I miss hot showers.
There. I've said it.
I'm living in a country where only 20% of the population (give or take) have access to toilets, or running water, a country where the life expectancy hovers around age 50, a country where the prospects for a reasonable, livable, decent life (I didn't say happy) are slim and far between. (And what a weird phrase that is. Not even sure what it means. Sorry about that.) I shouldn't be thinking of my own personal comfort needs.
Still.
I miss hot showers.
In my apartment, there's only cold showers available. Often, that's enough. After a run, or on a particularly hot day (which means every day), a cold shower can feel damn good. Soothing. Rejuvenating, even.
Still.
I haven't been entirely without a hot shower in my almost two (gulp) years of living here. I've had them at the hotels I've stayed at, the guest houses I've stayed at.
So, let's see -- less than five hot showers in two years?
It's not that I think about them that often, to be honest. But every now and then, the memory of a hot shower, potent and fierce, appears in my mind, like a picture you can only feel, not see.
And then I think of most Cambodians, who have never experienced and will never experience the simple goodness of a hot shower. I swallow my pity and get on with my day.
Still.
I admit it.
I miss hot showers.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
ARTIFICIAL EMBRACES CAN STILL LIGHTEN THE GLOOM
Today I received an email that I thought was a legitimate email because the name sounded real, somewhat familiar, almost (but not quite) like a grade-school classmate I used to know, and the tagline was 'Regarding tomorrow', so I thought it might be about work, but it turned out to be spam, which pissed me off, but then I imagined the Internet in ten, fifteen years time, when our emails will all be video emails, and we'll be able to see the faces of people as they give us their messages, and I imagined myself, age forty, forty-five, alone in a room, rain streaking the window, opening my Inbox on a particularly gloomy morning, finding it empty, but seeing my Junkmail full, full of stranger's faces, salesmen's faces, smiling, saying hello, their grins broad, their hair permed and pressed, all of them wanting to talk to me and me alone, and for some reason I can't quite understand this made me feel good, accepted, embraced, if only in an artificial way.
INDIFFERENCE
I've been thinking about slums recently.
Right down the street from where I live, there's a bunch of buildings that look like a bomb blast went off inside of them about ten, fifteen years back, a Die Hard style explosion gone awry, minus the modern-day heroics of a Bruce Willis to ease the pain and suffering. A lot of families live there, with husbands and wives, kids and clotheslines; these buildings look like overblown doll houses, their bare and shoddy rooms exposed for the whole world to see. Or at least that part of the world living on Sothearos Boulevard, I guess. (Not that that many doll houses look like remnants of shrapnel itself, only magnified.) This could be called, I guess, a slum.
There's a lot of them here in Phnom Penh. On my first trip to Cambodia, when I spent a week in Battambang, a Cambodian English teacher took me around to see the slums. There were no houses there, no buildings, just shacks, strips of wood tied together, a home cobbled out of necessity. All filled with desperately poor, perpetually smiling families. One boy had a growth that covered most of his face, a blue whoopee cushion stretching from brow to chin on the right hand side, but he was alert, friendly, open. He was a kid.
Slums are the subject, in part, of a book I'm reading called The Corner: A Year In The Life Of An Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon and Edward Burns. (No, not that Edward Burns; this one's a former cop, now a schoolteacher.)
These two writers chronicle a year in the life of the streets of West Baltimore, exposing the families and community that thrive in one of the 'worst' neighbourhoods in one of the most crime ridden cities in America. Its a brutal, piercing, heartbreaking book, focusing on a handful of people, a handful of families, a handful of drug addicts; the book exposes the drug subculture that exists in its own, enclosed universe.
I said 'worst' neighbourhoods, as if I know what I'm talking about. I grew up in a safe town; there was no inner city in my city. The closest I've come, in Canada, was when I lived for four years on-campus at York University in Toronto, just down the block from what is basically the most dangerous intersection in Canada, Jane and Finch. Even the name, 'Jane and Finch', brings back memories of, well, avoidance, mostly. You didn't want to go down there. Too dangerous. Too hostile. (What they meant was, let's be honest, too 'black'. )
I ventured into that forbidden zone once, with the guy who lived next to me in my dorm; we went to McDonald's, and had our meals, and were not shot, not even once.
And now I'm living right near a place that would, in some ways, make the intersection of Jane and Finch look positively bubbly. And I'm alive. And I haven't been shot.
