They frisk you at the malls in Manila. In Baguio City, too. There is a slot for MEN and WOMEN, just like the (imaginary) doors we walked through in elementary school. You walk through, and you're padded down, and if you're absent of any hand grenades or switchblades or submachine guns, you're free to check out the Mickey Dees and cinema screens. I'd never been frisked before, let alone before going into a mall, but now, even after a few days, it's become a familiar experience. (And I didn't say I enjoyed it; don't go there, people...)
Landing in a new land, a strange land, you latch onto the familiar, noticing what's the same, what's different, what's odd, what's mundane. Usually it's a mishmash of all of the above. Here in the Philippines, given that most of the people are reasonably poor, people take jeepneys around town -- a kind of taxi-type bus that is reasonably cheap. Each of the jeepneys is decorated with their owners own particular colour and fetish, but most of them display red and white stickers that ask: "How's my driving?". Followed by a phone number, of course.
Here in Baguio, a mountain city, a northern city, it's full of what mountains are full of -- hills. Long and winding ones. Up and down ones. All of these hills reminding me of similar altitudes from my stay in Japan, down to the myriad checkerbox houses that dot the high and mighty landscape. Given that I'm 'up', it's cool, quite cool, late-October-in-Canada-cool. I like it. After the heat of Cambodia, endless and dense, it's nice to be cold again. Nice to need a blanket at night.
In a strange land, a foreign land, you embrace the unknown and reach for the familiar. I've already dived into a paperback copy of Lost Boy, Lost Girl, one of Peter Straub's latest fantastical, slightly horrific offerings. Straub being one of my adolescent idols, running right behind Stephen King, it's good, for a time, for a moment, to lose myself in harmless yet insightful entertainment. Good to see how literature can use the tangible weight of metaphors to make sense of the senseless. Good to be distracted from what even the fresh mountain air and sloping crescents can't deny.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
LEAVIN' ON A JET PLANE
Somewhere in the endless suburbs of Tokyo there lies one particular train station named Sagami-Ono, on the Odakyu Line, and a stone's throw away from that particular station is a squat grey apartment building, four floors, that I lived in for four years. Room 417, if I recall correctly. I lived there and slept there and read there and learned there. Four years.
Whenever I hear about Japan or read about Japan or even look at a map of Japan, I always think: Something's missing. That 'something' is me, and my presence in that specific place, at that specific time. My sojurn there was not worthy of entry in an online encylopedia, of course, nor does it bear mentioning at the end of the latest economic and political news emanating from Nippon, but there is something special, almost sacred, about the fact that I was there, in that land, that I had a space of my own, if only briefly. It was mine.
I believe I will feel the same way about Cambodia when I leave, which is tomorrow. (I may be back, but who knows.) Of course, Cambodia is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the international news, but perhaps that will only accentuate the oddness and sacredness of the part it played in my life. There will always be me in Cambodia and Cambodia in me. Noone else need know; noone else need care. But the benefit of travel like this, of living in foreign lands, is that you become connected to the world.
Novelist James Michener's autobiography is entitled The World Is My Home, and famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, while resolutely maintaining that his films were made for the Japanese audience, acknowledged in his own autobiography that he, too, felt at home anywhere in the world. I don't know if I would go that far, not yet; I'm not sure how at home I would feel in Iraq, or Iceland, or Burkina Faso, where life expectancy hovers around thirty, tops.
Yet it really is one world; that most banal of truths is solidified again and again the more I travel, the more I see.
I was going to use this post to jot down a laundry list of memories of Cambodia, so that the future me (or the future you?) would be able to taste and touch and feel and sense what it was like. So that I would not forget.
But I will forget, some of it, and will remember, probably most of it. And the specifics I could list would only cloud my true intentions, which are to show that the differences are actually not so different after all. What would I list, anyway? People's smiles, people's actions, the specific contours of buildings and textures. To do so would be to highlight what's different, however, and I would rather leave this place and this time with the simple realization that perhaps such differences do not bear repeating. We're too much alike.
