DOWN WITH KRINGLE

There is no such thing as a gullible cynic. This is what I've come to believe. It's one of those thoughts I have late at night or early in the morning, when the lightning is crackling and the rain is strong and daylight is far, far away. Sometimes words and phrases pop into my head and I tell myself that I have to remember them, write them down, make sense of them, but then I drift back to sleep. The sound of rain on a rooftop does that to you.

Whenever I start to feel that I'm getting a wee bit cynical, I remember my gullibility. Stephen King has a wonderful introduction to his 1992 story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes in which he recounts that, as a child, he tended to believe anything and everything that anyone and everyone told him. I'm the same way. (Just, you know, minus the marvellous storytelling ability and the millions upon millions of dollars in the bank. Other than that, we're identical.)

A few months ago I happened to be at a small dinner party thrown by the French manager of the Cambodiana hotel, one of the biggest, classiest hotels in Cambodia. (Granted, that doesn't take much, does it, this being Cambodia, but you get the picture.) We were in the living room of his apartment, which happened to be in the hotel itself, and what an apartment it was. Not large, no, but stylish, decorated, compact and comfortable. On the wall were various paintings that looked quite familiar. They were Picassos, I noticed. One of them was even the famous sunflower picture. (Or wait -- did Van Gogh do the sunflower one? I think he did. Which just kind of proves my point to come...)

"Is that the real one?" I asked, pointing to the picture.

"Yes, it is," the manager said.

"Wow."

Of course, the logical part of my brain, that part that paid attention in school, should have realized: Those must be copies. But I didn't think of that. Where I come from, where I grew up, people don't usually hang reproductions of Picassos (or Van Goghs) on their walls. So here was this guy -- rich and French and owner of the swankiest hotel in the country -- and, well, it was certainly possible that he was loaded, and had bought the real thing. Wasn't it?

Uh, no.

When a few other guests and the managers chortled that chortled that makes you realize you are, without question, the biggest knob in the planet, if not the galaxy, you slap your hand to your forehead and tell yourself what a goofball you are.

Of course it wasn't the real one, Spencer.

I felt stupid, but later rather relieved. Because for a second, a moment, I had believed in something that was rather absurd. I had been taken in. I had been had. I wasn't as cynical as I thought. Hallejuah. I'm still able to believe the unbelievable.

I'm still convinced that there could be a Santa up there in the North Pole, working hard all year long, cranking out toys with his merry little band of elfin helpers. I mean, shit. I've seen stuff in Phnom Penh far, far more absurd and ridiculous than a kind old man in a red suit living north of Norway and greasing down his sleigh. Who's to say the dude doesn't exist? Until it's proven otherwise, I'm down with Kringle, is what I'm saying. (And I still plan on writing my Santa Claus novel, someday. Just not today.)

There was a bad storm here last night. Rain, thunder, lightning, the whole deal. The kind of storm that forces you to lay in bed, sweating, staring at the darkened ceiling. Thinking strange thoughts. Coining odd phrases that sometimes dissipate come morning, but every now and then linger.

I hope it rains again tonight, too.

TAKE ME BACK or WHY STAR WARS WAS, IS AND SHALL ALWAYS BE THE END-ALL BE-ALL OF SUPREME AND TOTAL COOLNESS

You have to understand something. Arguing about why the new Star Wars trilogy sucks to somebody of my age (29) or thereabouts is tantamount to blasphemy, at least in my book. (My book isn 't the book, no, but as a non-Christian and a non-Muslim, the Bible or the Koran ain't going to cut it; Star Wars is the closest I will get to a religion. That and Marvel Comics...)

Then again, I suspect I may be in the minority here, as many folks my age feel wounded, betrayed, kicked-in-the-crotch by what George Lucas has wrought this second time out.

Not me.

You see, when you're seven years old, and you save the proof-of-purchase certificates from four or five Star Wars action figures, diligently cutting them out from the back of the box, and then you send those same proof-of-purchase cardboard ovals carefully in the mail, hoping against hope that the mailman doesn't lose that precious little envelope, all with the promise of receiving an exclusive, can't-buy-it-in-the-stores Nien Numb action figure in the mail, and two, three months later that figure actually arrives, in your house, in a small gray cardboard box, well, when such an act occurs, it is akin to all those folks who see images of the Virgin Mary in pieces of toast. (And if you think I'm exaggerating, think again.)

