It's difficult keeping track of Canadian politics abroad, given that I mostly rely on www.thestar.com or, occasionally, www.borque.org to keep me up to date, but reading recently about the kick-backs, bribery and all around money-going-where-it's-not-supposed-to scandals back home has reinforced how far I've come in the last few years in understanding a little more clearly how the world works. (Notice I said a little more clearly; I still don't really understand what the world does, and why, and towards what purpose, but I know more than I did five, six years ago, and I guess it would be scary if that weren't the case.)
Scandals at the UN involving huge sums of money. Scandals at home in Canada involving Canadian politicians funnelling money to people and corporations that will support their causes. Scandals and uproar between Japan and China, as each side baits the other with nationalistic rhetoric. Just today in the New York Times there was an interesting article analyzing how the Chinese government was carefully orchestrating the latest round of 'spontaneous' protests against Japan. And all of these crooked shenangians inevitably seem to involve money and power and connections among the elite of the elite.
Maybe it's just because I've been living in Cambodia for almost two years. The pages of the Cambodia Daily routinely depict the kickbacks that take place between those who want to move on up in the world. Hell, I've had to do it myself. Upon losing my passport last year I had to give the nice and friendly policeman a little bit of bribe to make the transactions go smoothly. (Yes, I lost my passport. Not recommended, and especially not recommended when you're living in freakin' Cambodia, because the Canadian embassy here doesn't do new passports; only the embassy in Thailand can make new ones, and so I had to wait a month for a new one, and the thing is, it was a new passport I had lost, my old one having reached its four score and ten, or thereabouts, and the moral of the story is: Scott is a knob. A first-class one.)
This is an entire country that is essentially run by greasing the palms of those who have what you want. And I've gradually realized that I was really, really naive about how the world works, and what it takes to move ahead, and how power corrupts, absolutely.
Part of Canadians current outrage has to do with our essential naivety, I think. The government's not supposed to be doing these things, we say. How dare they think they can get away with it!
Sentiments I agree with one hundred percent. But the reality is, well, to a large extent, the world over, this is what governments do, plain and simple. And it's not only limited to governments; one only has to look at the boys of Enron and Martha Stewart to realize that those on top, those in power, do not play by the same rules as everybody else.
I'm not saying the entire social system and governmental, military-industrial complex everywhere in the world is fundamentally corrupt. What I think I'm saying is that there are channels and avenues of illicit interactions that have always been there, are there now, and will continue. You can't stop them; you can only circumvent them. You can put safeguards in check. You can have, like, laws. (Cambodia is pretty much a lawless society; chaos and anarchy results. On the roads, in my school, in the courts. And in my house. But that's, um, another blog...) As Chris Rock so wisely pontificated, "A man is only as faithful as his options."
When your options multiply, fidelity becomes an endangered, cloistered species.
But where does the culpability end? I'm putting the blame on the Martha Stewarts and Paul Martins of the world, but what about me? I had to pay off the police chief to get my passport back; I'm part of the same system I'm so gleefully indicting. I have no excuse, I say; I do what nees to be done, I say. I believe it and it's bullshit and I can't reconcile the two. Where does it end, and where does the blame, should the blame, stop?
Friday, April 15, 2005
Thursday, April 14, 2005
WHO SAYS WE CAN'T HAVE NEON SIGNS FLASHING ON OUR FOREHEADS THAT SIMPLIFY AND ADVERTISE WHO AND WHAT WE ARE?
Having just watched The Upside of Anger, the new Kevin Costner/Joan Allen/dysfunctional family flick that was actually quite good, entertaining and moving and funny, I've come to a couple of conflusions:
1) Actresses today, young and old, have no wrinkles, at all, on any portion of their faces stretching from their forehead to their ears. They all look as if they've never spent a day oftheir lives in any kind of real-world situation that involves stress or precipitation or perspiration. There were four daugthers in this movie, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-four or so, and the mother, Joan Allen, who must be in her mid to late forties, and none of them had anything even remotely resembling real, honest-to-goodness facial expressions that looked authentic. Why? Because they've all botoxed the hell out of the foreheads, I'm guessing, which means that when they get really, really angry, their face contorts into various positions, none of them betraying the hint of a wrinkle. Totally takes me out of the movies these days, wondering how all these women have such perfect faces.
2) I really, really don't like titles that thematically state the message of the movie. The Upside of Anger is a clever title and all, but it's so generic and blatant; it's so direct. It's like that movie from a few years called The Myth of Fingerprints. Titles should have a hint of the specific in them, I believe. (Exceptions abound, of course, none more so than Do The Right Thing, the perfect title for a pretty much perfect movie. But exceptions only exist for the masters.)
