GIVEN TIME

The other day Clinton unveiled his new presidential library amidst rain, wind, and three former presidents. (Gerald Ford was sick.) Speeches were made, photos were taken, false political smiles were plastered on one and all -- and a monument to one person's life was opened for all the world to see. Apparently, you can walk around and click buttons on various computer consoles arrayed around the whole library and you can pretty much see what Clinton was doing on every day of his freakin' life.

Which got me thinking (which I try to do as rarely as possible, by the way) that it would be cool if we could all of have our own, expansive library dedicated solely and squarely to the centre of our universe: ourselves.

Wouldn't it be cool? I know, I know, a lot of you are young, meaning under forty; now that I'm almost thirty, I'm redefining the boundaries of what is YOUNG and what is FREAKIN' ANCIENT. But still -- think about it.

Rooms and halls devoted to you. To what you did each and ever day, week, month, year. Clinton was the very definition of an overachiever. (I'm reminded by an old teammate describ-
ing Michael Jordan: "The difference with Michael was, he had more natural talent than anyone else on the planet, and yet he was also an overachiever. He worked harder than anyone else. You rarely get those two things together in the same person." I think the quote applies equally to Slick Willie.) Clinton was the kind of guy who was campaigning coming out of the womb, I'm sure, complimenting the doctor's slap-to-the-buttocks and reassuring him that it didn't hurt, no, not at all, in fact he kind of enjoyed it, truth be told.

Now, we're not all overachievers. We're not all replicas of The Man From Hope.

Still. It's interesting to think about.

As people wandered around the rooms dedicated to your life, what would they see? What pictures would be on the wall? What achievements of yours would be listed in thick, leather-bound books? What would make people stop, and read, and consider.

What will your legacy be, is what I'm getting at.

(Michael Jordan once said: "I don't have a legacy. I have a life." Meaning, I can't worry about what people will say about me after I'm dead, because I'm alive right now and I have some living to do. Words I agree with completely. But it helps, sometimes, to consider our actions today in the context of how they will be perceived tomorrow.

If it's all over now, God forbid, and you have shuffled off this mortal coil, and next week, at a windy, rainy ceremony (attended by no former presidents, no past prime ministers, only by your close friends and families), the doors to your new library are opened -- what's inside?

As the people you've loved weep and remember and examine all that you've left behind, all that you've accomplished, what do you think they will see? What will make them stop and dab their eyes and marvel in pride?

And what will make them pause and look around in wonder at the marble halls, not because it is so grandly extravagant, no, but because it is so small compared to the person you were and the person you might have become, given time...

LOST IN TRANSLATION

When you are living in Asia, and you're Canadian, unless you were actually, like, a student in your university days, and actually, like, studied and stuff, you probably don't speak the language of the country you're living in. You are, in essence, a child.

Why? Because a child can't read. When a child is lost, he or she can't look at a sign and figure out which highway sign leads to Lindsay and which leads to Pembroke. (Not that a child should be looking at highway signs. I'm not advocating children driving. And if you don't know where Lindsay is, you're not from Ontario. Or, if you do know where it is and you're still not from Ontario, that scares me. People shouldn't know where Lindsay is. Some places should remain unknown.)

So, in Asia, at least for the first little while, we're infants. (Actually, I guess I was an infant back home, too, but that's for another post.)

I've been in Cambodia for seventeen (?!?) months, and I can't speak barely a lick of Khmer. It's not that I don't want to; if my life was measured in centuries, rather than years, I wouldl earn Khmer, and woodworking, and the rules of American football, not to mention Canadian football, and I would try my had at pottery, as well. But I'm getting up there, you see. Time ain't forever, Tupac Shakur's mother said in POETIC JUSTICE, and she was right. (And if you're wondering why I'm quoting old Janet Jackson/John Singleton movies as if they were scripture, well, I'm the kind of guy that quotes those kinds of things, is all. And I didn't go to church, no, but I went to the Fairview Mall cinema every Friday, so there you go.) I'm not sure how useful Khmer would be back in St.Catharines, or Ottawa, or Canada, or, um, the rest of the world.

Of course, that didn't stop me from trying my hand at Japanese, which sure as hell ain't the language of choice in Oshawa or thereabouts.

Why did I study it (albeit briefly)? Because I'd been in Japan for two years and I couldn't speak it, for one, and I wanted to see what studying a language did to my head, for two.

I wanted to know what it meant to study a language. I don't remember how I learned English. I'm not quite sure what's happening when I try to write English. The words come, and I transcribe them, and occasionally they're in the right order, and often they're not, and, well, so be it.

Learning a foreign language makes you a kid again, and it forces you to think about, well, thoughts in a way that you've never had to before. It's really, really hard, and really, really gratifying, and, the cool thing is, it doesn't matter how smart you are, or how many degrees you have, or how man other languages you speak -- when you learn a new one, welcome to infancy, babe. Nap time is at three.

Of course, knowing other languages does help you to learn a new one. I took lessons at the Association for Japanese Language Teaching in Tokyo (and if you think that sounds strange coming from this St.Catharines kid, imagine being this St.Catharines kid, sitting in a Tokyo classroom at eight a.m. on a cold winter's morning in that land of the rising sun, an expression that most Japanese have never heard of, come to think of it), and in my class there was a French couple and an American Chinese and a Brit and an eccentric German professor, mid-thirties, married to a Japanese, Japanese kids, but he didn't speak the language, and he wanted to learn. Considering he spoke German, French, English, Thai and Malay, I thought he wouldn't have a problem.

