On a hot day like today, when Cambodia's rainy season still seems like a distant mirage that may (or may not) shimmer into existence at some future but as of yet maddeningly undetermined point in time, the simple pleasures of a cold 7-UP drunk straight from the can should not and cannot be minimized.
Which begs the question, at least from me: Is it better to be too hot or too cold?
(Not quite as dramatic as Chazz Palminteri quoting from Machiavelli's classic text of deception and morality The Prince in A Bronx Tale, true, as Palminteri answers that eternal question "Is it better to be loved, or feared?", but it's still a question that needs to be considered, all things considered.)
In other words, would you rather freeze your butt off or have it burnt off by the broiling sun?
Having lived in climates cold (Canada) and hot (Cambodia), I think my vote would lean towards, well, wait a minute. Take a seat. Hold the phone, Chuck. (That's a line that Michael Keaton says in his debut feature Night Shift, starring Henry Winkler and directed by Ron Howard, and that movie proved a few things, namely a)Howard has a comedic touch as a director, b) that Henry Winkler could play more than just the Fonz, and c) that Michael Keaton is a supreme, massively underrated talent who can deliver lines like the above with a kind of majestic simplicity that allows them to be quoted twenty years later by people like me whenever possible, in blogs and in life.) I was about to answer cold, to say that it's better to be cold, in the snow, on the ice, picking your ass off the driveway you slipped on, but I paused, I hesitated, I reconsidered. I tend to do that.
It's a matter of sweat, really.
You don't sweat in the winter. (Unless you run in the winter, true, because you are layered in undershirts and t-shirts and sweatshirts and toques, toques being a Canadian word that means 'felt hat', and yes I said 'a Canadian word', which is a really, really wrong thing to say, because I personally hate it, hate it when I hear somebody say "Speak American", because there is no such language as 'American', and to say otherwise is smug and ignorant and condescending, and yet I've just gone and done the same thing, more or less, which proves I have to be more tolerant, more forgiving, more altogether aware of the various and unintentional human foibles that make us, well, human.)
It's true. Sweat is rare from December to April.
The opposite is true in summer, or in Cambodia. I try to go for a run early in the morning, when the sun is absent, when the dark is total, but I still sweat, a lot, constantly. (I'm sure you're happy to hear that and read that. Reading about my sweat may not be the highlight of your day, and I apologize. Unless you're Jacoba, for which it very may well be, and for that I apologize, too. You do need to get out more, kid...)
The thing is, you don't need to move to sweat here. You just have to, like, be. And I'm not talking 'be' in any kind of philosophical sense, or Buddhist sense, or even Fonzie-in-his-coolest-sense, because he really was 'the man', one who could 'be' like no other, and there was even an episode where Chachi, the Fonz's nephew, somehow acquired Fonzie's mysterious powers, his ability to attract women at the snap of his fingers, his ability to simply ooze the essence of cool and all that it represents. Fonzie at his coolest was beyond cool, but even he would sweat in this place.
So choosing hot over cold or cold over hot depends, in no small part, on your own comfort with your own sweat.
The thing is, we forget. When we're hot, we long for the cold; when we're freezing our balls off (so to speak), we miss the heat and forget the heat and wonder if such a heat truly, actually, exists, or whether it's simply a memory of a memory of a dream, like the Ropers from Three's Company having their own sitcom -- did it really happen? (I'm here to report that it did happen, they had a show, and it blew.)
So, I can't give an answer. But I'm expecting you to think about it. I'm hoping that you at least consider it. Because it seems to represent something larger, this longing for hot or cold, either/or, ying or yang, that-which-I-do-not-have-but-so-desperately-seek; it hints at where we feel at home, where we feel comfortable, where we feel complete and ourselves. The answer could be important.
Or it could, in my case, just be an excuse to reach for another 7-UP, but hey, in this heat, I take what I can get.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
DISPLACEMENT
Displacement.
In my travels abroad, I first felt it in on the plane from Osaka to Tokyo. Because everybody was Japanese. Everybody. Not only that, the entertainment provided for our viewing pleasure was sumo. I'd never seen sumo before, in person or on TV. And here it was.
Displacement.
It's what I've felt for almost six years now, if not on a daily basis, surely on a weekly one. It's not an altogether nasty feeling; truth be told, I've grown so accustomed to it, so expectant of its insights, that to be denied its jarring nudge would be almost, well, cruel.
Displacement.
The nature of streets -- in Japan, narrow and winding; in Cambodia, dusty and bumpy. The look of people, their shapes and sizes. The smell of the breeze. The varying configuration of buildings large and small. The colour of the sun at night, as it slinks into dusk. The emotional transactions that conversations require.
Displacement.
I apologize for belaboring the point, but I don't think I can underestimate what a powerful, almost liberating force such a condition engenders. Growing up in one place, the same place, you think, as you must: This is the world. This is the way the world works. This is the way that life has chosen to reveal itself.
And then, suddenly, as suddenly as an airplane touching ground, as fast and as jarring, you begin to learn. You realize that everything you know, everything you've been taught, all the ideas about human existence that have been formed and passed down to you are, at best, inadequate. I won't say wrong, or misguided, or intentionally lacking; these terms imply a kind of intent that society does not plan. People are people, and humans are humans, and they raise their children the way that they were raised. This is not a flaw but a necessity.