I do think it would be cool, however, if each of us could have thematic principles related to our lives flash across our foreheads when it's thematically appropriate in real-life situations. Let's say you get angry -- wham, bam, ' the upside of anger' flashes across your face with a neon intensity. That way it would be easier to figure out what kind of a person somebody is, whether they're a prophet or a prick, a saint or a sinner. You could walk into a bar and come across a Fonzie wannabe with a 'Be Cool' sign beneath his brow, or a major-league whiner bitching and moaning about their lack of a salary could have ' Million Dollar Baby' slapped beneath their chin. The possibilities are endless, the likelihood, well, not likely...
1) Actresses today, young and old, have no wrinkles, at all, on any portion of their faces stretching from their forehead to their ears. They all look as if they've never spent a day oftheir lives in any kind of real-world situation that involves stress or precipitation or perspiration. There were four daugthers in this movie, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-four or so, and the mother, Joan Allen, who must be in her mid to late forties, and none of them had anything even remotely resembling real, honest-to-goodness facial expressions that looked authentic. Why? Because they've all botoxed the hell out of the foreheads, I'm guessing, which means that when they get really, really angry, their face contorts into various positions, none of them betraying the hint of a wrinkle. Totally takes me out of the movies these days, wondering how all these women have such perfect faces.
2) I really, really don't like titles that thematically state the message of the movie. The Upside of Anger is a clever title and all, but it's so generic and blatant; it's so direct. It's like that movie from a few years called The Myth of Fingerprints. Titles should have a hint of the specific in them, I believe. (Exceptions abound, of course, none more so than Do The Right Thing, the perfect title for a pretty much perfect movie. But exceptions only exist for the masters.)
I do think it would be cool, however, if each of us could have thematic principles related to our lives flash across our foreheads when it's thematically appropriate in real-life situations. Let's say you get angry -- wham, bam, ' the upside of anger' flashes across your face with a neon intensity. That way it would be easier to figure out what kind of a person somebody is, whether they're a prophet or a prick, a saint or a sinner. You could walk into a bar and come across a Fonzie wannabe with a 'Be Cool' sign beneath his brow, or a major-league whiner bitching and moaning about their lack of a salary could have ' Million Dollar Baby' slapped beneath their chin. The possibilities are endless, the likelihood, well, not likely...
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
A HUMBLE (?) REQUEST
I'm just a little curious as to how many people are actually reading this blog on a daily (or even bi-monthly) basis, so I'm wondering if I could request each and every one of you who is reading this blog right now, at this moment, to post a comment? It'll just take a second, much shorter than it takes you to read my usual mindless, seemingly endless rants, and all you have to do is click the 'comment' button at the end of this post, and if you want to remain anonymous you don't have to leave your name if you don't want to, you can write 'Here', like you did in grade school when they took attendance, or 'present', or 'not here' (which some joker always said, and it always got a laugh too), and then choose to be anonymous, or leave a pseudonym, like 'Felipe from Three's Company' or 'Erik Estrada from Chips' or 'Vladmir Putin from Moscow' if you want.
I haven't installed one of those people-counting-thingees yet, so I'm just wondering how many people are reading this thing at any given time.
Thanks!
I haven't installed one of those people-counting-thingees yet, so I'm just wondering how many people are reading this thing at any given time.
Thanks!
DARKNESS HAS NO DOMAIN
"There should be a health warning on countries like this. If you want to go somewhere and be unaccountable, this is the ideal place, because there are no rules."
-- Eddie Gibson's father, on Cambodia
Where is Eddie Gibson?
Who is Eddie Gibson?
He's a young British dude, early twenties, who high-tailed it out of England and flew off to Cambodia for fun in the sun -- ditching his university classes in Leeds without telling a soul. Stayed in Cambodia awhile, met up with a Cambodian female 'friend' at the Heart of Darkness bar in Phnom Penh, travelled around the country, eventually told his parents he was coming home on such-and-such a flight, only to leave them waiting at the airport, wondering where the hell he was.
He's been missing for months now, and his father was here recently, trying to make sense of his son's life, wondering where the hell he was, and if he was alive, and if not, well, let's not think about that too much.
Cambodia has that effect on people -- the let's-throw-caution-to-the-wind-and-live-life-to-the-fullest attitude that can quickly turn the bubbly-wine of your spirit to cyanide here. The drugs and the booze and anything else you could possibly imagine (and many things you don't) are cheap, cheap, cheap -- and so, to a certain extent, is human life.
I walk past the New York Hotel everyday after work. I think this is where Eddie was staying the night before he went missing. He was a real, genuine, honest-to-god person, people, who went to the same bars I went to, probably at the same restaurants, rode the same motos on the same streets. And, unless he's just been cruising the country for the last six months on his bike, taking in the blood-red sunsets and crystal-white beaches, he's been swallowed up by this very same place.
Gone.
