterday, a group of people, probably no more than a handful, entered trains and buses in London, England and decided to show the world what they could do. They accomplished their mission. Their destruction was visible, life-altering, demented. Exactly what they wanted. And yet the madness of their actions was but a midwife to their true legacy -- the reactions of people, the humanity of people, the inherent dignity of people.
The only thing worthwhile that can emerge from a tragedy such as this is the realization and acceptance of our own naive humanity. We are forgetful people, vile people, and angelic people. We forget the inherent fragility of our world, because to remember, consistently, would leave us immobile. We are vile in what we can do to each other, willingly, in the name of ideology. We are angelic in our capacity to grieve and help.
An event like this always surprises us, as it should; the shock comes from the notion that we have acts like this capable inside of us. It seems like an aberration, even though we know, all too well, that it is the norm.
Hate and love are the flipsides of our nature, and just as we are blindsided by the carnage we can convey, we should also not neglect the daily acts of generosity and sympathy that continually remind us of our humanity. The driver who lets you switch lanes, the person who allows you to butt in line, the salesclerk who calls after you because you have left behind your purse on the counter -- these are the small, building-block examples of decency that culminate in a life well lived and a shared humanity. These tiny acts of kindness and grace are not showcased on the news with the fervor or intensity of a terrorist attack, no, but they should be noted, occasionally, and used as small reminders that we can do occasionally do monstrous things, violently and forcefully, but we can, more often, also do good things, repeatedly and effortlessly.
But we are capable of so much more! Yesterday, a group of people, probably no more than a handful, entered trains and buses in London, England and decided to show the world what they could do. They accomplished their mission. Their destruction was visible, life-altering, demented. Exactly what they wanted. And yet the madness of their actions was but a midwife to their true legacy -- the reactions of people, the humanity of people, the inherent dignity of people.
The only thing worthwhile that can emerge from a tragedy such as this is the realization and acceptance of our own naive humanity. We are forgetful people, vile people, and angelic people. We forget the inherent fragility of our world, because to remember, consistently, would leave us immobile. We are vile in what we can do to each other, willingly, in the name of ideology. We are angelic in our capacity to grieve and help.
An event like this always surprises us, as it should; the shock comes from the notion that we have acts like this capable inside of us. It seems like an aberration, even though we know, all too well, that it is the norm.
Hate and love are the flipsides of our nature, and just as we are blindsided by the carnage we can convey, we should also not neglect the daily acts of generosity and sympathy that continually remind us of our humanity. The driver who lets you switch lanes, the person who allows you to butt in line, the salesclerk who calls after you because you have left behind your purse on the counter -- these are the small, building-block examples of decency that culminate in a life well lived and a shared humanity. These tiny acts of kindness and grace are not showcased on the news with the fervor or intensity of a terrorist attack, no, but they should be noted, occasionally, and used as small reminders that we can do occasionally do monstrous things, violently and forcefully, but we can, more often, also do good things, repeatedly and effortlessly.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
LIVE 8's AFTERMATH
To know poverty you must spend seven years living in a foreign land, amongst the people, amidst the carnage, like Bruce Wayne in BATMAN BEGINS, and only then, possibly, good fortune willing, you may be able to appreciate what the lesser among us endure.
To know poverty you must spend your entire life treating the sick, the wounded, the feeble, the lost, and only then, certainly, can you begin to understand what the wretched of the earth have known for so long.
To know poverty you must attend a series of concerts, featuring multiple artists in multiple countries, and only then, for a moment, will wisdom announce its reclusive presence.
The truth is, I fear, that we can never know true, lasting, grinding poverty unless we are in it. Unless we are of it. Unless we are one of the billions who are unfortunate enough to have been born among it.
Cynicism never leads anywhere, which is why I hope I’m not being cynical when I find the whole Live 8 phenomenon somewhat, well, depressing.
Let me be clear: I think the concerts were a fantastic idea. I firmly believe that drawing attention to Africa’s problems, drawing attention to poverty itself, is a necessary, worthy and, dare I say it, divine goal. It united the world for a good cause, as the pundits say, and who can argue with that?
And yet.
I read that at the end of the concert held in Barrie, Ontario, Bryan Adams and Dan Ackyroyd and The Tragically Hip and thousands of concertgoers all chanted ‘Canada cares’ before leading into an impromptu rendition of our national anthem, ‘O Canada’.
Who can quabble with this warm-hearted display of sentiment and solidarity? Shit, if I were there, in that place, in that crowd, I have no doubt whatsoever that I, too, would have been smiling and laughing and singing along. It’s what we humans do.