The thing is, it's just so, so, so outside of my scope. I read books like this, and you marvel at the humanity of the people, and weep over the stupidity and futility of the justice system, the police system, the rehabilitation system. These are people whose whole lives revolve around getting the next fix, people whose entire world centres upon drugs, and getting some, stealing some, killing for some.
In North America (and most the world, I guess), the undercurrent is always race. Leave the blacks for the inner cities, while the whites will commute to their jobs in downtown Atlanta and Dallas and Boston and Baltimore, and get the hell out of Dodge come quitting time.
I see it in America, I see it in urban Canada, and I see it in Africa, especially, Rwanda and Sudan, particularly. The bottom line: Black lives are devalued. (Doesn't take a rocket science to see it that way.) That's the nasty truth that politicians will never divulge. Our people, our politicians, my countrymen, collectively, when it comes right down to it, don't give a flying fu-- what happens to the dark-skinned poor, be they in Canada or America or Cambodia or Rwanda. That's the only explanation I can come to.
(Not that it's necessarily conscious, or pre-ordained, or inherently malevolent; indifference has its own unseen escalation, its own blind, alarming evil.)
I'm not trying to present myself as some do-gooder, a noble white, the enlightened one. (If that's the way I come across, I'll take the blame. And hell, maybe it's a valid criticism, to some extent. I sometimes think I should go back home and just go teach English or rudimentary Japanese to the kids in the schools at Jane and Finch, and then I think 'you precious bastard, like they need a white person like you to help them along'. I feel stupid for thinking of the idea, then stupid for feeling stupid. It's just that I come from a world that was pretty white-bread, and I've seen the world, lived in Japan, lived in Cambodia, and I'm trying, in my own way, to piece together what I've seen and feel; trying to reconcile the harsh reality of the world with the Leave It To Beaver suburban environment that molded me, for better or for worse.)
I don't have any answers.
And, to some extent, it goes beyond race, this indifference to the development of those on a lower scale than ourselves. There's something primal in the way we react to poverty, the way we flinch from it, the way we divert our movement and our attention from its nasty grip.
In Phnom Penh, it's in your face, every day, but you can still look away. Back home, ifyou're lucky, you can do more than look away -- you can move away, and see its aftereffects only on the evening news, in between Wheel of Fortune and Everbody Loves Raymond. You can react to poverty only as a theoretical concept, if you so choose, as an ideology, even, rather than as the stinking, putrid mess that it is, a living, breathing organism that consumes you and spits you out and moves on to the next piece of prey.
I just know that generations of people, be they black or white or Hispanic or Sudanese or Khmer, are screwed from the get-go. Yes, yes, yes -- there will always be those who can overcome adversity. I have confidence in the individual; I have the belief that we can rise above our circumstances.
But I also know this:
There are schools in West Baltimore, and there are schools on Jane Street and Finch street in Toronto, and there are (a few) schools somewhere near the slum near my house in Phnom Penh, and, to be honest, I don't think very many successful people care one way or another what goes on inside of them, or what happens to them. And I can bet you that these schools' books suck, their facilities blow, and that their teachers, overworked and good souls that they are, do not have the means to deal with a situation that seems to be deteriorating decade by decade, year by year.
Who do we blame?
Where do we start?
I don't have any answers.
But maybe if we keep asking the questions, that's a start? A small one, true, but a start nevertheless?
Or am I dreaming?
Tell me I'm not.
Right down the street from where I live, there's a bunch of buildings that look like a bomb blast went off inside of them about ten, fifteen years back, a Die Hard style explosion gone awry, minus the modern-day heroics of a Bruce Willis to ease the pain and suffering. A lot of families live there, with husbands and wives, kids and clotheslines; these buildings look like overblown doll houses, their bare and shoddy rooms exposed for the whole world to see. Or at least that part of the world living on Sothearos Boulevard, I guess. (Not that that many doll houses look like remnants of shrapnel itself, only magnified.) This could be called, I guess, a slum.
There's a lot of them here in Phnom Penh. On my first trip to Cambodia, when I spent a week in Battambang, a Cambodian English teacher took me around to see the slums. There were no houses there, no buildings, just shacks, strips of wood tied together, a home cobbled out of necessity. All filled with desperately poor, perpetually smiling families. One boy had a growth that covered most of his face, a blue whoopee cushion stretching from brow to chin on the right hand side, but he was alert, friendly, open. He was a kid.