But it's inadequate. Because even though we are becoming more and more connected, and more and more multi-cultural, the fruits of these alliances are illusory (at best). We can eat ethnic food and marvel over National Geographic's vivid depictions of those who are different than ourselves -- but it's not enough.
Not enough for what? What do I expect?
I cannot speak for you; I'm not sure that I can even speak for myself. Knowledge is hard to attain, and difficult to process, let alone articulate.
I find it somewhat ironic that on the same day Terri Schiavo passes away from starvation, the Pope is revealed to be being kept alive by means of a feeding tube. That is a literary image and coincidence that any self-respecting editor would dismiss as being too on-the-point, obvious and over-the-top.
I don't know what these two people, the citizen and the saint, will ulitmately come to represent, but both cases point, with a laser-like intensity, at the sanctity of life, and what we will do, and not do, to preserve it. And our opinions on this issue, on life itself, are nurtured in the towns and provinces and countries and societies that sustain us. All of which lead to conviction, and certainty, and obstinancy.
"I am right," we think. "What I believe is the truth, the path, the way that things should be."
And whether you are a shah in Iran or a dictator in Cambodia or a preacher in Milwaukee or a teacher in Moosejaw, the end result of this line of thinking is the same: inertia.
Life itself has a three-dimensionality that I had never considered before leaving Canada. I was subsequently allowed access, access to views on life that are separate and isolated from those that shaped me.
I was offered, and accepted, displacement.
And, hopefully, this same process will eventually enable me to fit myself back into the puzzle of my own culture with a rudimentary but piercing understanding, however partial, of how complex and mystifying the human condition truly is. How devoid of easy answers and lock-step conclusions, and how better off we all for that ambiguous confusion.
In my travels abroad, I first felt it in on the plane from Osaka to Tokyo. Because everybody was Japanese. Everybody. Not only that, the entertainment provided for our viewing pleasure was sumo. I'd never seen sumo before, in person or on TV. And here it was.
Displacement.
It's what I've felt for almost six years now, if not on a daily basis, surely on a weekly one. It's not an altogether nasty feeling; truth be told, I've grown so accustomed to it, so expectant of its insights, that to be denied its jarring nudge would be almost, well, cruel.
Displacement.
The nature of streets -- in Japan, narrow and winding; in Cambodia, dusty and bumpy. The look of people, their shapes and sizes. The smell of the breeze. The varying configuration of buildings large and small. The colour of the sun at night, as it slinks into dusk. The emotional transactions that conversations require.
Displacement.
I apologize for belaboring the point, but I don't think I can underestimate what a powerful, almost liberating force such a condition engenders. Growing up in one place, the same place, you think, as you must: This is the world. This is the way the world works. This is the way that life has chosen to reveal itself.
And then, suddenly, as suddenly as an airplane touching ground, as fast and as jarring, you begin to learn. You realize that everything you know, everything you've been taught, all the ideas about human existence that have been formed and passed down to you are, at best, inadequate. I won't say wrong, or misguided, or intentionally lacking; these terms imply a kind of intent that society does not plan. People are people, and humans are humans, and they raise their children the way that they were raised. This is not a flaw but a necessity.
But it's inadequate. Because even though we are becoming more and more connected, and more and more multi-cultural, the fruits of these alliances are illusory (at best). We can eat ethnic food and marvel over National Geographic's vivid depictions of those who are different than ourselves -- but it's not enough.
Not enough for what? What do I expect?
I cannot speak for you; I'm not sure that I can even speak for myself. Knowledge is hard to attain, and difficult to process, let alone articulate.
I find it somewhat ironic that on the same day Terri Schiavo passes away from starvation, the Pope is revealed to be being kept alive by means of a feeding tube. That is a literary image and coincidence that any self-respecting editor would dismiss as being too on-the-point, obvious and over-the-top.
I don't know what these two people, the citizen and the saint, will ulitmately come to represent, but both cases point, with a laser-like intensity, at the sanctity of life, and what we will do, and not do, to preserve it. And our opinions on this issue, on life itself, are nurtured in the towns and provinces and countries and societies that sustain us. All of which lead to conviction, and certainty, and obstinancy.
"I am right," we think. "What I believe is the truth, the path, the way that things should be."
And whether you are a shah in Iran or a dictator in Cambodia or a preacher in Milwaukee or a teacher in Moosejaw, the end result of this line of thinking is the same: inertia.
Life itself has a three-dimensionality that I had never considered before leaving Canada. I was subsequently allowed access, access to views on life that are separate and isolated from those that shaped me.
I was offered, and accepted, displacement.
And, hopefully, this same process will eventually enable me to fit myself back into the puzzle of my own culture with a rudimentary but piercing understanding, however partial, of how complex and mystifying the human condition truly is. How devoid of easy answers and lock-step conclusions, and how better off we all for that ambiguous confusion.