So I can, if pressed, rationally explain to you why I actually really, really like The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and, finally, Revenge Of The Sith. I can state that I love how Lucas has retroactively refitted his original story, making it now the primary narrative not of Luke Skywalker, but that of his father, Anakin Skywalker, later to become Darth Vader. I can relate how this is now a saga of a father who chooses the wrong way in life, and is then redeemed by his son, who faces similar temptation, then resists. I can point out how the entire series, all six films, reflects the circular nature of history, how democracies are fragile enterprises that often come undone by the actions of a few misguided individuals, and how the empires that arise are then, in turn, undone by a concentrated group of dedicated rebels. I could even hypothesize that Lucas has attempted something that nobody in cinema has ever done before -- using one family's personal saga, intimate and emotional, and interwoven it with the fate of an entire civilization. I could, on reflection, show how various Buddhist, Christian and Muslim ideas surrounding God, fate, prophecies and prophets are interwoven together alongside the spaceships and light sabres, and how embedded within the entire saga is a subtle critique of how institutionalized religion inevitably becomes corrupted alongside the institutions that govern our lives, and that it is only when the religion itself breaks free from its schematic, regimented requirements that true spiritual redemption arises.

I could say all of that, but it would be bullshit.

Because what matters is that when I was seven years old I sent away for a Star Wars action figure that could not be found at Zellers, or Towers, and it arrived, in my hands, weeks later. A solid, bendable, force. You have to understand -- this was Nien Numb, people, the co-pilot of the Millenium Falcon, Lando Calrissian's right-hand man when they attacked and destroyed the second Death Star.

So, I understand all the criticisms of the new Star Wars films. I even agree with some of them. And again, if a light sabre was pressed to my throat, I could articulate, in an 800 page essay, the political, social and familial themes that Lucas was articulating.

But the seven year old who got Nien Numb delivered by mail to his house would respond:

"Did you see that fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan? And the way Anakin's face, like, melted? And Yoda crawling through that little crawlspace! And how Anakin killed all those Jedi, even the younglings? And..."

When the seven year old inside of you pipes up, you listen, and you listen hard. That boy's religion was Star Wars, and while it may not be a mature relgion, or a real religion, it was mine, more or less. Trying to explain to me why Star Wars sucks is like trying to convince a born-again why evolution is the real deal. I will nod my head and smile politely and concede that you do, in fact, have quite a good argument. But nothing will change.

Very few things in life can take me back to that boy who waited, patiently, day after day, for his action figure to arrive -- and the things that can accomplish that feat, Star Wars or otherwise, I revere, plain and simple.

WAITING FOR A HAPPY PIZZA

Cambodian kick-boxing was on the TV. I watched and waited for my happy pizza, minus the 'happy'. ('Happy' being a little marijuana sprinkled on the pizza. 'Happy happy' being a lot of marijuna sprinkled on the pizza.) Tourists strolled by the river. Children begged. The restaurant had a good crowd for a Sunday night, three or four tables full.

A bored waitress was sitting next to me, watching TV.

"Do you like boxing?" I asked.

"I like boxing very much," she said, both her English and enthusiasm surprising me. I didn't expect a positive response; what woman likes boxing?

"You like it?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "In school, I used to box in school."

"They taught boxing in school?"

"Yes," she said, nodding, the words coming quicker. "I was very good. My teacher, he boxed in Cambodia and Thailand and Laos and Vietnam. Now he's very old, eighty, so he doesn't box anymore. He teaches."

We watched the TV some more. I waited for my pizza. A slight breeze came, went.

"You from Phnom Penh?" I asked.

"No, Kompong Chhang province."

"How often do you go back home?"

"Three days every year."

"That's it?" I said. "Only three days?"

"It's okay," she said. "I like to work. I don't like to go back home. I don't trust my parents. They say bad things, they lie, they take things."

"You don't trust your parents?"

"I don't trust anyone," she said. "My friends, they call me, they want to go out, but I don't go. I stay here, I work. They do bad things, sometimes. I don't trust anyone."

"You have any days off?"

"No days off. But that's okay. I don't trust anyone. I trust myself." Pointing at her chest.

My pizza was ready. I had already paid, so I stood up, smiled, asked her her name. She told me hers, and I told her mine.

I went outside to get a moto. She turned her attention back to the TV, to the boxing. I felt a little sad. The air was cool and the sky was a little gray and I hopped on a bike and left.

