In the late autumn of 1963 my father, age fifteen, Canadian, compiled a scrapbook containing newspaper and magazine articles related to the recent killing of American President John.F.Kennedy on November 22. In the early autumn of 1991, twenty eight years later, I, age fifteen, found that scrapbook anew, and plundered its depths.
I'd seen it many times before -- a thick, red, hardbound scrapbook, its pages less than a quarter full. Until that fall, it had been fondled and fingered for its personal, rather than political, history; it was solid, demonstrable proof that my dad had, at one point in time, in the dark and distant past, against all conceivable odds, been a teenager like myself. A time capsule from the past, it was, helping me along that path child must walk alone, when he or she discovers that their parents are, and always have been, human. (And thus fallible. Which should engender forgiveness in us, but does it?)
That particular fall, though, it was not my father I was seeking, but J.F.K. -- the man, the movie, his assasination and its legacy.
I, being a rapidly burgeoning film nut, was getting psyched and stoked for Oliver Stone's soon-to-be-realsed film J.F.K. (A whole future post still awaits, a long one, on Oliver Stone, which will make some of you eager and many of you, I'm afraid, sick to your stomachs.) J.F.K's death was something I knew a little bit about, in that way abstract way (pre-Internet) that most teenagers in a televised society knew a little bit about almost everything, but I felt the need to preapre for the film. I would feel a similar desire the following year, awaiting release of Spike Lee's magnum opus Malcolm X. (I would read Malcolm's autobiography and a book on his assasination before the film's opening, which only whetted my appetite even more and raised my expectations for the movie itself; luckily, I was not to be disappointed.)
Via my father's scrapbook, I was thrilled to be able to read actual, authentic newspaper accounts, brittle and yellowed and aged, about Kennedy's assasination, his funeral, the arrest of Oswald and Oswald's own, subsequent assasination by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. I was ecstatic to discover that my dad also had an old copy of one of the first conspiracy books about the assasination, The Second Oswald, resting on the battered bookshelf in our basement toyroom, where all my dad's old books from the sixties and seventies were kept. (Mostly philosophy and true-life adventure stories.) I read the book straight through in one sitting, I think, instantly convincedby the book's hypothesis that Oswald had a double in Dallas in the months leading up to Kennedy's death, using his name, usurping his identity. It was a conspiracy, I thought, with something approaching awe.
I had read the scrapbook. I had read The Second Oswald cover to cover. I was ready for J.F.K., the movie.
I was wrong.
That film's impact on me, Oliver Stone's impact on me, must wait for a future post. (Again, you've been warned. After all, you're talking to a guy who really, really liked Alexander, so you know what you're in for.)
I walked into the movie theatre at the Pen Centre in St.Catharines, Ontario one person, and emerged as another. That may sound like an exaggeration, or adolescent hyperbole, but I can assure you, it's not. That film changed the way I thought about cinema, and it altered my overall perception on life itself.
Stone's film contemplates a theory so fast and sinister, so grand and Machiavellian, that its very hypothesis would seem outraegous were it not more rooted in reality than one would like to believe. Notice I said 'contemplated'; the film is a mosaic of speculations, hypotheses and 'what-ifs', something most of its fervent, even frenzied critics failed recognize. Actually, I have come to believe, after multiple viewings, that J.FK. isn't about the Kennedy assasination at all. It's about the forces that control our lives. It's about the dangers of relying on a government's word. It's about the way that we perceive the truth is kaleidoscopic in intent and execution. It's about the price and the value of committing to a cause greater than oneself, and what its gained and lost by such a vow. In its themes, metaphors, and sheer cinematic brilliance, the film was far, far ahead of its time -- and, fourteen years later, I believe that its now ahead of this time, too, both cinematically and philosophically.
But I digress.
The point is, I walked out of that screening an absolute, hard-core, frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy nut. Energized beyond belief by what I had seen, I was motivated to investigate further the spark that Stone had ignited inside of me. I was going to solve this conspiracy, once and for all. Why couldn't I? The St.Catharines Centennial Library, where I would soon get a job shelving books after school, was filled with tomes both old and new on the case. I was young. I had energy. I will avenge you Jack, I thought.
And so, I went to work.
I started with On The Trail of the Assassins by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner in the film), an account of his prosecution of Clay Shaw for the murder of John Kennedy. I then read Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs, also a source for the film, and a book that investigates any number of possibilities before settling rather uneasily on a conspiracy that essentially accuses Kennedy's successor Lyndon Johnson of, if not instigating the assassination, at least covering it up. I read High Treason and its sequel, High Treason II, by Harrison Livingstone and Robert J.Groden, an encylopedic examination of the case. I read Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F.Kennedy by John Davis, which exhaustively details the role of the legendary gangster in the killing. I read Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F.Kennedy by David S.Lifton, which details the controversial autopsy of J.F.K. I read J.FK: The C.I.A., Vietnam, and the Plot to Kill Kennedy by L.Fletcher Prouty, the former C.I.A. contact portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the film. I read Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed Kennedy by Bonnar Menniger claims that the final head shot that killed Kennedy was accidentally fired by a gunshot from his own secret service agent, George Hickey, riding behind him in the same motorcade car, standing just behind Jackie. I read and read and read.
One week I was convinced the C.I.A. did it. The next, it was the Mafia. After that, the F.B.I. -- had to be Hoover, I thought, HAD to be. After watching a PBS documentary I realized that imported assassins, expert marksmen, possibly from Marseilles, surely had a hand in the actual shooting. That notion soon bit the dust when I discovered that Cubans sent by Castro surely had a larger role than I had anticipated.
And so it went.
Many of the conspiracy related books commit the same cardinal sin -- they try to fit the facts into their theory, rather than looking at the facts themselves and seeing where (and where not) the dots connect. Many of these books tend to overlook and omit any evidence that would undermine their own, carefully constructed and elaborate theories. Which is why reading only one book on the case is not enough, and reading ten or fifteen is probably against all Surgeon General warnings, and not a recipe for lifelong mental health. (Exhibit A, right here.) One of my favorite lines from the film J.F.K. sums up the experience of immersing oneself in the body of literature related to the assassination that exists: "We're through the looking glass here, people," Kevin Costner says. "Black is white, and white is black." All too often, it can seem like no one, common link exists to unite all of these arbitrary, disparate, random and, quite often, loony theories.
Except one.
Oswald.
The most compelling, maddening, enlightening and frustrating books on the Kennedy assassination centre upon one Lee Harvey Oswald, that legendary name in American life. There is enough circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, in my opinion, to prove that Oswald was, at the very least, involved in the assassination, at some level. The madness of all the conspiracy theories revolve around the fascinating and abbreviated life that Oswald lived during his brief twenty-four years on this planet.