REALLY RANDOM STUFF: IT'S PAT, A COMEDIC INTERLUDE, AND WHY GARY COLEMAN IS A LESSON FOR US ALL
I'm trying really, really hard to keep this blog focused on international and social issues that speak to us all as humans first and nationalities second, and with that in mind I feel it's my duty to point out that Wheel of Fortune's Pat Sajak, a global treasure, has his own blog at www.patsajak.com, where he writes about baseball and his thoughts on being a Republican in Democrat-centred Hollywood and other interesting, essential issues central to our perserverance as a species, and if you're wondering how I came across this information, it's so that you wouldn't have to. Not everyone can handle that much Pat; I can. Enter at your own discretion, and don't blame me for the consequences.
*************************************************************************************
"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."
-- Mitch Hedberg
*************************************************************************************
I was just thinking: At one point, Gary Coleman was the man. He was the dude. You can't get any bigger than Diff'rent Strokes. You can't. He had his ass kissed on a daily basis. People cut his hair for free, brought him sandwiches, secretly rooted for him because their jobs depended on how funny he was.
And then one day the show was cancelled, and he becomes a joke. I know, because I've made jokes about him, and Emmanuel Lewis, too. That's not right. (And for my birthday one year a few years back my friends Eric and Greg took me to Yuk Yuk's comedy club in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where the featured comedians were Marc 'Skippy' Price from Family Ties, along with his special guest, Emmanuel 'Webster' Lewis from Webster, and it was so sad, seeing these two young men who had provided so much entertainment for me as a kid, reduced to groping for laughs from an audience who were more urgently concerned with downing some beer and, potentially, copping a few feels from their dates.)
That's what sucks about success -- it never, ever lasts. Ask Milton Berle. George Burns. Chevy Chase. Gerald Ford. The dude who played handyman Schneider on One Day at a Time. Eventually, it goes, leaves, hikes up its thumb and hits the road. That's what I think about when I watch the Oscars, or listen to music, or cruise the net. We are viewing the next generation of has-beens. It's an illusion, all of it, the whole deal. Instead of thinking of 'celebrity' as something that one goes out and actually aspires to and achieves, it's better to think of it as something that one lives through, and emerges from, scalded but alive (hopefully).
And the great thing about living abroad is that you begin to learn that being famous doesn't, mean, shit. You know why? Because noone's famous. Not really.
You think anybody in Japan or Cambodia knows who Oprah Winfrey is? Ray Romano? Yes, sure, Brad Pitt is huge in Japan, and Tom Cruise, but that's about it. They don't know who the hell Johnny Carson was, and they don't care. The only westerners that Cambodians can recognize are George W. Bush and maybe, if they have a satellite dish, Larry King.
All the things that the western media focus on, the Jerry Springers and Dr.Phils and P.Diddy's and Puff Daddy's and 50 Cents and Madonnas and Jack Nicholsons and whomever, it's all transitory; it's all see-through. They're all the Gary Colemans of the future. We just have to wait.
Reality TV has made the everyman a celebrity, which means nobody is a celebrity. Maybe it's better to focus on the people who live next door to us, or across the street, rather than the ones on a supermarket tabloid while we buy out Ben and Jerry's. (Which, incidentally, I don't think I've ever tried, given that that particular ice cream brand isn't available in Canada, I don't think, but I'm reaching for a colourful image. And yes, I spelled 'colourful' with a 'u', because that's how Canadians spell it. I need to hang on to my Canadian heritage and language usage in order to maintain my citizenship. If you don't believe me, just see bylaw 056479-03321-A section three, paragraph two, line four, right under the picture of Pamela Anderson, who, true story, at the time of her birth, was somehow chosen as Canada's Centennial Baby because she was born on July 1, 1967, which was Canada's one hundredth birthday, and nobody knew at the time that she would grow up to be a bona-fide representative of California bimbodom because she was a) a baby, and b) a Canadian, but there you go. And she recently received American citizenship, as did Jim Carrey, as did Michael J.Fox, as did Peter Jennings, and it's not that I'm against them doing it, as they still maintain their Canadian citizenship, but I can't help but feeling a lit bit, as a Canadian, deflated because of it. Which shows you how celebrity has wrecked my world, because I know all of the above facts, when I really should know more about the pythagorean theorem and the Versailles treaty. Don't know shit about either.)
The people on the floor us below might not be as interesting as Rosie O'Donnell or Kirstie Alley, no, but, assuming you stay in the same place, I'm betting you that they, unlike insert-celebrity-name-here will still be around and relevant in twenty, thirty years time.
And they'll probably have something to say.
*************************************************************************************
"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."
-- Mitch Hedberg
*************************************************************************************
I was just thinking: At one point, Gary Coleman was the man. He was the dude. You can't get any bigger than Diff'rent Strokes. You can't. He had his ass kissed on a daily basis. People cut his hair for free, brought him sandwiches, secretly rooted for him because their jobs depended on how funny he was.
And then one day the show was cancelled, and he becomes a joke. I know, because I've made jokes about him, and Emmanuel Lewis, too. That's not right. (And for my birthday one year a few years back my friends Eric and Greg took me to Yuk Yuk's comedy club in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where the featured comedians were Marc 'Skippy' Price from Family Ties, along with his special guest, Emmanuel 'Webster' Lewis from Webster, and it was so sad, seeing these two young men who had provided so much entertainment for me as a kid, reduced to groping for laughs from an audience who were more urgently concerned with downing some beer and, potentially, copping a few feels from their dates.)
