BLIND BEGGARS, FRED SAVAGE, LIK-M-AID, AND THE OPPOSITE OF CHILDHOOD WONDER (WHATEVER YOU'D CALL IT)

Nature knows what it is doing, prescribing amnesia for early childhood.

-- Doris Lessing,
Under My Skin


There are children in Cambodia who make a living for themselves and their family by wandering the streets and leading their blind parents around by the hand, as the father or mother sightlessly pounds on a drum or blows on a flute, hoping that a kind stranger will toss out some cash for the sake of a sickened clan.

(The really weird thing is, just as I was typing the above sentence, two children and their blind father, banging a drum, came to the door of the Internet cafe, chanting, asking for money. Is that some kind of a sign? Are the BlogGods screwing with me or what?)

When I was seven, eight, nine years old, I was going to school, reading comic books, watching movies, playing hockey once a week...and that was it. Almost literally. I didn't think about money, unless it was to ask for a raise in my allowance. I didn't have to think about money, let alone making money.

We romanticize childhood -- childhood in general, and our own in particular. (Some of us do, anyways. ) We think of endless summer days, glasses of lemonade, sleepovers, the excitement of the first day of school -- all of that stuff.

I think it's because adulthood is not that thrilling or exciting or anything what we expect it to be; we revert to the times when life was simpler to get our nostalgic rocks off.

(Oh, but is that the truth, that childhood was simpler, that childhood is this eternal Mayberry accessed only through the mind, because I don't think it is, not at all, if only because we tend to downplay all of those nightsweat moments of childhood, those dark and altogether dense moments around three a.m. when time folds in on itself, the tree is scratching and clawing at the window, the proverbial tree of doom, the one that is designed for you and you alone, the one that is not only symbolic of a deeper sense of dread but is that sense of dread, alive and tactile, a physical embodiment of all that Mommy and Daddy forgot to tell you about, the essence of 'Granny-is-up-in-heaven' which is not a comforting thought but a flat-out monstrous thought, because what that means is that Granny is not here, not now, but that tree most certainly is, along with its devil-twin, that sharp and shrieking wind...)

Days of ice creams on August afternoons, is how we like to look at childhood. Days of chocolate popsicles and dark-blue freezies and Fun-Dip/Lik-M-Aid dabbed straight from the packet, and didn't you just hate it when the Fun-Dip stick broke in half, and you were forced to use your pinkie finger to poke at those sweetened, coloured grams of sugar, or were you one of those other kids, the ones who wore that orange or red or purple shade on your finger as proudly and triumphantly as those Iraqis who went out to vote just last month, terrorists be damned?

Those are the things we like to remember; those are the things we highlight, like yellow ink on a textbook page.

But walking around with your blind parent playing your flute as you beg for change from indifferent Khmers and slightly scared, slightly sympathetic foreigners?

Can't quite wrap my head around that.

Missed that particular Wonder Years episode.

Not something Fred Savage had to go through, I don't think.

Let's put it this way: When you come over and see the wretchedness of so many kids' lives, when you've seen little girls shitting in the curbside sewers at three a.m., any sense of 'the wonder and magic of childhood' has to be put in its proper place.

I do believe in it, that wonder and magic, because these kids, somehow, poor as they are, still have it.

But it has its own darker, nastier cousins, this magic does. I don't know what the opposite of 'childhood wonder' would be, but it's here in Cambodia, and it's potent, and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.

FRACTIONS ON UNIVERSAL BLACKBOARDS

There are times when I think that the boundaries between ourselves and others, countries and other countries, roads and fields, the past and the present, life and death, are completely arbitrary, and I can't articulate why or how I feel this way, except to say that I get feelings like this when I'm in a car at night, watching the moon follow me, keeping pace with the car's steady glide, and I wonder how this is possible, this relentless, steady, stalker-like moon, how something so far away up there can nevertheless find it in its heart to concern itself with one mere mortal's travel plans down here, and this link, this bond between the moon-seen-through-the-backseat-window-that-I-can-cup-in-the-palm-of-my-hand and the real moon, hanging suspended in space, lonely and gray, not to mention their mutual connection to my own life and times, makes me believe that nothing is lost, that everything that needs to be found has been found, that we are all one, just subdivided, like faded, chalk-white fractions still visble on the blackboards of the universe.

LIFE AS A MOVIE

My life is a movie, and others are watching it for their own enjoyment.

This is a common fantasy I had as a kid, and I've heard others voice the same thing -- that there were times, when young, when they suspected that the life they were living was not what it appeared to be on the surface, that it was actually part of a larger cinematic enterprise that was being played out for unseen, possibly uncaring, spectators.

For example: I'd watch a movie and think: These people don't know they're in a movie, so why can't it be the same for me? Maybe I'm in the movie, and right now people are eating popcorn and drinking Coke and getting up to pee and making out and checking their watches because they find the story of my life boring.