This is the edge of the earth, of course -- and yet, it isn't, not at all, not ever. We like to believe that danger and suspicion and murder and shadows, dense, triumphant shadows, are the providence of poor and desperate countries like this one.
I used to think so. But, as I've written about before, I was attacked in broad daylight in Japan, the safest country in the world, by a crazy homeless man wielding a two-by-four; a serial killer and his wife preyed upon the streets of my hometown, St.Catharines, which had been my Mayberry (squared).
For me to then come to Cambodia and lionize it as a den of desititution and debauchery, well, that would be misleading. Don't get me wrong -- in many, many respects, this country is a cesspool of the worst that humanity has to offer -- drugs and prositution, human trafficking and pedophilia. It's raw and gaping and visceral here; I'm not denying, could not, deny it.
The thing is, it's open here. It's in your face. It's obvious and clear and, above all, expected.
A homeless nut whacking me in the stomach in Sagamihara, Japan, was not expected; a husband and wife team of murderers in my hometown was not expected.
So, yes, one should use caution here. One should be aware that this is not Mayberry, and Andy Griffith and little Ronnie Howard will not be walking by with their fishing poles anytime soon, whistling their favorite song. Eddie Gibson is missing, and I fear for what could have happened to him; I fear that this beautiful yet indifferent land could have eaten him whole.
But I will keep up hope that he's alive, safe, chilling in some backwater village somewhere up in Battambang province. Cambodia is cruel and heartless, yes, but it is a place on earth, no more, no less, and darkness itself, the darkness within us, has no exclusive, geographic stranglehold on the human heart.
-- Eddie Gibson's father, on Cambodia
Where is Eddie Gibson?
Who is Eddie Gibson?
He's a young British dude, early twenties, who high-tailed it out of England and flew off to Cambodia for fun in the sun -- ditching his university classes in Leeds without telling a soul. Stayed in Cambodia awhile, met up with a Cambodian female 'friend' at the Heart of Darkness bar in Phnom Penh, travelled around the country, eventually told his parents he was coming home on such-and-such a flight, only to leave them waiting at the airport, wondering where the hell he was.
He's been missing for months now, and his father was here recently, trying to make sense of his son's life, wondering where the hell he was, and if he was alive, and if not, well, let's not think about that too much.
Cambodia has that effect on people -- the let's-throw-caution-to-the-wind-and-live-life-to-the-fullest attitude that can quickly turn the bubbly-wine of your spirit to cyanide here. The drugs and the booze and anything else you could possibly imagine (and many things you don't) are cheap, cheap, cheap -- and so, to a certain extent, is human life.
I walk past the New York Hotel everyday after work. I think this is where Eddie was staying the night before he went missing. He was a real, genuine, honest-to-god person, people, who went to the same bars I went to, probably at the same restaurants, rode the same motos on the same streets. And, unless he's just been cruising the country for the last six months on his bike, taking in the blood-red sunsets and crystal-white beaches, he's been swallowed up by this very same place.
Gone.
This is the edge of the earth, of course -- and yet, it isn't, not at all, not ever. We like to believe that danger and suspicion and murder and shadows, dense, triumphant shadows, are the providence of poor and desperate countries like this one.
I used to think so. But, as I've written about before, I was attacked in broad daylight in Japan, the safest country in the world, by a crazy homeless man wielding a two-by-four; a serial killer and his wife preyed upon the streets of my hometown, St.Catharines, which had been my Mayberry (squared).
For me to then come to Cambodia and lionize it as a den of desititution and debauchery, well, that would be misleading. Don't get me wrong -- in many, many respects, this country is a cesspool of the worst that humanity has to offer -- drugs and prositution, human trafficking and pedophilia. It's raw and gaping and visceral here; I'm not denying, could not, deny it.
The thing is, it's open here. It's in your face. It's obvious and clear and, above all, expected.
A homeless nut whacking me in the stomach in Sagamihara, Japan, was not expected; a husband and wife team of murderers in my hometown was not expected.
So, yes, one should use caution here. One should be aware that this is not Mayberry, and Andy Griffith and little Ronnie Howard will not be walking by with their fishing poles anytime soon, whistling their favorite song. Eddie Gibson is missing, and I fear for what could have happened to him; I fear that this beautiful yet indifferent land could have eaten him whole.
But I will keep up hope that he's alive, safe, chilling in some backwater village somewhere up in Battambang province. Cambodia is cruel and heartless, yes, but it is a place on earth, no more, no less, and darkness itself, the darkness within us, has no exclusive, geographic stranglehold on the human heart.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
THAT'S JUST ME -- I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT...
