THE HERE AND THE NOW

You slip and fall on the ice and bang your head and for the rest of your life you have a tiny scar stretching across your brow, looking like a little corn on the cob, as your aunt used to say. Or you hold the hand of someone you love as they die, feeling disgusted by the clammy grip of their fingers and horrified at your own reaction -- distaste mixed with love. Or you strap yourself into the plane that you told yourself you would never get on and suddenly you are up, and AWAY, and there is no place else to go but down, far below, and that is a somewhere-kind-of-place that you don't want to be a part of, twenty thousand feet below, not yet, not after this moment of elevated bliss.

We all have moments that have shaped us. Affected us. Even molded us, almost against our will. These are the moments that made us realize that we were alive, there, at that moment. We can't imagine ourselves without them. We may be watching t.v. or crossing the street or watching the rain splash against the windshield when those moments come back, vivid and raw, real and alive.

But how often will we really think about them again? I read this awhile back, and it made me think, and it's true -- even our most precious, hidden memories, the ones that drift in and out of our minds as we dive into and out of sleep, are finite.

No, no, no, you say. That's not true. I think about them all the time.

Fine. I'm sure you do. But add it up. Do the math. In the course of a life, how many times will we think about that particular point in time? Ten? Fifteen? Let's thirty.

Thirty seems like a lot. Thirty is a number you can grasp.

Oh, but that's the point, isn't it, that grasping, that wielding, that holding-on, and the scary thing, the finite thing, is that you can count it, you can conceive of it, you can get a grip on a number like that. Your memories have a limit.

I think we take for granted those little pieces of time, wonderful and wretched, that have chipped away at our psyche. When we're wounded or bruised, we reach for similar points in the past that have bludgeoned us -- we compare, contrast, decide which is more painful.

Same goes for the good stuff, too. Was this experience as good as that experience? Our mind flashes back, remembering the brightness and the glee and the sheer, glossy goodness that only memories can provide. And then we store the new experience away. To be retrieved at a later point in time.

Or let's look at it this way:

Something happens to you that instantly reminds you of a previous event or incident or escapade that occurred at some point in the past. You hadn't thought about that memory in years and years, ages really, but boom, here its, back for more. And the thing that reminded you of the old event suddenly takes a new meaning, a heavier resonance, because now it forms a weird, transitory bridge from the self you were to the self you are.

Case in point. When I was in Tokyo a few years back, I was in an Internet cafe, minding my own business, browsing the net, when suddenly I heard the song "I love a rainy night."

And I was instantly reminded of a tape my brother and I had made when we were eight and six years old, respectively, a tape that was recorded at a winter cottage we used to go to every February for a week, and on the tape there is a wild and wacky Scotty Spencer singing 'I love a rainy night', and I had not thought about that moment in years, decades, or that tape in years, and yet here it was, back for more, and maybe that first incident -- me as a kid, singing -- had occurred so that this latest incident -- me as a twentysomething in Tokyo -- would have an added resonance that would cause me to reflect on who I was and where I'd been and how strange and mystical the process of life itself can be, if you think about it.

Maybe somebody up above was orchestrating the whole thing, I think at times, usually before sleep. Maybe the events that don't make sense to us, that cause us pain and joy, are not meant to be understood now -- they can only be comprehended in context, and that context can only arise after years of experience. After living, in other words.

Whatever.

Point is, when you travel, you're aware, you notice, and you reflect. I've seen a lot in Cambodia, stuff that I'll remember for the rest of my life -- but how many times will I think of these things? Five more times? Fifteen?

To be honest, I don't know. (Which is as it should be.) But when the memories do come back, don't neglect them; don't treat them as commonplace. Don't shove them aside, assuming they'll be back. Let them linger. Dwell on them. Think about what they mean, and why, and make the colours in the picture a little sharper.

They may be back again at some point in the future, yes, but they are also here, now, and the here and the now is perhaps the most fleeting state of all.

BLONDE JOKE OF THE DAY

(With apologies to all blondes out there. Natural or otherwise.)


So it's Friday night, and this blonde decides to go and see this new ventriloquist act that comes to town. The papers have been saying great things about it, MARVELLOUS things, in fact, and she needs a little sunshine in her life right now, this blonde does.

She arrives early, gets a nice seat, smack dab in the middle, sucks some gobstoppers and settles in to enjoy the show.

Out comes the ventriloquist, an old, balding, gentle-as-can-be looking chap wearing an old cardigan vest and bright green tie. Gripped in his right hand is his grinning wooden friend, smiling that idiot-smile found all on all dummies, wooden or not. He sits on a small green stool, centre stage, rests the dummy on his right knee, nods a little nod to the crowd, and gets to work.