SALVATORE LOMBINO/EVAN HUNTER/ED MCBAIN (1926-2005): AMERICAN WRITER

Salvatore Lombino died the other day. So did Evan Hunter. Ed McBain, too.

They were all the same person, of course. Lombino was an Italian-American writer who changed his name early in his career because he felt authors of Italian heritage didn't get any respect. He became Evan Hunter, who wrote mainstream novels, and then transformed himself into Ed McBain, master of the mystery and the police procedural.

I discovered Ed McBain before Hunter. When I was twelve years old, I devoured anything and everything Stephen King wrote, only to find myself in a curious dilemma -- I had caught the literature bug, quite badly, and I needed a fix, but I had read all of King's stuff, so what was I to do? Panic set. Short-lived panic, fortunately. I soon discovered, while browsing through the bookshops, that King had 'blurbed' quite a number of books, giving his positive comments to any number of thrillers, chillers and, occasionally, serious works of literature. It was how I initially discovered Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Harlan Ellison, even John Irving.

And McBain. I even remember the first McBain books I read, back in 1988, purchased from the Avondale convenience store just down the road from my elementary school. It was a two pack -- a paperback copy of McBain's new release, Vespers, packaged alongside a reprinted edition of his very first 87th precinct novel, Cop-Hater, written in the early fifties.

I was hooked. Instantly. From the get-go. McBain's 87th precinct novels are set in the mythical city of Isola (modelled after New York), populated by fresh cops new to the force and lifers just waiting, dear God, for what the next day will bring. At the beginning of each mystery, there is usually a murder -- the rest of the book revolves around interviewing suspects, following leads, capturing the culprit.

Routine stuff, in other words. But oh, this is Ed McBain we're talking about here. His plots move, his characters are real, their pain is honest. These traits may sound obligatory for any good novel, and I suppose they are -- but how often do you find them? What separates McBain from all of the other suspense novelists out there is 1) character and 2) story. For a long time I didn't read any mystery novels, but I always read McBain; I cared about the people, who I followed from book to book, and I cared about the stories. And what stories! And so many! He started writing his 87th precint stories in the early fifties, usually at the pace of one or two a year, and I started reading them in the late eighties, so you can do the math -- that's a lot of fiction. A lot of fun.

(And I wasn't the only fan, either. McBain was generally considered the grandmaster of his field. The TV series Hill Street Blues was basically a carbon-copy of his 87th precinct books -- albeit without the credit to McBain, which ticked him off to no end. Stephen King even had one of McBain's perennial cops, Steve Carella, show up in the unexpurgated edition of The Stand, which I thought was a fun little 'tip of the cap'. Carella also pops up in the final novel of McBain's other series of books, the ones featuring private eye Matthew Hope. I'm telling you, I don't know when the guy slept.)

Oh, but wait. Ed McBain was only part of the equation. And not the first part, either.

Salvatore Lombino's first novel was written under the name of Evan Hunter, and that novel was The Blackboard Jungle. A stunning success, it was, about a young teacher in the inner city trying to do good. Became a hit movie starring Glenn Ford. And it holds up; I vividly remember reading the last line in my high school cafeteria, shutting the book, and saying: "Wow." (And I still remember that last line, too, though I won't tell you what it is.) Hunter also went on to write the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's great film The Birds.

The thing is, when writing as 'Evan Hunter', the novels were serious novels, often family novels -- what movies would call 'dramas'. Fathers and Sons traced a grandfather, son and grandson through life. Streets of Gold was probably the only novel I ever read told from the point-of-view of a blind person. A blind musician. It sounds gimmicky, but it isn't, because Hunter makes it real, and it's a great novel about the costs and sacrifices associated with the American dream. He wrote a moving novel of adolescence called Last Summer, and followed it up with an equally moving sequel, Come Winter. A story of father-daughter love, realistically told, was captured in Love, Dad. And just last fall, on a layover in Taiwan, I read most of his recent novel The Moment She Was Gone, which was advertised as a thriller but, instead, dealt sensitively and movingly with a young girl's mental illness, and the effect that it has on her family. (Most of his 'Evan Hunter' novels were written in the seventies, and are now, sadly, out of print; lucky for me, the St.Catharines Centennial Library, where I slaved and toiled for a few years in high school, had an excellent fiction section, so I was able to find most of his old work there. I still remember the smell of those books The yellowed paper. The black-and-white photos on the back. I remember reading Last Summer in the basement of my old house, because we did not have air conditioning and it was cool down there, cool and hidden. Tied up, tangled up in my adolescence, Hunter was...)