Oswald, the troubled loner. Oswald, the military man stationed overseas. (In Japan, I lived a short train ride away from one of the military bases that Oswald stayed at. There's even a picture I've seen of John Wayne visiting the troops at one of these stations, and who is that lurking in the background of the picture? Lee Harvey himself. That these two iconic Americans once occupied the same space and time is surely one of life's oddest ironies.) Oswald, the defector who was somehow able to move to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Oswald, who somehow was able to bring himself and a Russian wife back to the U.S. a few years later. Oswald, who almost certainly tried to assassinate an army general named Edwin Walker. Oswald, who, in the summer months leading up to the assassination, was witnessed associating with both pro and anti Castro groups in New Orleans, Louisiana. Oswald, who made appearances at F.BI. offices in America, and, possibly, Mexico. Oswald at the apex of everything and everyone. Oswald.
Three books are especially helpful in understanding the psyche of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the role that he did (or did not) play in Kennedy's death, and whether he was a tiny part of a larger puzzle or all the pieces in the puzzle himself.
Case Closed by Gerald Posner serves as a kind of rebuttal to the multi-layered conspiracy depicted in Stone's film. The rigorous nature of Posner's research is undeniable, and the book convincingly details the argument that Oswald, and Oswald alone, offed Kennedy. But even Posner, who wrote an equally convincing book on Martin Luther King Jr.'s alleged assassin James Earl Ray called Killing The Dream, falls victim to the loopholes that form the Kennedy assassination's own Bermuda Triangle. One tiny one: Posner states with certainty that Oswald did not even know David Ferrie, who was at the heart of the conspiracy portrayed in Stone's film (and played freakishly well by Joe Pesci.) And yet a FRONTLINE documentary crew showed Posner a picture that clearly shows Oswald as a part of a group of Air Cadets that Ferrie instructed. Does that prove anything? Not necessarily. But it shows the slippery slope of the assassination water slide -- you state one fact, only to have it refuted. You close one door, and another will open. If Oswald knew Ferrie, then there's certainly at least the possibility that Oswald took part in the anti-Castro training exercises Ferrie conducted. And if that possibility exists, well, what doesn't? I believe that Posner, too, perhaps unknowingly, fell victim to what all other writes of conspiracy books fall victim to -- beginning with a thesis, and marshalling the facts to fit that thesis, come hell or high water. And, like clockwork, a rebuttal book to Posner's book soon was released, called, you guessed it, Case Open.
Another fascinating book on Oswald was produced by one of America's greatest writers, period, Norman Mailer. At some point in time, I think, every real reader goes through a period where you devour Norman Mailer, and you're left either marvelling at his genius or embarrassed by his ego. I believe that he's a genius, and so I was overjoyed to hear that he was researching a book on Oswald, spending time in Russia, examining until-then classified KGB files on Oswald, and interviewing Oswald's widow, Marina. The resulting book, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery is an involving, masterful study of the man and his life. So many of the assassination books are written in that drab, bland, journalistic style that saps the life and vitality out of the English language like a mosquite sucking blood. And here was Mailer, one of the great chroniclers of the American psyche, livening the case with his muscular prose.
His verdict? Mailer, long a conspiracy-theorist himself, somewhat reluctantly comes to the conclusion that Oswald did, in fact, pull the trigger -- which doesn't rule out others being involved, no, but he uses Oswald as a fulcrum through which one can better examine what America was and where America is going. Mailer gives us a human Oswald, a real Oswald; he gives us his widow, as well, who was once convinced of Oswald's guilt but now believes that he was, at the very least, part of a conspiracy. And so it goes.
And then there's Lee, a long out-of-print memoir by Oswald's older brother, Robert, which I was lucky to find in the dusty stacks of my aforementioned hometown library. (I remember reading that book down in the cool of my basement, lost in its world.) It is a searching, painful and honest book, written only a few years after the assassination, by a sibling who comes to believe that his little brother did a terrible, terrible thing.
Thus:
"Scott, who do you believe was the mastermind of the assassination?"
I can still hear his voice. Mr Taylor, my Grade 13 History teacher. We sat together in his cramped office (or what he was using as an office), the two of us checking the progress of my Independent Study presentation on Kennedy's death. I had an answer to his question then, and I have an answer now. But it will remain mine.
But there is this, perhaps more important:
For many years I believed it was a grand conspiracy the likes of which the world had never seen before and would never see again. Then, as I left my teenage years behind, I became more pragmatic, more realistic, more mature. I realized that was Oswald, only Oswald, that young, lost, misguided soul now buried in a pauper's grave. But now, pushing thirty, I waver.
I've lived a bit. I've learned a bit. I've come back to my belief in conspiracy. Peter Pan may have believed in faeries, but I believe in patsies. I no longer necessarily see governments as benign agents of the people's will; I've seen too much that corresponds with and affirms a darker and more labryinth way of public life. I've aged.
There are some who say that those who believe in conspiracies are actually wishful thinkers: a belief in conspiracy implies a longing for a world and a history that has flow, and structure, and reason, and a + b equals c. There is nothing illogical or unplanned in such a world, they say. Young men with mail order rifles do not kill Camelot and alter history's ebb.
And then there is the other side, that those who subscribe to the lone nut theory are naive, not understanding that we live in a complex, venal world that strikes down those who upset and endanger the status quo. One need only look at history, at the word, to see evidence of conspiracy and all its heirs, they say.
I'm somewhere in between.
Some days, when I feel whipped left and right by the random whims of fate, I judge Oswald, condemn him, crucify him. Other days, Cambodia days, watching the methodical, corrupt nature of power and its denizens, reading histories of the C.I.A. and the K.G.B., I realize that the world is a much more complex place than I had imagined, and I cry out for Oswald's true conspirators to lay down their rifles for once and for all, to come forward, like men, and accept blame for the horror that they unleashed.
It's not every day, or week, or even month that I think about Kennedy's killing. There was a period of time, a younger time, when it mattered to me very much. By figuring out the truth, I could figure out life. By examining his death, I could find patterns that were absent in my day-to-day life, which rarely offered anything so grand, so tragic, so alive, even in its dissection of death. Kennedy's assassination, and my perusal of it, represents a time when the world was new and oddly intriging and slowly, methodically being uncovered by me and me alone.
But then I'll hear something on the radio, a recent revelation that both Nixon and Johnson had speculated upon Castro's role in the assassination. Or I'll be wandering through a used bookshop here in Phnom Penh, and I randomly spot the same hardback copy of Mark Lane's Plausible Denial, a compelling account of a trial of Watergate conspirator E.Howard Hunt, who sued a magazine in the 1980's for implying that he was involved in Kennedy's death -- a lawsuit, by jury trial, which he lost, as the jurors believed that there was enough evidence to nail Hunt in a possible conspiracy to kill Kennedy. I hear that news, and I see that book, and I'm back. Back in that endless maze that haunts me still. A maze that led me out of the fiction I usually read and into a larger, more complicated world, a world I am still in the midst of exploring.