Out come the jokes. One after the other. And guess what, folks? They're all bonde jokes. ALL of them.

Not surprisingly, the blonde is shocked. Stunned. Disgusted and dismayed. She looks around and sees that everyone ELSE seems to be enjoying the show, thank-you very much. Some people are giggling. Others are roaring. Still others are laughing so hard that tears are drizzling down their cheeks, leaving, literally, small pools of water on the floor.

After twenty minutes, the blonde's had enough. QUITE enough. She's listened to these kinds of jokes all her life, and enDURED them all her life, but no more. Tonight's the night when she makes a stand. When she demands the respect that all blondes deserve.

She stands up, takes a deep breath (to gather her courage), and then, shaking, screams:

"Enough! ENOUGH! I've been here for twenty minutes, and I've heard nothing, NOTHING but blonde jokes! And YOU may think it's funny and THEY may think it's funny, but let me tell you -- I sure as heck don't think it's funny, mister!"

The old man's eyes pop wide. His mouth opens and closes. He looks around the hall, at the suddenly silent crowd.

"Oh my," he says. "My oh my oh MY. I'm truly sorry, ma'am, if you were offended. I, well, I was only telling JOKES, you see, and I never imagined that --"

"You be quiet!" the blonde yells, waving her finger at the ventriloquist. "This is between me and the little man sitting on your knee!"

ATLANTIS -- STAY LOST, PLEASE

Given that they may have actually, really, honestly, sincerely found the fabled lost city of Atlantis, according to a story on cnn.com, it made me re-evaluate my idea of the perfect afterlife.

Not that I'm sure that there IS an afterlife, of course, but there may be one waiting for me, and I know what I want to see.

Forget the angels. Put down those harps. Lock the pearly gates. (And what does that mean, anyways? 'Pearly' gates? Are they draped in jewelry or something?)

When I kick the bucket, what I want to see is a clean, well-lit display room. The kind you might see in a used-car dealership, for example, or better yet, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. High ceilings. Bright lights. Perhaps a uniformed guard standing in the corner, looking bored.

And what is exactly in this room?

Nothing much. Just pictures on the wall, that's all. Beneath the pictures will be a one or two paragraph caption. Clean, bold type. Easy to read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah -- but the content, right? What's it all about, Alfie?

Again, nothing much. Just the mysteries of the universe finally, unquestionably explained.

After all, I'd be dead, right? If you can't find out the answers when you're dead, then what's the point of it all?

So, this is what I'd like to see:

A picture of Dealey Plaza, Dallas Texas, November 22, 1963. The death of J.F.K., if you haven't guessed it already. And then beneath the picture would be an explanation of what really happened. Oswald did it. Oswald didn't do it. Oswald did it, but others did too. Whatever. I just want the truth. And, contrary to what Jack Nicholson may believe, I think I could handle it, being dead and all. Let me have it.

Then I move on, wandering through this lovely room, listening to the soothing, pleasantly bland muzak that drifts along with me.

I come to a picture of stars. Not 'stars' as in Pauly Shore and Don Knotts, but 'stars' as in 'celestial wonders of light'. Beneath the stars, two words, in bold: 'Big bang'. Followed by an explanation I can understand.

You getting the drift? It's simple, really. Show me the pyramids -- then explain how they were built. The Loch Ness monster? Why not; I've always wondered about that mythical (?) beast. How about ghosts? Are they real or not? I just want to know, is all.

Others may want to spend eternity in God's loving embrace. Good for them. Myself, I think that could get stifling after awhile. He's got a hell of a grip, God does. (Maybe He could be waiting in the room after the display room?) I just want to know what it's all about. I want all the mysteries of life solved, explained, put to bed.

At least, that's what I thought.

But then I saw that article about the finding of Atlantis, and something just felt...wrong.

Atlantis is not supposed to be found.

Charlie Brown is not supposed to kick the football.

The Red Sox are not supposed to win the World Series.

If Atlantis is found, and the Loch Ness Monster is found, then they're real, and if they're real, then they're not mythical anymore.

And when you take away the mythical, then you take away that wonderful, golden layer of life that elevates us.

(Then again, I'll be dead when I'm finding all of this stuff out, right? So maybe it won't matter much. Maybe, being dead, I'll want all the answers I can get. Because eternity sounds really, really long to me, and I'll need something to think about.)

But I ain't dead yet.

So maybe Oswald did it, and maybe he didn't (and I have a theory, of course, but that's for another, later, epic-length entry), and maybe the Bermuda triangle really is out there, and ghosts do actually exist, but if you happen to find out any of these answers, do me a favor, okay?