"Responsiveness to the subtle motions of inner feeling is as much an art as sailing, and is entirely untaught in schools. Surely, if our neurologists are the first to admit that they do not understand the brain, isn't it possible that the brain -- and the nervous system as a whole -- is wiser than the conscious intellect? For conscious intellect is only a fragmentary use of the brain, bound to the cumbersome process of linear thinking, which cannot -- without long deliberation-- synthesize more than a few variables. But the brain regulates thousands of bodily processes at a time without having to think about them, and this -- not one's personality -- is the self."
-- Alan Watts
In My Own Way
This is me, and this is what I'm doing, and this is who...I...am.
What a joke!
According to Watts, that is.
Watts is the new-age, Buddhist, access-to-the-Orient dude that popped up in the fifties and sixties and essentially introduced Eastern philosphy to us tight-asses in the west.
I haven't read a lot of his stuff, but I'm making my way through his autobiography, which is a fascinating read. Didn't know that Watts, the quintessential Buddhist in my mind, was actually a Catholic priest (!) for a while, and his thoughts on religion, philosophy, life and our own, individual, essentially-meaningless-and-therefore-extremely-meangingful lives are compelling. His conception of what God is or isn't, could or could be, should or shouldn't be, is animist and Buddhist and Christian, all for the price of one -- God is us, and we are God, and He is none of us, and this Moment is God, and...
You know the deal.
As the old saying goes, if you're into this kind of stuff, then this is the kind of stuff you'd be into.
Watts' rebels against having to pretend to have some kind of authentic, permanent 'self'; his whole conception of ego is fundamentally a Buddhist one: a human construct that we selfishly and recklessly hide behind, a shield by which we try to construct and maintain a vision of ourselves when, in reality, no 'self' exists at all.
The excerpt I posted at the beginning of this, um, post, hints at a physical explanation for the metaphysical paradigm that Watts has built for himself.
We tend to think of our 'personality', as Watts points out, as our 'self'. In other words, the 'you' that watches Desperate Housewives and reads Plato and practices softball and strums the guitar -- that's you, the 'you' that the world will love and embrace or despise and reject. Essentially, 'you' are a laundry-list of your likes and dislikes.
But what about the 'you' that grows your hair, or moves your feet on the treadmill, or types the words on the keyboard, or scans the morning paper as you listen to morning deejays do their laugh and chuckle and let's-check-in-on-the-traffic? The 'you' that is responsible for getting you through the day safely, the 'you' that doesn't trip on the curb that would fling you headlong into traffic? (Is 'headlong' a word? If it is, it shouldn't be, and I apologize for using it.) The 'you' that is a series of motor-skills, neurons-in-the-brain pathways?
Why can't that 'you' be just as authentic and valid as the one who meets-and-greets the guests before dinner, taking off their coats, commiserating with their traffic-was-just-terrible stories?
In other words, once you start down the road of defining who you are and what you are, you start to realize that it's a no-win game. Where do you end? (Or even begin?) We are all the things that we do and the things that we are, physical things, and they're all connected, the thinking parts of us and the parts of us that are flabby and smelly and stale. We're all shifting, evolving, transforming all the time, constantly; we're all slinkies, in other words, crawling down the stairway of life. The slinky that gets to the bottom of the stairs is the same one that started at the top -- it just bended and swayed along the way.
My take on it, anyways.
(But that's just me. I don't know about you.)
-- Alan Watts
In My Own Way
This is me, and this is what I'm doing, and this is who...I...am.
What a joke!
According to Watts, that is.
Watts is the new-age, Buddhist, access-to-the-Orient dude that popped up in the fifties and sixties and essentially introduced Eastern philosphy to us tight-asses in the west.
I haven't read a lot of his stuff, but I'm making my way through his autobiography, which is a fascinating read. Didn't know that Watts, the quintessential Buddhist in my mind, was actually a Catholic priest (!) for a while, and his thoughts on religion, philosophy, life and our own, individual, essentially-meaningless-and-therefore-extremely-meangingful lives are compelling. His conception of what God is or isn't, could or could be, should or shouldn't be, is animist and Buddhist and Christian, all for the price of one -- God is us, and we are God, and He is none of us, and this Moment is God, and...
You know the deal.
As the old saying goes, if you're into this kind of stuff, then this is the kind of stuff you'd be into.
Watts' rebels against having to pretend to have some kind of authentic, permanent 'self'; his whole conception of ego is fundamentally a Buddhist one: a human construct that we selfishly and recklessly hide behind, a shield by which we try to construct and maintain a vision of ourselves when, in reality, no 'self' exists at all.
The excerpt I posted at the beginning of this, um, post, hints at a physical explanation for the metaphysical paradigm that Watts has built for himself.
We tend to think of our 'personality', as Watts points out, as our 'self'. In other words, the 'you' that watches Desperate Housewives and reads Plato and practices softball and strums the guitar -- that's you, the 'you' that the world will love and embrace or despise and reject. Essentially, 'you' are a laundry-list of your likes and dislikes.