And I think of a scrapbook started by a young, grief-stricken teenager in Fort Erie, Ontario over four decades ago, mourning the president of a country not his own. Why would a young Canadian, by way of England, mourn so strongly, strong enough to keep a scrapbook? (That's I would ask, as a teenage boy, about my father, not understanding, not yet, that parents once had and still have the same emotions, the same potential for empathy and curiosity, as us other mortals.) Something passed from the future father to his unborn son, neither knowing the doors it would open twenty-eight years later, the worlds it would unleash, the journey it would begin.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Friday, August 05, 2005
TANGLED UP IN ORANGES AND PISS, or THE CYCLE WILL BEGIN
I'll come back to the boy pissing into oncoming traffic in a moment. I feel that he is important, and I feel that his counterpart, elder and elite, similarly lost, but driven, is equally important.
First:
I don't claim to know jackshit about poverty (though it sometimes may seem like I claim to -- the dangers of blogging, I suppose), but I know what I do know what it's not: generic. A slogan. Part of a goal on a t-shirt two sizes too big.
Having just seen Michael Douglas on CNN proclaiming how important it is to end poverty and hunger by 2015, I'm a little bit, well, confused. I'm not against Douglas or Angelina Jolie or anybody else who does what they can to raise awareness for a worthy cause; if anything, I applaud them. They are stepping outside of themselves and opening themselves up to any and every blowhard with a forum. (Like, um, me.)
The thing is, it's insidious, poverty is. Almost benign. Yet somehow still devious and deceptive in its banal, everyday simplicity. Cambodia was recently ranked the 10th worst country in the world to live in for mothers and children, and I believe it. Henry Kramm, an American journalist steeped in Southeast Asia, wrote a concise, book on this country that I highly recommend called Cambodia: Notes from a Stricken Land. His ultimate summation? "Cambodia is a basketcase."
No dissenting opinion from these quarters. Things are so sometimes so comically inept here to feel as if they were merely the byproduct of maliciousness; things are too blatantly, blindly disorganized and chaotic, lethargic and inept. A 'basketcase' seems to sum up the country perfectly.
And yet.
That's the problem.
That phrase. That wittiness. That 'summing up'. That band on the stage. That roar from the crowd. That banner on the wall. That goal and that pledge and that deadline.
I don't know. I simply feel such, what's the word, disconnect between what the world and the media focuses on, and the ridiculously commonplace reality of the real issues. A month ago, it seems like, for many people in the West, 'poverty' meant going to a rock concert. There is, of course, something so wonderful in that unity of intent, and something else so wretchedly inappropriate, although what exactly that 'something else' is what I'm struggling to define.
Take today.
I saw a little girl, shirtless and shoeless, walking merrily along the hot pavement as he helped her mother push their garbage cart through the early morning streets. (They were collecting plastic bottles, cans, whatever.) The girl looked happy. I thought: She doesn't know she's poor, and she doesn't know her life is absolutely fucked. I know it, but she doesn't. But then I thought: Who the hell am I to think her life is screwed? After all, she looked happier than I normally do. She has a purpose. She has a mother who loves her. It's not my call to pronoune her happiness or sadness or trajectory in life.
And yet.
One of the girls who regularly begs in front of Lucky Supermarket -- now, suddenly, a teenager, and now, suddenly, pregnant. Still begging.
The cycle continues.
And later:
The motley crew of four or five young boys chasing after me as I hurried down the street with my bag of freshly bought oranges. I waved my hand, wooing them away. They weren't buying it; they could see the oranges' round outline through the white plastic bag. But I was adamant. These were my oranges, goddamnit.
But then, for nor reason, I relented. Reached into the bag. Plucked out a couple of oranges and tossed them to the boys. A regular Mother Teresa, I am. I mean, what. I can't spare two freakin' oranges for some street kids? And what, I'm going to tell them I cannot give you a single orange, because if I do, that will only endorse and thereby perpetuate the dependency you already an unwilling victim of? Fuck no -- at a certain point, you give away the oranges. Not every day, no, and not all the time, no, but there comes a time, like it or not, when the oranges go AWOL. It solves nothing, neither my western guilt nor their impoverished lives, but what the hell.
The cycle continues.
On that same corner, earlier today, the boy. (Remember him? The pissing one, from the top of the post?) I saw him as I rode on the back of a moto as we approached the traffic light, the moto watching the signal (I hoped), me noticing a four or five year old boy, pants around his ankles, nonchalantly pissing on the street, his spray lazily baptizing the blackened pavement. (Can one pee nochalantly? I think one can.)
At that moment, I felt like ringing Bob Geldof. I wanted to get him on the line and blurt: "You should not have had Paul McCartney open LIVE 8 by singing 'Seargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. You should have had this little boy, the one I just saw, the one receding into the distance of my moto's rearview mirror. You should have had this boy up on stage, knees around his ankles, pissing into the crowd. Not close enough to actually have the urine land on anybody, no, but close enough so that they could see and smell and trace the fall of its dribbling arc. That is what you needed." And I would have hung up, and felt like an ass, and wondered who the hell I think I am.
A childish plea, I know that. A nonsensical gesture -- I realize that, too.
It's just that, if the nature of some of these posts somehow inevitably find themselves touching on poverty, it's because it's something that inevitably sometimes touches on me in my daily life. (Or pisses on me, as the case may be.) There's good intentions and UN plans and rocks bands singing cool tunes, and there's a little boy who has nowhere to piss, so he chooses the street, and no one bats any eye. They keep on driving. How to reconcile these two sets of realities remains divided in my mind.
I would feel hopeless, but I sense and I believe in the power of belief. In possibility. In hope. Because right now, all through Phnom Penh, there are women being trafficked and little kids begging and mothers slowly, anonymously fading away, but there is also this: young men and young women studying English, studying business, learning computers. They are optimistic and in motion. They are staying up late and asking questions and wondering just when, exactly when, the corruption will end. And even if that optimism of mine is misguided, amplifying the numbers, then there is at least one. One person. Sick of their society's ills. Lost, but looking for the path. Willing to take their time, to study, to immerse themselves in a political and economic structure only now developing. In time -- ten, twenty, thirty years hence -- that person will emerge, fully formed, agile and focused. He has not heard of Bob Geldof, or the UN, or Scott Spencer, or you. He has been too busy for that. He will not save the country, no, but he will have found the courage to, by and large, here and there, save himself. He will have saved himself.
And a new cycle will have begun.
First:
I don't claim to know jackshit about poverty (though it sometimes may seem like I claim to -- the dangers of blogging, I suppose), but I know what I do know what it's not: generic. A slogan. Part of a goal on a t-shirt two sizes too big.
Having just seen Michael Douglas on CNN proclaiming how important it is to end poverty and hunger by 2015, I'm a little bit, well, confused. I'm not against Douglas or Angelina Jolie or anybody else who does what they can to raise awareness for a worthy cause; if anything, I applaud them. They are stepping outside of themselves and opening themselves up to any and every blowhard with a forum. (Like, um, me.)
The thing is, it's insidious, poverty is. Almost benign. Yet somehow still devious and deceptive in its banal, everyday simplicity. Cambodia was recently ranked the 10th worst country in the world to live in for mothers and children, and I believe it. Henry Kramm, an American journalist steeped in Southeast Asia, wrote a concise, book on this country that I highly recommend called Cambodia: Notes from a Stricken Land. His ultimate summation? "Cambodia is a basketcase."