Don't let me know.

BEER AND CONFUSION

The other day I went to Kirirom national park, a beautiful, cool, scenic kinda place about two and a half hours north of Phnom Penh. This was for a 'team-building' exercise with my co-workers. Play games, bond, share experiences -- with the hopes of a better working relationship for all. A nice trip, a nice day, with the required breaking-down-of-the-van-on-the-way-back which is typical of Cambodia and might even be mandatory. But there were gorgeous moutains and wide, endless green fields that stretched in circles around us, and kids in white shirts bicyling back from school, staring and smiling at the unfortunate foreigners, far from home, so it was a moment to remember, despite the breakdown.

On the way out of the city, we passed a billboard advertising a local Cambodian beer -- 'Your country! Your beer!' -- the ad shouted, with a group of twenty-somethings clutching cans of beer and smiling and looking for all intents and purposes as if they had just won the lottery, if the grand prize happened to be a couple of bottles of suds.

I thought of most Canadian beer ads, and how they, too, tie in nationalism and patriotism and whatever ism you want to call it with getting blitzed, hammered, shredded. (Heck, even the names are patriotic -- Molson Canadian, comes to mind. As do 'I am Canadian!' ads so popular a few years back.)


Everybody loves their country. Everybody loves their beer.


Which got me thinking: Everything always seems to come back to, or revolve around, the name of the country on our passports. Why is that? Why are we obsessed with our nationalities?


I guess it's natural, and inevitable, and necessary -- we need to feel like we belong, and we need a sense of place. It's natural to be proud of where you are and what you do. Nobody wants to feel like their family is composed of a bunch of schmucks, and nobody wants to believe that the country they live in is on the wrong side of morality, truth, honor.


But I think there is a thin line between pride and arrogance.

The good thing about living abroad is that you are forced to look at your country anew. You start to realize that the stereotypes people have about your own native land are completely false and, more often than not, truer than you ever knew.

The other day I realized that I had not spoken to another Canadian in Phnom Penh for a good two, three months. Wow. But on a daily basis I speak to Americans and Finns and Dutch and Japanese and Singaporeans and even Burmese.

And don't think twice about it.

That's worth raising a glass too, isn't it?

************************************************************************************

Last night I watched CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND and THE INCREDIBLE HULK on t.v., both of which I really enjoyed, and both of which came out, like, a year and a half ago. (Okay. I'm a little late.)


After the movies I was flipping around the channels and I came across that old SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 'Weekend Update' host Dennis Miller, who I was surprised to see hosting a talk show because a) who knew he had his own talk show still? and b) this is Cambodia, so it's always shocking to see anybody western, in some sense, let alone someone you used to imitate while in junior high school. (I was also flabbergasted to see that John Macenroe has his own bloody talk show -- and it's available, via cable, in Cambodia. As a host, he's not half-bad. When he tries to make jokes, well, let's just say he was my favorite tennis player as a kid, and leave it at that.)


Dennis Miller still throws out these arcane, obscure references that may qualify as jokes if you have the time to search the Net to locate their sources as you're listening to his routine.
But truth and insight comes from the strangest places, and as his first guest he had that familiar character actor Hector Elizondo, who some of you may know and others may not, and he was talking about this play he was performing in at some Burbank theatre, and it was about an older man dying, and a young nurse who soothes him, yada-yada-yada, and he quoted some of the lines of the play that are actually quite, well, provoking.



"Cultivate confusion," the old man tells the young woman. "Confusion leads to questioning. It leads to searching. Certainty leads only to dogma."


Fantastic, insightful stuff.


I remember getting a tour of my new junior high school when I was still in Grade Six, and the place seemed mammoth, monstrous, because there were, like, two floors, not one like at Pine Grove Public School, which had been the land of my learning for the past seven years, and Kenny Savoie, a likeable, scruffy character who I have not seen since the age of thirteen (and does that make me feel old, well, I guess it does) was just as bewildered as I was: "Scott, don't lose me now!" Half-joking, half-not. He grabbed my arm as we wandered from room to room.

Then, much later, came Japan, and Cambodia, and if you ever live abroad, or even travel abroad, you will be confused, and you will question, and you will wander, and you will grow.


So, I wish you all a little bit of confusion. You may even find yourself in an endless series of perpetual, perplexing cycles of confusion and uncertainty, leading you to constantly seek out the answers to questions that others neglect to even ask. You may contain within yourself those seeds of restlessness that sprout ambition and courage. You may be forever wondering if you are now the person you were meant to be.


You may always be confused, if you're lucky.