And yet.
How many people will truly, sincerely, authentically be inspired to, well, DO something? Act. Engage. Some, especially the young, will. Others will have had a good day out.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Again, I believe that the concerts were a rousing success. One shouldn’t nitpick attempts at goodness, at greatness, at humaneness.
But I will, regardless.
My concerns:
1) A concert for Africa – Africa is not a country. Africa is a mammoth continent composed of dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. Some are doing fairly well; most are not. In most people’s eyes, the concept of ‘Africa’ seems to be: a place that is dying, and a place that needs our help’. Fine. All well and good. But Africa is filled with countries and cities and towns and villages. And people. Individuals. Some are good and some are bad and some are arrogant pricks while others are bordering on sainthood. Africa’s countries can and should speak for themselves, and I think they should have had a much, much larger presence within the concerts themselves. Maybe television ratings wouldn’t have been as high, and maybe more people would have tuned out, the message thus being lost, but still – it’s condescending, patronizing, and more than a little colonial to assert our own power and principles while relegating the people concerned to a status little higher than that of a helpless victim. It's our duty as more successful countries to help those less fortunate, but it's also our duty to include the people in their own projected development. The whole 'teach a man' to fish truism is truer than I ever knew; it's not easy to do, and it may not be what the people want to do, but capacity-building is the only way. You have to help the people help themselves, and that will not (only) be accomplished through an influx of cash; it will take years and years and decades and decades of teaching and development.
2) Canada cares – Well, good for Canada. Canada has decided that it cares. For me, that’s irrelevant. The concerts were supposed to be about the people who need help; when everything is reduced to ‘look how good we are’, topped off by a singing of our own national anthem, something has been lost in translation somewhere. Why was ‘Oh Canada’ being sung? To celebrate that concertgoers attended a cool concert? To wallow in how generous a country we are? Bullshit. Caring is action, plain and simple. If your action was nothing more than going to a concert to watch Neil Young jam again, well, I don’t think that’s something to gloat about. The issues involved are too big and too sad for that kind of pat-on-the-back. If every Canadian had decided to go to an African country for one year, six months, even month, and teach English, or architecture, or help design a road, if every Canadian had signed a legal pledge to do that, then I would truly, sincerely, believe that 'Canada cares'. Words are cheap, and sentiment alone, divorced from action, is even cheaper.
3) Africa Is A Place Designed For Our Goodwill – Africa has governments. It has corrupt governments. It has governments that will do whatever it can to take all of the money earmarked for development and keep it for themselves. As I’ve written about before (perhaps ad nauseum), I don’t think Westerners quite realize how absolutely entrenched corruption is in the very fabric of most countries’ social systems. (I sure as shit didn’t before I came to Cambodia.) The G-8 countries can give 20, 30, 40 more billion bucks every year, and it won’t mean shit. Unless safeguards are in place, unless accountability is in place, than the money will be filtered through channels so Byzantine that it will never be found. Somebody wrote a good column about this the other day – how, if no one’s held accountable for actions and intentions, then what’s the point? (Donor money keeps getting pumped into Cambodia, and the money keeps being squandered; it is only now, after a decade, that the donor countries are starting to say to the Cambodian government: You better do with it what we tell you to do with it.) The point is, Africa is not just some mythical blob of suffering that will be healed by cash. Cash will help; cash never hurts. But when you have generations of people raised to believe that ‘foreigner equeals someone who gives me money’, that damages and taints everything, from infrastructure to infant mortality.
4) There Is No They – Another one of my recurring themes here at this blog for the, oh, two people who may read it on a regular basis. The whole point of the concerts, as I understood them, was to force the G-8 countries to pony up the cash for Africa. Fine. But there was no talk of Africans helping themselves, and very little asked of the people attending the concerts. Mass mobilizations can work wonders and bring down civilizations, as recent events in the Middle East and Central Asia have shown. But that’s not enough. It comes down to you, and you alone. It comes down to the Africans. It comes down to individuals guided by conscience. There is no ‘they’. There is only you.