Off, tomorrow. Off to the Philippines. I never thought I'd end up in Japan, let alone Cambodia, let alone the Philippines, but so it goes. I guess I'm taking this 'canuckinasia' thing a bit too far; perhaps, eventually, I should return to 'canuckincanada', right?
Not that it would matter much, really.
In the end, it's all the same.
Whenever I hear about Japan or read about Japan or even look at a map of Japan, I always think: Something's missing. That 'something' is me, and my presence in that specific place, at that specific time. My sojurn there was not worthy of entry in an online encylopedia, of course, nor does it bear mentioning at the end of the latest economic and political news emanating from Nippon, but there is something special, almost sacred, about the fact that I was there, in that land, that I had a space of my own, if only briefly. It was mine.
I believe I will feel the same way about Cambodia when I leave, which is tomorrow. (I may be back, but who knows.) Of course, Cambodia is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the international news, but perhaps that will only accentuate the oddness and sacredness of the part it played in my life. There will always be me in Cambodia and Cambodia in me. Noone else need know; noone else need care. But the benefit of travel like this, of living in foreign lands, is that you become connected to the world.
Novelist James Michener's autobiography is entitled The World Is My Home, and famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, while resolutely maintaining that his films were made for the Japanese audience, acknowledged in his own autobiography that he, too, felt at home anywhere in the world. I don't know if I would go that far, not yet; I'm not sure how at home I would feel in Iraq, or Iceland, or Burkina Faso, where life expectancy hovers around thirty, tops.
Yet it really is one world; that most banal of truths is solidified again and again the more I travel, the more I see.
I was going to use this post to jot down a laundry list of memories of Cambodia, so that the future me (or the future you?) would be able to taste and touch and feel and sense what it was like. So that I would not forget.
But I will forget, some of it, and will remember, probably most of it. And the specifics I could list would only cloud my true intentions, which are to show that the differences are actually not so different after all. What would I list, anyway? People's smiles, people's actions, the specific contours of buildings and textures. To do so would be to highlight what's different, however, and I would rather leave this place and this time with the simple realization that perhaps such differences do not bear repeating. We're too much alike.
Off, tomorrow. Off to the Philippines. I never thought I'd end up in Japan, let alone Cambodia, let alone the Philippines, but so it goes. I guess I'm taking this 'canuckinasia' thing a bit too far; perhaps, eventually, I should return to 'canuckincanada', right?
Not that it would matter much, really.
In the end, it's all the same.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
ESPECIALLY TIME
Time attains a different degree in a hospital. It moves at a stranger rate. Even if you are in a darkened room, light from the hallway outside, the world outside, blends in and reminds you that life moves on, regardless. Nurses bop in and out of rooms. There is no sense of night. An artificial glare bathes everything in its own indifferent glow. Racks of ragged paperback books sitting tight on a rack in the lobby beckon to be read, if only to substitute a story for the plodding passage of minute after minute. Who am I to refuse the pleas of such lonely books? While lounging around the Bangkok Hospital last week I took another gander at John Irving's A Widow For One Year, a book I'd read twice before years before, and, like Twain marvelling at how much his father had changed in seven years, I, too, was astounded at how much this particular book had mellowed and improved since 1998. (Not that I'm comparing myself to Twain, of course.)
As an unreserved John Irving junkie, I've always loved his work, but it's only been recently, in the past few years, that I've begun to truly understand what he has always claimed is the most important component of his novels -- or, indeed, any novel, namely: the passage of time. How time affects us. How it changes us. How it allows characters to grow and shift in unexpected ways, and how narrative, too, achieves its own special flavor and slant depending on what happened to who, and when. Especially when.
I'd always taken that remark for granted -- but the more I think about it, the more I agree with it, and learn from it. Time is nothing if not space stretched out, and a novel is full of space. Irving's novels in particular tend to trace the entire arc of characters' lives, and can often take reckless leaps in narrative time that, in retrospect, seem not only bold, but absolutely essential. (One chapter towards the end of The Cider House Rules jumps ahead twenty years -- a surprising, disconcerting decision that is that much more poignant because of its ambition. The film version had to abandon such recklessness.)