No dissenting opinion from these quarters. Things are so sometimes so comically inept here to feel as if they were merely the byproduct of maliciousness; things are too blatantly, blindly disorganized and chaotic, lethargic and inept. A 'basketcase' seems to sum up the country perfectly.
And yet.
That's the problem.
That phrase. That wittiness. That 'summing up'. That band on the stage. That roar from the crowd. That banner on the wall. That goal and that pledge and that deadline.
I don't know. I simply feel such, what's the word, disconnect between what the world and the media focuses on, and the ridiculously commonplace reality of the real issues. A month ago, it seems like, for many people in the West, 'poverty' meant going to a rock concert. There is, of course, something so wonderful in that unity of intent, and something else so wretchedly inappropriate, although what exactly that 'something else' is what I'm struggling to define.
Take today.
I saw a little girl, shirtless and shoeless, walking merrily along the hot pavement as he helped her mother push their garbage cart through the early morning streets. (They were collecting plastic bottles, cans, whatever.) The girl looked happy. I thought: She doesn't know she's poor, and she doesn't know her life is absolutely fucked. I know it, but she doesn't. But then I thought: Who the hell am I to think her life is screwed? After all, she looked happier than I normally do. She has a purpose. She has a mother who loves her. It's not my call to pronoune her happiness or sadness or trajectory in life.
And yet.
One of the girls who regularly begs in front of Lucky Supermarket -- now, suddenly, a teenager, and now, suddenly, pregnant. Still begging.
The cycle continues.
And later:
The motley crew of four or five young boys chasing after me as I hurried down the street with my bag of freshly bought oranges. I waved my hand, wooing them away. They weren't buying it; they could see the oranges' round outline through the white plastic bag. But I was adamant. These were my oranges, goddamnit.
But then, for nor reason, I relented. Reached into the bag. Plucked out a couple of oranges and tossed them to the boys. A regular Mother Teresa, I am. I mean, what. I can't spare two freakin' oranges for some street kids? And what, I'm going to tell them I cannot give you a single orange, because if I do, that will only endorse and thereby perpetuate the dependency you already an unwilling victim of? Fuck no -- at a certain point, you give away the oranges. Not every day, no, and not all the time, no, but there comes a time, like it or not, when the oranges go AWOL. It solves nothing, neither my western guilt nor their impoverished lives, but what the hell.
The cycle continues.
On that same corner, earlier today, the boy. (Remember him? The pissing one, from the top of the post?) I saw him as I rode on the back of a moto as we approached the traffic light, the moto watching the signal (I hoped), me noticing a four or five year old boy, pants around his ankles, nonchalantly pissing on the street, his spray lazily baptizing the blackened pavement. (Can one pee nochalantly? I think one can.)
At that moment, I felt like ringing Bob Geldof. I wanted to get him on the line and blurt: "You should not have had Paul McCartney open LIVE 8 by singing 'Seargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. You should have had this little boy, the one I just saw, the one receding into the distance of my moto's rearview mirror. You should have had this boy up on stage, knees around his ankles, pissing into the crowd. Not close enough to actually have the urine land on anybody, no, but close enough so that they could see and smell and trace the fall of its dribbling arc. That is what you needed." And I would have hung up, and felt like an ass, and wondered who the hell I think I am.
A childish plea, I know that. A nonsensical gesture -- I realize that, too.
It's just that, if the nature of some of these posts somehow inevitably find themselves touching on poverty, it's because it's something that inevitably sometimes touches on me in my daily life. (Or pisses on me, as the case may be.) There's good intentions and UN plans and rocks bands singing cool tunes, and there's a little boy who has nowhere to piss, so he chooses the street, and no one bats any eye. They keep on driving. How to reconcile these two sets of realities remains divided in my mind.
I would feel hopeless, but I sense and I believe in the power of belief. In possibility. In hope. Because right now, all through Phnom Penh, there are women being trafficked and little kids begging and mothers slowly, anonymously fading away, but there is also this: young men and young women studying English, studying business, learning computers. They are optimistic and in motion. They are staying up late and asking questions and wondering just when, exactly when, the corruption will end. And even if that optimism of mine is misguided, amplifying the numbers, then there is at least one. One person. Sick of their society's ills. Lost, but looking for the path. Willing to take their time, to study, to immerse themselves in a political and economic structure only now developing. In time -- ten, twenty, thirty years hence -- that person will emerge, fully formed, agile and focused. He has not heard of Bob Geldof, or the UN, or Scott Spencer, or you. He has been too busy for that. He will not save the country, no, but he will have found the courage to, by and large, here and there, save himself. He will have saved himself.
And a new cycle will have begun.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
I shouldn't be here. I should be back at home, in Canada, in a shack, writing books. Or no. Better yet. I should be in Canada, in a shack, writing books, while working to solve the world's problems with a super-secret, super-talented group of young, idealistic go-getters. That way I can create my own imaginary worlds and still participate in what we like to call the real world. Or wait. Scratch that. We all know that life is short and, death, as the saying goes, is so damn long, so it then makes much more sense to live life, enjoy life, conquer life. Better to be a surfer riding the waves off of some secluded beach in Hawaii. Open air always. Blue skies constantly. The sound of the tide and the rise of the moon. Nightly. Sweet. But still. Even hedonism has its limit. Better to be a monk. Alone. Grouped, yes, but alone. Contemplating contemplative stuff. Learning ancient, arcane languages. Chanting whatever it is that monks chant. Recognizing that life is an illusion, attachment a curse, detachment the key. Oh, but wait. Stillness breeds contempt, for oneself and for others. A nomad's life is the life for me. Wandering distant lands, living with the locals for a limited span of time, no more than a week, a month at most. Just long enough to grasp who they are and what what they want. Then I move. To the next country, the next province, the next town. It's just, nomads get tired, moving so much. Better to veg, come to think of it. I'll go back to my hometown, buy a hardware store, invest in stocks. Chill out on the weekends. Crash out in front of the tube. Get one of them plasma TVs everybody's talking about. Learn the rules of football, pick a favorite team, both NFL and CFL, because people tell me Canadian football's better. Call in to work every hour or so, not to nag, just to check things out. Bone up on hardware knowledge. Get a drill to drill stuff with. But, I don't know. What I'd drill, I mean. You can only drill so much, and besides, the store stays still. You have to be there, doing store stuff. There's no mobility. So a salesman's life would be ideal, come to think of it. Like a nomad, only plusher. I've always liked hotels. Beds freshly made, maids freshly bed. A mint on the pillow. Shampoo in the shower. Different cities, different rooms. The thing is, though. Continuity would be absent. All those room keys. All those swimming pools. The water would be nice, but water can be found almost anywhere. Better to seek out a stream, bordering rocks, overlooking a valley. I would have a place to sit and a place to swim and a place to, I don't know, graze. And yet. Nothing to read. I could compose a book in my head, word by word, line by line, and leave it for me and me alone to read and write. Not a confederacy of dunces, no, but at least a dictatorship, with myself as the only subject. I could read and write my way into myself. Lacking pen or paper, screen or keyboard, the going would get tough, but you know what they say in those circumstances. The tough get golden. The arches, I mean. I'd miss cilivization and food. Working at McDonald's would not be all that bad, all things considered. Discounts on the Big Macs. Free newspapers to read. A chocolate sundae now and then. I could get into that. A sleeping bag, of course. Easy to slip in to, they are. As long as it's long and soft, I could slip inside, at night, under the stars. Forget the franchise. Just me and the almighty, up above. Nobody to bother me. Maybe the occasional car or truck. Perhaps the odd cottage or shack in the distance. I'd be able to hear music coming from that shack, soft and melodic, and the smell of freshly baked cookies would drift through the night air, keeping me up. In the attic, I mean. There'd be enough space up there. Surrounded by boxes and books. Insulated in the way that attics are. Until, that is, I hear that voice calling me from down in the kitchen, the ageless, official one that says: "You shouldn't be here." To which I'd answer, with something approaching an epiphany, lowercase: "Hey, buddy, whether I should be here or not is irrelevant, because here is where I'm at. End of story."