Slums are the subject, in part, of a book I'm reading called The Corner: A Year In The Life Of An Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon and Edward Burns. (No, not that Edward Burns; this one's a former cop, now a schoolteacher.)
These two writers chronicle a year in the life of the streets of West Baltimore, exposing the families and community that thrive in one of the 'worst' neighbourhoods in one of the most crime ridden cities in America. Its a brutal, piercing, heartbreaking book, focusing on a handful of people, a handful of families, a handful of drug addicts; the book exposes the drug subculture that exists in its own, enclosed universe.
I said 'worst' neighbourhoods, as if I know what I'm talking about. I grew up in a safe town; there was no inner city in my city. The closest I've come, in Canada, was when I lived for four years on-campus at York University in Toronto, just down the block from what is basically the most dangerous intersection in Canada, Jane and Finch. Even the name, 'Jane and Finch', brings back memories of, well, avoidance, mostly. You didn't want to go down there. Too dangerous. Too hostile. (What they meant was, let's be honest, too 'black'. )
I ventured into that forbidden zone once, with the guy who lived next to me in my dorm; we went to McDonald's, and had our meals, and were not shot, not even once.
And now I'm living right near a place that would, in some ways, make the intersection of Jane and Finch look positively bubbly. And I'm alive. And I haven't been shot.
The thing is, it's just so, so, so outside of my scope. I read books like this, and you marvel at the humanity of the people, and weep over the stupidity and futility of the justice system, the police system, the rehabilitation system. These are people whose whole lives revolve around getting the next fix, people whose entire world centres upon drugs, and getting some, stealing some, killing for some.
In North America (and most the world, I guess), the undercurrent is always race. Leave the blacks for the inner cities, while the whites will commute to their jobs in downtown Atlanta and Dallas and Boston and Baltimore, and get the hell out of Dodge come quitting time.
I see it in America, I see it in urban Canada, and I see it in Africa, especially, Rwanda and Sudan, particularly. The bottom line: Black lives are devalued. (Doesn't take a rocket science to see it that way.) That's the nasty truth that politicians will never divulge. Our people, our politicians, my countrymen, collectively, when it comes right down to it, don't give a flying fu-- what happens to the dark-skinned poor, be they in Canada or America or Cambodia or Rwanda. That's the only explanation I can come to.
(Not that it's necessarily conscious, or pre-ordained, or inherently malevolent; indifference has its own unseen escalation, its own blind, alarming evil.)
I'm not trying to present myself as some do-gooder, a noble white, the enlightened one. (If that's the way I come across, I'll take the blame. And hell, maybe it's a valid criticism, to some extent. I sometimes think I should go back home and just go teach English or rudimentary Japanese to the kids in the schools at Jane and Finch, and then I think 'you precious bastard, like they need a white person like you to help them along'. I feel stupid for thinking of the idea, then stupid for feeling stupid. It's just that I come from a world that was pretty white-bread, and I've seen the world, lived in Japan, lived in Cambodia, and I'm trying, in my own way, to piece together what I've seen and feel; trying to reconcile the harsh reality of the world with the Leave It To Beaver suburban environment that molded me, for better or for worse.)
I don't have any answers.
And, to some extent, it goes beyond race, this indifference to the development of those on a lower scale than ourselves. There's something primal in the way we react to poverty, the way we flinch from it, the way we divert our movement and our attention from its nasty grip.
In Phnom Penh, it's in your face, every day, but you can still look away. Back home, ifyou're lucky, you can do more than look away -- you can move away, and see its aftereffects only on the evening news, in between Wheel of Fortune and Everbody Loves Raymond. You can react to poverty only as a theoretical concept, if you so choose, as an ideology, even, rather than as the stinking, putrid mess that it is, a living, breathing organism that consumes you and spits you out and moves on to the next piece of prey.
I just know that generations of people, be they black or white or Hispanic or Sudanese or Khmer, are screwed from the get-go. Yes, yes, yes -- there will always be those who can overcome adversity. I have confidence in the individual; I have the belief that we can rise above our circumstances.
But I also know this:
There are schools in West Baltimore, and there are schools on Jane Street and Finch street in Toronto, and there are (a few) schools somewhere near the slum near my house in Phnom Penh, and, to be honest, I don't think very many successful people care one way or another what goes on inside of them, or what happens to them. And I can bet you that these schools' books suck, their facilities blow, and that their teachers, overworked and good souls that they are, do not have the means to deal with a situation that seems to be deteriorating decade by decade, year by year.