It is only through time that we achieve any perspective, or meaning, or resonance, in our own lives and the lives of others, and the best works of art recognize that. Novels can do that so easily; turn the page, and presto-changeo, it's a decade hence. They rarely do so, of course, because that requires patience, and plotting, and the signs of a well-thought out story; in today's contract-driven, book-a-year world, who has time for plot? Who has time for craftmanship?
Film, too, is at a disadvantage, because the experience itself unfolds in linear time. And yet, upon reflection, some of my favorite films from my favorite filmmakers are obviously, even relentlessly obsessed with what time does to us. What time demands of us. The Oliver Stone films I particularly love -- Born On The Fourth of July, The Doors, J.F.K., Heaven and Earth, Nixon, Alexander --span months, years, even decades in the lives of its protagonists, a technique that lends some to argue that much is truncated, much is condensed, much is slighted in the race to cram as much life as possible into the shortest time possible. Fair enough; a valid criticism. But I would argue that it is precisely such 'cramming of life', so to speak, that inevitably creates the boldest, most emotional effects. Only time can tell us about ourselves, and only time can teach us, scold us, spurn us and reveal to us. Only time.
The days are long in a hospital room. I sat in a chair and looked out the window and read my battered copy of A Widow For One year. Took only a couple of days, it did, but within those days and beneath those pages I saw children grow old, spouses die, decades pass and minutes stretch out. Will my life follow a similar pattern? I think of my grandfather, who was my age in 1949. Will I endure a similar span? Who were we, and who are we? Where are we, and where are we going? How do we move on, and how do we retain the best of who we were? These are the questions I asked myself while reading the book, as the nurses made their nightly rounds, and the hallway lights, as always, stayed on.
As an unreserved John Irving junkie, I've always loved his work, but it's only been recently, in the past few years, that I've begun to truly understand what he has always claimed is the most important component of his novels -- or, indeed, any novel, namely: the passage of time. How time affects us. How it changes us. How it allows characters to grow and shift in unexpected ways, and how narrative, too, achieves its own special flavor and slant depending on what happened to who, and when. Especially when.
I'd always taken that remark for granted -- but the more I think about it, the more I agree with it, and learn from it. Time is nothing if not space stretched out, and a novel is full of space. Irving's novels in particular tend to trace the entire arc of characters' lives, and can often take reckless leaps in narrative time that, in retrospect, seem not only bold, but absolutely essential. (One chapter towards the end of The Cider House Rules jumps ahead twenty years -- a surprising, disconcerting decision that is that much more poignant because of its ambition. The film version had to abandon such recklessness.)
It is only through time that we achieve any perspective, or meaning, or resonance, in our own lives and the lives of others, and the best works of art recognize that. Novels can do that so easily; turn the page, and presto-changeo, it's a decade hence. They rarely do so, of course, because that requires patience, and plotting, and the signs of a well-thought out story; in today's contract-driven, book-a-year world, who has time for plot? Who has time for craftmanship?
Film, too, is at a disadvantage, because the experience itself unfolds in linear time. And yet, upon reflection, some of my favorite films from my favorite filmmakers are obviously, even relentlessly obsessed with what time does to us. What time demands of us. The Oliver Stone films I particularly love -- Born On The Fourth of July, The Doors, J.F.K., Heaven and Earth, Nixon, Alexander --span months, years, even decades in the lives of its protagonists, a technique that lends some to argue that much is truncated, much is condensed, much is slighted in the race to cram as much life as possible into the shortest time possible. Fair enough; a valid criticism. But I would argue that it is precisely such 'cramming of life', so to speak, that inevitably creates the boldest, most emotional effects. Only time can tell us about ourselves, and only time can teach us, scold us, spurn us and reveal to us. Only time.
The days are long in a hospital room. I sat in a chair and looked out the window and read my battered copy of A Widow For One year. Took only a couple of days, it did, but within those days and beneath those pages I saw children grow old, spouses die, decades pass and minutes stretch out. Will my life follow a similar pattern? I think of my grandfather, who was my age in 1949. Will I endure a similar span? Who were we, and who are we? Where are we, and where are we going? How do we move on, and how do we retain the best of who we were? These are the questions I asked myself while reading the book, as the nurses made their nightly rounds, and the hallway lights, as always, stayed on.
