If you are a young and able male in modern day Cambodia, there is the very real possibility that you will become a monk-- if not forever, till death do you part, at least for a few years.
Why?
Monks are respected here. People listen to them, seek advice from them, and, on a daily basis, provide money for them. As HIV/AIDS remains a huge problem here, the monks have been enlisted by various groups to provide accurate information in the small towns and villages that line the countryside.
In Phnom Penh, too, monks are a daily sight, walking the streets with their orange robes, clutching umbrellas to shield themselves from the unforgiving heat. Often, books are tucked under their arms: schoolbooks, textbooks, copies of MAD magazine. (Okay, maybe they don't read MAD.)
Some of the best students I ever taught were monks. They are interested in learning. They are interested in acquiring truth. They are interested in concepts like democracy and justice and suffering. They shave their heads and live together in pagodas and instantly, almost miraculously, you could say, become respected citizens of their country, the pride of their families. They become elevated. This makes for a good scholar.
But what is it that the t-shirts they sell at Canada's Wonderland say: Monks are people too? (Okay, maybe there are no t-shirts that actually say that, let alone ones sold at Toronto's coolest theme park, but there should be, damnit...)
One day last year I sat in the computer lab of my old university. Next to me was a young monk, perhaps nineteen years old. I glanced over at his computer seen. He was busily filling out the registration form of match.com, a dating site.
I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that on-line matchmaking services are not part of most Cambodian monks enlightenment process. Call me crazy.
In fact, monks aren't even supposed to be near females. A female student in one of my classes came late into class one afternoon and slipped into a seat beside a monk. He promptly closed his books, stood up, and found a seat at the back of the room. (Did she not know this rule?)
Still, monks are people, too. Another of my students, probably twenty-one, twenty-two years old, seemed to embody the word 'monk' to me. He was polite and solemn and eager to address issues of religion and morality, about the meaning of Christianity, and how its principles shared and overlapped with those of Khmer buddhism. And then one day he came to class in a white dress shirt and black slacks, a shy grin on his face. His time as a monk was done. He came up to me in the cafeteria later that day and let me know that he was interested in his fellow female classmate, romantically interested, and he did he have any tips I could offer? Out the came the pen and the paper.
Each culture's young people head off into the world looking for the same fundamental things: a place to belong, a job that fulfills, a (somewhat) eternal truth that can found, nurtured, sustained. In Cambodia, an ancient land of simple needs, these truths are attained through moderation: You eat two meals a day, and you study Khmer texts, and you shave your head and slap on some orange and purple robes, and you wander the city, and you think about suffering, and you maintain respect for the poor.
Not every young person here becomes a monk, no, but it still seems to me that they're somehow on a kind of track that is nowhere near parallel to ones that run back home. Do the Internet chatrooms and racing video games and action flick DVDs lead teenagers to think about issues of enlightenment? Is shaving your head and studying ancient texts a better way to prepare you for the real world?
I dunno. It's culturally relative, I suppose.
But I've gotten used to the sights of the young monks as they stroll around Phnom Penh, with their gentle smiles and slow, shambling gait. They somehow seem, I don't know, like they consider things more than young people in other, more modern lands. It always feels like they're on to something, that they've figured out primal, fundamental things that I hadn't even contemplated, let alone assessed.
If so, they keep this knowledge to themselves.
Better that way, I think. It's somehow reassuring to view them as mystic, knowing sages, not confused kids groping for answers, as they probably are. Just trying to make their way in the world, tryig to put one foot in front of the other without falling down.
Under the blinding Cambodian sun, they wander the streets. I watch, and wonder.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
A GIRL NAMED 'VICTORY'
Sitting on the table beside the computer monitor here at the Galaxy Web internet cafe in lovely, scenic Phnom Penh, Cambodia, are two things, a book and a newspaper: the book being the first volume of AlexsandrI.Solzhenitsyns' Gulag Archipelago, the newspaper being the weekend edition of The Cambodia Daily, whose cover features a story promising details on the one-year anniversary of Chea Vichea, a union leader assassinated a year ago for doing what a lot of union leaders do here, which is cause some trouble and make some noise.
Solzhenitsyn is the Soviet dissident who chronicled life in the Russian version of the concentration camps, the Gulags. I just started the book, but, to my relief, it's very readable and very involving; the translator did a good job of capturing, in straightforward, energetic English, the tone of Sozhenitsyn's original. (I'm assuming he did, anyways, because I don't speak Russian. Or read it. Or write it. But I have seen Rocky IV man, many times, and that flick features a Russian villian, so that's got to give me some brownie points, doesn't it?)
Two, three, four years ago I wouldn 't have thought of picking up either this book or this newspaper. The stories wouldn't have interested me. The concepts and ideaologies would have been over my head. (A lot of them still are, yes, thanks for pointing that out, but I'll choose to blame it on the Ontario education system, rather than my own thick skull.)
When you live in a foreign country, if you keep your eyes open, and you look around a little bit, you're presented with views of the world that rarely, if ever, mesh with the portrait of life that was painted for you while growing up back home. This can be dislocating, at first; you either examine the different ways that the strange-and-alien-world you're presently wandering through has chosen to express itself, or you put the tinted sunglasses back over your eyes and click back on the National Geographic channel, content to observe the world's oddities, landscapes and strange, backward cultures in between advertisements for hairspray and chewing gum. Just the other night I saw the most bizarre thing, this Discovery channel documentary show where Julia Roberts hung out in the middle of Mongolia for a little while, chilling with the local Mongols, marvelling at the size of the moon and how it loomed over the vast, endless plains.