I hate to sound like a curmudgeon for writing all of this, but I don’t think most Canadians (barring the native Indians) have ever really, truly seen poverty up close. It stinks and it’s dehumanizing and it’s ugly. Poverty is two thousand kids picking trash at a garbage dump every day with the hope of raising twenty-five, maybe fifty cents for their family after ten hours work in the blazing sun. Poverty is a brilliant, shining girl living in a small village who studies English hard every single day and who will never go to university because her parents can’t afford the yearly tuition, which amounts to about the cost of sixty of the bottles of water sold at the Canada Live 8 concert. Poverty is a life of bathing and drinking from the same water you shit in. Poverty means selling children for sex, transporting children for sex, and killing children, physically and mentally, for sex. Poverty is the scab you pick that regenerates itself. And the only reason I sometimes get so worked up about this whole issues arises from my own guilt, my own sense of bourgeois liberal shame; you can’t live here and not feel, well, superior, because you are – economically and educationally, as a foreigner, you are superior. As a person, no. The kindest people I’ve ever met have had nothing at all; as Paul Theroux ends his account of Africa, Dark Star Safari: “The best of them are bare-assed.”
The attention from Live 8 will, hopefully, enable the G-8 leaders to give Africa the support it needs and deserves. But such support is complex; it needs hard questions with even harder answers. It needs acknowledging the responsibilities that individual governments in individual countries need to live up to. It entitles asking people to help themselves and lay claim to themselves.
I have no answers; sometimes I feel stupid even acting like I know what I’m talking about, when I really, really don’t. Perhaps I’m misguided, and misinterpreting and overanalyzing the whole thing. I don’t know. At the very least, though, I’ve asked myself these questions, and thought about these concerns; two, three years ago, they weren’t even on my radar. I’ve started to see, living here in Cambodia, how complex and fucked-up and craven the world truly is. I’ve also realized its’ generosity and good-heartedness.
Balancing those two realities, dwelling within their borders, accepting your own role and your own responsibility, is a life-long endeavor that requires much, much more from others and ourselves than a little song and a little dance every decade or two, I guess is what I’m saying.
To know poverty you must spend your entire life treating the sick, the wounded, the feeble, the lost, and only then, certainly, can you begin to understand what the wretched of the earth have known for so long.
To know poverty you must attend a series of concerts, featuring multiple artists in multiple countries, and only then, for a moment, will wisdom announce its reclusive presence.
The truth is, I fear, that we can never know true, lasting, grinding poverty unless we are in it. Unless we are of it. Unless we are one of the billions who are unfortunate enough to have been born among it.
Cynicism never leads anywhere, which is why I hope I’m not being cynical when I find the whole Live 8 phenomenon somewhat, well, depressing.
Let me be clear: I think the concerts were a fantastic idea. I firmly believe that drawing attention to Africa’s problems, drawing attention to poverty itself, is a necessary, worthy and, dare I say it, divine goal. It united the world for a good cause, as the pundits say, and who can argue with that?
And yet.
I read that at the end of the concert held in Barrie, Ontario, Bryan Adams and Dan Ackyroyd and The Tragically Hip and thousands of concertgoers all chanted ‘Canada cares’ before leading into an impromptu rendition of our national anthem, ‘O Canada’.
Who can quabble with this warm-hearted display of sentiment and solidarity? Shit, if I were there, in that place, in that crowd, I have no doubt whatsoever that I, too, would have been smiling and laughing and singing along. It’s what we humans do.
And yet.
How many people will truly, sincerely, authentically be inspired to, well, DO something? Act. Engage. Some, especially the young, will. Others will have had a good day out.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Again, I believe that the concerts were a rousing success. One shouldn’t nitpick attempts at goodness, at greatness, at humaneness.
But I will, regardless.
My concerns:
1) A concert for Africa – Africa is not a country. Africa is a mammoth continent composed of dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. Some are doing fairly well; most are not. In most people’s eyes, the concept of ‘Africa’ seems to be: a place that is dying, and a place that needs our help’. Fine. All well and good. But Africa is filled with countries and cities and towns and villages. And people. Individuals. Some are good and some are bad and some are arrogant pricks while others are bordering on sainthood. Africa’s countries can and should speak for themselves, and I think they should have had a much, much larger presence within the concerts themselves. Maybe television ratings wouldn’t have been as high, and maybe more people would have tuned out, the message thus being lost, but still – it’s condescending, patronizing, and more than a little colonial to assert our own power and principles while relegating the people concerned to a status little higher than that of a helpless victim. It's our duty as more successful countries to help those less fortunate, but it's also our duty to include the people in their own projected development. The whole 'teach a man' to fish truism is truer than I ever knew; it's not easy to do, and it may not be what the people want to do, but capacity-building is the only way. You have to help the people help themselves, and that will not (only) be accomplished through an influx of cash; it will take years and years and decades and decades of teaching and development.