Who do we blame?
Where do we start?
I don't have any answers.
But maybe if we keep asking the questions, that's a start? A small one, true, but a start nevertheless?
Or am I dreaming?
Tell me I'm not.
Monday, March 21, 2005
YOURS TO DISCOVER
The weird thing about blogging is not necessarily the fact that you have to create this online, virtual version of yourself that somehow represents and encapsulates the sum and total of how you view the world (and thus how it views you), all through the medium of a highly literate, supremely witty prose that highlights your intelligence and plays down your less palatable characteristics, the worst of which is your tendency to hum The Brady Bunch theme song when you're really, really nervous.
(Actually, that does sound weird enough for most people, doesn't it. And I don't hum that theme song in tense situations. I swear. In those cases, nine times out of ten, I opt for Diff'rent Strokes. Facts of Life, maybe.)
But the weirder thing, in my view, is that it's not really that strange at all, this new-age practice of posting your thoughts for the world to see, instantly letting the mostly-indifferent denizens of the planet know what they really weren't that interested in hearing about anyways.
Yout get a blog, and you start writing, and you try to nail down a 'voice'.
Very similar to writing fiction, really, only in fiction the voice is either a) some omniscient narrator, so your 'voice' has to be kind of an all-knowing, all-seeing sage type of deal, or b) a first person narrator, which is not really 'you' but the voice of the character who is telling the story, which means that you have to write it the way that he/she would write it. (Or even how 'they' would write, if you're referring to this really cool novel by Joyce Carol Oates called Broke-Heart Blues, and I urge you, implore you to read it, as it encapsulates the high school experience better than most books I've ever read, viewing it from the teenage perspective and the middle-age perspective, and the cool thing is, it does so by using a 'they' narrator -- a group of people, a collective, nameless 'they' that shouldn't work but does, wickedly so.)
Not that you really have to think of your 'voice' too much, but it's usually there, nonetheless, this insistent rumbling in the back of your brain that's telling you how to write what it is that you want to write about.
It's new, this voice, this blogging voice, at least to me; before last, what, last October, I guess, it didn't exist.
Kind of like learning a new sport, or another language. The cool thing about learning Japanese was realizing, after awhile, that a new-me had been created, a Japanese-speaking-me that literally was not in existence before I went to Japan. (Not that I'm fluent or anything, but still, being able to hold a minimal conversation in a language that you didn't know only two, three years before is a little freaky -- it's the birth of a whole new aspect of yourself.)
So it's best to look at blogging, I guess, as a kind of endeavor that is at least the equal of learning how to scuba dive or play contract bridge. (Not that I know how to do either. Not that I even know what contract bridge is, exactly, because for years I thought it was an actual bridge in England, because in Empire of the Sun the young boy, Jim, tells his mother at bedtime that he's writing a book about contract bridge, only I thought he was talking about an edifice, not a game, so there you go.)
You figure out how to do it, and you do it.
Only in blogging, there's no rules, because anybody can post anything they want. Film reviews, book reviews, naked pictures of infamous people -- the game is open, 'cuz the forum is yours, the voice is yours.
Yours to birth, develop, hone or disregard; this new aspect of yourself has at least the possibility of being as interesting as the 'you' that talks to your parents, tells off your brother, calms down your neighbour.
And yours to discover, as the Ontario license plates say -- a daily, weekly, monthly discovery. For you and you alone to judge (negative posters be damned).
Shouldn't all life be as accessible as this?
(Or maybe it already is.)
(Actually, that does sound weird enough for most people, doesn't it. And I don't hum that theme song in tense situations. I swear. In those cases, nine times out of ten, I opt for Diff'rent Strokes. Facts of Life, maybe.)
But the weirder thing, in my view, is that it's not really that strange at all, this new-age practice of posting your thoughts for the world to see, instantly letting the mostly-indifferent denizens of the planet know what they really weren't that interested in hearing about anyways.
Yout get a blog, and you start writing, and you try to nail down a 'voice'.