There's nothing wrong with that view of the world, because guess what? Our globe is a marvellous, bizarre place filled with beautiful landscapes and oddly shaped people, both physically and mentally. It's nice to look at it and ponder it and see how it matches our take on things, how it compares to the streets and blocks that we call home.
But when you're in it, you're forced to look at things. You're forced to interact with people. You're obligated to understand the larger forces that are shaping and directing the little girl with no shoes and dirty cheeks who you buy your newspaper from.
When I taught at a university here, the students ranged in age from fifteen to fifty. I had a fifteen year old student who was super bright, a beaming young girl who always did her homework and once, good-naturedly (I hope), called me a liar because I had said I would give back an assignment the week before and I hadn't yet. (Being honest in this dishonest culture was a big thing for her; she could spot a fib a mile away.) The first time I met this outspoken youth, I read the names of the students in the class, and I stumbled over her name.
"How do you pronounce this?" I asked.
"It's 'Victory," she said.
"Like the English word?"
"It is the English word," she said. "My parents wanted me to succeed in life."
How old would her parents be? Thirty-five, forty, maybe fifty. They would have been young people during the Khmer Rouge era. They would have seen family members killed, or maybe they lived in the Thai border camps for years on end, wondering when their fair share of life's bounty would be made available to them.
I also taught a North Korean kid, whose father owns the North Korean restaurant in town. This kid grew up in Burkina Faso, Africa (one of the worst places to live on the planet), where his proud papa taught Tae Kwan Do to the communist leaders of that corrupt regime. Somebody just told me that he was taking pictures of his classmates last week because a return to good old North Korea was on the table in the next few days. Back to Pyongyang to fulfill his military duties, I'm assuming. Mama mia.
This is all heady stuff for a boy from St.Catharines. Issues of war and peace and genocidal regimes and pudgy dictators with super-freaky hair are personified, presto-changeo, right before my eyes. I'm in the thick of it, with the ever-present option of leaving, while everyone else has to stay. That's the difference, and a grand difference it is.
I imagine most Canadian kids are apolitical. They don't have reasons to be engaged with the forces of good and evil that are everyday occurrences elsewhere around the planet. With immigrants from places like Somalia and Sudan arriving daily in Canada, though, that white-bread, idyllic Canadian world, while still a reality in most parts of the country, will change. Kids will learn about their classmates previous lives. They will listen to stories of torture, and wonder why this has to be. The world will close in on Canada, little by little.
I hope.
This way, young people can at least be aware of what it means to be Canadian. It is not about a flag or a puck or natural beauty. It is about what we have that everyone wants.
You won't find too many kids named 'Victory' in Canada. We haven't felt the need to give our children a name that will inspire them to relentlessly remember the goal of liberation, personal and national, that you must always strive for, despite the seemingly insurmountable odds that threaten to grind you down, day by day.
No, not many kids have to be named 'Victory' back home.
I don't know whether this is something to celebrate or worry about.
Solzhenitsyn is the Soviet dissident who chronicled life in the Russian version of the concentration camps, the Gulags. I just started the book, but, to my relief, it's very readable and very involving; the translator did a good job of capturing, in straightforward, energetic English, the tone of Sozhenitsyn's original. (I'm assuming he did, anyways, because I don't speak Russian. Or read it. Or write it. But I have seen Rocky IV man, many times, and that flick features a Russian villian, so that's got to give me some brownie points, doesn't it?)
Two, three, four years ago I wouldn 't have thought of picking up either this book or this newspaper. The stories wouldn't have interested me. The concepts and ideaologies would have been over my head. (A lot of them still are, yes, thanks for pointing that out, but I'll choose to blame it on the Ontario education system, rather than my own thick skull.)
When you live in a foreign country, if you keep your eyes open, and you look around a little bit, you're presented with views of the world that rarely, if ever, mesh with the portrait of life that was painted for you while growing up back home. This can be dislocating, at first; you either examine the different ways that the strange-and-alien-world you're presently wandering through has chosen to express itself, or you put the tinted sunglasses back over your eyes and click back on the National Geographic channel, content to observe the world's oddities, landscapes and strange, backward cultures in between advertisements for hairspray and chewing gum. Just the other night I saw the most bizarre thing, this Discovery channel documentary show where Julia Roberts hung out in the middle of Mongolia for a little while, chilling with the local Mongols, marvelling at the size of the moon and how it loomed over the vast, endless plains.
There's nothing wrong with that view of the world, because guess what? Our globe is a marvellous, bizarre place filled with beautiful landscapes and oddly shaped people, both physically and mentally. It's nice to look at it and ponder it and see how it matches our take on things, how it compares to the streets and blocks that we call home.
But when you're in it, you're forced to look at things. You're forced to interact with people. You're obligated to understand the larger forces that are shaping and directing the little girl with no shoes and dirty cheeks who you buy your newspaper from.
When I taught at a university here, the students ranged in age from fifteen to fifty. I had a fifteen year old student who was super bright, a beaming young girl who always did her homework and once, good-naturedly (I hope), called me a liar because I had said I would give back an assignment the week before and I hadn't yet. (Being honest in this dishonest culture was a big thing for her; she could spot a fib a mile away.) The first time I met this outspoken youth, I read the names of the students in the class, and I stumbled over her name.