That's what sucks about success -- it never, ever lasts. Ask Milton Berle. George Burns. Chevy Chase. Gerald Ford. The dude who played handyman Schneider on One Day at a Time. Eventually, it goes, leaves, hikes up its thumb and hits the road. That's what I think about when I watch the Oscars, or listen to music, or cruise the net. We are viewing the next generation of has-beens. It's an illusion, all of it, the whole deal. Instead of thinking of 'celebrity' as something that one goes out and actually aspires to and achieves, it's better to think of it as something that one lives through, and emerges from, scalded but alive (hopefully).
And the great thing about living abroad is that you begin to learn that being famous doesn't, mean, shit. You know why? Because noone's famous. Not really.
You think anybody in Japan or Cambodia knows who Oprah Winfrey is? Ray Romano? Yes, sure, Brad Pitt is huge in Japan, and Tom Cruise, but that's about it. They don't know who the hell Johnny Carson was, and they don't care. The only westerners that Cambodians can recognize are George W. Bush and maybe, if they have a satellite dish, Larry King.
All the things that the western media focus on, the Jerry Springers and Dr.Phils and P.Diddy's and Puff Daddy's and 50 Cents and Madonnas and Jack Nicholsons and whomever, it's all transitory; it's all see-through. They're all the Gary Colemans of the future. We just have to wait.
Reality TV has made the everyman a celebrity, which means nobody is a celebrity. Maybe it's better to focus on the people who live next door to us, or across the street, rather than the ones on a supermarket tabloid while we buy out Ben and Jerry's. (Which, incidentally, I don't think I've ever tried, given that that particular ice cream brand isn't available in Canada, I don't think, but I'm reaching for a colourful image. And yes, I spelled 'colourful' with a 'u', because that's how Canadians spell it. I need to hang on to my Canadian heritage and language usage in order to maintain my citizenship. If you don't believe me, just see bylaw 056479-03321-A section three, paragraph two, line four, right under the picture of Pamela Anderson, who, true story, at the time of her birth, was somehow chosen as Canada's Centennial Baby because she was born on July 1, 1967, which was Canada's one hundredth birthday, and nobody knew at the time that she would grow up to be a bona-fide representative of California bimbodom because she was a) a baby, and b) a Canadian, but there you go. And she recently received American citizenship, as did Jim Carrey, as did Michael J.Fox, as did Peter Jennings, and it's not that I'm against them doing it, as they still maintain their Canadian citizenship, but I can't help but feeling a lit bit, as a Canadian, deflated because of it. Which shows you how celebrity has wrecked my world, because I know all of the above facts, when I really should know more about the pythagorean theorem and the Versailles treaty. Don't know shit about either.)
The people on the floor us below might not be as interesting as Rosie O'Donnell or Kirstie Alley, no, but, assuming you stay in the same place, I'm betting you that they, unlike insert-celebrity-name-here will still be around and relevant in twenty, thirty years time.
And they'll probably have something to say.
WESLEY SNIPES AND THE POTENTIAL RESCUE OF ALL OUR LOST AND NEGLECTED MOMENTS IN TIME
Yesterday I was scanning the selection at my local DVD shop here in Phnom Penh when I spotted Boiling Point, an early nineties Wesley Snipe/Dennis Hopper police thriller that I saw sometime in high school, forgot had ever existed, only to have it reappear in my life here, now, in Cambodia.
Not that this is rare. There are always movies that you've forgotten you've seen, or aren't sure that you've seen, or are pretty sure that you've seen, but you could be wrong.
I guess I didn't like the movie all that much, as I can only remember a few stray images. I like Wesley Snipes more as an actor than an action star; he was great in Mo' Better Blues and Jungle Fever and The Waterdance and One Night Stand. (Shameless name dropping moment: I actually got Snipes' autograph at the Toronto Film Festival Screening of One Night Stand in the mid-nineties. Snipes was sitting a few rows back from me during the screening at the now sadly defunct Uptown Theatre, and as soon as the lights went up I high-tailed it over to his row and asked for his John Hancock. At that same moment, Roger Ebert said hello to Snipes, asked if he was still living in Chicago, congratulated him on the movie. So Ebert stole my moment with Snipes, is what I'm getting at...)
And yet, seeing that DVD cover last night, of a movie I can scarcely recall, brought about a brief, almost crystalline moment of sadness into being.
Why? Because it reminds me of how much we forget; sometimes I think we forget most of our lives, if not all of them.
I probably saw that movie in Grade 11, 12. (I seem to have vague memories of me watching it in the Pendale Cinemas; I almost always remember which theatre I saw which movie in, a weird quirk of mine.) Me and my friends used to go to the movies every Friday night, usually catching a 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock show. I would have seen the ad for Boiling Point in the newspaper, chatted with my friends, decided to catch it as either the first feature of the night, or the last. I probably went for a run after school. I might have been the one to drive that night, or maybe my friend Eric, or Greg; we usually took turns. We probably went to Mickey Dee's, or grabbed a pizza. It might have been a cold night in February, or a warm spring evening in late April. I probably had to work the next day, stacking books at the downtown library. I might have jotted a few thoughts about the movie somewhere in a journal of mine.