Maybe that's the case. Maybe we're all trapped behind an unseen silver screen. Maybe the air that we breathe is Cineplex Odeon's.

So it all makes sense -- our personal problems and failures, our ridiculous trials and tribulations, not to mention tsunamis and earthquakes and other natural disasters, like Chernobyl, or Anna Nicole Smith. We're all part of an out-of-control disaster flick, that's all.

Comforting, really.

I'm wondering how it ends, and whether a sequel is possible...

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF NORM 'SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE' MACDONALD

I was in my peak physical condition when I was about, like, uh...one. Oh God, I looked good, young and fresh! You wouldn't know me now if you'd seen when I was one, you know? I even looked good for my age. People would come up to me and go, "What are you, zero?" And I'd go, "no, I'm one over here!"

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INTERVIEWER: You're Canadian. What do you think is the biggest difference between you guys and Americans?

NORM MACDONALD: I guess Canadians are without opinions. Normally, Americans always have these opinions, and I always find that funny because I don't have any. Like, you can tell me two sides of an issue, and I'll just think they're both right. I don't know how people come up with opinions.

MY KRIS KRINGLE

Watching The Polar Express yesterday on DVD, I was reminded of how much I love Santa Claus. The very idea of him, the image of him, the execution of the concept -- wonderful. Love the guy. (Loved that movie, too -- very dark and strange and magical and a little creepy and the type of movie I would have flipped for at age ten.) I'm still not entirely convinced that Santa is actually, certifiably, provably fake; I still think that somewhere between Norway and Finland his hideout waits for my detection. Who's to say that he isn't real, anyways?

When I was in Grade 6 we had to write a Christmas story for class, and I wrote this morbid little tale concerning a certain elf of Santa's who was pissed off at how hard he worked without receiving any credit whatsoever, so he shot down a couple of other elves and kidnapped Santa; I even providedillustrations for my readers' enjoyment, complete with jet-black uzis and maroon-red blood. My teacher wasn't pleased.

Not the usual Santa story, no, and not one I'd write now, but I still would like to write the ultimate, kickass Santa Claus story.

I'm serious.

Richard Christian Matheson, son of the great genre writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, Duel) had a neat little story in his short story collection Scars about a burnt-out, middle-age executive type who bumps into Santa himself at Club Med one July. Very touching and funny.

Personally, I'd like to write a novel about a burnt-out Santa himself. He would be fifty-five, sixty, as he eternally is. Hanging out in bars. Drinking too much. (If I turned it into a screenplay, I could see Gene Hackman playing my version of Santa.)

The thing is, I would like to write it totally straight and serious, as if this dude really existed. He would be full of guilt and self-loathing; here he is, living for generation after generation, and everybody's stopped believing in him. He's been co-opted by the media and the advertisers. Department stores cheapen what he represents, cloning him for the masses. He resents the fact that he's never been able to bring gifts to the Jews and the Hindus and the muslims. He mourns the disintegration of his North Pole empire. He's the ultimate overacheiver who's flatlined. Lost his mojo.

I'd go into his whole backstory -- how he became Santa, why he stayed Santa, why Mrs.Claus left him, the whole deal.

We all have our own crazy ideas, and mine is to write a novel about Santa.

Don't mock me. It will just give me the ammunition needed to write the ultimate realistic story of Santa's downfall and redemption, a Santa Claus for the new millenium for those who don't believe in him anymore.

I just might do it.

BIN LADEN, TONY DANZA, GEORGE SOROS, AND THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

An article I read the other day raised an interesting point, namely that Osama Bin Laden, attempting to destroy (or at least seriously disrupt) western democratic systems, unintentionally set in motion a chain of events that had actually led to the opposite of his original goal -- thus, the Law of Unintentional Consequences once again comes into play.

In other words, Bin Laden and his deluded cronies seek to get payback against America for what they perceive as meddling in Middle East affairs. So what happens? America decides to meddle even MORE in Middle Eastern affairs, resulting in a wave of democratic movements stretching from Afghanistan to Iraq and Lebanon.

Not quite what Bin Laden had in mind.

I'd never thought of his before, at least in connection to 9/11. Puts a new slant on how to view global-international relations.

Bush certainly wasn't originally elected by proclaiming his desire to spread democracy; quite the opposite. And yet, because of one madman's malevolence (alliteration alert!), he's doing his best to spread the gospel according to Dubya.

We plan to do something to achieve A, and, instead of A, we get B, which turns out to be better than A, which makes us glad that we didn't actually get what we wanted.

You order the wrong drink by accident and get a tastier one than what you had wanted.