2) Canada cares – Well, good for Canada. Canada has decided that it cares. For me, that’s irrelevant. The concerts were supposed to be about the people who need help; when everything is reduced to ‘look how good we are’, topped off by a singing of our own national anthem, something has been lost in translation somewhere. Why was ‘Oh Canada’ being sung? To celebrate that concertgoers attended a cool concert? To wallow in how generous a country we are? Bullshit. Caring is action, plain and simple. If your action was nothing more than going to a concert to watch Neil Young jam again, well, I don’t think that’s something to gloat about. The issues involved are too big and too sad for that kind of pat-on-the-back. If every Canadian had decided to go to an African country for one year, six months, even month, and teach English, or architecture, or help design a road, if every Canadian had signed a legal pledge to do that, then I would truly, sincerely, believe that 'Canada cares'. Words are cheap, and sentiment alone, divorced from action, is even cheaper.
3) Africa Is A Place Designed For Our Goodwill – Africa has governments. It has corrupt governments. It has governments that will do whatever it can to take all of the money earmarked for development and keep it for themselves. As I’ve written about before (perhaps ad nauseum), I don’t think Westerners quite realize how absolutely entrenched corruption is in the very fabric of most countries’ social systems. (I sure as shit didn’t before I came to Cambodia.) The G-8 countries can give 20, 30, 40 more billion bucks every year, and it won’t mean shit. Unless safeguards are in place, unless accountability is in place, than the money will be filtered through channels so Byzantine that it will never be found. Somebody wrote a good column about this the other day – how, if no one’s held accountable for actions and intentions, then what’s the point? (Donor money keeps getting pumped into Cambodia, and the money keeps being squandered; it is only now, after a decade, that the donor countries are starting to say to the Cambodian government: You better do with it what we tell you to do with it.) The point is, Africa is not just some mythical blob of suffering that will be healed by cash. Cash will help; cash never hurts. But when you have generations of people raised to believe that ‘foreigner equeals someone who gives me money’, that damages and taints everything, from infrastructure to infant mortality.
4) There Is No They – Another one of my recurring themes here at this blog for the, oh, two people who may read it on a regular basis. The whole point of the concerts, as I understood them, was to force the G-8 countries to pony up the cash for Africa. Fine. But there was no talk of Africans helping themselves, and very little asked of the people attending the concerts. Mass mobilizations can work wonders and bring down civilizations, as recent events in the Middle East and Central Asia have shown. But that’s not enough. It comes down to you, and you alone. It comes down to the Africans. It comes down to individuals guided by conscience. There is no ‘they’. There is only you.
I hate to sound like a curmudgeon for writing all of this, but I don’t think most Canadians (barring the native Indians) have ever really, truly seen poverty up close. It stinks and it’s dehumanizing and it’s ugly. Poverty is two thousand kids picking trash at a garbage dump every day with the hope of raising twenty-five, maybe fifty cents for their family after ten hours work in the blazing sun. Poverty is a brilliant, shining girl living in a small village who studies English hard every single day and who will never go to university because her parents can’t afford the yearly tuition, which amounts to about the cost of sixty of the bottles of water sold at the Canada Live 8 concert. Poverty is a life of bathing and drinking from the same water you shit in. Poverty means selling children for sex, transporting children for sex, and killing children, physically and mentally, for sex. Poverty is the scab you pick that regenerates itself. And the only reason I sometimes get so worked up about this whole issues arises from my own guilt, my own sense of bourgeois liberal shame; you can’t live here and not feel, well, superior, because you are – economically and educationally, as a foreigner, you are superior. As a person, no. The kindest people I’ve ever met have had nothing at all; as Paul Theroux ends his account of Africa, Dark Star Safari: “The best of them are bare-assed.”
The attention from Live 8 will, hopefully, enable the G-8 leaders to give Africa the support it needs and deserves. But such support is complex; it needs hard questions with even harder answers. It needs acknowledging the responsibilities that individual governments in individual countries need to live up to. It entitles asking people to help themselves and lay claim to themselves.
I have no answers; sometimes I feel stupid even acting like I know what I’m talking about, when I really, really don’t. Perhaps I’m misguided, and misinterpreting and overanalyzing the whole thing. I don’t know. At the very least, though, I’ve asked myself these questions, and thought about these concerns; two, three years ago, they weren’t even on my radar. I’ve started to see, living here in Cambodia, how complex and fucked-up and craven the world truly is. I’ve also realized its’ generosity and good-heartedness.