But what about the 'you' that grows your hair, or moves your feet on the treadmill, or types the words on the keyboard, or scans the morning paper as you listen to morning deejays do their laugh and chuckle and let's-check-in-on-the-traffic? The 'you' that is responsible for getting you through the day safely, the 'you' that doesn't trip on the curb that would fling you headlong into traffic? (Is 'headlong' a word? If it is, it shouldn't be, and I apologize for using it.) The 'you' that is a series of motor-skills, neurons-in-the-brain pathways?
Why can't that 'you' be just as authentic and valid as the one who meets-and-greets the guests before dinner, taking off their coats, commiserating with their traffic-was-just-terrible stories?
In other words, once you start down the road of defining who you are and what you are, you start to realize that it's a no-win game. Where do you end? (Or even begin?) We are all the things that we do and the things that we are, physical things, and they're all connected, the thinking parts of us and the parts of us that are flabby and smelly and stale. We're all shifting, evolving, transforming all the time, constantly; we're all slinkies, in other words, crawling down the stairway of life. The slinky that gets to the bottom of the stairs is the same one that started at the top -- it just bended and swayed along the way.
My take on it, anyways.
(But that's just me. I don't know about you.)
Monday, April 11, 2005
FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD
I'm not saying that I believe everything the fortune teller told me, or even any of it, but still, when someone takes out the cards and reads you your fate, whether they be mystic or saint or the blackjack dealer in Room 234, you listen, and you listen carefully. (At least I did, anyways.)
Backtrack:
I was on the beach, Hawaii Beach, to be precise, even though this beach is not anywhere near Hawaii but is to be found instead in the lovely and sceanic port of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, named after the former King himself. (And it really is lovely and scenic.) The occasion is a work sponsored getaway, at which free accomodation is provided, a meal and dancing is par for the course, and lazing on the beach under a broiling sun while deceptive waves hint at a tsunami-free future is not mandatory, no, but encouraged.
The fortune teller was a lucky (?) break.
A few of the other staff members were having their fortunes read, so I figured what the hell, life's short, let's give it a go. I'd never had my palms read or my future told, and last year I read a really interesting and enlightening book called A Fortune Teller Told Me by an Italian journalist, Tiziano Ternani (who passed away last year). The book chronicle's Ternani's adventures around Asia as he travels by land and by sea to chat with various fortune tellers of all shapes, colours and sizes, after vowing not to journey by air for an entire year after being warned not to do so by a particularly insistent sage. His conclusion: Most fortune tellers use similar tactics, relate similar stories, but every now and then, when you least expect it, you hear something about yourself that, if not unsettling, is, at the very least, spooky.
Not that I believe in any of this, of course.
She looked like a typical middle aged Cambodian woman -- forty to forty five, long gray hair, a little plump. (Actually, the life expectancy of most Cambodians is around fifty something, but women usually live a little longer than men, just like everywhere, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt.) She sat before a spread-out blanket, on the sand, a pack of regular playing cards in her hands. A Cambodian staff member from our work would act as translator. Everything was set.
Split the deck three times, I was told. I did so. She placed a handful of cards on the blanket, and asked me to pick three.
Thus, it began.
First, she made some general statements -- that I loved my friends very much, that I was a kind man, that I would have good luck from now until October. (My birthday's in October, which worried me a little.) And even though I am kind, I have to be careful, because those around me, those I call my 'friends', are out to deceive me. She stated that I don't rely on others for work, that I find it myself. She also said that I was of mixed nationalities.
Interesting.
Whether I'm a kind man is not up to me to declare, and whether my friends are deceiving me, scheming and plotting and forming conspiracies to silence me, well, I'll soon find out, I guess. The other stuff rings true -- I have relied on myself for work these last few years, purposely staying independent, travelling from country to country. And I am of mixed nationalities, in a sense, since my father's originally from England.
I asked her: "Am I going to die young?" (For some reason, don't ask why, I've always had this feeling. I'm not sure what 'young' is -- thirty-five, forty, but it's a feeling I've had.)
She promptly said no, no, that I will live to be 96 years old. (My great-grandmother died at 96).
The final parlor trick was a reading of my signature. A chaotic, slightly reckless person I am, according to her, after reading my John Hancock.
So there you have it. No burning incense or thundering clouds or black magic; just a deck of cards, and a blanket, and a few, seemingly random observations. I thanked her, headed back to the waves, looked out at the sea.
Nonsense, of course. A bunch of generalities, applicable to anyone at all, really.
Still, there were enough specifics -- somewhat general specifics, to be sure, but applicable to me and my life nevertheless -- that it left me thinking. Left me wondering. What do I do with those words? Do I apply them? Do I discard them like seashells lovingly picked by a young child on the beach only to be forgotten hours, if not minutes, later? Why believe any of it? Nothing more than a money-making scam. Nothing more than wishful thinking, priced for sale.