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
THE DYNAMIC DUO: GANDHI AND BATMAN
Something struck me the other day while I continued to read Erik Erikson's psychoanalytic study of Gandhi entitled Gandhi's Truth: On The Origins of Militant Nonviolence. It was a red ball, tiny but powerful, soft but potent, thrown by an adolescent child with stupendous force and intent.
(That was, um, a joke, and probably one I've used before. Sorry about that. Won't happen again.)
This is kind of a neat little book, the type of which I don't usually read, written by someone I haven't even thought of much since university. (Where, truth be told, I didn't think much about him then, either, but I pretended I did. What is university but a four-year jaunt where one pretends to learn and learns to pretend?) We tend to think of those humans we've classified as saints -- Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Pauly Shore -- as somehow being above the rest of humanity. And here comes Erikson saying no, no, these are people, and people have motives, and they do things for psychological reasons based on their past histories, so let's study them a little bit. I'm not saying I agree with psychonalysis as a practice or even know much about it, but it makes for compelling reading. And Erikson's actually a pretty good stylist.
Here's the quote:
...For membership in a nation, in a class, or in a caste is one of those elements of an individual's identity which at the very minimum comprise what one is never not, as does membership in one of the two sexes or a given race. What one is never not establishes the life space within which one may hope to become uniquely and affirmatively what one is -- and then to transcend their uniqueness by way of a more inclusive humanity.
Wow. Deep. The kind of quote that I could write two, three blog entries about, but I won't. (I can hear you all through cyberspace collectively muttering "Jesus Christ, thank God for that" under your breath. Sentiments I second.)
Deciding what we are not is surely part of the path to determining who we are. The experience of living abroad is, if anything, an ongoing exploration of what one absolutely isn't. You are not part of the race, the culture, or the language. You share no genetic history with anyone; you haven't even shared a pizza with anyone. You don't know what you're supposed to be doing or how you're supposed to be doing it. You no longer have any favorite TV shows, music stations, bookstores or restaurants to turn to. You are, devoid of all your previous connections, perhaps for the first time, authentically and undeniably yourself. It this disassociation, as the quote implies, particularly in the last sentence, that then links you more concretely to humanity as a whole. You realize that, on the surface, you are not of them. Which leads you to search for something in common. Being an alien forces you to look for those similarities amongst your fellow creatures that link you to a more collective sense of brotherhood.
I'm thinking right now of Bruce Wayne at the start of Batman Begins. (Aren't you? No?) Here is a young man who, as a boy, watched his parents be blown to bits by a desperate thief in a grungy alley; the only reason they found themselves in such a predicament in the first place was because young Bruce was scared of the opera that reminded him of a rather unfortunate encounter with bats that occurred months earlier, so off they went into the night, abandoning that spooky old theatre for their own unfortunate rendezvous with death. Bruce, as a university student, confronts a mob boss who killed said thief before he could plea bargain his way out of prison in exchange for information that would have implicated the mobster. The mobster tells Bruce, essentially: "You think you know the dark side of life because your parents were killed? Well, boo-hoo, rich boy. You don't know shit about the real world."
So Bruce Wayne spends the next seven years immersed in the criminal underworld of Asia, surviving on his own, being trained in the ancient martial arts by a secretive, elite criminal organization that he then, in turn, rejects. Why? Because he discovers who he is, and it is not a killer. He wants justice, yes, and vengeance, certainly, but on his own terms.
I love the opening hour of that flick, and not just because it's about time that the Batman mythos was given the respect it deserves on the silver screen, detailing for the first time just what, exactly, would drive a man to dress up as a bat and fight crime in the streets of his hometown. I love it because it shows the despair and the discipline and desire that transformed a spoiled rich kid into a warrior of the night. I love the seriousness with which it treats exile, with which it treats the concept of a world unhinged by violence and despair. I love the philosophical edginess it, if not endorses, at least illustrates so damn well. After watching this flick, it makes sense. He had to find out what he was not before he could accept who he was -- which is, apparently, a driven, tormented dude who wishes to avenge his parents murder and wear tights while he was doing so. (Hey, to each his own, right?)
And I love it because it's linked to that quote about Gahndi. (In my mind, anyways.) Bruce Wayne pushes himself and tests himself until he comes up against his own limit, which is murder. He allows the world to teach him what it needs to before deciding to return home and use what he has learned to make the world a better place.
And for me, who's been abroad almost as long, six years to Batman's seven, I can identify. (Granted, I'm not a wealthy orphan with a mansion and a butler resembling Michael Caine awaiting my return, and my parents weren't murdered, and I haven't been trained by a secretive, sequestered group of black-clad ninjas -- but other than those minor discrepancies, me and Christian Bale are ideological twins.) I have a feeling that I've been given a glimpse into a real world out here in Cambodia, one that has no bearing or allegiance to freshly cut lawns and newly scrubbed windows, to classrooms full of computers and plazas full of Burger Kings. There is a rawness and a truthfulness here that has added depth to my life and perspective to my goals. I have seen things I do not care to remember and met people I long to embrace. I have not become part of this society but by being in this society I have recognized more clearly what I am not, what western society is not, and at some point, perhaps soon, perhaps later, I hope to return home and, like Batman, only minus the cape, cowl and Katie Holmes, put what I've learned to good use.
(That was, um, a joke, and probably one I've used before. Sorry about that. Won't happen again.)
This is kind of a neat little book, the type of which I don't usually read, written by someone I haven't even thought of much since university. (Where, truth be told, I didn't think much about him then, either, but I pretended I did. What is university but a four-year jaunt where one pretends to learn and learns to pretend?) We tend to think of those humans we've classified as saints -- Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Pauly Shore -- as somehow being above the rest of humanity. And here comes Erikson saying no, no, these are people, and people have motives, and they do things for psychological reasons based on their past histories, so let's study them a little bit. I'm not saying I agree with psychonalysis as a practice or even know much about it, but it makes for compelling reading. And Erikson's actually a pretty good stylist.