Balancing those two realities, dwelling within their borders, accepting your own role and your own responsibility, is a life-long endeavor that requires much, much more from others and ourselves than a little song and a little dance every decade or two, I guess is what I’m saying.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
SKIPPING STONES ON WATER
While having lunch today at the restaurant located across the street from the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' drifted through the diner like some soothing, gossamer remnant of times gone by, and I remembered, quite suddenly, quite vividly, watching, as a kid, on video, the scene where the song appears in Good Morning Vietnam. A battle scene, a war scene, with a montage of fighting and explosions, all interwoven with the sensitivity inherent in Robin Williams' expressive eyes as he watches those young American men in trucks go off into battle.
It was the first time I was aware, I think, of juxtaposition, of irony, of two things colliding that created an effect larger and sweeter than the sum of their individual parts. Here you had a gentle song, celebrating the good stuff in life, and it was played over scenes of carnage, clearly the bad stuff in life.
My twelve year old brain didn't get it, couldn't get it. The song was about love; the images were about war. The song didn't fit the images! What the hell was going on?
And now, seventeen years later, I still don't know what the hell's going on, but I can appreciate that scene. At the time, I could barely imagine going to Toronto, let alone Vietnam; and hearing that song again, at twenty-nine, in a cafe in Cambodia, it brought me back. Returned me. To another time, another state of mind. One that seems very long ago, ages ago, and yet, paradoxically, as recent as yesterday, or this morning, or the minute before last. I remember watching that scene in that movie in that place. I remember the emotion it created. I remember the power of it.
What's that old quote? 'It's not that life's too short -- it's that death is so damn long.' Sometimes I can feel the tug and pull of life and at other times, like now, looking back, feeling back, I can recognize that we're here for a blip. One segment in time overlaps another, and some segments are longer than others, but still. In 1987, '88, I was a kid who loved movies, and Good Morning Vietnam was one that I loved. In 2004, '05, I'm a man who loves movies, who just returned from Vietnam. There's some kind of strange, if erratic, symmetry at work there. One that involves an understanding of life gleamed from a silver screen, and another, parallel understanding earned from a life lived in uncertain and hesitant starts and stops.
Sometimes I think it would be nice if life just spread outward, in a straight line. But there are always rings within rings. You can't tell where one starts and finishes. Past and future collide, each reinterpreting the other, with the present acting, in vain, as a deaf and dmb interpreter.
It's all like a stone skipped across water -- determining at what point the stone stopped before moving forward is a fool's game. It dips and bobs and eventually sinks. That's the whole point of throwing a rock across a lake -- to see how far you can hurl it before it succumbs to gravity. To see what kind of waves you can make. To see what type of speed you can get, and what unlikely, transitory pathway makes itself apparent on the surface of the water, before the pattern itself disintegrates, as it must.
It was the first time I was aware, I think, of juxtaposition, of irony, of two things colliding that created an effect larger and sweeter than the sum of their individual parts. Here you had a gentle song, celebrating the good stuff in life, and it was played over scenes of carnage, clearly the bad stuff in life.
My twelve year old brain didn't get it, couldn't get it. The song was about love; the images were about war. The song didn't fit the images! What the hell was going on?
And now, seventeen years later, I still don't know what the hell's going on, but I can appreciate that scene. At the time, I could barely imagine going to Toronto, let alone Vietnam; and hearing that song again, at twenty-nine, in a cafe in Cambodia, it brought me back. Returned me. To another time, another state of mind. One that seems very long ago, ages ago, and yet, paradoxically, as recent as yesterday, or this morning, or the minute before last. I remember watching that scene in that movie in that place. I remember the emotion it created. I remember the power of it.
What's that old quote? 'It's not that life's too short -- it's that death is so damn long.' Sometimes I can feel the tug and pull of life and at other times, like now, looking back, feeling back, I can recognize that we're here for a blip. One segment in time overlaps another, and some segments are longer than others, but still. In 1987, '88, I was a kid who loved movies, and Good Morning Vietnam was one that I loved. In 2004, '05, I'm a man who loves movies, who just returned from Vietnam. There's some kind of strange, if erratic, symmetry at work there. One that involves an understanding of life gleamed from a silver screen, and another, parallel understanding earned from a life lived in uncertain and hesitant starts and stops.
Sometimes I think it would be nice if life just spread outward, in a straight line. But there are always rings within rings. You can't tell where one starts and finishes. Past and future collide, each reinterpreting the other, with the present acting, in vain, as a deaf and dmb interpreter.