But he was just like me. He came to class early in the morning, and he wore glasses, and his hair was never combed. (Like I said, just like me.) Difference was, he was smart. He under -
stood languages. Both of us were inept at Japanese, but he understood that was this was necessary, and essential, and unavoidable.

At a certain point, about four months into our lessons, he turned to me, excited, and said: "Scott, I zink ve hav reached a turning point. Ziss is vere we go forward."

Or words to that effect. (With apologies for my German transcription.) There does come a point where things click, and words fall into place, and you do things by reflect that you used to have to by, well, thinking.

Simplest example: When a waitress brings you your food, do you consciously think about saying "thank-you." No. It comes out. (And if you are one of those people who don't thank waitresses, I hope you burn in hell, eternally.)

The thing is, when you learn a new language, you do think about it. And think again. Until, after five or ten or twenty times, presto-changeo, out they come, the words, and you didn't think about it, and you've made a leap. First it's a word, and then it's a sentence, and then, when you learn the vocabulary, it's a conversation. (Or a monlogue.)

Ah, but there's the rub -- vocabulary. How do you learn enough words to be fluent?

You have to read, and listen, and speak, and it's repetitive and boring and endless, but I'm starting to believe that if you don't speak another language, you're not in touch with some -
thing fundamentally human. If you only speak one language, you're living life in black and white.

Learning another language brings out the shades and subtleties, the yin and the yang of how we communicate and how we identify ourselves. Thoughts are words, nothing more, and words are thoughts. They're our currency. You speak another language, bam, you're rolling in dough. And you get to wheel and deal with people and concepts outside of your normal frames of reference. You get to continually access and wield something ancient, lasting and open-hearted.

A PERPETUAL PRESENT

Here's the deal:

You want to go to university. You want to study English. You are young, and bright, and you are tired of dropping off both Khmers and foreigners at the front gates of schools that you have never dreamed of stepping foot inside, let alone attending.

But now you are dreaming, you see, and your dreams are big. Problem is, so are your children. And so is your wife, come to think of it, who is eight months pregnant.

Do you stop your job? Do you go to school full-time to ensure the prosperity of your future, thereby neglecting the realities of the present?

This is what a lot of Cambodians face. There are dozens of universities popping up all over, promising degrees, which they will undoubtedly deliver, with one small warning: DOES NOT GUARANTEE A JOB UPON GRADUATION. (Actually, the schools won't carry this warning, and everybody knows that anyways -- there are thousands of students, and hundreds of jobs, and those jobs that do exist will go to those with money and connections, period. You bet people are worried.)

So this is the thing -- it's easier to ride a motobike around and pick up people and drop them off than it is to go to school. Know what? It's more profitable, too. Once you graduate, and you get a government job, and you're on the path to respectability and progress and achievement, you are congratulated with a salary of about twenty U.S. dollars a month.

Know what a moto-taki driver (motodop) can make, if they're lucky?

More than twenty bucks. Not a lot more, no, but more. And when you have a pregnant wife, and crying, hungry kids, more is more, no matter what the amount.

I don't know what's going to happen to Cambodia. Nobody does. Women are getting a university education for the first time in who-knows-how-long, and the people, the young people, are certainly smarter than their elders; after all, all the really smart ones were decimated during the Khmer Rouge era.) There is still cheating and corruption amongst the young whippersnappers, of course, but that's par for the course. They are bright, and they motivated, and they have mouths to feed and families to make proud.

And yet...

There aren't a heck of a lot of jobs out here. And women are still second-class citizens. And Cambodia is still, first and foremost, an agricultural nation. None of the university educated young 'uns want to go back and work on the farm, however, because there's no money in that, no esteem in that, and besides, the government jobs have air conditioning. And who can blame them? But what that means is that nobody is really studying how to properly farm and irrigate and innovate this country, in rural terms; nobody, as far as I know, is interested in creating a structure that will allow the majority of Cambodians, those living in small villages and communes, to thrive and prosper and heck, maybe even feed their families. And, on top of that, the education system, pre-university, is abysmal. Everybody bribes their teachers. The teachers themselves are not educated. Nobody wants to teach in the rural areas because the money's no good. And the teachers themselves make only twenty, thirty bucks a month, which means that they have to get two, even three jobs, which means...

You get the point.

Cambodia's future is wide open. It's better than before, of course, unquestionably, but then again -- how can it not be better than genocide, or a foreign, Communist power ruling over your homeland? There are lots of signs of improvement here. You have to look closely, true, but they're there, nevertheless.

But there is still that moto-taxi driver, you see. He wants an education. He wants to learn about the world, and English, and the world beyond Cambodia. But he has a wife, and family, and while nobody likes to drive around Phnom Penh at midnight, tracking down backpackers, hoping to give them a lift, the present will always win out over the future, every time, and that's what worries me about this country the most -- it's in a perpetual present, until that unknown point in time when the future catches up with everyone, and by then, you see, it's too late.

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.