"How do you pronounce this?" I asked.
"It's 'Victory," she said.
"Like the English word?"
"It is the English word," she said. "My parents wanted me to succeed in life."
How old would her parents be? Thirty-five, forty, maybe fifty. They would have been young people during the Khmer Rouge era. They would have seen family members killed, or maybe they lived in the Thai border camps for years on end, wondering when their fair share of life's bounty would be made available to them.
I also taught a North Korean kid, whose father owns the North Korean restaurant in town. This kid grew up in Burkina Faso, Africa (one of the worst places to live on the planet), where his proud papa taught Tae Kwan Do to the communist leaders of that corrupt regime. Somebody just told me that he was taking pictures of his classmates last week because a return to good old North Korea was on the table in the next few days. Back to Pyongyang to fulfill his military duties, I'm assuming. Mama mia.
This is all heady stuff for a boy from St.Catharines. Issues of war and peace and genocidal regimes and pudgy dictators with super-freaky hair are personified, presto-changeo, right before my eyes. I'm in the thick of it, with the ever-present option of leaving, while everyone else has to stay. That's the difference, and a grand difference it is.
I imagine most Canadian kids are apolitical. They don't have reasons to be engaged with the forces of good and evil that are everyday occurrences elsewhere around the planet. With immigrants from places like Somalia and Sudan arriving daily in Canada, though, that white-bread, idyllic Canadian world, while still a reality in most parts of the country, will change. Kids will learn about their classmates previous lives. They will listen to stories of torture, and wonder why this has to be. The world will close in on Canada, little by little.
I hope.
This way, young people can at least be aware of what it means to be Canadian. It is not about a flag or a puck or natural beauty. It is about what we have that everyone wants.
You won't find too many kids named 'Victory' in Canada. We haven't felt the need to give our children a name that will inspire them to relentlessly remember the goal of liberation, personal and national, that you must always strive for, despite the seemingly insurmountable odds that threaten to grind you down, day by day.
No, not many kids have to be named 'Victory' back home.
I don't know whether this is something to celebrate or worry about.
TODAY'S FORECAST...
You sit down at twenty-five and stand up at sixty-five.
- Orson Welles on California
What was he talking about? He was talking about the weather, because it's always, eternally nice and sunny and oh so clear in the Land of Schwarzenegger. Blue skies, no clouds, t-shirt weather, shorts weather. Every day of the year.
The same is true of Cambodia. It is always, always, always hot, except when it's cool, which is rare, usually in the mornings, almost always between five and six. Officially, there are two seasons in this country, rainy and dry, each lasting six months. Don't let the classification fool you, though; during the rainy season, it it still bloody boiling -- it just means that on top of the ridiculous tropical heat, you are treated to ceaseless, relentless streams of water for an hour or two in the late afternoon. Right now, as I write, at this very moment, the dry season is, I think, coming to a close, no rain having touched Phnom Penh's streets in, God, I can't remember how long.
I wrote that I think the dry season is ending because it's hard to differentiate between the days and weeks and months here. It's bloody surreal. Back home (or even in Japan), there is rain and sleet and slow and windy days and cool days and brisk days and days when you have to wear a hat or a toque and days where you need a light coat and you have to check the weather reports before leaving the house, or, at the very least, you might want to stick your head out the window and test how things are, just to see which way the wind is blowing.
None of that stuff here.
Just put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and you're good for the year. Good for your life.
A good thing and bad thing, I guess. I don't miss the Canadian winters much (or even the Japanese ones), but the seasons that we grow up with shape the barometer by which we measure the passage of time. Without those seasons, there's the danger of existing in this steady, monotonous limbo of life, where one day blends into the next, and the next, and the next, and time's passage begins to seem illusory and unimportant, today being all that matters.
Depending on how you look at it, that might not be a bad thing after all.
- Orson Welles on California
What was he talking about? He was talking about the weather, because it's always, eternally nice and sunny and oh so clear in the Land of Schwarzenegger. Blue skies, no clouds, t-shirt weather, shorts weather. Every day of the year.
The same is true of Cambodia. It is always, always, always hot, except when it's cool, which is rare, usually in the mornings, almost always between five and six. Officially, there are two seasons in this country, rainy and dry, each lasting six months. Don't let the classification fool you, though; during the rainy season, it it still bloody boiling -- it just means that on top of the ridiculous tropical heat, you are treated to ceaseless, relentless streams of water for an hour or two in the late afternoon. Right now, as I write, at this very moment, the dry season is, I think, coming to a close, no rain having touched Phnom Penh's streets in, God, I can't remember how long.
I wrote that I think the dry season is ending because it's hard to differentiate between the days and weeks and months here. It's bloody surreal. Back home (or even in Japan), there is rain and sleet and slow and windy days and cool days and brisk days and days when you have to wear a hat or a toque and days where you need a light coat and you have to check the weather reports before leaving the house, or, at the very least, you might want to stick your head out the window and test how things are, just to see which way the wind is blowing.
None of that stuff here.
Just put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and you're good for the year. Good for your life.