It's all like a stone skipped across water -- determining at what point the stone stopped before moving forward is a fool's game. It dips and bobs and eventually sinks. That's the whole point of throwing a rock across a lake -- to see how far you can hurl it before it succumbs to gravity. To see what kind of waves you can make. To see what type of speed you can get, and what unlikely, transitory pathway makes itself apparent on the surface of the water, before the pattern itself disintegrates, as it must.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
THAT DECEMBER FEELING
On the corner of 8th Street and Wandale Avenue, in the small town of Freemont, Ontario, there stands a house. (As a visitor to Freemont, you can't miss it; it won't let you.) Large and gray, boastful and expansive, it has stood, silent and watchful, in the centre of town for longer than the town itself has existed. There were rumors around Ontario for many years that the house was built by native Canadians around the turn of the nineteenth century, but rumors travel far and travel often in Freemont; to give voice to them, let alone confirm them, is a gamble that few are willing to take. (Freemont is not, and has never been, despite the casino, a gambling town.) Even if such gossip is limited to homebuilders and houses, history and myth, its potential potency remains suspect. To walk the streets of Freemont and stare at the elderly, Victorian-style houses that act as awkward second cousins to their elder, domineering blood relative, or to gawk at the startlingly ugly, brown and bland housing projects that have popped over the past year or two is enough. Enough to satisfy your curiosity. You will not find any answers, and especially not to those questions regarding that one specific house, the one bordering 8th and Wandale. You will walk these streets and think: How could this town have borne that house? It is both too grand and too ostentatiously forbidding for a town as a bland and glumly forlorn as Freemont. It is the place that makes you a child, in all the worst ways, for all the most craven of reasons. It is the house that you hurry past on a cold, moonless December evening, when the sky is black, the air crisp, the snowfall steady but slight. Yes, you hurry past, and you do not look back, and when you mention it again -- that feeling, that December feeling -- the next morning, as you pick up your juice and Lotto 649 ticket at Becker's on Main and Cromwell, the balding cashier, Henry, elderly and retreating, retreats even further. All the way to the other side of the counter, near the chips and the Lik-M-Aid, three for a buck. Visitors don't come all that often to Freemont, truth be told, and when they do, they usually ask. About the house. And the locals, they retreat. To the other side of the counter, or to the storage room, or even just one aisle over. Doesn't matter where.
You shouldn't ask about that house.
You shouldn't ask about that house.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
IN A SIMILAR SPACE
The other day I saw a small Cambodian boy standing on the side of the road. By himself. Talking to himself. Head bopping. A slight smile on his lips. Happy.
All around him, cars were buzzing, dust was flying, foreigners were staring, the sky was falling. (Not literally, no, because the Cambodian sky is vast and deep, but his country is falling. Sinking. Or drifting -- let's say drifting. It is not for me to say if this wounded land sinks or swims, but I can recognize drift.)
But he is a boy. These are not his concerns.
He was thinking about something. Perhaps a day at school, half-remembered, the details already fading away but still strong enough to bring a smile to his lips. Or something his sister said. Yes, that must be it. Something his sister said that morning, over breakfast, as they drank their water and ate their rice. She said something silly and strange because that is what sisters do. Often he does not like his sister but at moments like that, breakfast moments, she can say something silly and strange and all is forgiven. (Until lunch.)
Even now, the boy is fading from my memory. I can't clearly remember his features. No matter. He was in his own headspace, the space that only kids inhabit. Anything can happen in there. Aliens can land, animals can fly, cars can speak.
When I was a child, in a similar space, I used to choose one rock to kick all the way home, and I would imagine that that particular stone was alive and sentient, that it was aware, in pain, and I was kicking it further and further away from home, and for a stone, a small stone, the distance was quite far, and its family, assuming it had one, would never see it again. And though I sometimes felt bad for that rock, I still would kick it, again and again, until I reached home, because I knew, after all, that it was just a rock.
(Oh, but still. There was one that one part. That one part of my brain. The part that allowed aliens to land and animals to fly and pigs to speak. The part that suspected that I had committed a malicious and contemptuous act, though I would not have used those exact words, not knowing what they meant. Did the rock have feelings? Had I taken it away from its family? Listening to the rain against my window, this is what I wondered.)
He was just a boy on the side of the road. But I'm quite certain that something strange and wonderful is going on inside of his head even as I type these words. Something divorced from politics, and finance, and development, and coercion. Something intricate and layered.