I don't know.
This is all speculation.
That night is lost. I know I saw the movie; I know that, for a few hours at least, my life intersected with the life of the movie. That movie dictated, to a small extent, a night in my life. Just one night, true, but still. The only thing I can recollect from that point in time is this movie, the fact that I saw it.
Everything else from that night is gone.
That's the way it has to be, I guess. We can't hold on to everything, right?
But still. Sometimes I like to think that the memories of that night, the details of that night, are hidden elsewhere, in some neighboring dimension, like stubborn, abandoned children that refuse to believe that they are orphans. Stored away by some unseen God from the indifferent, prying fingers of time and age and distance. Waiting for the perfect chance to discard their celestial camoflauge and reveal themselves in one shining, almost blinding blast of concentrated, enduring nostalgia.
Not that this is rare. There are always movies that you've forgotten you've seen, or aren't sure that you've seen, or are pretty sure that you've seen, but you could be wrong.
I guess I didn't like the movie all that much, as I can only remember a few stray images. I like Wesley Snipes more as an actor than an action star; he was great in Mo' Better Blues and Jungle Fever and The Waterdance and One Night Stand. (Shameless name dropping moment: I actually got Snipes' autograph at the Toronto Film Festival Screening of One Night Stand in the mid-nineties. Snipes was sitting a few rows back from me during the screening at the now sadly defunct Uptown Theatre, and as soon as the lights went up I high-tailed it over to his row and asked for his John Hancock. At that same moment, Roger Ebert said hello to Snipes, asked if he was still living in Chicago, congratulated him on the movie. So Ebert stole my moment with Snipes, is what I'm getting at...)
And yet, seeing that DVD cover last night, of a movie I can scarcely recall, brought about a brief, almost crystalline moment of sadness into being.
Why? Because it reminds me of how much we forget; sometimes I think we forget most of our lives, if not all of them.
I probably saw that movie in Grade 11, 12. (I seem to have vague memories of me watching it in the Pendale Cinemas; I almost always remember which theatre I saw which movie in, a weird quirk of mine.) Me and my friends used to go to the movies every Friday night, usually catching a 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock show. I would have seen the ad for Boiling Point in the newspaper, chatted with my friends, decided to catch it as either the first feature of the night, or the last. I probably went for a run after school. I might have been the one to drive that night, or maybe my friend Eric, or Greg; we usually took turns. We probably went to Mickey Dee's, or grabbed a pizza. It might have been a cold night in February, or a warm spring evening in late April. I probably had to work the next day, stacking books at the downtown library. I might have jotted a few thoughts about the movie somewhere in a journal of mine.
I don't know.
This is all speculation.
That night is lost. I know I saw the movie; I know that, for a few hours at least, my life intersected with the life of the movie. That movie dictated, to a small extent, a night in my life. Just one night, true, but still. The only thing I can recollect from that point in time is this movie, the fact that I saw it.
Everything else from that night is gone.
That's the way it has to be, I guess. We can't hold on to everything, right?
But still. Sometimes I like to think that the memories of that night, the details of that night, are hidden elsewhere, in some neighboring dimension, like stubborn, abandoned children that refuse to believe that they are orphans. Stored away by some unseen God from the indifferent, prying fingers of time and age and distance. Waiting for the perfect chance to discard their celestial camoflauge and reveal themselves in one shining, almost blinding blast of concentrated, enduring nostalgia.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
SOMETHING AKIN TO SURRENDER
This morning on the way in to work, sitting in the company van while somebody else thankfully did the driving, I was reading a book called Deng Xiaping And The Making Of Modern China, and in between pages I glanced out the window, saw a Khmer girl on the back of a moto, watched her lazily scan the van, the passengers, the cars ahead, and I thought: Nobody will ever write a book about her.
Not that it matters, of course. It doesn't. The only reason I thought such a thought was because I was reading a biography, and I read a lot of biographies, and part of the attraction for me is that within the pages of a biography life, with all its messy, nonsensical randomness, is somehow given a strict structure, layout and pattern; it may all be bullshit, may all be part of the arbitrary order imposed, um, arbitrarily by the biographer on his subject, but still -- such a composed, measured narrative gives life itself texture, and meaning, and endurance, so who am I to object?
Still. That girl the one on the back of the bike. Who is she? Where is she going? She will not be part of any grand ideological movements; she will, if she's lucky, get a few years of education, get pregnant, find a husband and a house, settle down. That's that.
(Oh, but of course that is most certainly not that, and you know it, and I know it. She will have fears and heartaches, nights of dirrahea and days of bliss, mornings of confusion and afternoons of Coca-cola sipped through a straw as it quickly grows hot in its pathetic plastic bag. She will work as a waitress, or a cleaner, possibly a clerk, and will experience small but powerful moments of confusion, indecision, something bordering on despair, though she would never classify it as such. She will misunderstand her boss's orders; he will yell at her, repeatedly. She will find a place in the countryside near her parent's home, away from Phnom Penh, from its dusty distractions and snarling web of traffic. She will have a thousand, no, a million moments, small and large, that will, at some point, assemble themselves into something resembling a life. And no one will be there to chart and chronicle her growth, development, decay and death. She will live a life as full and as rich as Lindbergh and Magellan and Jessica Simpson and Deng Xiaoping. The differences between these lives is simply a matter of degrees.)