A good thing and bad thing, I guess. I don't miss the Canadian winters much (or even the Japanese ones), but the seasons that we grow up with shape the barometer by which we measure the passage of time. Without those seasons, there's the danger of existing in this steady, monotonous limbo of life, where one day blends into the next, and the next, and the next, and time's passage begins to seem illusory and unimportant, today being all that matters.
Depending on how you look at it, that might not be a bad thing after all.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
A GOOD SIGN: CAMBODIAN STUDENTS, CONDOLEEZA RICE, THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, AND BARBARA BUSH'S THANKSGIVING STUFFING
Walking home from work yesterday, I passed by just one of the many colleges, institutes, academic centres of learning, call-them-what-you-will, that populate Phnom Penh. Along with the backpackers, mosquitoes, English teachers and moto drivers, 'higher learning' places are now a common sight. Standing outside in her white shirt and blue skirt was a young girl waiting for her ride, holding her jet-black books and binders tightly to her chest.
That's quite a sight, in and of itself. Only fifteen years ago, I don't think too many girls in Phnom Penh were studying much of anything. I wondered: Exactly what was she studying? Where did she want to go in life? Was there even a chance in hell of her getting there, given the modern realities of Cambodia's political and social structures?
The personal and the political are always linked in my mind.
For the past two days, Condoleeza Rice has been grilled for hours on end in her Secretary of State confirmation hearings. Forty years ago, Ms.Rice would have been similar in status and possibility to that Khmer girl I saw. The America of 1964, the Alabama of 1964, did not hold much hope for a young black girl. Rice went to the same school as one of the girls killed in the infamous church bombings in Montgomery Alabama (a story chronicled in Spike Lee's documentary 4 Little Girls). At that time, Rice wouldn't have been able to grab a hamburger at Woolworth's if she wanted to. "Ah, but you can become president someday," her parents told her, and she believed them.
And so she might. (It's not as far fetched as it may sound.) First up, she has to succeed as Secretary of State. Second up, she has to link America's policies with the world's expectations. What a shining moment of pride and possibility for African-Americans.
Yet, she is doing this as part of an administration that is disliked, if not despised, by most black Americans (and a hell of a lot of other whites, Hispanics, Chinese, Mongolians...) What should be a crowning moment of pride for the 'Civil Rights generation' hasn't really felt like that at all. Everybody's pleased as punch that Condi's made it so far, and it certainly represents a magnificent achievement...but did it have to be for somebody like Bush, they wonder. Did it have to be an African-American woman who was largely responsible for the war in Iraq, they ask.
What's Rice thinking, in these final few days before she takes the reins from Colin Powell? Somewhere inside of her, beneath the overachieving Soviet expert and former Stanford provost, beats the heart of that little girl who came of age in a slowly desegregating America. A little girl who had be twice as better as the whites around her if she wanted to succeed. A little girl who has made it to the top of the top, only to find that most of her own people may respect her, yes, but not her agenda, or her boss, or what he stands for.
Her boss, too: What does he think?
I'm not talking about Bush the president. I'm talking about Bush the frat boy, Bush the practical joker, the eldest son of the family who kind of bumbled through his twenties and thirties looking for something to focus his energies on. I just read a book about the 'Bush family dynasty'; its central argument being that the Bush family has been at the centre of an almost century long vortex that lies at the heart of the military-industrial complex, that nebulous alliance of big business, big industry and big military that has fueled America's imperialist ambitions. Money, oil, the CIA, oil, Saudi Arabia, oil, the CIA, Texas money, oil -- Bush the elder, Bush the younger, and their family connections to the whole damn shebang, are all chronicled in exhaustive detail. (Oh, and did I mention their links to the oil industry?Or the CIA? Very scary stuff.)
The point is, at one point, Bush was a high school kid who liked to screw around and play baseball and try to cop a feel every now and then. While his dad was forging the international links that would eventually sustain his son's political career, Bush was daydreaming through Economics 101, waiting for the bell, watching the clock. He was a yahoo, in other words, as we all were, and as some of us still are (present company absolutely included.)
This kind of stuff fascinates me. Slowly, through the days and years that claim us all, somehow, Bush was brought into the family circle. He learned the ropes. The intricacies and complexities of global cartels and local, West Texas oil tycoons gradually became understanable, if not clear, resulting in a worldwide order and destiny that has been, without exaggeration, largely shaped and refined by a single family, by a father and his son.
It's fascinating, if you look at it this way. All of these complex, global-altering concepts of finance and theology and espionage and shady deals made in brightly lit rooms and shadowy hallways, and it all comes down (as all of our lives do) to a Thanksgiving dinner in Kennebunkport, and George Dubya walking into a room, and hugging his dad, and his dad asking how things are, and the son saying pretty good, pretty good, can't complain, and how's that turkey coming? The stuffing going to be like last year's? That was good stuff.
The personal and the political, linked, inseparate.
So back to the young Khmer girl. Let's not forget about her, shall we? She stands in front of the school, waiting for her ride. She's learning English, maybe computers, possibly a little accounting. Corruption and politics and money changing hands goes on all around her. A few blocks away, political parties and treaties and deaths are being planned. She's oblivious to it all, as she should be, as Rice and Bush before her were, as you were, too (and maybe still are).
Who knows? She could be a future leader in this country, twenty, thirty years from now. Stranger things have happened. Or she could be a housewife by the time she's twenty, a more likely scenario. (Ah, but this is Cambodia, and since when could the word 'likely' be applied to anything with certainty? So let's allow her her dreams; let's give her that much, at the very least.)
