SMILE!

What is it with Cambodians and their endless smiles?

The thing is, if you smile at a Cambodian, be they man, woman or child, they will, almost without exception, smile back. Broadly. Without any hesitation or fear. Even if it's a motobike driver who's stopping to pick you up, but you don't want to get picked up, right, so you smile and wave them off. The moto drivers almost always smile back.

Think about it.

In Canada, in Toronto, if I wave a cab off as it approaches me, smiling all the while, is the cabbie going to smile back? I'm betting no. If I'm walking down the street, and I happen to see a stranger, and I simply smile, will he smile back? Probably not. He will, most likely, high-tail it to the other side of the street, glancing back over his shoulder every now and then to see if I'm following him.

Maybe it's because I'm a foreigner here. That could be it. Foreigners are strange, exotic specimens of existence that most Cambodians don't interact with on a daily, monthly, yearly basis.

But I think it's more than that.

There's a certain lack of, well, cynicism here. In Japan, too. That lack of cynicism allows other, more noble human emotions to peek their way through to the surface more readily, I think.

In the west, right, we're told that we can be anything we want to be. If we try hard, work hard, the world is our oyster, our treasure, our Domino's pizza with pepperoni on top.

In Asia, it ain't like that. People grow up knowing their place, for the most part. There isn't a caste system here like in India, no, but it's much, much, muuuuuch harder to elevate yourself to where you would like to be in life in Japan, Cambodia, China. In the west, I think people begin to resent life itself as they get older, because they realize that (for them, at least) the dream they were promised was bogus. They worked hard, they paid their bills, they went to work -- and for what? The American (Canadian?) Dream eldued them. It ran away. Enter cynicism, stage left.

Cynicism emerges when we realize that the world is an unfair place. Well, a lot of people in Asia know that from the get-go anyways. Life sucks, we all die, we're screwed from birth, but hey -- what are ya gonna do? (Sho ga nai, as the Japanese say. It can't be helped. That's life.) So with that lack of cynicism comes a kind of gentleness that persists and endures.

Yes, yes, but what about the Japanese military in WWII, and what about the Khmer Rouge in the seventies -- you call that innocence, Spencer?

And my answer is: Hey, I'm from St.Catharines, Ontario -- whaddaya want? I don't got all the answers. I'm just bumbling my way through Asia, observing and, as Indiana Jones once said, making it up as I go along.

But it's here, that sense of spirit and open-hearted, unselfconscious generosity that we're somehow lacking in the west. It pops up when you least expect it.

If you doubt me, just come to Cambodia. Walk down the street. Wait for a crowded van full of smooshed together kids to come roaring by. Wave your hand and catch their eyes and let your smile beam forth.

And watch what happens.

CLIMBING (SORT OF) ANGKOR

If you want to see Angkor Wat, really see it, you have to climp up. And up. On thin, slightly unsteady rocks that jut out from the surface of the temple. It is not extremely high, no, but it is high enough to fall off of, and that fall would not be a pleasant one. There would be screams. There would be the sound of bones cracking. There could even be death, if you're not too careful. And it's not like I'm trying to scare you off, or anything morbid like that. I'm just saying: If you come to Cambodia, and you visit the 'pyramids of Egypt' (which is, to be honest, the only real reason that most people do come to Cambodia), and you go to Angkor Wat itself (as opposed to the myriad other temples that are there), in certain parts of the place, you can ascend. There is a sheer rock wall filled with little stone steps that give you just enough leeway to stand on. It's quite steep, and I'm quite certain that there must have been at least a dozen or so people over the years that have kicked the bucket trying to scale its (admittedly-meager-when-compared-to-like-a-mountain) heights, and while I didn't climb it last year, this year I did, and survived, and somehow made my way back down. And, contrary to popular belief, going down is not always easier than going up.

You can lose your footing either way.

STANDING VIGIL FOR...HOW MUCH LONGER?

Every morning outside the ASIA-EUROPE bakery on Sihanouk street in Phnom Penh there are two or three almost-teenage girls who stand vigil, freshly printed copies of The Cambodia Daily gripped in their hands. Foreigners are what they are waiting for. Foreigners with money. Foreigners who may buy what they're selling. Foreigners who might, if the girls are lucky, buy them a croissant or a cookie or the always popular Coca-Cola.

These young girls don't actually go inside the cafe; they wait just at the edge, as if an invisible force shield prevented their access. There's no door to the place. It's all open air, tables and chairs facing out with a view of the hot and busy street, so you can read your paper and drink your orange juice and nibble at your almond chocolate pastry-type-thingee and, if you're so inclined, tilt your head just a little bit up and to the right to catch a glimpse of cars and motos speeding by, and of teenage Cambodians watching you eat, bite by bite.

They don't go to school, these girls, probably because their families need them to go out and make some money, damnit, and, anyway, they wouldn't be able to provide the fine educational services that the Kingdom of Cambodia so graciously provides to its people; many students have to bribe the teachers just to attend class, and you can't bribe if you got nothing to give.