Here's the quote:
...For membership in a nation, in a class, or in a caste is one of those elements of an individual's identity which at the very minimum comprise what one is never not, as does membership in one of the two sexes or a given race. What one is never not establishes the life space within which one may hope to become uniquely and affirmatively what one is -- and then to transcend their uniqueness by way of a more inclusive humanity.
Wow. Deep. The kind of quote that I could write two, three blog entries about, but I won't. (I can hear you all through cyberspace collectively muttering "Jesus Christ, thank God for that" under your breath. Sentiments I second.)
Deciding what we are not is surely part of the path to determining who we are. The experience of living abroad is, if anything, an ongoing exploration of what one absolutely isn't. You are not part of the race, the culture, or the language. You share no genetic history with anyone; you haven't even shared a pizza with anyone. You don't know what you're supposed to be doing or how you're supposed to be doing it. You no longer have any favorite TV shows, music stations, bookstores or restaurants to turn to. You are, devoid of all your previous connections, perhaps for the first time, authentically and undeniably yourself. It this disassociation, as the quote implies, particularly in the last sentence, that then links you more concretely to humanity as a whole. You realize that, on the surface, you are not of them. Which leads you to search for something in common. Being an alien forces you to look for those similarities amongst your fellow creatures that link you to a more collective sense of brotherhood.
I'm thinking right now of Bruce Wayne at the start of Batman Begins. (Aren't you? No?) Here is a young man who, as a boy, watched his parents be blown to bits by a desperate thief in a grungy alley; the only reason they found themselves in such a predicament in the first place was because young Bruce was scared of the opera that reminded him of a rather unfortunate encounter with bats that occurred months earlier, so off they went into the night, abandoning that spooky old theatre for their own unfortunate rendezvous with death. Bruce, as a university student, confronts a mob boss who killed said thief before he could plea bargain his way out of prison in exchange for information that would have implicated the mobster. The mobster tells Bruce, essentially: "You think you know the dark side of life because your parents were killed? Well, boo-hoo, rich boy. You don't know shit about the real world."
So Bruce Wayne spends the next seven years immersed in the criminal underworld of Asia, surviving on his own, being trained in the ancient martial arts by a secretive, elite criminal organization that he then, in turn, rejects. Why? Because he discovers who he is, and it is not a killer. He wants justice, yes, and vengeance, certainly, but on his own terms.
I love the opening hour of that flick, and not just because it's about time that the Batman mythos was given the respect it deserves on the silver screen, detailing for the first time just what, exactly, would drive a man to dress up as a bat and fight crime in the streets of his hometown. I love it because it shows the despair and the discipline and desire that transformed a spoiled rich kid into a warrior of the night. I love the seriousness with which it treats exile, with which it treats the concept of a world unhinged by violence and despair. I love the philosophical edginess it, if not endorses, at least illustrates so damn well. After watching this flick, it makes sense. He had to find out what he was not before he could accept who he was -- which is, apparently, a driven, tormented dude who wishes to avenge his parents murder and wear tights while he was doing so. (Hey, to each his own, right?)
And I love it because it's linked to that quote about Gahndi. (In my mind, anyways.) Bruce Wayne pushes himself and tests himself until he comes up against his own limit, which is murder. He allows the world to teach him what it needs to before deciding to return home and use what he has learned to make the world a better place.
And for me, who's been abroad almost as long, six years to Batman's seven, I can identify. (Granted, I'm not a wealthy orphan with a mansion and a butler resembling Michael Caine awaiting my return, and my parents weren't murdered, and I haven't been trained by a secretive, sequestered group of black-clad ninjas -- but other than those minor discrepancies, me and Christian Bale are ideological twins.) I have a feeling that I've been given a glimpse into a real world out here in Cambodia, one that has no bearing or allegiance to freshly cut lawns and newly scrubbed windows, to classrooms full of computers and plazas full of Burger Kings. There is a rawness and a truthfulness here that has added depth to my life and perspective to my goals. I have seen things I do not care to remember and met people I long to embrace. I have not become part of this society but by being in this society I have recognized more clearly what I am not, what western society is not, and at some point, perhaps soon, perhaps later, I hope to return home and, like Batman, only minus the cape, cowl and Katie Holmes, put what I've learned to good use.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
ANOTHER NEW LIFE
A whiteboard behind me. Row after row of gray folding chairs in front of me. A handful of students, heads down, puzzling over their papers. Through the window at the back of the room I can see the contrast that is modern day Phnom Penh: A regal, ornate, gold-plated temple that stands proudly in front of a rather brown and drab new hotel. I am watching that place. Watching them, the students. Not so long ago I was them. Soon they may be me. I am seated at a desk; I am wearing a tie. I suppose -- here, anyways-- this makes me a teacher.
Strange, to be teaching again, after almost a year long absence from the classroom. Strange to be a teacher at all, considering that I always hated teachers and schools, essays and tests.
The truth is, I am happy teaching here, abroad, away. I cannot imagine doing it at home. Perhaps this is because, for me, that old cliche has proven surprisingly true: one learns more from the students than they learn from you. And that can only be intensified in a foreign land. It's impossible to describe what living in a foreign country entails, because it depends on the person and it depends on the country. The question is tantamount to: What's it like to be you? The easiest way I can put it is: You know that feeling you get while watching a foreign film, that slight unease, that enticing intrigue? You understand some, not all; you intuit more than you can assimilate. Living abroad is basically like living in a foreign film that never ends, minus the subtitles. And since movies are the closest, most tangible things we have to dreams, you say that it's like living a dream, living abroad. With all the oddities and ambiguities that implies.
The only way to make sense of it all is to try to learn, period, and it is in countless (or so it seems) Cambodian classrooms I have learned what little I know about Cambodian culture. The students here are kind and bright, lazy and cheating (like students everywhere, in varying degrees), and it is the essential human virtues of the first two qualities that offset the pain-in-the-assness of the second pair. I have learned not to blame the students for their habits, because a habit is all too often something ingrained and implanted by others.
And, besides, who am I to judge this culture? I can only rely on what I see and hear and read and feel; my assumptions and observations are, by necessity, inadequate, filled with open spaces; attempting to fill those gaps is a futile quest. I am daily faced with all that I do not know -- about myself, about them, about where we intersect and where we diverge.
But it's those intersections that have meant the most. Three years ago I cam to Battambang, for a week, teaching English to street children who lived in group homes. They were teenage boys and teenage girls. They were orphans or had been rescued from trafficking or from families too poor to support them; the boys lived in one home, the girls in another. As time passes, I remember much more of that week from three seasons passed than I do of the week before last.