I stood on the beach and looked out at the dock that stretched into the beginning of the beginning of the sea. It looked similar to docks I'd seen in Ontario, docks I'd seen in Shimane. The water, the ocean, the small islands visible from the shore -- these, too, were familiar. In that moment I found myself unsure of where I actually was at that present moment in time -- Canada, Cambodia, Japan? If I were to have woken up here, on this beach, with no recollection of who I was or where I'd come from, I would have nothing to guide me. Nothing to hint at home.
A vast and concentrated universe this is.
Sometimes, on certain specific (albeit isolated) days, when the sun is bright and the waves lap the shore at the right, regulated pace, when fortune tellers deal their decks of cards on blankets that shield their feet from the hot and slippery sand, I'm tempted, if not encouraged, to wade into the water and wait, patiently, anxiously, for celestial signals that will reveal the universe's splendor in all its maddening simplicity and glory.
I'm tempted to believe.
Backtrack:
I was on the beach, Hawaii Beach, to be precise, even though this beach is not anywhere near Hawaii but is to be found instead in the lovely and sceanic port of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, named after the former King himself. (And it really is lovely and scenic.) The occasion is a work sponsored getaway, at which free accomodation is provided, a meal and dancing is par for the course, and lazing on the beach under a broiling sun while deceptive waves hint at a tsunami-free future is not mandatory, no, but encouraged.
The fortune teller was a lucky (?) break.
A few of the other staff members were having their fortunes read, so I figured what the hell, life's short, let's give it a go. I'd never had my palms read or my future told, and last year I read a really interesting and enlightening book called A Fortune Teller Told Me by an Italian journalist, Tiziano Ternani (who passed away last year). The book chronicle's Ternani's adventures around Asia as he travels by land and by sea to chat with various fortune tellers of all shapes, colours and sizes, after vowing not to journey by air for an entire year after being warned not to do so by a particularly insistent sage. His conclusion: Most fortune tellers use similar tactics, relate similar stories, but every now and then, when you least expect it, you hear something about yourself that, if not unsettling, is, at the very least, spooky.
Not that I believe in any of this, of course.
She looked like a typical middle aged Cambodian woman -- forty to forty five, long gray hair, a little plump. (Actually, the life expectancy of most Cambodians is around fifty something, but women usually live a little longer than men, just like everywhere, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt.) She sat before a spread-out blanket, on the sand, a pack of regular playing cards in her hands. A Cambodian staff member from our work would act as translator. Everything was set.
Split the deck three times, I was told. I did so. She placed a handful of cards on the blanket, and asked me to pick three.
Thus, it began.
First, she made some general statements -- that I loved my friends very much, that I was a kind man, that I would have good luck from now until October. (My birthday's in October, which worried me a little.) And even though I am kind, I have to be careful, because those around me, those I call my 'friends', are out to deceive me. She stated that I don't rely on others for work, that I find it myself. She also said that I was of mixed nationalities.
Interesting.
Whether I'm a kind man is not up to me to declare, and whether my friends are deceiving me, scheming and plotting and forming conspiracies to silence me, well, I'll soon find out, I guess. The other stuff rings true -- I have relied on myself for work these last few years, purposely staying independent, travelling from country to country. And I am of mixed nationalities, in a sense, since my father's originally from England.
I asked her: "Am I going to die young?" (For some reason, don't ask why, I've always had this feeling. I'm not sure what 'young' is -- thirty-five, forty, but it's a feeling I've had.)
She promptly said no, no, that I will live to be 96 years old. (My great-grandmother died at 96).
The final parlor trick was a reading of my signature. A chaotic, slightly reckless person I am, according to her, after reading my John Hancock.
So there you have it. No burning incense or thundering clouds or black magic; just a deck of cards, and a blanket, and a few, seemingly random observations. I thanked her, headed back to the waves, looked out at the sea.
Nonsense, of course. A bunch of generalities, applicable to anyone at all, really.
Still, there were enough specifics -- somewhat general specifics, to be sure, but applicable to me and my life nevertheless -- that it left me thinking. Left me wondering. What do I do with those words? Do I apply them? Do I discard them like seashells lovingly picked by a young child on the beach only to be forgotten hours, if not minutes, later? Why believe any of it? Nothing more than a money-making scam. Nothing more than wishful thinking, priced for sale.
I stood on the beach and looked out at the dock that stretched into the beginning of the beginning of the sea. It looked similar to docks I'd seen in Ontario, docks I'd seen in Shimane. The water, the ocean, the small islands visible from the shore -- these, too, were familiar. In that moment I found myself unsure of where I actually was at that present moment in time -- Canada, Cambodia, Japan? If I were to have woken up here, on this beach, with no recollection of who I was or where I'd come from, I would have nothing to guide me. Nothing to hint at home.