So let's look at their options. They are eleven, twelve, thirteen. They come from dirt-poor families. They have no educational future. Newspapers are theirs to sell because they are young and cute and liable to trigger the guilt-complexes of foreigners -- backpackers and residents, teachers and NGO workers. Soon they will no longer be cute in that 'Cambodian Little Rascals' kind of way that breeds sympathy and handouts.

And what's left for them is...

Probably the sex trade. Possibly not. They might get a gig selling gasoline from bottles on the side of the road. (Always a viable career option for the young, smart, upwardly mobile, poverty-stricken Cambodian female.) Or, if they can somehow swindle a mobile phone, they can set up their own little booth, a bona fide business, so phoneless people like me can stop by when I need to make a call for the pricely sum of eight cents a minute.

In any event, there will come a day, probably soon, when one or two of those girls won't be in front of the bakery. No excited, almost violent cries of : "Sah! Sah! Daily? Sah!" The morning air will be crisp and cool, and the good, sweet smells of freshly baked goods will welcome me inside, and I'll wonder where those girls are.

I'll try not to wonder too much.

After all, this is Cambodia.

FIVE YEARS

"Only two things will be different in your life five years from now -- the people you hang out with and the books you read."

-- unknown

Is that true?

I dunno. Let's see. Five years ago I was hanging out with a bunch of Japanese and reading, primarily, books about Japan -- history, philosophy, fiction.

Now my peers are Cambodians and people from everywhere but Japan (or Canada), and I'm reading a lot of history and a little bit of politics.

Maybe it's true.

In five years, things change. What's that weird fact -- that our body replaces itself every five years or so, regenerating new cells like Pampers generates diapers? (A bad comparison, but what the hell.) We are, literally, a new person. Why should our interests be the same?

(I think you can substitute 'the books you read' with the 'movies you watch' or the 'music you listen to' or the 'people you slaughter'. I mean, the 'people you like', not slaughter. That's, um, what I meant...)

Life shifts, moves, evolves.

So, how about it?

Is it true for you?

THE ONE AND ONLY (INSERT YOUR NAME HERE)

John Irving once said that you should never trust a novelist who writes a memoir, because they all fudge the facts a little bit, making this or that incident just a little more exciting, more interesting or even funnier than what actually took place in the so-called 'real' world. (This was before Irving wrote his own memoir, the wise and entertaining THE IMAGINARY GIRLFRIEND.) From a novelist's perspective, the opportunity to look back on his or her own life can be an opportunity too tempting to resist, a chance to give things a shape and a texture that it lacked the first time around.

We all are busy composing our own memoirs, whether we write them down or not, aren'twe? We remember things the way that we want to remember them; we pick and choose which details to emphasize in the photo-album of our brain, and pull out the pictures for another look whenever we are feeling down and out. The reality of events fades, but the impressions linger, and those impressions are what we try to embellish and brighten, if possible.

I'm reading a biography of Khruschev now, and the writer of the book, William Taubman, quotes generously from the Soviet leader's own memoirs. An interesting pattern develops: Taubman quotes Khruschchev's own written recollections of a certain event or incident, and then he instantly invalidates little Nikita's quote by saying, in essence: "But that's not what really happened..." So the version and validation of his existence that Khrushchev set down for posterity is being rewritten even after his death, by someone he never met. His own version of his own life is deemed to be suspicious, self-serving, inaccurate. History will not settle for one man's version of his own existence.

Most of us will not dictate into a tape recorder the events of our lives, or have our own, personal biographers watching and judging our every action from some future vantage point; we won't have to worry about somebody contradicting our take on events.

It's intriguing to think about, though. How would others write the story of your life? Not after you're dead -- I mean right now. How would your mother and father and boss and high school history teacher transform the daily details of your existence into words on paper? If you picked the same event -- let's say your first day at work in a new job -- would the narrative be the same? The emotions, the anxities, the small, unnoticed triumphs?

I'm guessing no. I'm betting that you would get as many different stories as there were partici-
pants.

And given that we're mired in the festive season (well, Cambodia isn't, but still), it's safe to say that, were Jesus's disciples asked to give a precis of the dude, a brief character sketch of who he was and what he accomplished, the results would have been uneven. The contradictions would have stood out. ("No, no, no, it wasn't wine that he turned water into -- it was apple juice, guy. No, man, he didn't walk across the water -- he boogie-boarded across it. Dude, I swear. I was there, alright?")

The point is, it's our world and our universe. We're dictating what we do and how we do it. But there's a million other people bumping and bopping off of us at any given point in time, and they're writing their own biography of each of us; they're compiling, subconsciously, their private databank containing information on the one and only (insert your name here).

Paul Theroux said that, like most people, his public self rarely matched his private self. (The Japanese recognize this more than others -- tatamae and honne, they call it.) We all have a face we show to the world and a face we look at each and every week while we brush our teeth. (That's a joke -- I know we're supposed to brush our teeth each and every day, not each and every week. It was a typo, I swear. I brush my teeth, like, all the time. Honest...)