All around him, cars were buzzing, dust was flying, foreigners were staring, the sky was falling. (Not literally, no, because the Cambodian sky is vast and deep, but his country is falling. Sinking. Or drifting -- let's say drifting. It is not for me to say if this wounded land sinks or swims, but I can recognize drift.)
But he is a boy. These are not his concerns.
He was thinking about something. Perhaps a day at school, half-remembered, the details already fading away but still strong enough to bring a smile to his lips. Or something his sister said. Yes, that must be it. Something his sister said that morning, over breakfast, as they drank their water and ate their rice. She said something silly and strange because that is what sisters do. Often he does not like his sister but at moments like that, breakfast moments, she can say something silly and strange and all is forgiven. (Until lunch.)
Even now, the boy is fading from my memory. I can't clearly remember his features. No matter. He was in his own headspace, the space that only kids inhabit. Anything can happen in there. Aliens can land, animals can fly, cars can speak.
When I was a child, in a similar space, I used to choose one rock to kick all the way home, and I would imagine that that particular stone was alive and sentient, that it was aware, in pain, and I was kicking it further and further away from home, and for a stone, a small stone, the distance was quite far, and its family, assuming it had one, would never see it again. And though I sometimes felt bad for that rock, I still would kick it, again and again, until I reached home, because I knew, after all, that it was just a rock.
(Oh, but still. There was one that one part. That one part of my brain. The part that allowed aliens to land and animals to fly and pigs to speak. The part that suspected that I had committed a malicious and contemptuous act, though I would not have used those exact words, not knowing what they meant. Did the rock have feelings? Had I taken it away from its family? Listening to the rain against my window, this is what I wondered.)
He was just a boy on the side of the road. But I'm quite certain that something strange and wonderful is going on inside of his head even as I type these words. Something divorced from politics, and finance, and development, and coercion. Something intricate and layered.
Monday, June 27, 2005
WHAT I WANT VERSUS WHAT YOU NEED, or WHY, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE WORLD IS A RATHOLE, WE STILL NEED TO WATCH JON STEWART EVERY NOW AND THEN
What do you owe yourself and what do you owe the world around you?
I ask because I'm reading Thomas Friedman's new book The World Is Flat, which details how, in this brave new interconnected world, you had better continually upgrade who you are and what you can do or else you will be left in the competitive dust of those around you who are not necessarily climbing the corporate ladder, but just hanging onto a rung by any means possible.
I also ask because recently I read a book called Citizen Nader, written in 1972, about social crusader Ralph Nader, a man who, even thirty-five years ago, was recognizing certain tendencies in American society that he deemed trivial and wasteful -- namely, watching t.v., chilling out, playing mah-jong, having fun. In a world and a society at the mercy of major corporations and governments who do not necessarily have the people's best interests at heart, it is not enough to just vote; you have to engage.
I tend to read between the lines and find things that usually aren't there to begin with, but what the hell. Reading these two books, this is what I found.
You have the individual who must prepare himself to engage in an increasingly interconnected and difficult job-market, society, world. This takes planning, intelligence, time and strategy. If you want to have even a middle-class life, you have to be prepared to strategically position yourself to potential employers. And you will have to keep doing this to survive -- to buy the car, the house, the flat-screen TV.
And yet, Nader is pointing to loftier goals. He is saying look, all that shit won't make you happy. It's advertisers and governments way of forcing you to continually keep up with the Joneses; it's society's way of playing your neuroses like a harp. The key to a good life and a healthy life and a happy life is to fight injustice any way that you can -- in your society, your city, your neighbourhood. Don't waste time on trivial things; think of what you can contribute to society.
Which is the better choice -- the career and the family and the inevitable path that those structures necessitate, or the more laborious, less ostentatiously fulfilling road of social engagement? How do you balance your own needs, which are, by their very nature, inherently selfish, with the notion that you could be putting your own energies to better, more nobler uses? And to what end? You can end up divorced, paying alimony to an ex-wife to you hate and with kids who barely know you, or end up like Ralph Nader, alone at seventy, no wife, no family, no companions, driven by work?
Is there a middle ground?
I'm oversimplifying things, obviously, but it's something I often think about. I don't have a car, or a house, or a flat-screen TV. Do I want those things? I dunno. I do know that I want to engage in work that contributes something to the world around me, but I'm not sure that a single-minded, blind pursuit aimed at solving society's ills will necessarily result in contentment. An hour spent watching The Daily Show: Global Edition is an hour that I could have spent tutoring some poor kid in the slums. But just as Doestoevsky's Underground Man said that it's sometimes fun to smash things, so do I say that it's sometimes fun to chill out in front of Jon Stewart. Where do you balance the insatiable needs of the ego with the more humane tendencies that truly lift us up and take us to another level of humanity?