Friday, November 04, 2005
ON A DOCK
While eating breakfast a few days ago in the restaurant of the A-One Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, the lazy seventies rock of Steve Miller drifted through the gaps in the morning buffet, taking me back.
Back fifteen, sixteen years, to a lake, and a dock, and a cottage. Near Halliburton, Ontario (where Bill Murray and his comedic gang filmed the first, best Meatballs, back when the world was young), this cottage was (and is). Steve Miller was the music of choice that summer (and the summer before that, and the summer after that), along with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead, the Traveling Wilburys and the Beautiful South. Us kids would put on the tunes and listen to the beats of our adolescene fade out of tune, one note at a time.
And yet, sometimes there was stillness; sometimes the music was gone. I remember, vividly, sitting on the dock one morning with my friend Mike, the two of us reading our paperback books as the waves leisurely lapped the sides of the dock, begging to be noticed. The dads were probably out fishing; the moms where most likely inside, cleaning up after breakfast. I read my copy of H.P.Lovecraft's strange and horrifying tales of depravity (purchased because there was a recommendation by Stephen King on the cover -- if King blurbed it, I bought it, period). Mike read the novelization of Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers. (In those days, the reality of the world, the harshness of the world, was still a source of innocent, escapist fun, and we revelled in that make-believe terror.)
Out on the water, the first boats of the day, towing anxious skiers ready for the fun to begin, occasionally sliced the silent morning in two, but that was fine; that was what summer was for, after all. A light wind pushed at the water and pulled at the pages of our books. Later that day would come our own bout of waterskiing and fishhooks, campfire and music. Later that summer would come school supplies and autumn shoes, velcro binders and coloured pencils. That was fine, too. Everything had its season, we were learning. You couldn't always stay on a dock. You could learn to appreciate the stillness, though, and we did. We learned.
We sat on the dock, under the blue, feeling the wind, listening to the distant roar of a distant boat, as the waves did what waves do: advance and retreat, rise and fall, collapse and ascend -- almost effortlessly, almost gracefully -- in their own, incremental manner.
Back fifteen, sixteen years, to a lake, and a dock, and a cottage. Near Halliburton, Ontario (where Bill Murray and his comedic gang filmed the first, best Meatballs, back when the world was young), this cottage was (and is). Steve Miller was the music of choice that summer (and the summer before that, and the summer after that), along with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead, the Traveling Wilburys and the Beautiful South. Us kids would put on the tunes and listen to the beats of our adolescene fade out of tune, one note at a time.
And yet, sometimes there was stillness; sometimes the music was gone. I remember, vividly, sitting on the dock one morning with my friend Mike, the two of us reading our paperback books as the waves leisurely lapped the sides of the dock, begging to be noticed. The dads were probably out fishing; the moms where most likely inside, cleaning up after breakfast. I read my copy of H.P.Lovecraft's strange and horrifying tales of depravity (purchased because there was a recommendation by Stephen King on the cover -- if King blurbed it, I bought it, period). Mike read the novelization of Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers. (In those days, the reality of the world, the harshness of the world, was still a source of innocent, escapist fun, and we revelled in that make-believe terror.)
Out on the water, the first boats of the day, towing anxious skiers ready for the fun to begin, occasionally sliced the silent morning in two, but that was fine; that was what summer was for, after all. A light wind pushed at the water and pulled at the pages of our books. Later that day would come our own bout of waterskiing and fishhooks, campfire and music. Later that summer would come school supplies and autumn shoes, velcro binders and coloured pencils. That was fine, too. Everything had its season, we were learning. You couldn't always stay on a dock. You could learn to appreciate the stillness, though, and we did. We learned.
We sat on the dock, under the blue, feeling the wind, listening to the distant roar of a distant boat, as the waves did what waves do: advance and retreat, rise and fall, collapse and ascend -- almost effortlessly, almost gracefully -- in their own, incremental manner.