We judge ourselves by the face in the mirror while everyone else renders a verdict based on the face they see in the classroom, the cubicle, the hallway, the street. We silently, wordlessly write our memoirs in our heads, not realizing that the people we're judging are doing the same. We're all the heroes of our own lives (if we're lucky), and that simple, grinning fool you see at Starbucks every day may have a life story that, were she to tell it, would take you out of your own biography and make you shake your head with awe, fear or even reverence.

You just have to ask to hear it.

CAMBODIAN WEDDING TRIVIA

One interesting (if mystifying) aspect of Cambodian wedding receptions:

While everyone else sits inside and dines on various courses and listens to the pleasant music provided by the live band, the bride and groom and their respective families wait outside the hall the whole time, greeting everyone who arrives, and they only join the reception near the end, after most people have finished eating and already left.

Which makes me, as a guest, feel very guilty about eating and enjoying myself while the guests of honor wait outside in the parking lot.

THE GREAT 'ALEXANDER'

Oliver Stone, whose new film ALEXANDER has been universally derided by American critics, was on a promotional tour in Europe this week, where he stated that one of the reasons for the lack of success back home was that Americans did not know their history as well as the Europeans did.

It sounded like a pretty feeble defense -- until I watched ALEXANDER, and loved it, and realized that Stone is right.

ALEXANDER is pure Oliver Stone -- melodramatic and forceful and over-the-top and the opposite of subtle. If you hate Oliver Stone, you'll probably hate this film.

I'm no Alexander the Great expert. I just finished reading one book on the guy (by Robin Fox, who was Stone's advisor), but it gave me a sense of the man and the context to understand the world in which he lived.

Almost all of other people's criticisms of the movie are attributes to me -- the narration by Anthony Hopkins, the episodic nature of the script, the emotional anguish of Alexander.

Particularly that last point. A lot of critics have stated that Colin Farrell does nothing but weep and moan throughout the movie.

All very true. But let's look. Let's look at what made Alexander particularly revolutionary. He agonized over his troops deaths'. He praised them before battle. He respected his defeated adversaries. He actually cried over his men. This is all historically accurate. This is what helped build the Alexander legacy. And this is what Stone gets chided for.

What Stone does, brilliantly, I think, is illuminate a period of history that will be little understood by those who watch the film if they don't have some basic knowledge of what events of that time were like. Is it Stone's responsibility to provide that context?

Well, yes and no. He does offer some historical information to set the scene, but how much can you give in a movie like this? I saw J.F.K. when I was sixteen, and I'd say sixty percent of the sixties' social context depicted in the flick went right over my head like a missle. Didn't affect my enjoyment of the film.

The difference here, I think, is that this is a story set long, long ago, before Christ. It deals with social customs and political ideals that are substantially different than what we now know. It's a time and an era that he has brought to life splendidly well, but I don't think a lot of people will have the patience or interest to sit through it, unfortunately -- it will seem baroque, unwieldy, sometimes silly.

All very well and good, but how is it as a movie?

This is my take on it. The film is called Alexander -- not 'Alexander the Great'. I think that's key. The Alexander from myth and history remains just that -- mythic. Somewhat ethereal. Not quite real. Stone has gone back and tried to imagine, conceptualize, depict, what it would be like for Alexander, himself, to come of age with his burden and his destiny. Stone depicts the boy and the man inside of the myth -- the tears and the rage and the confusion and the bloodlust. What would it be like to be considered the son of Zeus and the son of the most powerful man in the world? What would that do to you? Stone goes inside of the myth to try to bring forth Alexander.

If people don't like the film, fine. That's their perogative. But to see the joy that most critics' feel in dismissing a work that, for me, overflows with adolescent guts and passion and energy and grace is more than sad; it's debilitating. It smacks of cynicism and snarkiness and everything vile that growing old represents. Much of Alexander's life, and this film, focuses on the inevitability of glory's death, the long, inescapable fall that follows all those who seek to soar higher than the rest.

Perhaps, to some, this film is an example of that -- Stone's hubris expanded one last and final (?) time.

Not for me. For me, this film is an example of epic thinking. I think it has bravado and heart. It is long and slow, melodramatic and bloody. It dares to depict simple, primal thoughts. It beats with the heart of young dreamers. In its grandiosity, it practically invites the scorn it has received.

Let people scorn. The irony, I think, is that the young, who know very little about the present, let alone the past, will this film, and be intrigued, mystified, perplexed. They will want to know more about this strange man named Alexander. They will search the net, go to the library, explore. Somewhere in the world, a twelve or thirteen or fifteen year old boy or girl, just beginning to think of concepts like destiny and adventure, power and ambition, will see this film, and be enthralled, and marvel at one whose ambition knew no bounds, and whose desire, in all its multifaceted glory, had no territory or limits. They will, perhaps, wonder about those same qualities in themselves.

This film is for the young and the dreamers.