I always felt that the skills Hunter employed in his 'serious' novels, namely the depth of his characterization, were what made his 'Ed McBain' thrillers come alive and resonate; and, conversely, the storytelling skills he employed in his police procedurals also enabled his mainstream work to move and flow and not get stuck in the kind of endless navel-gazing that so much of modern fiction seems to dwell on.

(A few years ago, he published a book called Candyland under both of his pseudonyms, Evan Hunter and Ed McBain. The first half was written by Hunter, and felt like a mainstream novel; the second half was written by McBain, and felt like a crime book. Wonderful fun.)

Hunter/McBain was one of the first writers who showed me that writing was writing. If you were good, you could dip in and out of different genres with ease. If it was real, and true, then it didn't matter if the label was 'thriller' or 'drama' or 'fiction'; all that mattered was the story, and he was a master storyteller. And I will miss him.

LONDON

We are continually astonished by man's capacity to do harm. It jolts us, surprises us, awakens us. One would think that we would have been fully awakened by now, given all that has transpired in the last few years, the last hundred years, but no. We are jolted, again and again. The world is a mean and desperate place, but we have lives to live, do we not, so we go on, and on, until something, an act, an explosion, possibly four, reminds us of what we are capable of.

But we are capable of so much more! Yesterday, a group of people, probably no more than a handful, entered trains and buses in London, England and decided to show the world what they could do. They accomplished their mission. Their destruction was visible, life-altering, demented. Exactly what they wanted. And yet the madness of their actions was but a midwife to their true legacy -- the reactions of people, the humanity of people, the inherent dignity of people.

The only thing worthwhile that can emerge from a tragedy such as this is the realization and acceptance of our own naive humanity. We are forgetful people, vile people, and angelic people. We forget the inherent fragility of our world, because to remember, consistently, would leave us immobile. We are vile in what we can do to each other, willingly, in the name of ideology. We are angelic in our capacity to grieve and help.

An event like this always surprises us, as it should; the shock comes from the notion that we have acts like this capable inside of us. It seems like an aberration, even though we know, all too well, that it is the norm.

Hate and love are the flipsides of our nature, and just as we are blindsided by the carnage we can convey, we should also not neglect the daily acts of generosity and sympathy that continually remind us of our humanity. The driver who lets you switch lanes, the person who allows you to butt in line, the salesclerk who calls after you because you have left behind your purse on the counter -- these are the small, building-block examples of decency that culminate in a life well lived and a shared humanity. These tiny acts of kindness and grace are not showcased on the news with the fervor or intensity of a terrorist attack, no, but they should be noted, occasionally, and used as small reminders that we can do occasionally do monstrous things, violently and forcefully, but we can, more often, also do good things, repeatedly and effortlessly.

LIVE 8's AFTERMATH

To know poverty you must spend seven years living in a foreign land, amongst the people, amidst the carnage, like Bruce Wayne in BATMAN BEGINS, and only then, possibly, good fortune willing, you may be able to appreciate what the lesser among us endure.

To know poverty you must spend your entire life treating the sick, the wounded, the feeble, the lost, and only then, certainly, can you begin to understand what the wretched of the earth have known for so long.

To know poverty you must attend a series of concerts, featuring multiple artists in multiple countries, and only then, for a moment, will wisdom announce its reclusive presence.

The truth is, I fear, that we can never know true, lasting, grinding poverty unless we are in it. Unless we are of it. Unless we are one of the billions who are unfortunate enough to have been born among it.

Cynicism never leads anywhere, which is why I hope I’m not being cynical when I find the whole Live 8 phenomenon somewhat, well, depressing.

Let me be clear: I think the concerts were a fantastic idea. I firmly believe that drawing attention to Africa’s problems, drawing attention to poverty itself, is a necessary, worthy and, dare I say it, divine goal. It united the world for a good cause, as the pundits say, and who can argue with that?

And yet.

I read that at the end of the concert held in Barrie, Ontario, Bryan Adams and Dan Ackyroyd and The Tragically Hip and thousands of concertgoers all chanted ‘Canada cares’ before leading into an impromptu rendition of our national anthem, ‘O Canada’.

Who can quabble with this warm-hearted display of sentiment and solidarity? Shit, if I were there, in that place, in that crowd, I have no doubt whatsoever that I, too, would have been smiling and laughing and singing along. It’s what we humans do.