Very similar to writing fiction, really, only in fiction the voice is either a) some omniscient narrator, so your 'voice' has to be kind of an all-knowing, all-seeing sage type of deal, or b) a first person narrator, which is not really 'you' but the voice of the character who is telling the story, which means that you have to write it the way that he/she would write it. (Or even how 'they' would write, if you're referring to this really cool novel by Joyce Carol Oates called Broke-Heart Blues, and I urge you, implore you to read it, as it encapsulates the high school experience better than most books I've ever read, viewing it from the teenage perspective and the middle-age perspective, and the cool thing is, it does so by using a 'they' narrator -- a group of people, a collective, nameless 'they' that shouldn't work but does, wickedly so.)
Not that you really have to think of your 'voice' too much, but it's usually there, nonetheless, this insistent rumbling in the back of your brain that's telling you how to write what it is that you want to write about.
It's new, this voice, this blogging voice, at least to me; before last, what, last October, I guess, it didn't exist.
Kind of like learning a new sport, or another language. The cool thing about learning Japanese was realizing, after awhile, that a new-me had been created, a Japanese-speaking-me that literally was not in existence before I went to Japan. (Not that I'm fluent or anything, but still, being able to hold a minimal conversation in a language that you didn't know only two, three years before is a little freaky -- it's the birth of a whole new aspect of yourself.)
So it's best to look at blogging, I guess, as a kind of endeavor that is at least the equal of learning how to scuba dive or play contract bridge. (Not that I know how to do either. Not that I even know what contract bridge is, exactly, because for years I thought it was an actual bridge in England, because in Empire of the Sun the young boy, Jim, tells his mother at bedtime that he's writing a book about contract bridge, only I thought he was talking about an edifice, not a game, so there you go.)
You figure out how to do it, and you do it.
Only in blogging, there's no rules, because anybody can post anything they want. Film reviews, book reviews, naked pictures of infamous people -- the game is open, 'cuz the forum is yours, the voice is yours.
Yours to birth, develop, hone or disregard; this new aspect of yourself has at least the possibility of being as interesting as the 'you' that talks to your parents, tells off your brother, calms down your neighbour.
And yours to discover, as the Ontario license plates say -- a daily, weekly, monthly discovery. For you and you alone to judge (negative posters be damned).
Shouldn't all life be as accessible as this?
(Or maybe it already is.)
Sunday, March 20, 2005
FLAGS IN THE BREEZE
I saw a flag fluttering in the wind on the banks of the river here in Phnom Penh. There were a bunch of flags, actually, all of them representing the various countries of the world, all of them moving swiftly, almost gracefully, with each warm, insistent push of the afternoon breeze.
"It would be a nice to be a flag," I said to my friend.
"Why?"
"I don't know. You'd have a kind of dignity."
"Yes, but you'd be stagnant."
I hadn't thought of that. There is a certain regal grace about flags, I think, but it's true -- for all of their ceremonial exteriors, they can't go anywhere; they can only fly in one place. And without the wind, they droop, looking forlorn and defeated.
Silly, isn't it? Ascribing these human characteristics to something as inherently lifeless as a piece of silk strung up in the sky.
Still.
Living in Cambodia, where Buddhism and reincarnation is a matter of course, I can't help but thinking: What if everybody's right? What if we do come back? And who's to say we have to come back as living, breathing, sentient beings? Why couldn't we come back as flags?
Personally, I like the idea of coming back, of returning to life again and again, only in another shape and form, in another era and place. There's a wonderful cosmic and spiritual serenity in that concept.
Of course, the part of my brain that deals in logic (a small part, true, but it's there, it exists) wonders: If reincarnation is true, how could it all have begun, this whole rebirth thing? I mean, people have been living and dying for millenium, and how did this all start? If you believe in evolution (and I do), then how does evolution come into play? How do you logically link the scientific and the spiritual? And what about this idea that if you are a bad person in your former life, you will pay for it in the next life? Rich people here use that as a means to justify their own station, their own greed; the poor are poor because their souls are unworthy, paying in this life for their sins of their previous ones.
I can't reconcile all of this; I don't know, and I will never will. (I hope.)
Makes just as much sense, though, as believing that there is a place somewhere up there that we all go when we die, where everything is goodness and light forever and ever. Not sure that I buy that, either.
No matter.
Maybe there's a heaven, or maybe there isn't. Maybe we come back again, and maybe we don't. There are still those flags, the ones that fly down by the river, and I can go and see them whenever I wish.
All the other questions, the big questions, the life-and-death questions, can wait. I can pause for a few moments in the hot and dusty stillness of a Phnom Penh afternoon, pause and watch the flags do their flag. Watch them flutter in the breeze, before the wind dies down for another day.