Friday, October 28, 2005
CARPE DIEM
Helen, the thirty-seven year old Filipino woman I've been seeing for the past sixteen months, mother of a ten-year old son back home, has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had her uterus and ovaries removed a few days ago here at Bangkok Hospital. Chemo to follow, probably in the Philippines.
I'm stunned and sad, angry and confused. I have no idea what I'll write about in the days and weeks and months ahead, but this is a very personal, profound journey, and it's not my place to chronicle it here. I thought I was a pretty philosophical guy before. But now.
Let me just say: If you are a woman, or if you know any women, please dot not ignore any inexplicable weight loss or pain in the lower regions. Ovarian cancer is hard to detect, and when it is, it's usually late in the game.
As for the title of the post, it may be cliche, but it's not meant to be ironic. Live for the moments, and the people you share them with, because life can be one cruel bastard at times.
I'm stunned and sad, angry and confused. I have no idea what I'll write about in the days and weeks and months ahead, but this is a very personal, profound journey, and it's not my place to chronicle it here. I thought I was a pretty philosophical guy before. But now.
Let me just say: If you are a woman, or if you know any women, please dot not ignore any inexplicable weight loss or pain in the lower regions. Ovarian cancer is hard to detect, and when it is, it's usually late in the game.
As for the title of the post, it may be cliche, but it's not meant to be ironic. Live for the moments, and the people you share them with, because life can be one cruel bastard at times.
Monday, October 24, 2005
OFF TO THAILAND
Life takes us to unexpected places at unexpected times, proof of which is the fact that I'll be flying into Bangkok, Thailand tomorrow morning for a week to ten days, depending on how long my rather-ill friend's surgery goes. (Let's just say that hospitals in Cambodia, even the good foreign clinics that do exist, are not equipped to handle major surgery.)
I've never been to Thailand (other than the airport), despite its proximity to Cambodia, and these are not exactly the conditions under which I wanted to visit it, but so it goes. The writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., always quotes his brother's philosophy of life: "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." And this is one of those times.
Expect sporadic updates for the next week, but I'll try to write from Bangkok with a taste or two of urban Thai life.
I've never been to Thailand (other than the airport), despite its proximity to Cambodia, and these are not exactly the conditions under which I wanted to visit it, but so it goes. The writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., always quotes his brother's philosophy of life: "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." And this is one of those times.
Expect sporadic updates for the next week, but I'll try to write from Bangkok with a taste or two of urban Thai life.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
___________ ONLY HAPPENS IN ___________
There's a series of commercials that have been airing on CNN International here in Cambodia that feature a number of tourists sampling the sights and sounds that are unique to Madrid, Spain. The food, the people, the vibe, the jibe -- all of it is captured quite well in thirty second clumps of tourist propoganda, and each commercial ends with the vistor enraptured by the city, mourning their exit, wistfully exclaiming: "Madrid only happens in Madrid."
I like that catchphrase. It makes sense. It has heart. It makes me want to quit my job and pack my bags and hightail it on out to Spain to find out what the hell is so unique about Madrid. And it got me thinking: does every city have its own, individual essence that cannot be replicated anyplace else? Fuck that -- does every person have his or her own unique domain?
We're all taught that as kids, right? No two snowflakes are alike, there's nobody else like us in the world, torturing small animals is perfectly reasonable behavior, as long as fire isn't involved. (What, you weren't taught that last part? I can't be the only one.) The thing of it is, som much of life is redunant. The asshole who cuts in front of me is not the same asshole who cut in front of you, no, but they are distant cousins, metaphorically speaking. If you've seen one small town in Ontario, I guess you haven't seen them all -- but after driving through dozens of them, it sure as shit seems that way. Identical modes of being and living are just that -- identical. The details may change, but I'm not sure that every person and every place has a secret heart and sympathetic soul; carbon copies exist. As you grow, you learn that. Sad, but true.
And yet.
'Phnom Penh only happens in Phnom Penh'. The legless female dwarf in the wheelchair. The smell of dust and dirt and shit and exhaust. The morning sun, arrogant and blazing. The row of motodops sleeping in their carts, cloaked by the night. The fast-driving Mercedes, with their fast-driving owners. The smiles of naked children picking through trash. The anger and fear lying just below the surface of the most gentle faces.