And yet.

How many people will truly, sincerely, authentically be inspired to, well, DO something? Act. Engage. Some, especially the young, will. Others will have had a good day out.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Again, I believe that the concerts were a rousing success. One shouldn’t nitpick attempts at goodness, at greatness, at humaneness.

But I will, regardless.

My concerns:

1) A concert for Africa – Africa is not a country. Africa is a mammoth continent composed of dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. Some are doing fairly well; most are not. In most people’s eyes, the concept of ‘Africa’ seems to be: a place that is dying, and a place that needs our help’. Fine. All well and good. But Africa is filled with countries and cities and towns and villages. And people. Individuals. Some are good and some are bad and some are arrogant pricks while others are bordering on sainthood. Africa’s countries can and should speak for themselves, and I think they should have had a much, much larger presence within the concerts themselves. Maybe television ratings wouldn’t have been as high, and maybe more people would have tuned out, the message thus being lost, but still – it’s condescending, patronizing, and more than a little colonial to assert our own power and principles while relegating the people concerned to a status little higher than that of a helpless victim. It's our duty as more successful countries to help those less fortunate, but it's also our duty to include the people in their own projected development. The whole 'teach a man' to fish truism is truer than I ever knew; it's not easy to do, and it may not be what the people want to do, but capacity-building is the only way. You have to help the people help themselves, and that will not (only) be accomplished through an influx of cash; it will take years and years and decades and decades of teaching and development.

2) Canada cares – Well, good for Canada. Canada has decided that it cares. For me, that’s irrelevant. The concerts were supposed to be about the people who need help; when everything is reduced to ‘look how good we are’, topped off by a singing of our own national anthem, something has been lost in translation somewhere. Why was ‘Oh Canada’ being sung? To celebrate that concertgoers attended a cool concert? To wallow in how generous a country we are? Bullshit. Caring is action, plain and simple. If your action was nothing more than going to a concert to watch Neil Young jam again, well, I don’t think that’s something to gloat about. The issues involved are too big and too sad for that kind of pat-on-the-back. If every Canadian had decided to go to an African country for one year, six months, even month, and teach English, or architecture, or help design a road, if every Canadian had signed a legal pledge to do that, then I would truly, sincerely, believe that 'Canada cares'. Words are cheap, and sentiment alone, divorced from action, is even cheaper.

3) Africa Is A Place Designed For Our Goodwill – Africa has governments. It has corrupt governments. It has governments that will do whatever it can to take all of the money earmarked for development and keep it for themselves. As I’ve written about before (perhaps ad nauseum), I don’t think Westerners quite realize how absolutely entrenched corruption is in the very fabric of most countries’ social systems. (I sure as shit didn’t before I came to Cambodia.) The G-8 countries can give 20, 30, 40 more billion bucks every year, and it won’t mean shit. Unless safeguards are in place, unless accountability is in place, than the money will be filtered through channels so Byzantine that it will never be found. Somebody wrote a good column about this the other day – how, if no one’s held accountable for actions and intentions, then what’s the point? (Donor money keeps getting pumped into Cambodia, and the money keeps being squandered; it is only now, after a decade, that the donor countries are starting to say to the Cambodian government: You better do with it what we tell you to do with it.) The point is, Africa is not just some mythical blob of suffering that will be healed by cash. Cash will help; cash never hurts. But when you have generations of people raised to believe that ‘foreigner equeals someone who gives me money’, that damages and taints everything, from infrastructure to infant mortality.

4) There Is No They – Another one of my recurring themes here at this blog for the, oh, two people who may read it on a regular basis. The whole point of the concerts, as I understood them, was to force the G-8 countries to pony up the cash for Africa. Fine. But there was no talk of Africans helping themselves, and very little asked of the people attending the concerts. Mass mobilizations can work wonders and bring down civilizations, as recent events in the Middle East and Central Asia have shown. But that’s not enough. It comes down to you, and you alone. It comes down to the Africans. It comes down to individuals guided by conscience. There is no ‘they’. There is only you.