"It would be a nice to be a flag," I said to my friend.
"Why?"
"I don't know. You'd have a kind of dignity."
"Yes, but you'd be stagnant."
I hadn't thought of that. There is a certain regal grace about flags, I think, but it's true -- for all of their ceremonial exteriors, they can't go anywhere; they can only fly in one place. And without the wind, they droop, looking forlorn and defeated.
Silly, isn't it? Ascribing these human characteristics to something as inherently lifeless as a piece of silk strung up in the sky.
Still.
Living in Cambodia, where Buddhism and reincarnation is a matter of course, I can't help but thinking: What if everybody's right? What if we do come back? And who's to say we have to come back as living, breathing, sentient beings? Why couldn't we come back as flags?
Personally, I like the idea of coming back, of returning to life again and again, only in another shape and form, in another era and place. There's a wonderful cosmic and spiritual serenity in that concept.
Of course, the part of my brain that deals in logic (a small part, true, but it's there, it exists) wonders: If reincarnation is true, how could it all have begun, this whole rebirth thing? I mean, people have been living and dying for millenium, and how did this all start? If you believe in evolution (and I do), then how does evolution come into play? How do you logically link the scientific and the spiritual? And what about this idea that if you are a bad person in your former life, you will pay for it in the next life? Rich people here use that as a means to justify their own station, their own greed; the poor are poor because their souls are unworthy, paying in this life for their sins of their previous ones.
I can't reconcile all of this; I don't know, and I will never will. (I hope.)
Makes just as much sense, though, as believing that there is a place somewhere up there that we all go when we die, where everything is goodness and light forever and ever. Not sure that I buy that, either.
No matter.
Maybe there's a heaven, or maybe there isn't. Maybe we come back again, and maybe we don't. There are still those flags, the ones that fly down by the river, and I can go and see them whenever I wish.
All the other questions, the big questions, the life-and-death questions, can wait. I can pause for a few moments in the hot and dusty stillness of a Phnom Penh afternoon, pause and watch the flags do their flag. Watch them flutter in the breeze, before the wind dies down for another day.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
ALTERING YOUR TRAJECTORIES, OR WHY BELIEVING IN THE LOCH NESS MONSTER IS THE WAY TO GO
"Some people would say that because we don't know, it can't be. I would say that because we don't know, we don't know."
- Charles Towne,
Physicist, Nobel laureate
And so in this corner we have the world of ghosts and devils, spirits and shamans, Loch Ness monsters and all of those other unseen, unborn mythical-or-not creatures that go bump in the night, and then in the other corner we have faith, stability, crosses and candles, crucifixtions and chants, certainty and faith.
You either believe that Oswald did it, or that the whole bloody mess was an elongated, elaborate, massive conspiracy.
You either believe that people from the other side continue to enchant us and guide us and listen to us, literal angels on our shoulders, or you hold firmly to the view that the coffin, once in the ground, or the ashes, once in the urn, are the complete and sum total of all that is left of our earthly selves.
This and that.
Either/or.
Worlds of certainty versus universes of ambiguity.
But let's say this, and I'll say it quietly. I won't make a fuss, or raise my voice. There are those in the other room, the one right next to you, who may disagree with what I'm saying, and we don't want to offend them, piss them off, alter their trajectories.
What if the physicist is right? What if all of our uncertainties are not necessarily reflective of any ultimate end-goal? Because we don't know means, well, we don't know. Period. Turn the page.
It doesn't mean that there is a God, or that there isn't. It doesn't mean that UFOS actually exist, or that they don't. It doesn't mean that death is the end of this life, or the beginning of another one.
Just because you're not sure about your new job doesn't mean that it won't turn out to be something spectacular. Just because you can't figure out your life now, doesn't have to lead to you not figuring out your life in the near future, or ever.
It just means that all of the myriad mysteries of the universe, whether they be the exact size, shape and texture of this close and present galaxy or the exact size, shape and texture of your husband's toupee are simply riddles waiting to be solved at some future date. The worth of our own uncertainties can be validated by their own essential unknowability.
It's okay not to know, in other words. To not know means you will keep attempting to know. To not know means you will allow other entrances to be opened. To not know means that the door is always half-open, not half closed.
I'm not sure if the Loch Ness monster really, truly exists.
But I'm betting that he does.