All around the country, big changes are happening, ideas are being discussed, senators are being bribed, coups being planned.
And it all comes back that girl, waiting for her ride. It all comes back to the ordinary lives we try to lead in the middle of swirling, indefinable political tornadoes that shake us up and lift us high.
As I walked down the street, I looked back to see if she was still standing there.
She was.
For some reason, I took that as a good sign.
That's quite a sight, in and of itself. Only fifteen years ago, I don't think too many girls in Phnom Penh were studying much of anything. I wondered: Exactly what was she studying? Where did she want to go in life? Was there even a chance in hell of her getting there, given the modern realities of Cambodia's political and social structures?
The personal and the political are always linked in my mind.
For the past two days, Condoleeza Rice has been grilled for hours on end in her Secretary of State confirmation hearings. Forty years ago, Ms.Rice would have been similar in status and possibility to that Khmer girl I saw. The America of 1964, the Alabama of 1964, did not hold much hope for a young black girl. Rice went to the same school as one of the girls killed in the infamous church bombings in Montgomery Alabama (a story chronicled in Spike Lee's documentary 4 Little Girls). At that time, Rice wouldn't have been able to grab a hamburger at Woolworth's if she wanted to. "Ah, but you can become president someday," her parents told her, and she believed them.
And so she might. (It's not as far fetched as it may sound.) First up, she has to succeed as Secretary of State. Second up, she has to link America's policies with the world's expectations. What a shining moment of pride and possibility for African-Americans.
Yet, she is doing this as part of an administration that is disliked, if not despised, by most black Americans (and a hell of a lot of other whites, Hispanics, Chinese, Mongolians...) What should be a crowning moment of pride for the 'Civil Rights generation' hasn't really felt like that at all. Everybody's pleased as punch that Condi's made it so far, and it certainly represents a magnificent achievement...but did it have to be for somebody like Bush, they wonder. Did it have to be an African-American woman who was largely responsible for the war in Iraq, they ask.
What's Rice thinking, in these final few days before she takes the reins from Colin Powell? Somewhere inside of her, beneath the overachieving Soviet expert and former Stanford provost, beats the heart of that little girl who came of age in a slowly desegregating America. A little girl who had be twice as better as the whites around her if she wanted to succeed. A little girl who has made it to the top of the top, only to find that most of her own people may respect her, yes, but not her agenda, or her boss, or what he stands for.
Her boss, too: What does he think?
I'm not talking about Bush the president. I'm talking about Bush the frat boy, Bush the practical joker, the eldest son of the family who kind of bumbled through his twenties and thirties looking for something to focus his energies on. I just read a book about the 'Bush family dynasty'; its central argument being that the Bush family has been at the centre of an almost century long vortex that lies at the heart of the military-industrial complex, that nebulous alliance of big business, big industry and big military that has fueled America's imperialist ambitions. Money, oil, the CIA, oil, Saudi Arabia, oil, the CIA, Texas money, oil -- Bush the elder, Bush the younger, and their family connections to the whole damn shebang, are all chronicled in exhaustive detail. (Oh, and did I mention their links to the oil industry?Or the CIA? Very scary stuff.)
The point is, at one point, Bush was a high school kid who liked to screw around and play baseball and try to cop a feel every now and then. While his dad was forging the international links that would eventually sustain his son's political career, Bush was daydreaming through Economics 101, waiting for the bell, watching the clock. He was a yahoo, in other words, as we all were, and as some of us still are (present company absolutely included.)
This kind of stuff fascinates me. Slowly, through the days and years that claim us all, somehow, Bush was brought into the family circle. He learned the ropes. The intricacies and complexities of global cartels and local, West Texas oil tycoons gradually became understanable, if not clear, resulting in a worldwide order and destiny that has been, without exaggeration, largely shaped and refined by a single family, by a father and his son.
It's fascinating, if you look at it this way. All of these complex, global-altering concepts of finance and theology and espionage and shady deals made in brightly lit rooms and shadowy hallways, and it all comes down (as all of our lives do) to a Thanksgiving dinner in Kennebunkport, and George Dubya walking into a room, and hugging his dad, and his dad asking how things are, and the son saying pretty good, pretty good, can't complain, and how's that turkey coming? The stuffing going to be like last year's? That was good stuff.
The personal and the political, linked, inseparate.
So back to the young Khmer girl. Let's not forget about her, shall we? She stands in front of the school, waiting for her ride. She's learning English, maybe computers, possibly a little accounting. Corruption and politics and money changing hands goes on all around her. A few blocks away, political parties and treaties and deaths are being planned. She's oblivious to it all, as she should be, as Rice and Bush before her were, as you were, too (and maybe still are).
Who knows? She could be a future leader in this country, twenty, thirty years from now. Stranger things have happened. Or she could be a housewife by the time she's twenty, a more likely scenario. (Ah, but this is Cambodia, and since when could the word 'likely' be applied to anything with certainty? So let's allow her her dreams; let's give her that much, at the very least.)
All around the country, big changes are happening, ideas are being discussed, senators are being bribed, coups being planned.
And it all comes back that girl, waiting for her ride. It all comes back to the ordinary lives we try to lead in the middle of swirling, indefinable political tornadoes that shake us up and lift us high.
As I walked down the street, I looked back to see if she was still standing there.