You mean to tape Fear Factor: The U.S.Senate, but end up taping The Tony Danza Show instead, and find yourself enjoying it anyway. (Though you would never admit it. And when did he get his own show, anyway? The weird thing about living abroad is you go home once a year and discover all these people who are famous to everyone but you, and the people you do know are popping up where you least expect them.) It makes me think of something George Soros, the billionaire/philanthropist often talks about. (I mean, it's not The Tony Danza Show that makes me think of George Soros, but the Law of Unintentional Consequences. Although, who knows, maybe George Soros watches Tony Danza every afternoon. It's possible. Stranger things have happened. The fact that Tony Danza has a talk show is one of them. )

Soros states that one of the prerequisites of a free and open society is not only the ability and responsibility to make our own decisions, but also the ability to recognize that what we decide could, in fact, be wrong. A notion of our own fallibility is necessary to maintaining a democratic order, or else we simply live day to day by our own unbudgeable convictions. (Is that a word, 'unbudgeable'? As in, 'won't move'? I don't think it is, but I'm feeling very vulnerable and inadequate right now because I watched this documentary called Spellbound last night, about the U.S. National Spelling Bee, and I saw all these twelve year old kids spell all these words that I've never even heard of, let alone be able to spell, and it reminded me of how I participated in a spelling bee in Grade 7, and I was doing all right, working my magic spelling mojo pretty suavely, until I got the word 'restaurant', which I started to spell r-e-s-t-e-r only to hear Kendra Thorne in the audience clap in glee because she knew I made a mistake, and her team was the other team, not mine, and the memory still digs deep, so now I'm continuously trying to expand my bloggatic vocabulary, but I don't think it's working.) Recognizing that we have the power to make our own choices, and that those choices may not always be the correct ones, is essential to an understanding of our own democratic limits and possibilities.

The Law of Unintented Consequences allows an escape clause to any worry you might have about accepting that responsibility, because who knows? Your screw-up could actually lead to better results than your successful follow-through.

So, don't fret about your decisions. Decide, see what happens, go from there. It may not be what you planned, but you could end up with green lights all the way down the road.

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The weird thing about writing is that it forces you to constantly monitor your thoughts, translate them into words, and then figure out what they mean. (To you, and to others.)

Going through our daily lives, our thoughts come and go, drifting through our minds with a random, relentless rapidness (alliteration alert!) that would be almost comic if so many of them weren't so strange and unclassifiable; we usually don't stop and take stock of them. (Unless you're seriously into Buddhism, of course, where you can sit and chill in the lotus position, keeping mental score of what you think about all day long. Could be scary.)

We think something, then something else, then something else. That's what life is -- a succession of thoughts we try to grasp hold of, then clarify. I can be sitting here typing a post about writing, and suddenly I'm thinking about one of the teachers at my elementary school, Miss Watson, large and kind, calmly sitting in the centre of a circle while a group of kids shrieked their way through 'Kumbaya'. I wasn't planning on writing about her; wasn't thinking about her at all. But there it was, that blast from the past, and what does that mean? What neurons or photons or protons or whatever-they're-called are firing their synapses off in my brain? And what compels us to put them down in concrete form?

I think writing is like speech, which means it's freakin' bizarre, is what I'm saying. What goes on in her heads is somehow transferred to our fingers (tapping keys) and our lips (forming shapes). Out comes something approaching, hopefully, wisdom or insight or, most of the time, if we're lucky, comprehension.

And how much of these thoughts bopping around in our heads do we control? It's interesting, because I think, to a certain degree, we can control our emotions. (I just remembered that Jenn at www.1ljenn.blogspot.com had a similar post about controlling your emotions awhile back, I think, so maybe I'm unconsciously-and-now-consciously stealing her idea. Not a good thing to do from a future lawyer, I know, but...) If we are sad, we can pop a Jim Carrey movie into the DVD player. (If you think he's funny, of course.) If you're angry, you can try and think warm, soothing thoughts. If you're happy, you can think of even happier thoughts and continue in your state of bliss.

In other words, you can will your emotions; I do believe that. You can choose which emotions to have, at which time. (By no means is this easy, or always possible, but I think when we feel ourselves in a funk, we tend to dwell in that funk, make it our home, hang a mental sign on the door that says 'do not disturb'; when we are happy, we do what we can to stay happy.)

But thoughts?

Thoughts are formed by the colour of the sky and the song on the radio and the latch on the door that won't stay latched and the slow and steady trickle of snot that is sneaking its way down your nephew's face against his will and the sound of popcorn popping and the fact that your foot on the brake thankfully, one could say miraculously, pushed down just in time, right on time, avoiding the slightly annoying autistic kid crossing the road who would, otherwise, have been toast, buttered and jammed, and the myriad and multiple other things that control and contain and liberate us on a yearly, monthly, weekly, hourly, second-by second basis. (Not that that autistic kid was annoying because he was autistic, of course, but because of the fact that his mother always dresses him in a bright green coat that makes him look not like Green Lantern, which would be cool, but Kermit the Frog, which is decidedly uncool. And did you know that Sylvester Stallone has an autistic son? Close to my age, actually. And do you see how stupid and cracked my thoughts can get?!? Somebody stop me...)

All we can do is see what comes up and out of our heads, try to figure out what to do with them, and then see how they affect the (so-called) real world around us.

And hope they don't do any damage.