Besides, a life with even the slimmest possibility of a Loch Ness monster silently floating beneath the misty gloom of a Scottish night is a life that I would gladly alter my trajectory for, if necessary.
- Charles Towne,
Physicist, Nobel laureate
And so in this corner we have the world of ghosts and devils, spirits and shamans, Loch Ness monsters and all of those other unseen, unborn mythical-or-not creatures that go bump in the night, and then in the other corner we have faith, stability, crosses and candles, crucifixtions and chants, certainty and faith.
You either believe that Oswald did it, or that the whole bloody mess was an elongated, elaborate, massive conspiracy.
You either believe that people from the other side continue to enchant us and guide us and listen to us, literal angels on our shoulders, or you hold firmly to the view that the coffin, once in the ground, or the ashes, once in the urn, are the complete and sum total of all that is left of our earthly selves.
This and that.
Either/or.
Worlds of certainty versus universes of ambiguity.
But let's say this, and I'll say it quietly. I won't make a fuss, or raise my voice. There are those in the other room, the one right next to you, who may disagree with what I'm saying, and we don't want to offend them, piss them off, alter their trajectories.
What if the physicist is right? What if all of our uncertainties are not necessarily reflective of any ultimate end-goal? Because we don't know means, well, we don't know. Period. Turn the page.
It doesn't mean that there is a God, or that there isn't. It doesn't mean that UFOS actually exist, or that they don't. It doesn't mean that death is the end of this life, or the beginning of another one.
Just because you're not sure about your new job doesn't mean that it won't turn out to be something spectacular. Just because you can't figure out your life now, doesn't have to lead to you not figuring out your life in the near future, or ever.
It just means that all of the myriad mysteries of the universe, whether they be the exact size, shape and texture of this close and present galaxy or the exact size, shape and texture of your husband's toupee are simply riddles waiting to be solved at some future date. The worth of our own uncertainties can be validated by their own essential unknowability.
It's okay not to know, in other words. To not know means you will keep attempting to know. To not know means you will allow other entrances to be opened. To not know means that the door is always half-open, not half closed.
I'm not sure if the Loch Ness monster really, truly exists.
But I'm betting that he does.
Besides, a life with even the slimmest possibility of a Loch Ness monster silently floating beneath the misty gloom of a Scottish night is a life that I would gladly alter my trajectory for, if necessary.
Friday, March 18, 2005
IGNORANCE IS BLISS (ISN'T IT?)
"The abscence of alternatives clears the mind wonderfully."
-- Henry Kissinger
Recently, I was reading the new biography of J.F.K. that's currently out in paperback, and a Khmer colleague asked who the handsome man on the cover was.
"It's Kennedy," I said.
A pause. A nod.
"Who?" he asked.
"John Kennedy? The American president who was assasinated?"
Another pause. Another nod.
Not a freakin' clue.
In a country like Cambodia, information, let alone knowledge, is still somewhat restricted. A luxury, if you will, reserved for those with satellite dishes and access to the Internet.
Unlike most of us in the west, who basically have access to everything, all the time, whenever we want, whether we want it.
Do we need it all?
Do we need any of it?
There's a certain cultural, snobbish level of awareness that seems to exist back home -- meaning, if you don't watch this program, or read this book, then there's something wrong with you. The inverse works too -- if you do watch this kind of program, or that kind of book, then there's something wrong with you. You're either too intellectual, too refined, or you're too ignorant, too trailer-park. You either follow Oprah's book club, or disdain it. (I think it's a great idea, in case you're wondering -- anything that gets people reading.)
We often judge ourselves, and others, by what they like to watch, or read, and not necessarily by what they do. (Which is a very scary thing, I'm starting to realize; people who are as passionate as all get out about their books and movies and the world's reactions and accolades to their particular fetishes are often the same kind of people who don't do jackshit about any real injustice in the real world.) Some of the biggest jerks in the world are the most educated, erudite people you would ever want (or not want) to find; some of the nicest people in the world haven't read a goddamn thing in their lives.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't it be that the more we read, and think, the better people we become?
I don't think it ends up that way, though.
Don't know why that is. Maybe it's because we're simply assaulted on a daily basis by, well, everything. Billboards and ads and our parents and our teachers and our co-workers, all of them saying: This, this, this, you gotta read it, watch it, BE it.
How much is enough, though? How many really, really good movies come out in a single year? I'm talking exceptional. One? Maybe two?
How many amazing, life-changing books?