She was.
For some reason, I took that as a good sign.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
REMEMBERING TO PAUSE
Last night I watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou for a second time, enjoying all the things I missed the first time, those hidden jokes and layers of meaning that somehow passed me by. (Things have a habit of going over my head.)
Wouldn't it be wild to have that function in that everyday realm we call life -- that ability to see and live again what we missed the first time out?
Some people try to do that now, of course, videotaping weddings and hockey games, bar mitzvah's and baby showers, snapping photos meant for a lifetime of perusal. (Yes, I just used the word 'perusal' in a sentence. Please don't hold it against me.)
I'm not talking about that kind of (usually) harmless looking back.
But what if we could relive our lives the way we rewatch our favorite movies? What if we could inhabit ourselves once again as we moved through the days, weeks, months and years that led to our current, fluid moment in time. Knowing what lay ahead, we could spot the subtle glances and awkward pauses we missed the first time out, those clues that indicated change, upheaval, disruption. The good parts would be that much more poignant, the bad parts that much more...
There's the rub.
The scary parts you've seen in a movie become less and less frightening the second, third and fourth times you've watched them. Having to go back, view and endure those moments in life would be, well, counterproductive.
Best to look ahead. Best to glance, back yes, but not stay back. Better yet to somehow place yourself between the rewind and fast-forward button, remembering to pause every now and then, if only to savor the here and the now for a little while longer.
Wouldn't it be wild to have that function in that everyday realm we call life -- that ability to see and live again what we missed the first time out?
Some people try to do that now, of course, videotaping weddings and hockey games, bar mitzvah's and baby showers, snapping photos meant for a lifetime of perusal. (Yes, I just used the word 'perusal' in a sentence. Please don't hold it against me.)
I'm not talking about that kind of (usually) harmless looking back.
But what if we could relive our lives the way we rewatch our favorite movies? What if we could inhabit ourselves once again as we moved through the days, weeks, months and years that led to our current, fluid moment in time. Knowing what lay ahead, we could spot the subtle glances and awkward pauses we missed the first time out, those clues that indicated change, upheaval, disruption. The good parts would be that much more poignant, the bad parts that much more...
There's the rub.
The scary parts you've seen in a movie become less and less frightening the second, third and fourth times you've watched them. Having to go back, view and endure those moments in life would be, well, counterproductive.
Best to look ahead. Best to glance, back yes, but not stay back. Better yet to somehow place yourself between the rewind and fast-forward button, remembering to pause every now and then, if only to savor the here and the now for a little while longer.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
THE FIVE OR SIX GUYS IN THE ROOM
Last night, one of the Thai television channels rebroadcast the Tsunami telethon, the one that featured a slew of celebrities answering the phones while other, more musically inclined famous folks sang a tune or two to raise money for a worthy cause.
Anything that raises money for charity is, fundamentally, a good thing. Plain and simple, no questions asked. When I was a ten year old kid, during the whole 'We are the world' phase of western culture, that brief period when the powers-that-be decided to focus attention on Ethiopia for a month or two, Marvel (Spider-Man, X-Men) Comics put out a special edition comic related to the famine, the proceeds of which went to help the starving in Africa. Marvel's main competitor, DC (Superman, Batman) Comics, did the same thing a few months later. A classic case of jumping on the bandwagon while the wheels were still rollin'. When I pointed out to my father that DC was just copying Marvel, (which made sense, 'cuz Marvel was, is and shall always be cooler, though I like DC, too) my dad basically said: "Hey, if it's for a good cause, things like that don't matter."
He was right.
Yes, it seems kind off odd to tempt people into donating money by offering them the chance to chat one-on-one with Brad Pitt or Matt Damon or Meg Ryan. It's condescending and pandering. It treats us all like star-struck juveniles.
But, like the Buckley's cough syrups ads say, it works.
The money is going (hopefully) towards a good cause. It can help save lives and ease pain. If showbiz glitz does a bit of good, I'm all for it.
I can't help but think that there's something larger at play, though, something that ties into our belief about what we can and can't control about the world we live in.
When a god-given act like a tsunami occurs, we're reminded of our vulnerabilities. Our ultimate smallness in the world suddenly becomes immense in our hearts and thoughts. We have little, if any, possibility of defending ourselves when Mother Nature decides it's time to kick a little ass.
So what can we do?
We can hop on the Net and click the mouse and send some money. We've played our part. We've contributed something to the world. It gives us puny earthlings a feeling of autonomy and direction. Our efforts have an end-point, even if it's just a sack of rice on the back of a truck, partially payed for with our rainy-day funds, and having an end-point is always an affirming thing.
The Internet gives us this access. God bless it. (I'm not sure why He didn't bless Indonesia or Thailand or Somalia, but I'll take that up with the Big Guy some day on the other side. Assuming I'm going up, of course...) It allows us a touch and a reach that was unthinkable even a decade ago.
And if you sense a 'but' coming, you're right.
Ready for it?
But...
With charity, with aid, with most of our lives, come to think of it, we're still in the hands of someone else. We still have to rely on something else. That else may be the bank that accesses our donation, or the charity that turns our piggy-back coins into something tangible. We have a role, a vital role, but it's just that -- something we put on and play with for awhile. Then it's back to our kitchen, our jobs, our lives.