I hate to sound like a curmudgeon for writing all of this, but I don’t think most Canadians (barring the native Indians) have ever really, truly seen poverty up close. It stinks and it’s dehumanizing and it’s ugly. Poverty is two thousand kids picking trash at a garbage dump every day with the hope of raising twenty-five, maybe fifty cents for their family after ten hours work in the blazing sun. Poverty is a brilliant, shining girl living in a small village who studies English hard every single day and who will never go to university because her parents can’t afford the yearly tuition, which amounts to about the cost of sixty of the bottles of water sold at the Canada Live 8 concert. Poverty is a life of bathing and drinking from the same water you shit in. Poverty means selling children for sex, transporting children for sex, and killing children, physically and mentally, for sex. Poverty is the scab you pick that regenerates itself. And the only reason I sometimes get so worked up about this whole issues arises from my own guilt, my own sense of bourgeois liberal shame; you can’t live here and not feel, well, superior, because you are – economically and educationally, as a foreigner, you are superior. As a person, no. The kindest people I’ve ever met have had nothing at all; as Paul Theroux ends his account of Africa, Dark Star Safari: “The best of them are bare-assed.”

The attention from Live 8 will, hopefully, enable the G-8 leaders to give Africa the support it needs and deserves. But such support is complex; it needs hard questions with even harder answers. It needs acknowledging the responsibilities that individual governments in individual countries need to live up to. It entitles asking people to help themselves and lay claim to themselves.

I have no answers; sometimes I feel stupid even acting like I know what I’m talking about, when I really, really don’t. Perhaps I’m misguided, and misinterpreting and overanalyzing the whole thing. I don’t know. At the very least, though, I’ve asked myself these questions, and thought about these concerns; two, three years ago, they weren’t even on my radar. I’ve started to see, living here in Cambodia, how complex and fucked-up and craven the world truly is. I’ve also realized its’ generosity and good-heartedness.

Balancing those two realities, dwelling within their borders, accepting your own role and your own responsibility, is a life-long endeavor that requires much, much more from others and ourselves than a little song and a little dance every decade or two, I guess is what I’m saying.

SKIPPING STONES ON WATER

While having lunch today at the restaurant located across the street from the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' drifted through the diner like some soothing, gossamer remnant of times gone by, and I remembered, quite suddenly, quite vividly, watching, as a kid, on video, the scene where the song appears in Good Morning Vietnam. A battle scene, a war scene, with a montage of fighting and explosions, all interwoven with the sensitivity inherent in Robin Williams' expressive eyes as he watches those young American men in trucks go off into battle.

It was the first time I was aware, I think, of juxtaposition, of irony, of two things colliding that created an effect larger and sweeter than the sum of their individual parts. Here you had a gentle song, celebrating the good stuff in life, and it was played over scenes of carnage, clearly the bad stuff in life.

My twelve year old brain didn't get it, couldn't get it. The song was about love; the images were about war. The song didn't fit the images! What the hell was going on?

And now, seventeen years later, I still don't know what the hell's going on, but I can appreciate that scene. At the time, I could barely imagine going to Toronto, let alone Vietnam; and hearing that song again, at twenty-nine, in a cafe in Cambodia, it brought me back. Returned me. To another time, another state of mind. One that seems very long ago, ages ago, and yet, paradoxically, as recent as yesterday, or this morning, or the minute before last. I remember watching that scene in that movie in that place. I remember the emotion it created. I remember the power of it.

What's that old quote? 'It's not that life's too short -- it's that death is so damn long.' Sometimes I can feel the tug and pull of life and at other times, like now, looking back, feeling back, I can recognize that we're here for a blip. One segment in time overlaps another, and some segments are longer than others, but still. In 1987, '88, I was a kid who loved movies, and Good Morning Vietnam was one that I loved. In 2004, '05, I'm a man who loves movies, who just returned from Vietnam. There's some kind of strange, if erratic, symmetry at work there. One that involves an understanding of life gleamed from a silver screen, and another, parallel understanding earned from a life lived in uncertain and hesitant starts and stops.

Sometimes I think it would be nice if life just spread outward, in a straight line. But there are always rings within rings. You can't tell where one starts and finishes. Past and future collide, each reinterpreting the other, with the present acting, in vain, as a deaf and dmb interpreter.

It's all like a stone skipped across water -- determining at what point the stone stopped before moving forward is a fool's game. It dips and bobs and eventually sinks. That's the whole point of throwing a rock across a lake -- to see how far you can hurl it before it succumbs to gravity. To see what kind of waves you can make. To see what type of speed you can get, and what unlikely, transitory pathway makes itself apparent on the surface of the water, before the pattern itself disintegrates, as it must.