BREADTH AND DEPTH

Two stories, one true, the other a fable:

First --

Pierre Trudeau -- Canada's greatest, truest prime minister, a man I accidentally met along with Greg Gaspari and Eric Daigle while waiting for movie stars outside of the Sutton Hotel in Toronto back in the fall of '95, a man who signed my paperback copy of Paul Auster's screenplays for SMOKE andBLUE IN THE FACE before he slowly strolled up Bay Street, a small old man who no one gave a second look to -- used to go scuba diving in the Arctic. In his fifties.

(See why he was the greatest?)

After he died, one of Trudeau's companions on those nautical adventures, a long-time doctor friend of his, recalled the glee and the determination the prime minister brought to his dives. He used to sit on the edge of the boat, and smile at the doctor, and look at the wide Arctic sky looming over them, and ask: "How deep do you think we can go?"

Second --

Two guys, one young and one old, are sitting on the top deck of a luxury cruise liner as it slowly bobs it way through the Atlantic ocean. It's a beautiful evening -- cool air, red sun slowly sinking into the water, bikini-clad babes milling around the pool. Lit cigars. Lavender lounge chairs. Red wine. Soft music. The whole deal.

The young guy, taking a puff on his stogie, slowly lets the smoke escape from his lips.

"My first time on a boat," the guy says. "Can you believe that. First time. Just look at that water, man. Look at it!"

"Yeah," the old guy says, smiling, watching a college girl in a two-piece do her laps in the pool in a series of lazy, I-ain't-gotta-be-nowhere strokes. "And you know what?"

"What?" the young guy says, taking another puff.

"That's just the top," the old guy says, turning his gaze to the sea. "That's just the top, kid."

I'll come back to these points in a moment. Honest. Don't go anywhere.

See, the thing is, I've stepped foot in seven countries.

For the record: Canada (the true north strong and free), the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia.

Three of them don't count. (Okay, okay -- they count as countries, yes, but they don't count for me. Why? Because I spent only two days in Hong Kong, one night in Malaysia, and
Thailand -- well, Bangkok has a heck of an airport. Got a KFC and everything.

I've spent a total of a month and a half, tops, in the States, and that's including over-the-border runs to Buffalo, New York, and vacations in Myrtle Beach and Orlando.

Japan? For four years the Japanese were my homeboys (and homegirls.)

Kampuchea? Seventeen months, and counting...

And what have I learned?

For me, it comes down to breadth and depth.

A former Canadian co-worker of mine here in Phnom Penh (who used to teach high school math at East York Collegiate in Toronto) has been to a hundred countries. A HUNDRED. That's a lot of stamps in a lot of passports.

I've been to seven.

But I lived in Canada for twenty-three years, and will again. (I'm assuming. Although Ice -
land is looking tempting. And El Salvador, well, it has its moments...)

Japan was my base for four years, and I feel a strong, almost electric pull to it.

And Cambodia is definitely surreal and intricate, but it's raw and real and compelling.

The thing is, I've spent time in these places. I've ate the food. I've listened to the music. I've watched their politicians talk and bargain, slowly realizing that they all the do the same
shuck-and-jive, no matter what the country; it's the beat that changes, is all.

Living in Canada, and Japan, and Cambodia, has given me depth. It hasn't made ME a deep person, no, but it's forced me to dip and then dive into the deep end of life. You have time to breathe and live and grow and think when you live a foreign country.

Passing through a country for a week or a month, you get breadth. You see a lot. You marvel a lot. But I don't think you get the chance to learn a lot. It's the difference between seeing five flashy movies and reading one good book, slowly, in sips, not gulps.

Not that you have to go to a foreign country to get depth. I think you can stay in the town that you grew up in for thirty, forty years, and, if you look around, and observe, and listen, and feel for the pulse and listen for the hum, you will get a depth deeper than you could ever have imagined.

I don't think one way's better than the other, breadth or depth, either-or, Freddy versus Jason, Alien versus Predator. Different strokes for different folks, as I like to say.

The import thing is, no matter where you are, or for how long you are there, to go deeper.

To dive in.

How deep do you think you can go?

TURN THE PAGE...

I like books. Love books. LIVE for books.

The test of a reader is: Have you read a book while walking down the street at any point in the last, oh, year.

If the answer is yes, then you're a reader.

I was walking out of the train station near my apartment in Japan, reading the first volume of Robert Caro's great, unending biography of Lyndon Johnson when a crazy Japanese homeless guy whacked me in the stomach with a two-by-four. (Howard Cosell's famous call of the Ali/Frazier fight echoes in my mind: "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!") I was down for the count in Sagami-Ono, Japan.