Yes. I suppose 'Phnom Penh' only happens in Phnom Penh'. And if this is true, which I believe, than who am I to say such is not the case for all places, every place, all people, every people? The maddening aftereffects of aging, I suppose. We live through the years, and the years live through us. I have been there and I have seen that, we think. Not realizing that a tiny piece of ourselves is being chipped away. Not understanding, even remotely, that we are cutting ourselves off from a kindred soul that could emerge from a flower in the pavement or the hand of a stranger. We look into others' eyes thinking that we've seen them before. What a fallacy! How routine us humans can sometimes be! To think what that particular person has seen and done! And a new town. To imagine what secrets and hearbreaks it contains! Were we to have such concealments exposed in all their human sordidness, surely our hearts and our minds would crumble with the weight of such emotion.
It's a battle, I suppose. A battle against our own boring, mechanized nature. The urge, the temptation, remains, one that still enclouds me (as you can tell by the beginning of the post.) Nothing new under the sun, we think.
Bah! True or not, we must fight such temptations. As long as we are beginning a new day, as long as we can encounter a person or a place that we have not encountered before, there is always the possibility, always the tantalizing prospect, that newness could result.
(Even when some of those small Ontario towns do feel a little bit drab after awhile. I mean, have you been to Barry's Bay?)
I like that catchphrase. It makes sense. It has heart. It makes me want to quit my job and pack my bags and hightail it on out to Spain to find out what the hell is so unique about Madrid. And it got me thinking: does every city have its own, individual essence that cannot be replicated anyplace else? Fuck that -- does every person have his or her own unique domain?
We're all taught that as kids, right? No two snowflakes are alike, there's nobody else like us in the world, torturing small animals is perfectly reasonable behavior, as long as fire isn't involved. (What, you weren't taught that last part? I can't be the only one.) The thing of it is, som much of life is redunant. The asshole who cuts in front of me is not the same asshole who cut in front of you, no, but they are distant cousins, metaphorically speaking. If you've seen one small town in Ontario, I guess you haven't seen them all -- but after driving through dozens of them, it sure as shit seems that way. Identical modes of being and living are just that -- identical. The details may change, but I'm not sure that every person and every place has a secret heart and sympathetic soul; carbon copies exist. As you grow, you learn that. Sad, but true.
And yet.
'Phnom Penh only happens in Phnom Penh'. The legless female dwarf in the wheelchair. The smell of dust and dirt and shit and exhaust. The morning sun, arrogant and blazing. The row of motodops sleeping in their carts, cloaked by the night. The fast-driving Mercedes, with their fast-driving owners. The smiles of naked children picking through trash. The anger and fear lying just below the surface of the most gentle faces.
Yes. I suppose 'Phnom Penh' only happens in Phnom Penh'. And if this is true, which I believe, than who am I to say such is not the case for all places, every place, all people, every people? The maddening aftereffects of aging, I suppose. We live through the years, and the years live through us. I have been there and I have seen that, we think. Not realizing that a tiny piece of ourselves is being chipped away. Not understanding, even remotely, that we are cutting ourselves off from a kindred soul that could emerge from a flower in the pavement or the hand of a stranger. We look into others' eyes thinking that we've seen them before. What a fallacy! How routine us humans can sometimes be! To think what that particular person has seen and done! And a new town. To imagine what secrets and hearbreaks it contains! Were we to have such concealments exposed in all their human sordidness, surely our hearts and our minds would crumble with the weight of such emotion.
It's a battle, I suppose. A battle against our own boring, mechanized nature. The urge, the temptation, remains, one that still enclouds me (as you can tell by the beginning of the post.) Nothing new under the sun, we think.
Bah! True or not, we must fight such temptations. As long as we are beginning a new day, as long as we can encounter a person or a place that we have not encountered before, there is always the possibility, always the tantalizing prospect, that newness could result.
(Even when some of those small Ontario towns do feel a little bit drab after awhile. I mean, have you been to Barry's Bay?)
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