Playing a game of backyard volleyball with the boys as the sky faded from grey to blue to crimson, the colour of a bruise. Listening to one boy gleefully sing a half-English, half Khmer version of 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.' (Where did he learn that, and why was he singing it so passionately in September?) Reading Elizabeth Becker's chronicle of the Cambodian genocide When The War Was Over on my bed in my hotel room, trying to make sense of this unknown land, the same way I read and read and read to try to make sense of Japan three years previously when I first landed in that strange and mystic land. (And trying to make sense, too, of why a hotel in Battambang had a channel showing American porn.) Arm-wrestling one boy after another after another, a dozen or more, until my hand shot and sore. Practicing my limited Japanese day after day with those students from Japan, even though their English was much, much more pristine and refined than my Japanese. Wandering down dirt roads in the dead of night, street lights absent, the black sky bloated with stars. Trying to explain to one of the street kids, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, just what, exactly, a roller-coaster was, and failing miserably. (It's harder than you think.) Watching a group of girls rescued from prositution and trafficking laughing with bemused delight at a video of the Japanese anime My Neighbour Totoro. Chatting with a police officer while sitting on the picnic tables in front of the Battambang airport, a site that resembled little more than a dilapitated, seemingly abandoned bus station. (The airport resembled this, not the policeman.) Sitting in the airplane as it left level ground, and me, reclining back, thinking back, trying to comprehend what a week in Battambang, Cambodia meant to me, and to them.
And now, three years later, I think about what that week led to, which was teaching here, in this country, and what teaching has ultimately given me, both her and in Japan. I wonder: If destiny exists, if karma does, indeed, spin its magic wheel by wheel, then why am I here? In this place, at this time? I feel as if I have already, at the brink of thirty, lived a dozen lives. Perhaps I have. After all, every day is another new life, another fresh birth. Our eyes open, and there is either something to teach or something to learn.
A whiteboard. A row of gray folding chairs in front of me. The person reaching out, and the people being reached.
We will either stand and teach today, or sit and learn.
I feel as if I have no other choice. I feel that I'm ready for both. Eager for both.
Are you?
Strange, to be teaching again, after almost a year long absence from the classroom. Strange to be a teacher at all, considering that I always hated teachers and schools, essays and tests.
The truth is, I am happy teaching here, abroad, away. I cannot imagine doing it at home. Perhaps this is because, for me, that old cliche has proven surprisingly true: one learns more from the students than they learn from you. And that can only be intensified in a foreign land. It's impossible to describe what living in a foreign country entails, because it depends on the person and it depends on the country. The question is tantamount to: What's it like to be you? The easiest way I can put it is: You know that feeling you get while watching a foreign film, that slight unease, that enticing intrigue? You understand some, not all; you intuit more than you can assimilate. Living abroad is basically like living in a foreign film that never ends, minus the subtitles. And since movies are the closest, most tangible things we have to dreams, you say that it's like living a dream, living abroad. With all the oddities and ambiguities that implies.
The only way to make sense of it all is to try to learn, period, and it is in countless (or so it seems) Cambodian classrooms I have learned what little I know about Cambodian culture. The students here are kind and bright, lazy and cheating (like students everywhere, in varying degrees), and it is the essential human virtues of the first two qualities that offset the pain-in-the-assness of the second pair. I have learned not to blame the students for their habits, because a habit is all too often something ingrained and implanted by others.
And, besides, who am I to judge this culture? I can only rely on what I see and hear and read and feel; my assumptions and observations are, by necessity, inadequate, filled with open spaces; attempting to fill those gaps is a futile quest. I am daily faced with all that I do not know -- about myself, about them, about where we intersect and where we diverge.
But it's those intersections that have meant the most. Three years ago I cam to Battambang, for a week, teaching English to street children who lived in group homes. They were teenage boys and teenage girls. They were orphans or had been rescued from trafficking or from families too poor to support them; the boys lived in one home, the girls in another. As time passes, I remember much more of that week from three seasons passed than I do of the week before last.
Playing a game of backyard volleyball with the boys as the sky faded from grey to blue to crimson, the colour of a bruise. Listening to one boy gleefully sing a half-English, half Khmer version of 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.' (Where did he learn that, and why was he singing it so passionately in September?) Reading Elizabeth Becker's chronicle of the Cambodian genocide When The War Was Over on my bed in my hotel room, trying to make sense of this unknown land, the same way I read and read and read to try to make sense of Japan three years previously when I first landed in that strange and mystic land. (And trying to make sense, too, of why a hotel in Battambang had a channel showing American porn.) Arm-wrestling one boy after another after another, a dozen or more, until my hand shot and sore. Practicing my limited Japanese day after day with those students from Japan, even though their English was much, much more pristine and refined than my Japanese. Wandering down dirt roads in the dead of night, street lights absent, the black sky bloated with stars. Trying to explain to one of the street kids, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, just what, exactly, a roller-coaster was, and failing miserably. (It's harder than you think.) Watching a group of girls rescued from prositution and trafficking laughing with bemused delight at a video of the Japanese anime My Neighbour Totoro. Chatting with a police officer while sitting on the picnic tables in front of the Battambang airport, a site that resembled little more than a dilapitated, seemingly abandoned bus station. (The airport resembled this, not the policeman.) Sitting in the airplane as it left level ground, and me, reclining back, thinking back, trying to comprehend what a week in Battambang, Cambodia meant to me, and to them.
And now, three years later, I think about what that week led to, which was teaching here, in this country, and what teaching has ultimately given me, both her and in Japan. I wonder: If destiny exists, if karma does, indeed, spin its magic wheel by wheel, then why am I here? In this place, at this time? I feel as if I have already, at the brink of thirty, lived a dozen lives. Perhaps I have. After all, every day is another new life, another fresh birth. Our eyes open, and there is either something to teach or something to learn.
A whiteboard. A row of gray folding chairs in front of me. The person reaching out, and the people being reached.
We will either stand and teach today, or sit and learn.
I feel as if I have no other choice. I feel that I'm ready for both. Eager for both.
Are you?
Monday, August 01, 2005
REASON #6,384 FOR WHY I DON'T PARTICULARLY TRUST THE KEEN JUDGEMENT OF DRIVERS IN PHNOM PENH
Today's actual, not-a-joke front-page headline in The Cambodia Daily:
Driving Test Now Required For License
Driving Test Now Required For License
Sunday, July 31, 2005
TWENTY-FOUR HOUR PEOPLE
Somebody in the book I'm reading right now, Erik Erikson's psychoanalytic study Gandhi's Truth: On the Orgins of Militant Nonvioence, describes the Indian saint as something like a "twenty-four man", a phrase that leapt out at me. Made me think. Made me pause. To be authentically humane at all times, every hour, consistently -- is that what we're here for? Could anyone other than Ganhdi do such a thing?
I don't think there's anything particularly masculine in the phrase; substitute 'woman' for 'man', and although the particulars may change, the overall sentiment remains basically intact. To be all that we, as human creatures, are capable of being; to achieve what we are put here to be.
Can I do that? Can you do that?
Just now, moments ago, a common sight: in the midst of a pouring rainstorm, a young Khmer boy, thin, poor, guides his blind grandfather around by the the hand, begging for change. Often such old folks are playing instruments or singing; sometimes, like today, they are simply there, existing to be used, elderly.
Think of that boy, if you please, and of his life. He probably does not go to school. He probably never will go to school. His life consists of wandering around in the rain, asking strangers for money he will probably not receive, money that will, instead, give his family the means for a meal. I know he does not do this out of the goodness of his heart, and I know that his life, undoubtedly, consists of highs and lows and sorrows and joys that I no doubt surpass my own at times, if not all the time. He is no saint, and he did not ask for these circumstances.