A vast and concentrated universe this is.
Sometimes, on certain specific (albeit isolated) days, when the sun is bright and the waves lap the shore at the right, regulated pace, when fortune tellers deal their decks of cards on blankets that shield their feet from the hot and slippery sand, I'm tempted, if not encouraged, to wade into the water and wait, patiently, anxiously, for celestial signals that will reveal the universe's splendor in all its maddening simplicity and glory.
I'm tempted to believe.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
THE ABSOLUTE, LIKE, NECESSITY OF OLD SITCOMS' LEADING MEN IN REINFORCING HUMANITY AS MORE THAN ONE BIG DRUNK LEANING AGAINST A LAMPPOST
Is humanity itself (and I'm definitely including myself here, although others might debate the validity of my inclusion) fundamentally, at its coure, the equivalent of Woody on Cheers? Or Barbarino on Welcome Back Kotter? Or Bull on Night Court?
Are we all, at our fundamental core, way down deep, just plain and simply stoooooooooooopid?
Sometimes I think so.
Sometimes I don't.
But sometimes I do, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've been around a little bit these last few years. I've been to Hiroshima. I've checked out the killing fields. I've taught former heads of Toshiba, and Cambodian orphans, and been almost robbed by a motodop at midnight in Phnom Penh, and ridden a double-decker bus in Hong Kong, and had a personal tour of director Akira Kurosawa's former film studio by his long-time art director (and even got to hold the actual mask worn by the dude who plays Godzilla). There are many, countless, untold thousands of things I haven't done, and still hope to do, but I have certainly seen and heard and felt and thought about much, much more than I had ever anticipated. I used to think that life could be learned through a book; now I know that's not true.
I also know some other things, too.
The variety of life. The variety of people making their way through that life, this life, our life that we all share. It's mind-boggling, it really is. You can tell yourself all you want that you are a sane, rational, clear-headed individual -- but when you are stuck in a foreign land where you do not know a single soul, and you can't speak the language, and you are far from home, if that home still exists, you will be confronted with the essential fragility of who we are and what we think that we can be. It's not a pretty picture, or an enviable experience, but it's definitely a human one, and I recommend -- if for no other reason that it will allow you to feel like an immigrant, alone and forgotten, and that has to be a good thing, a good feeling, I'm sure of it.
The variety, though, is what leads to the questions. Questions that can't be answered.
Are we all the same, us humans? I guess so, yes, I think so, but after living in Japan for four years, and in Cambodia for almost two, I can also that there are differences, and these differences arise from living in groups, and these groups are ethnically and nationally oriented, and there is very little that we, as humans, can do that to rectify this imbalance.
Do we need to rectify it?
I don't think so, actually; perhaps that's too strong a word. What we need is balance. What we need is perspective.
Perhaps this goes back to my earlier post on the pope's passing (scroll down if you're interested).
We all want to believe what we believe. That's fine. All well and good. And we're in a certain stage of civilization's development where we have now, thankfully, accepted that other people's beliefs do not necesarily match our own. In other words, you are Jewish and free to perform your rituals and observe your holidays and do what it is that the people in your faith do; I am Muslim (for example; I haven't converted -- yet), and I practice my faith, and we agree that while our faiths our separate, they are also equal.
That's the theory.
Still.
Much of the world if not most of the world is composed of varying civilizations that offer unique and singular takes on religion and culture; I'm sure Iran and Japan share many things, but there's a lot that's different, too.
And yet our cultures breed us to believe, deep deep deep down, that we are right.
Think about it. The way we talk, the way we dress, the way we eat, the political opinions we hold -- our culture gives them to us.
Recently (and by 'recent' I refer to the last, oh, two hundred years) things are shifting because people are moving, travelling from one culture to another for work and for play, cross-pollinating their species, merging cultures. There is a fertilization of ideas and outlooks that is taking place; I recognize this. Things are changing for the good, I believe. In part.
But still...
A roundabout, long-winded way to get to my point (and it's debatable that I have one), which is: People are good and decent and kind, yes, but we are, I've come to conclude, also more than a little stoooopid. We harbor our resentments. We root for the home team simply because we live in the same city as the team; we root for our country against their country simply because we live where we live. We go around proclaiming that our country is the best country in the world to live, while dozens, if not hundreds of other countries'citizens shout the same repetitive mantra. We worship the faiths of our family simply because they told us to.
We instinctively align ourselves with others who feel the same way that we do, the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination.
It thus serves a purpose, this lamppost does -- but not the one it was intended for.
Maybe that's what my fears come down to.
We, as humans, absolutely crave support, not illumination; it's what gets us through the night. We listen to those who will tell us what we want to hear. We listen to the radio stations that play what we like. We watch the shows that confirm our own conceptions of the world. We approach life based on the models that have been formed by us, or by what we form ourselves. We are firm, and unflexing, and do not want to change. We are stubborn.