Placing yourself into the minds of others, trying to see life through their eyes and hearts, is a futile quest; best to leave it to the artists and biographers, the mystics and the lunatics. On the page or the screen, you can speculate, extrapolate, assess. In life, you are faced with flesh, and all that that implies. "I want to see what you see," we say, "know what you know."
But then, were this to happen, we wouldn't be them, we would be us, transfigured.
There is me in the van and her on the bike. A window separates us. I try to understand her as I gaze through the glass, but I can only conceive of my own, slanted image -- a reflection of a reflection. I can do nothing but turn back to my book, my biography of Deng Xiaoping, to a life safely tucked between covers.
I cannot understand that girl on the bike.
(But I will keep trying. To do otherwise is akin to surrender.)
Not that it matters, of course. It doesn't. The only reason I thought such a thought was because I was reading a biography, and I read a lot of biographies, and part of the attraction for me is that within the pages of a biography life, with all its messy, nonsensical randomness, is somehow given a strict structure, layout and pattern; it may all be bullshit, may all be part of the arbitrary order imposed, um, arbitrarily by the biographer on his subject, but still -- such a composed, measured narrative gives life itself texture, and meaning, and endurance, so who am I to object?
Still. That girl the one on the back of the bike. Who is she? Where is she going? She will not be part of any grand ideological movements; she will, if she's lucky, get a few years of education, get pregnant, find a husband and a house, settle down. That's that.
(Oh, but of course that is most certainly not that, and you know it, and I know it. She will have fears and heartaches, nights of dirrahea and days of bliss, mornings of confusion and afternoons of Coca-cola sipped through a straw as it quickly grows hot in its pathetic plastic bag. She will work as a waitress, or a cleaner, possibly a clerk, and will experience small but powerful moments of confusion, indecision, something bordering on despair, though she would never classify it as such. She will misunderstand her boss's orders; he will yell at her, repeatedly. She will find a place in the countryside near her parent's home, away from Phnom Penh, from its dusty distractions and snarling web of traffic. She will have a thousand, no, a million moments, small and large, that will, at some point, assemble themselves into something resembling a life. And no one will be there to chart and chronicle her growth, development, decay and death. She will live a life as full and as rich as Lindbergh and Magellan and Jessica Simpson and Deng Xiaoping. The differences between these lives is simply a matter of degrees.)
Placing yourself into the minds of others, trying to see life through their eyes and hearts, is a futile quest; best to leave it to the artists and biographers, the mystics and the lunatics. On the page or the screen, you can speculate, extrapolate, assess. In life, you are faced with flesh, and all that that implies. "I want to see what you see," we say, "know what you know."
But then, were this to happen, we wouldn't be them, we would be us, transfigured.
There is me in the van and her on the bike. A window separates us. I try to understand her as I gaze through the glass, but I can only conceive of my own, slanted image -- a reflection of a reflection. I can do nothing but turn back to my book, my biography of Deng Xiaoping, to a life safely tucked between covers.
I cannot understand that girl on the bike.
(But I will keep trying. To do otherwise is akin to surrender.)
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
WONDERING IF IT'S ENOUGH, OR EVEN RELEVANT
What am I supposed to do? Whenever I can, whenever I have time, whenever I'm on the back of a moto and I'm heading into Star-Mart, which is right near where I work, I stop, give her the remnants of my lunch, even buy her and her friends or siblings a bottle of water.
Is it my fault she's homeless? (Or, if not homeless, at least desperately, relentlessly poor?)
Is it my fault she looks twelve but is probably sixteen?
Is it my fault that sometimes I stop, and sometimes I don't, and sometimes, from the rapid, slightly blurry vantage of the motobike I can see them playing in front of the store, doing
cartwheels, laughing at each other's stupid jokes, pestering all the other customers and drivers who stop for gas or smokes or chocolates?
Back home, see, I never thought about kids without homes, street kids, starving kids. Didn't enter my consciousness. There was school, and work, and snow, and movies, and popcorn. With lots of butter and salt, the key being to ask the kid at the concession stand to put butter half-way through, so that you can get messy, slippery, butterfinger hands all the way down to the end of the bag. This was the important stuff; these were the things that mattered.
And now I often go for lunch at Chi-Cha's, this super-cheap Indian place down by the river, where, for only two dollars, you can get rice and fried chicken and japatee and all kinds of other stuff. What a deal. (Actually, the owner is Bangladeshi. I know because I asked him. He was the first Bangladeshi man I've ever spoken to. In my life. I'm starting to keep track of stuff like this. In the last few months, I've talked to my first Bangladeshi and Swede and Finn and Pole. You always remember your first.)
Then I get whatever I don't eat to go, and I give the rest to the girl in front of the Star Mart off of Monivong Street. Yay for me, right? What a saint. Mother Teresa is shaking in her grave.
But sometimes I don't stop there, at the convenience store; I head straight to work. And I know that that girl is probably waiting. Probably doing her cartwheels and hiding behind the bush and not noticing, not caring about how utterly ripped and dirty her otherwise pretty dress is.