But still. What he is doing. The basic dignity of it. His willingness to do it, even if he abhors it. I do not know if he is being 'a twenty-four man', since he is not yet a man at all, but there must be something dwelling deep within him that would recognize the truth of such a statement. I'm not even sure what that particular phrase means, of course; I'm adding my own allusions and half-baked insights onto somebody else's perceptions. And yet I believe if anyone could embody that aspect of Gahndi, that little boy does. I do not know why, but I feel it. I don't trust my feelings, no, but they are there, and they are real, and that is all I have to go on.
Surrounded by monks on a daily basis does tend to ground one in a certain way. I'm not sure why, and it could be simply my own cultural appropriation of somebody else's religion; the monks, in their purple robes, often wearing glasses, clutching school books, seem possessed of some kind of inner wisdom that I would never associate with priests-in-training. And I know my own perceptions have been proven false by my very own eyes; I've taught monks, and watched them cheat like everyone else, and sat beside them in the student computer lab and noticed that they, too, search match.com, looking for love. But there's something in their discipline, their ascetism, that stands out, that demands to be taken seriously. If they do not attain a higher level of wisdom after years of study, it's not for a lack of trying. Two meals a day, none after noon; flip-flops the only luxury clothes they possess, and often these, two, are absent from their feet. The memory of one of my first students, a young monk who was curious and interested and passionate about the links between Buddhism and Christianity and Hinduism and all of the world's myriad religions, because they were part of the grand human quest for a universal truth that transcended religion itself. It's the vibes that the monks give off, I suppose, more than anything else, a serene desire for understanding that feels so fundamentally delicate and alien in this sun-soaked land, detached but linked to my cold Canadian heritage, as if virtue and truth were a flake of snow fastly melting in this tropical heat.
I don't spend most days or many days contemplating what it means to be good, but I wonder. The last line of Robert Pirsig's Leila, which was the sequel to Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, postulates the concept of good as a noun, not an adjective. Good as a noun, a thing, a Platonic Form. Sometimes my mind drifts to that idea, that good could in fact turn out to be a tangible thing, a touchable force, maybe the Force that George Lucas was talking about. Can we somehow find it, this goodness? Can we grasp it? Can we harness it so that we, too, can become twenty-four people?
I don't know.
But I want to find that kid and warn that kid, the one with the grandfather on his arm. I want to stop him from becoming the young street kid I fear he will be in five, ten years time, the ones that wander around Phnom Penh sniffing glue from plastic bags, the ones who I see while running in the mornings along the banks of the river, the ones who sleep on the grass and take money for sex. I want to grab this young lad by the shoulders and let him know that now, in his current state, he is a twenty-four hour kid, and that he is the goodness that the world is lacking. He would not understand what I was saying, even if I were speaking Khmer. He would only look at me strangely, and grab his grandfather's bony hand a little tighter, and continue on his way down the long and dusty road, bored and tired, angry but diligent, trying to raise money for his family because that is what he has been trained to do. In that precise and fleeting moment he would thus become what I seek.
I don't think there's anything particularly masculine in the phrase; substitute 'woman' for 'man', and although the particulars may change, the overall sentiment remains basically intact. To be all that we, as human creatures, are capable of being; to achieve what we are put here to be.
Can I do that? Can you do that?
Just now, moments ago, a common sight: in the midst of a pouring rainstorm, a young Khmer boy, thin, poor, guides his blind grandfather around by the the hand, begging for change. Often such old folks are playing instruments or singing; sometimes, like today, they are simply there, existing to be used, elderly.
Think of that boy, if you please, and of his life. He probably does not go to school. He probably never will go to school. His life consists of wandering around in the rain, asking strangers for money he will probably not receive, money that will, instead, give his family the means for a meal. I know he does not do this out of the goodness of his heart, and I know that his life, undoubtedly, consists of highs and lows and sorrows and joys that I no doubt surpass my own at times, if not all the time. He is no saint, and he did not ask for these circumstances.
But still. What he is doing. The basic dignity of it. His willingness to do it, even if he abhors it. I do not know if he is being 'a twenty-four man', since he is not yet a man at all, but there must be something dwelling deep within him that would recognize the truth of such a statement. I'm not even sure what that particular phrase means, of course; I'm adding my own allusions and half-baked insights onto somebody else's perceptions. And yet I believe if anyone could embody that aspect of Gahndi, that little boy does. I do not know why, but I feel it. I don't trust my feelings, no, but they are there, and they are real, and that is all I have to go on.
Surrounded by monks on a daily basis does tend to ground one in a certain way. I'm not sure why, and it could be simply my own cultural appropriation of somebody else's religion; the monks, in their purple robes, often wearing glasses, clutching school books, seem possessed of some kind of inner wisdom that I would never associate with priests-in-training. And I know my own perceptions have been proven false by my very own eyes; I've taught monks, and watched them cheat like everyone else, and sat beside them in the student computer lab and noticed that they, too, search match.com, looking for love. But there's something in their discipline, their ascetism, that stands out, that demands to be taken seriously. If they do not attain a higher level of wisdom after years of study, it's not for a lack of trying. Two meals a day, none after noon; flip-flops the only luxury clothes they possess, and often these, two, are absent from their feet. The memory of one of my first students, a young monk who was curious and interested and passionate about the links between Buddhism and Christianity and Hinduism and all of the world's myriad religions, because they were part of the grand human quest for a universal truth that transcended religion itself. It's the vibes that the monks give off, I suppose, more than anything else, a serene desire for understanding that feels so fundamentally delicate and alien in this sun-soaked land, detached but linked to my cold Canadian heritage, as if virtue and truth were a flake of snow fastly melting in this tropical heat.
I don't spend most days or many days contemplating what it means to be good, but I wonder. The last line of Robert Pirsig's Leila, which was the sequel to Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, postulates the concept of good as a noun, not an adjective. Good as a noun, a thing, a Platonic Form. Sometimes my mind drifts to that idea, that good could in fact turn out to be a tangible thing, a touchable force, maybe the Force that George Lucas was talking about. Can we somehow find it, this goodness? Can we grasp it? Can we harness it so that we, too, can become twenty-four people?
I don't know.
But I want to find that kid and warn that kid, the one with the grandfather on his arm. I want to stop him from becoming the young street kid I fear he will be in five, ten years time, the ones that wander around Phnom Penh sniffing glue from plastic bags, the ones who I see while running in the mornings along the banks of the river, the ones who sleep on the grass and take money for sex. I want to grab this young lad by the shoulders and let him know that now, in his current state, he is a twenty-four hour kid, and that he is the goodness that the world is lacking. He would not understand what I was saying, even if I were speaking Khmer. He would only look at me strangely, and grab his grandfather's bony hand a little tighter, and continue on his way down the long and dusty road, bored and tired, angry but diligent, trying to raise money for his family because that is what he has been trained to do. In that precise and fleeting moment he would thus become what I seek.
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