The big boys (and it's still mostly boys) are the companies and the governments that control the funding, the flow, the access. The World Banks of the world. The White Houses of the world. The ones who actually build the choppers that take the food to Banda Aceh. While we sit at home and scan the progress on the Net or the tube. Waiting for Springer.
I'm not talking about the failings of democracy, or the inadequacy's of our social systems, or anything large scale like that. (Well, I guess I kind of am, but not doing a very good job of it, I'm afraid.)
I'm trying to get at something more personal and intimate, which is the fact that the Internet, the World Wide Web, whatever you want to call it, allows us a place and a space to breathe, vent, invent, collaborate, collide. It allows to do almost anything we want.
To a degree.
Spike Lee once said that all the entertainment that America watches is basically controlled by the five or six guys that own the five or six studios that produce the t.v. shows and movies we entertain ourselves to death with. Yes, yes, there's a wider variety of options, sure, and more media companies, certainly, but they are usually pieces of the bigger pie. The ultimate decisions rest on the shoulders of five or six very powerful, very profit-oriented, men, who could very easily fit into the smallest of hobbit-sized rooms.
What am I saying, you ask? I'm saying this: That the Internet allows generations of people, the young and the old and the sick and the seriously weird, to create their own world for themselves, to extend their desires around the globe and back in a series of moments, to change their lives for the better, to grasp and catch hold of ideas and concepts and people that are otherwise elusive, shadowy wisps. As Anthony Hopkins says in Alexander, the great warrior allowed men, when they were near him, to be greater than themselves. At its best, the Internet can do that, too.
But the damn thing is, like it or not, at some point in time, it still always comes down to those five or six guys in the room. They control entertainment; they control politics; they control peacekeeping. The names change, the facelifts differ in quality and texture, the suits go from brown to blue and back again, but it's basically the same five or six well-dressed dudes, the same Ward-Cleaver-in-Leave-It-To-Beaver room.
The people elect Bush and Blair and Koizumi and Martin, and they can unelect them. But once the die's cast, if Bush wants to go to war, he's going. If Blair wants to side with Bush, it's his call. What are we left to do if we don't like it? Rouse the rabble and wait for the next election.
Horrific incidents like the tsunami bring out the best in technology and people. Our ability to give without expecting anything in return is what makes us human. A person can sit in their living room and eat Doritos and flip through the latest US Weekly, the latest one, with Brad and Jen on the cover (which is probably every week, I guess, so maybe that's a bad example), and they can watch Madonna sing 'Imagine' and decide to pick up the phone, chat with Tom Selleck, donate ten bucks. This a great and empowering thing; this is a necessary thing. You gather ten, fifteen million of these Dorito-eating people together (of which I am one) and you can do a lot of good. Villages and towns can be rebuilt; schools can be put back together again, along with Humpty Dumpty's wall.
But maybe, just maybe, it's good to think about those five or six guys in the room, the ones with the real power, the true reach, the ones who listen to our voices, and then do what they want to do, regardless.
That scares me, because we can't all fit in the room. We can't all shove our way through the door, though many of us try. We push them in, those five or six guys (at least in democracies) , and we take them out, but we can't hear what they're saying, once the blinds are drawn and the door is shut. All we can do is go back out into the world and do our best, regardless. We have our telethons, and we donate our time, and we do what we can to make the world keep ticking.
And it's up to us to prod that door open, when given the chance. Hoping, of course, in our naive and human way, that the next five or six guys that we push in the room are better than the last.
Anything that raises money for charity is, fundamentally, a good thing. Plain and simple, no questions asked. When I was a ten year old kid, during the whole 'We are the world' phase of western culture, that brief period when the powers-that-be decided to focus attention on Ethiopia for a month or two, Marvel (Spider-Man, X-Men) Comics put out a special edition comic related to the famine, the proceeds of which went to help the starving in Africa. Marvel's main competitor, DC (Superman, Batman) Comics, did the same thing a few months later. A classic case of jumping on the bandwagon while the wheels were still rollin'. When I pointed out to my father that DC was just copying Marvel, (which made sense, 'cuz Marvel was, is and shall always be cooler, though I like DC, too) my dad basically said: "Hey, if it's for a good cause, things like that don't matter."
He was right.
Yes, it seems kind off odd to tempt people into donating money by offering them the chance to chat one-on-one with Brad Pitt or Matt Damon or Meg Ryan. It's condescending and pandering. It treats us all like star-struck juveniles.
But, like the Buckley's cough syrups ads say, it works.
The money is going (hopefully) towards a good cause. It can help save lives and ease pain. If showbiz glitz does a bit of good, I'm all for it.
I can't help but think that there's something larger at play, though, something that ties into our belief about what we can and can't control about the world we live in.
When a god-given act like a tsunami occurs, we're reminded of our vulnerabilities. Our ultimate smallness in the world suddenly becomes immense in our hearts and thoughts. We have little, if any, possibility of defending ourselves when Mother Nature decides it's time to kick a little ass.
So what can we do?
We can hop on the Net and click the mouse and send some money. We've played our part. We've contributed something to the world. It gives us puny earthlings a feeling of autonomy and direction. Our efforts have an end-point, even if it's just a sack of rice on the back of a truck, partially payed for with our rainy-day funds, and having an end-point is always an affirming thing.
The Internet gives us this access. God bless it. (I'm not sure why He didn't bless Indonesia or Thailand or Somalia, but I'll take that up with the Big Guy some day on the other side. Assuming I'm going up, of course...) It allows us a touch and a reach that was unthinkable even a decade ago.