Three, four years ago this wouldn't have bothered me, the fact that she waits there.
Now it does.
But what bothers me more, what sometimes keeps me awake at night, is the possibility that someday I'll leave this country, go home, and this girl, this poor Cambodian kid whose chances in life are slim steadily approaching none, will slip from my mind. She will be a dream-face who will fade the instant after waking, or, if she lingers, only in time for the first jug of juice. By the time the toast is done, she'll be gone. Or she will be shamelessly relegated to an after-dinner anecdote to illustrate my time in the orient, a potent, vanity-strewn plug at my own rather pitiful knowledge of third-world poverty. I will sip tea and finish my story and see the saddened faces of my listeners and eventually I will say, will have to say: "Well, enough of that. Shall we move to the den for dessert?"
I fear that the process has already begun, this desensitization, this exploitation of others for personal glory. She is out there now, under the sun, and I am here, writing this blog. My hope is that you will be moved for a moment or two; my hope is that you will understand what I am trying to get across.
There is something unseemly about this entire process, though I justify it all by believing that exposure itself is akin to empathy; that empathy, in turn, can lead to a shift in one's actions, one's own behavior. You will read what I write about the poor, and perhaps the next time you see a homeless person, a drunk, you will extend a hand, a coin, a coffee. That would be more than I could ask for, and I wonder if it's enough, or even relevant.
While she, the nameless girl, continues her daily dance around the Cal-Tex gas station, waiting for change, for food, smiling her smile, oblivious to me, her fate, the future.
Is it my fault she's homeless? (Or, if not homeless, at least desperately, relentlessly poor?)
Is it my fault she looks twelve but is probably sixteen?
Is it my fault that sometimes I stop, and sometimes I don't, and sometimes, from the rapid, slightly blurry vantage of the motobike I can see them playing in front of the store, doing
cartwheels, laughing at each other's stupid jokes, pestering all the other customers and drivers who stop for gas or smokes or chocolates?
Back home, see, I never thought about kids without homes, street kids, starving kids. Didn't enter my consciousness. There was school, and work, and snow, and movies, and popcorn. With lots of butter and salt, the key being to ask the kid at the concession stand to put butter half-way through, so that you can get messy, slippery, butterfinger hands all the way down to the end of the bag. This was the important stuff; these were the things that mattered.
And now I often go for lunch at Chi-Cha's, this super-cheap Indian place down by the river, where, for only two dollars, you can get rice and fried chicken and japatee and all kinds of other stuff. What a deal. (Actually, the owner is Bangladeshi. I know because I asked him. He was the first Bangladeshi man I've ever spoken to. In my life. I'm starting to keep track of stuff like this. In the last few months, I've talked to my first Bangladeshi and Swede and Finn and Pole. You always remember your first.)
Then I get whatever I don't eat to go, and I give the rest to the girl in front of the Star Mart off of Monivong Street. Yay for me, right? What a saint. Mother Teresa is shaking in her grave.
But sometimes I don't stop there, at the convenience store; I head straight to work. And I know that that girl is probably waiting. Probably doing her cartwheels and hiding behind the bush and not noticing, not caring about how utterly ripped and dirty her otherwise pretty dress is.
Three, four years ago this wouldn't have bothered me, the fact that she waits there.
Now it does.
But what bothers me more, what sometimes keeps me awake at night, is the possibility that someday I'll leave this country, go home, and this girl, this poor Cambodian kid whose chances in life are slim steadily approaching none, will slip from my mind. She will be a dream-face who will fade the instant after waking, or, if she lingers, only in time for the first jug of juice. By the time the toast is done, she'll be gone. Or she will be shamelessly relegated to an after-dinner anecdote to illustrate my time in the orient, a potent, vanity-strewn plug at my own rather pitiful knowledge of third-world poverty. I will sip tea and finish my story and see the saddened faces of my listeners and eventually I will say, will have to say: "Well, enough of that. Shall we move to the den for dessert?"
I fear that the process has already begun, this desensitization, this exploitation of others for personal glory. She is out there now, under the sun, and I am here, writing this blog. My hope is that you will be moved for a moment or two; my hope is that you will understand what I am trying to get across.
There is something unseemly about this entire process, though I justify it all by believing that exposure itself is akin to empathy; that empathy, in turn, can lead to a shift in one's actions, one's own behavior. You will read what I write about the poor, and perhaps the next time you see a homeless person, a drunk, you will extend a hand, a coin, a coffee. That would be more than I could ask for, and I wonder if it's enough, or even relevant.
While she, the nameless girl, continues her daily dance around the Cal-Tex gas station, waiting for change, for food, smiling her smile, oblivious to me, her fate, the future.
Monday, March 28, 2005
SOMETIMES REALITY IS TOO MUCH
Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, a husband-and-wife serial killer team tore my hometown apart.
Everybody who lives (or lived) in my city, St.Catharines, Ontario, has those two or three years permanently carved into the psychic structural landscape of their brain, and all those wounds will soon be reopened with an American film that dramatizes the case called Deadly (www.deadlythemovie.com).