I could sit in a room by myself and read and be reasonably happy for the rest of my life.

But is reading enough?

There's the world inside the books, and the world outside of the room where you're reading the books. And, at a certain point, those two worlds have to, should, collide.

You can't get everything from books. You can get a lot -- perspective, compassion, empathy, plain old knowledge -- but as a way of learning about the world, understanding the world, you gotta get out.

You gotta walk around.

You gotta travel, listen, observe.

I was given a book by a friend of the family called LOST JAPAN by Alex Kerr before I went to Japan. It was all about how the Japan of today doesn't compare to the Japan of yesterday, about how the modern Japan is trashing the traditional Japan, about how customs die and are buried on a daily basis, and now nobody in Japan seems to be noticing, let alone caring.

I read half of it. Put it down. I couldn't get it. Couldn't process it. Couldn't imagine it.

Why?

Because it was all about stuff that I had no first-hand contact with. Culture, economy, history and society -- I knew about that stuff in Canada. (Kind of. Well, a little.)

But in the rest of the world? Japan? Didn't affect me. My borders were square, and I was inside them, and I hadn't been out.

Cut to two years later, and I've lived in Japan, and taught the people, and ate the food, and watched the news, and learned the language (a little.)

I tried to read LOST JAPAN again. I found myself nodding. Understanding. Agreeing and disagreeing with his points. The book had a shape and a texture and a relevance that was suddenly, well, relevant to me. Because I'd been in that world for awhile, if not of it.

Books and reality are sometimes two different worlds for me.

The intersection of the two is when life really starts getting interesting. It's when 'life' with a capital 'L' meets and greets the thinking, pondering individual who turns the pages.

The intersection is when the boldness and vividness of life come into full play.

YOU SAY MACRO, I SAY MICRO

How do you save Cambodia?

How do you save Sudan?

How do you save Bangladesh?

And what does that mean, anyway -- how do you 'save' a country? Are some countries doomed, simply because of their location and their leaders?

No, according to Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's foremost macroeconomics gurus who is trying to figure out a way to stop poor countries from being poor.

His answer, as detailed in a New York Times story that ran last weekend, is simple: Money.

Lots and lots of money.

Simple.

Simplistic?

I kinda think so.

Now, I'm no economist. I took no poli-sci, economics, or development classes in university. (You're looking at a guy who dropped out of Grade 11 Accounting after a month, and whose idea of a good history lesson at the time was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.)

But I'm living in Cambodia, and work for an NGO, so I'll put in my two cents worth.

You can inject all the money you want into these poor, desperate countries in South-east Asia and Africa, and Sachs is probably right -- more money IS what is needed.

The problem, however, is...

1) Where will the money go? Most likely, right into the pockets of the charming, benevolent governments that lead most third-world countries. They don't care about the poor. They care about lining their own pockets with all the goodies that they can.

(Oh, sure, they care, yes, but in the same way that everybody cares about poor people. Nobody likes to see it. Nobody likes to think about it. And it all comes down to the individual and the individual's own life -- if he can improve it, he will. If he can use the money to get him out his own dire circumstances, he will. Why wouldn't he? He's been through hell and back, most likely. He's seen his family starve, die, beg. The biggest governments and wealthiest nations are still just groupings and gloppings of individuals who are looking after their own self-interest first, period. Any good that arises is a trickle-down side effect.)

2) Assuming that the money gets where it's supposed to go, will it be used efficiently? Probably not, because the people in charge of the governments of most of the poor countries in the world don't really know what the hell they're doing. They either siphon the money into their own bank accounts, or, should the money actually be used how it is intended to be, it will probably be used in a wasteful, inefficient manner.

Why? Well, they don't have the skills. They don't have the know-how. They don't have the time or the energy to implement the skills or the know-how, either, because life is short and projects are long and it's difficult to create something out of nothing. Difficult to build castles in the sand. Easier to watch them wash away as you kick back in your villa with a pina colada in one hand and the remote in the other.

This is not to say that there is no hope, because I think there is, but it lies in the next gen -
eration, and the generation after that, and the generation after that. And so international experts -- carrying lots and lots of cash, as Sachs suggests -- have to dig in deep and prepare for the long haul and do the best they can, with what they have, to help train and implement, by hook or by crook, government and community programs that are relatively easy to run. You have to train the young and hope that they can somehow break the endless cycle of dependen-
cy and corruption that so many third-world countries revolve around.

So, I think Sachs is right, to some extent -- it takes cash. But cash alone ain't enough, and I think he approaches everything from a macro-economic perspective.

All well and good, for the big issues.

But life is lived on the ground level, on a micro-scale.

Life is lived in inches.