So are we stooooopid?
I guess so.
But I take consolation in the fact that Woody on Cheers, Barbarino on Kotter and Bull on Night Court were mere supporting players. They leaned on others for support -- and if those leads, those Sam Malones and Mr.Kotters and Judge Harrys did not offer total illumination, they at least provided a little bit of light.
Which is maybe all we can hope for.
Are we all, at our fundamental core, way down deep, just plain and simply stoooooooooooopid?
Sometimes I think so.
Sometimes I don't.
But sometimes I do, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've been around a little bit these last few years. I've been to Hiroshima. I've checked out the killing fields. I've taught former heads of Toshiba, and Cambodian orphans, and been almost robbed by a motodop at midnight in Phnom Penh, and ridden a double-decker bus in Hong Kong, and had a personal tour of director Akira Kurosawa's former film studio by his long-time art director (and even got to hold the actual mask worn by the dude who plays Godzilla). There are many, countless, untold thousands of things I haven't done, and still hope to do, but I have certainly seen and heard and felt and thought about much, much more than I had ever anticipated. I used to think that life could be learned through a book; now I know that's not true.
I also know some other things, too.
The variety of life. The variety of people making their way through that life, this life, our life that we all share. It's mind-boggling, it really is. You can tell yourself all you want that you are a sane, rational, clear-headed individual -- but when you are stuck in a foreign land where you do not know a single soul, and you can't speak the language, and you are far from home, if that home still exists, you will be confronted with the essential fragility of who we are and what we think that we can be. It's not a pretty picture, or an enviable experience, but it's definitely a human one, and I recommend -- if for no other reason that it will allow you to feel like an immigrant, alone and forgotten, and that has to be a good thing, a good feeling, I'm sure of it.
The variety, though, is what leads to the questions. Questions that can't be answered.
Are we all the same, us humans? I guess so, yes, I think so, but after living in Japan for four years, and in Cambodia for almost two, I can also that there are differences, and these differences arise from living in groups, and these groups are ethnically and nationally oriented, and there is very little that we, as humans, can do that to rectify this imbalance.
Do we need to rectify it?
I don't think so, actually; perhaps that's too strong a word. What we need is balance. What we need is perspective.
Perhaps this goes back to my earlier post on the pope's passing (scroll down if you're interested).
We all want to believe what we believe. That's fine. All well and good. And we're in a certain stage of civilization's development where we have now, thankfully, accepted that other people's beliefs do not necesarily match our own. In other words, you are Jewish and free to perform your rituals and observe your holidays and do what it is that the people in your faith do; I am Muslim (for example; I haven't converted -- yet), and I practice my faith, and we agree that while our faiths our separate, they are also equal.
That's the theory.
Still.
Much of the world if not most of the world is composed of varying civilizations that offer unique and singular takes on religion and culture; I'm sure Iran and Japan share many things, but there's a lot that's different, too.
And yet our cultures breed us to believe, deep deep deep down, that we are right.
Think about it. The way we talk, the way we dress, the way we eat, the political opinions we hold -- our culture gives them to us.
Recently (and by 'recent' I refer to the last, oh, two hundred years) things are shifting because people are moving, travelling from one culture to another for work and for play, cross-pollinating their species, merging cultures. There is a fertilization of ideas and outlooks that is taking place; I recognize this. Things are changing for the good, I believe. In part.
But still...
A roundabout, long-winded way to get to my point (and it's debatable that I have one), which is: People are good and decent and kind, yes, but we are, I've come to conclude, also more than a little stoooopid. We harbor our resentments. We root for the home team simply because we live in the same city as the team; we root for our country against their country simply because we live where we live. We go around proclaiming that our country is the best country in the world to live, while dozens, if not hundreds of other countries'citizens shout the same repetitive mantra. We worship the faiths of our family simply because they told us to.
We instinctively align ourselves with others who feel the same way that we do, the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination.
It thus serves a purpose, this lamppost does -- but not the one it was intended for.
Maybe that's what my fears come down to.
We, as humans, absolutely crave support, not illumination; it's what gets us through the night. We listen to those who will tell us what we want to hear. We listen to the radio stations that play what we like. We watch the shows that confirm our own conceptions of the world. We approach life based on the models that have been formed by us, or by what we form ourselves. We are firm, and unflexing, and do not want to change. We are stubborn.
So are we stooooopid?
I guess so.
But I take consolation in the fact that Woody on Cheers, Barbarino on Kotter and Bull on Night Court were mere supporting players. They leaned on others for support -- and if those leads, those Sam Malones and Mr.Kotters and Judge Harrys did not offer total illumination, they at least provided a little bit of light.
Which is maybe all we can hope for.
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