The basics: A Ken-and-Barbie couple, Paul and Karla, who lived in St.Catharines, kidnapped at least two teenage girls, raped them, killed them. They also killed Karla's sister, when their plan to knock her unconscious, videotape and rape her went horribly wrong and she 'accidently' died. (Paul was also later found to be the 'Scarborough rapist' who terrorized Toronto for a good many years.)
One of the girls who they killed was a St.Catharines girl, Kristen French, who lived about five minutes, by car, from my house. When I was in Grade 8 at Dalewood Junior High, she was in Grade 7; we were in the choir together, though I never knew her then, and only figured this out later. (Oh, those small and slim connections we all found to somehow link us to the deceased.)
I can't write about this too much because it's, well, too much -- my idyllic (t0 me) hometown was ripped to shreds when this happened; a part of it died, and a part of all of us who lived there died too, I think.
That may be putting it harshly. I was in early-to-mid high school when all this went down; I went to school, ran track, watched movies, read books. I wasn't obsessed with this case, no, but it was always there for a good two years or so, blatantly exposed each and every day on the front page of The St.Catharines Standard, hiding more delicately on the faces of friends, teachers, family.
How could this happen? A perfect couple, kidnapping teenage girls in broad daylight, raping them, murdering them? This was the stuff that happened in movies and in Stephen King books; this was the stuff that had no business being in my hometown.
I was naive.
And now it's twelve years on, and the wife, Karla, is getting out of prison this summer, while the husband, Paul, will sit in solitary for life, and a movie will make its way to some theatres across America and Canada.
I won't watch it.
I have no problems with them making it; I think freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and it would be very hypocritical of me, who has enjoyed countless true-crime stories, to cry out against the airing of this one, be it in cinemas or on TV.
But you see, when I was sixteen, my family went on vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and I can remembering watching the Van Halen video Right Now on MTV, and this particular video featured all these cool catchphrases splashed across the screen, and one of them read 'Right now a killer is walking the streets of your hometown', and I thought no, no, not in St.Catharines, sorry, and one of the girls who was on vacation with us at that time was best friends with Kristen French, the girl who would be murdered in a few months, and so, you see, eloquence fails me at a moment like this. I had planned to write more, to delve deeper, to chart how my childhood somehow ended during this time, and how that little inconsequential personal fact pales in comparison to what the victims' families went through, and what they'll go through again with the release of this film, and how it's all bubbling back to the surface again, but I hope you'll forgive me for exiting early from this topic.
Sometimes reality itself is too much.
Everybody who lives (or lived) in my city, St.Catharines, Ontario, has those two or three years permanently carved into the psychic structural landscape of their brain, and all those wounds will soon be reopened with an American film that dramatizes the case called Deadly (www.deadlythemovie.com).
The basics: A Ken-and-Barbie couple, Paul and Karla, who lived in St.Catharines, kidnapped at least two teenage girls, raped them, killed them. They also killed Karla's sister, when their plan to knock her unconscious, videotape and rape her went horribly wrong and she 'accidently' died. (Paul was also later found to be the 'Scarborough rapist' who terrorized Toronto for a good many years.)
One of the girls who they killed was a St.Catharines girl, Kristen French, who lived about five minutes, by car, from my house. When I was in Grade 8 at Dalewood Junior High, she was in Grade 7; we were in the choir together, though I never knew her then, and only figured this out later. (Oh, those small and slim connections we all found to somehow link us to the deceased.)
I can't write about this too much because it's, well, too much -- my idyllic (t0 me) hometown was ripped to shreds when this happened; a part of it died, and a part of all of us who lived there died too, I think.
That may be putting it harshly. I was in early-to-mid high school when all this went down; I went to school, ran track, watched movies, read books. I wasn't obsessed with this case, no, but it was always there for a good two years or so, blatantly exposed each and every day on the front page of The St.Catharines Standard, hiding more delicately on the faces of friends, teachers, family.
How could this happen? A perfect couple, kidnapping teenage girls in broad daylight, raping them, murdering them? This was the stuff that happened in movies and in Stephen King books; this was the stuff that had no business being in my hometown.
I was naive.
And now it's twelve years on, and the wife, Karla, is getting out of prison this summer, while the husband, Paul, will sit in solitary for life, and a movie will make its way to some theatres across America and Canada.
I won't watch it.
I have no problems with them making it; I think freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and it would be very hypocritical of me, who has enjoyed countless true-crime stories, to cry out against the airing of this one, be it in cinemas or on TV.
But you see, when I was sixteen, my family went on vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and I can remembering watching the Van Halen video Right Now on MTV, and this particular video featured all these cool catchphrases splashed across the screen, and one of them read 'Right now a killer is walking the streets of your hometown', and I thought no, no, not in St.Catharines, sorry, and one of the girls who was on vacation with us at that time was best friends with Kristen French, the girl who would be murdered in a few months, and so, you see, eloquence fails me at a moment like this. I had planned to write more, to delve deeper, to chart how my childhood somehow ended during this time, and how that little inconsequential personal fact pales in comparison to what the victims' families went through, and what they'll go through again with the release of this film, and how it's all bubbling back to the surface again, but I hope you'll forgive me for exiting early from this topic.
Sometimes reality itself is too much.
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