And if you sense a 'but' coming, you're right.
Ready for it?
But...
With charity, with aid, with most of our lives, come to think of it, we're still in the hands of someone else. We still have to rely on something else. That else may be the bank that accesses our donation, or the charity that turns our piggy-back coins into something tangible. We have a role, a vital role, but it's just that -- something we put on and play with for awhile. Then it's back to our kitchen, our jobs, our lives.
The big boys (and it's still mostly boys) are the companies and the governments that control the funding, the flow, the access. The World Banks of the world. The White Houses of the world. The ones who actually build the choppers that take the food to Banda Aceh. While we sit at home and scan the progress on the Net or the tube. Waiting for Springer.
I'm not talking about the failings of democracy, or the inadequacy's of our social systems, or anything large scale like that. (Well, I guess I kind of am, but not doing a very good job of it, I'm afraid.)
I'm trying to get at something more personal and intimate, which is the fact that the Internet, the World Wide Web, whatever you want to call it, allows us a place and a space to breathe, vent, invent, collaborate, collide. It allows to do almost anything we want.
To a degree.
Spike Lee once said that all the entertainment that America watches is basically controlled by the five or six guys that own the five or six studios that produce the t.v. shows and movies we entertain ourselves to death with. Yes, yes, there's a wider variety of options, sure, and more media companies, certainly, but they are usually pieces of the bigger pie. The ultimate decisions rest on the shoulders of five or six very powerful, very profit-oriented, men, who could very easily fit into the smallest of hobbit-sized rooms.
What am I saying, you ask? I'm saying this: That the Internet allows generations of people, the young and the old and the sick and the seriously weird, to create their own world for themselves, to extend their desires around the globe and back in a series of moments, to change their lives for the better, to grasp and catch hold of ideas and concepts and people that are otherwise elusive, shadowy wisps. As Anthony Hopkins says in Alexander, the great warrior allowed men, when they were near him, to be greater than themselves. At its best, the Internet can do that, too.
But the damn thing is, like it or not, at some point in time, it still always comes down to those five or six guys in the room. They control entertainment; they control politics; they control peacekeeping. The names change, the facelifts differ in quality and texture, the suits go from brown to blue and back again, but it's basically the same five or six well-dressed dudes, the same Ward-Cleaver-in-Leave-It-To-Beaver room.
The people elect Bush and Blair and Koizumi and Martin, and they can unelect them. But once the die's cast, if Bush wants to go to war, he's going. If Blair wants to side with Bush, it's his call. What are we left to do if we don't like it? Rouse the rabble and wait for the next election.
Horrific incidents like the tsunami bring out the best in technology and people. Our ability to give without expecting anything in return is what makes us human. A person can sit in their living room and eat Doritos and flip through the latest US Weekly, the latest one, with Brad and Jen on the cover (which is probably every week, I guess, so maybe that's a bad example), and they can watch Madonna sing 'Imagine' and decide to pick up the phone, chat with Tom Selleck, donate ten bucks. This a great and empowering thing; this is a necessary thing. You gather ten, fifteen million of these Dorito-eating people together (of which I am one) and you can do a lot of good. Villages and towns can be rebuilt; schools can be put back together again, along with Humpty Dumpty's wall.
But maybe, just maybe, it's good to think about those five or six guys in the room, the ones with the real power, the true reach, the ones who listen to our voices, and then do what they want to do, regardless.
That scares me, because we can't all fit in the room. We can't all shove our way through the door, though many of us try. We push them in, those five or six guys (at least in democracies) , and we take them out, but we can't hear what they're saying, once the blinds are drawn and the door is shut. All we can do is go back out into the world and do our best, regardless. We have our telethons, and we donate our time, and we do what we can to make the world keep ticking.
And it's up to us to prod that door open, when given the chance. Hoping, of course, in our naive and human way, that the next five or six guys that we push in the room are better than the last.
Monday, January 17, 2005
SUNDAYS
I saw them down by the river yesterday, the familiar truckloads of men, women and children that are carted in from the countryside to enjoy a leisurely day by the river. They come in trucks and vans each and every Sunday, squashed together like cattle or pigs. Sometimes they even ride on top of the vans, when there's no more space for even one more person. Most of them are women, probably factory-workers, those pajama-clad ladies that eke out a living for their families in the garment industry. Sunday is their day to rest. Sunday is their day to head on down to the riverside and walk underneath the sun and smell the strong, pungent scent of the Tonle Sap. They can drift around the orange-robed monks, buy a balloon from the hopeful vendors, giggle at the occasional foreign tourists with their short shorts and big cameras.
Then the day drifts to night, the trucks start their indifferent growl, and the shy Khmer girls in their beige and blue hats hop back on the trucks. A nice day, true, and there is always next week! They scrunch together, standing in place. As the truck drives away they take a lingering last look at the river, the people, the cars, before turning their attention to the bumpy road ahead, the one that leads home.
Then the day drifts to night, the trucks start their indifferent growl, and the shy Khmer girls in their beige and blue hats hop back on the trucks. A nice day, true, and there is always next week! They scrunch together, standing in place. As the truck drives away they take a lingering last look at the river, the people, the cars, before turning their attention to the bumpy road ahead, the one that leads home.
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