Do we need all this, all this, all this stuff jammed into our heads to inform and enlighten us? Can't we just step outside of our house, look up at the sky, feel the sunshine, taste the snowdrops, and wait for enlightenment to come in its own sweet time?
Not that I'm saying that illiteracy is a good thing, or ignorance, or indifference. I'm guilty of all the sins I describe, and they may not even be sins; they may be what's necessary to survive and compete in a competitive world. We do have to know what's going on in the world, and why, and what we can do about it. No question.
Still.
Living here, in Cambodia, you see the simple. You see the farmers. You see the bicycles. You see TV channels that play only government approved speeches or endless, endless song-and-dance shows. You see a conformity, yes, and political repression, true, but you also see...
An engagement. With the real world. With daylight and tarmac. (Not by choice, no, but once can't deny that, despite genocide, despite mass murder, despite the wrenching heartache that exists here, and will exist for decades to come, there is, in the end, innocence. I don't know how it's here, or why it's here, but it's here, I swear, I see it.)
Change is coming to this country, yes, and it's a good thing, and a welcome thing, but when I begin to hear everyone talking about how they must, absolutely must watch the latest Desperate Housewives, well, that may be the day that I pack my bags and book my ticket home.
-- Henry Kissinger
Recently, I was reading the new biography of J.F.K. that's currently out in paperback, and a Khmer colleague asked who the handsome man on the cover was.
"It's Kennedy," I said.
A pause. A nod.
"Who?" he asked.
"John Kennedy? The American president who was assasinated?"
Another pause. Another nod.
Not a freakin' clue.
In a country like Cambodia, information, let alone knowledge, is still somewhat restricted. A luxury, if you will, reserved for those with satellite dishes and access to the Internet.
Unlike most of us in the west, who basically have access to everything, all the time, whenever we want, whether we want it.
Do we need it all?
Do we need any of it?
There's a certain cultural, snobbish level of awareness that seems to exist back home -- meaning, if you don't watch this program, or read this book, then there's something wrong with you. The inverse works too -- if you do watch this kind of program, or that kind of book, then there's something wrong with you. You're either too intellectual, too refined, or you're too ignorant, too trailer-park. You either follow Oprah's book club, or disdain it. (I think it's a great idea, in case you're wondering -- anything that gets people reading.)
We often judge ourselves, and others, by what they like to watch, or read, and not necessarily by what they do. (Which is a very scary thing, I'm starting to realize; people who are as passionate as all get out about their books and movies and the world's reactions and accolades to their particular fetishes are often the same kind of people who don't do jackshit about any real injustice in the real world.) Some of the biggest jerks in the world are the most educated, erudite people you would ever want (or not want) to find; some of the nicest people in the world haven't read a goddamn thing in their lives.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't it be that the more we read, and think, the better people we become?
I don't think it ends up that way, though.
Don't know why that is. Maybe it's because we're simply assaulted on a daily basis by, well, everything. Billboards and ads and our parents and our teachers and our co-workers, all of them saying: This, this, this, you gotta read it, watch it, BE it.
How much is enough, though? How many really, really good movies come out in a single year? I'm talking exceptional. One? Maybe two?
How many amazing, life-changing books?
Do we need all this, all this, all this stuff jammed into our heads to inform and enlighten us? Can't we just step outside of our house, look up at the sky, feel the sunshine, taste the snowdrops, and wait for enlightenment to come in its own sweet time?
Not that I'm saying that illiteracy is a good thing, or ignorance, or indifference. I'm guilty of all the sins I describe, and they may not even be sins; they may be what's necessary to survive and compete in a competitive world. We do have to know what's going on in the world, and why, and what we can do about it. No question.
Still.
Living here, in Cambodia, you see the simple. You see the farmers. You see the bicycles. You see TV channels that play only government approved speeches or endless, endless song-and-dance shows. You see a conformity, yes, and political repression, true, but you also see...
An engagement. With the real world. With daylight and tarmac. (Not by choice, no, but once can't deny that, despite genocide, despite mass murder, despite the wrenching heartache that exists here, and will exist for decades to come, there is, in the end, innocence. I don't know how it's here, or why it's here, but it's here, I swear, I see it.)
Change is coming to this country, yes, and it's a good thing, and a welcome thing, but when I begin to hear everyone talking about how they must, absolutely must watch the latest Desperate Housewives, well, that may be the day that I pack my bags and book my ticket home.
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