If teaching taught me anything, it's that you can see the effect, instantly, every day, that you have on another people. If you're pissed, it changes the texture and tone of the class. (I mean, of course, 'pissed' in the Canadian and American sense, not 'pissed' in the, you know, British sense. I'm aware that coming to class plastered out of your mind could change the mood of the room.) Alone in your cubicle, your mood only affects your own psyche. Standing in front of thirty nineteen year olds, your mood determines whether the next hour will be heaven or hell. (Or, as is usually the case, at least purgatory.)
No answers from me, only questions. Perhaps there's a middle ground, somewhere that satisfies our own selfish natures and allows the better parts of goodwill an outlet to the world at large.
I just wonder if settling for the 'middle ground' has ever created any lasting, resonant change -- in the world, or in ourselves.
I ask because I'm reading Thomas Friedman's new book The World Is Flat, which details how, in this brave new interconnected world, you had better continually upgrade who you are and what you can do or else you will be left in the competitive dust of those around you who are not necessarily climbing the corporate ladder, but just hanging onto a rung by any means possible.
I also ask because recently I read a book called Citizen Nader, written in 1972, about social crusader Ralph Nader, a man who, even thirty-five years ago, was recognizing certain tendencies in American society that he deemed trivial and wasteful -- namely, watching t.v., chilling out, playing mah-jong, having fun. In a world and a society at the mercy of major corporations and governments who do not necessarily have the people's best interests at heart, it is not enough to just vote; you have to engage.
I tend to read between the lines and find things that usually aren't there to begin with, but what the hell. Reading these two books, this is what I found.
You have the individual who must prepare himself to engage in an increasingly interconnected and difficult job-market, society, world. This takes planning, intelligence, time and strategy. If you want to have even a middle-class life, you have to be prepared to strategically position yourself to potential employers. And you will have to keep doing this to survive -- to buy the car, the house, the flat-screen TV.
And yet, Nader is pointing to loftier goals. He is saying look, all that shit won't make you happy. It's advertisers and governments way of forcing you to continually keep up with the Joneses; it's society's way of playing your neuroses like a harp. The key to a good life and a healthy life and a happy life is to fight injustice any way that you can -- in your society, your city, your neighbourhood. Don't waste time on trivial things; think of what you can contribute to society.
Which is the better choice -- the career and the family and the inevitable path that those structures necessitate, or the more laborious, less ostentatiously fulfilling road of social engagement? How do you balance your own needs, which are, by their very nature, inherently selfish, with the notion that you could be putting your own energies to better, more nobler uses? And to what end? You can end up divorced, paying alimony to an ex-wife to you hate and with kids who barely know you, or end up like Ralph Nader, alone at seventy, no wife, no family, no companions, driven by work?
Is there a middle ground?
I'm oversimplifying things, obviously, but it's something I often think about. I don't have a car, or a house, or a flat-screen TV. Do I want those things? I dunno. I do know that I want to engage in work that contributes something to the world around me, but I'm not sure that a single-minded, blind pursuit aimed at solving society's ills will necessarily result in contentment. An hour spent watching The Daily Show: Global Edition is an hour that I could have spent tutoring some poor kid in the slums. But just as Doestoevsky's Underground Man said that it's sometimes fun to smash things, so do I say that it's sometimes fun to chill out in front of Jon Stewart. Where do you balance the insatiable needs of the ego with the more humane tendencies that truly lift us up and take us to another level of humanity?
If teaching taught me anything, it's that you can see the effect, instantly, every day, that you have on another people. If you're pissed, it changes the texture and tone of the class. (I mean, of course, 'pissed' in the Canadian and American sense, not 'pissed' in the, you know, British sense. I'm aware that coming to class plastered out of your mind could change the mood of the room.) Alone in your cubicle, your mood only affects your own psyche. Standing in front of thirty nineteen year olds, your mood determines whether the next hour will be heaven or hell. (Or, as is usually the case, at least purgatory.)
No answers from me, only questions. Perhaps there's a middle ground, somewhere that satisfies our own selfish natures and allows the better parts of goodwill an outlet to the world at large.
I just wonder if settling for the 'middle ground' has ever created any lasting, resonant change -- in the world, or in ourselves.
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