MICHAEL KEATON AS THE DARK KNIGHT MAY VERY WELL HAVE BEEN ON TO SOMETHING, GIVEN THAT OUR FUTURE SELVES UNDERSTAND THE CONFUSION WE CONTINUALLY FEEL

Everything around me and within me has suddenly taken on a heightened clarity, as if the normal sunshine, the usual heat, my everday thoughts, have become fuller and stranger and equipped with their own special form of almost supernatural logic and grace. Perhaps it's because I feel change in the air, almost literally, as the heat gets stronger, more confident, and the dark clouds continue to tantalizingly hint at rain. Or it may because so much is changing (possibly), and stability is fragile (potentially). Where I will be two months from now is not altogether clear: possibly here, perhaps there. Where I will go is open.

It's that openness that is scary, isn't it? Frightening and necessary, somehow -- at least for me, and maybe sometimes for you, too. When things are open you can go any which way but loose, to quote an old Clint Eastwood movie. You can drift somewhere and come ashore on a strange or familiar beach, depending on the wind.

Or maybe it's like that scene in the original BATMAN flick, where Michael Keaton is trying to find the words to explain to Kim Basinger that he is, in fact, the Dark Knight.

"You know how other people have jobs, and they get up in the morning and brush their tooth and come downstairs and have something to eat and kiss somebody goodbye," he says, realizing that words are failing him. He's trying to describe what a normal life is compared to his abnormal one.

Sometimes I feel that way. (And sometimes you do, too, I'm sure.) Even if you DO have a life that includes getting up and coming downstairs and grabbing something to eat and kissing somebody goodbye before you carpool to work, there is always a nagging feeling within us that wants to go another octave beyond a nag and into a roar. The source and content of its ferocious message isn't always clear, but I have my suspicions.

Assuming that life is not a random series of unfortunate events (and that's a big assumption), then perhaps not only the 'me' of now is the captain of my ship but the 'me' of later, too. The 'me' who is forty, fifty, even sixty could be calling the shots. Incarnations of my later self (selves?) could be sending back through time appropriate psychic messages that help me make the big decisions, the tough decisions.

Or perhaps these later selves of mine also have some sway in the temporal and logistic shifting of reality itself; perhaps they are nudging people this way and that way, making room for me, allowing me to find the path that is meant for me and me alone. (These later selves know how hard it is, because they, of course, went through the same experiences.)

In other words, our lives are a loop -- the past selves inform our present selves, we know that, Dr.Phil told us so, and so who's to say that our future selves can't exist in a parallel dimension of time and space? Who's to say that our future isn't as prominent and potent as our present? If time is an illusion, a concept I suspect and endorse as being true, then it makes sense that the loop of life will be bookended by our later selves, who, of course, will want to make our rides as comfortable as possible.

So:

The stability of life and the constant things in life are constantly being upended. Check. Got that. But this is all part of a larger process, a cyclical process, whereby who we are decades hence somehow cosmically influences who we are at the present moment in time. The heat and the wind and the feelings in my gut are mysteriously coded signals, all of them, from future versions of Scott, hopefully wiser versions of Scott.

I'm down with that.

Such notions, bizarre as they seem, may not seem credible, no, but they allow the morning sun, the drifting clouds, the instincts we dismiss and discard to have a rhythm and a pattern and a balance that approach something almost musical in their serenity and intent.

WHAT YOU FIND

The interesting thing about writing a blog (or a novel or a poem or a screenplay or a play) is that it forces you to look at the life around you as part of something bigger than itself, or even yourself; it enables you to view everday life through a lens that is not necessarily rose-coloured, no, but it can be, if you want it to be, and if you describe it that way.

I'm not saying that this is a good thing, a noble thing, or even a sane thing. Most people in life go THROUGH life with blinders on, which is not a value judgement or a criticism; if anything, it's almost a compliment, because to do the opposite, to see life as something worthy of a blog (or a novel, or a yada-yada-yada) is to somehow glorify and demean the human experience.

Glorify, because when (or if) you DO happen to slip on those rose-coloured glasses as you perch over your notebook, pen in hand, or slump over the keyboard in a carpal-tunnel tornado of typing, you can point out to others exactly what you find worthy about life. What you find worthy of mentioning, highlighting, stressing. Maybe it's the little kid who drops his ice-cream cone on the ground, looks at it, looks at his mum, and decides not to cry. That is heroism writ small, a lad learning how to not give in to the cruelty of gravity and the malicious whims of all those Emperors of Ice Creams. So you see it, write it down, and it brings a smile (or a sigh, or even a snort) from those who read it. You feel good about life, the reader feels good about life, and that kid, the instigator of it all, was left totally out of the loop, unaware of the charm he unwittingly inspired and inflicted.

Oh, but there's also something demeaning about the whole thing, the whole charade of words-on-paper, and it's hard for me to put my finger on why writing about anything at all is sometimes unseemly and rank. (That's code for: I'm stuck, damnit.)

Perhaps it has something to do with the essential arbirtrariness of words in the first place. Living in Japan, trying to learn Japanese, I learned a number of valuable lessons, one of which was: Words are human constructs. Sounds simple, right? (Nobody ever accused me of being a rocket scientist.) But we tend to forget that. We tend to think that all of our human experiences, all our emotions and impulses, can be summed up by a combination of twenty-six letters arranged just so. It's only when you experience one kind of feeling, and then find yourself unable to express what you're feeling in another language, that you slowly start to realize: Hey, we can FEEL stuff and yet not know how to articulate it!

Or maybe it has something to do with the immensity and density of the unknown, whether that unknown is the legacy of genocide or the Khmer word for 'toothpaste'. The human and cosmic are continually intertwined, and the best we have to offer is our weak and futile words, hoping that the sounds that are emitted from our lips and the code that emerges from our typing (or scribbling fingers) contextualizes that unknown in a way that makes sense. In a way that approximates reality.

The best writing reminds us who we are and what we are capable of doing. (The great and the horrific.) The worst writing is untrue, meaning, it does reality a disservice. It boils life down to truisms and caricatures. It simplifies the human heart and the water in the river.

I guess, though, stuck with our language, at home with our language, we don't have much of a choice, do we?

We use the words as best as we can, then exit -- putting down the pen, turning off the computer. And then there's nothing left to do, if we're lucky, but to watch the sunset, notice its redness, and wish that we had within us the means to somehow capture and express accurately and majestically its fullness, its mystery.

LOST BOY

It happened a week or so ago, but I still find myself thinking of it at odd hours of the day, like now, in front of the computer, or yesterday, walking across the street, wondering if I would bump into the kid and knowing that that wouldn't happen, because he was elsewhere. Wherever that is.

Not that it was a major incident, or even a minor one; there was nothing special about it, because there was nothing special about the kid himself. I was in the company van, headed to work, and he walked across the street, dazed but purposeful. His eyes were blank, his clothes ratty, his hair a mess. (Okay, that could describe me, too, but.) He stepped out in front of the van, stopped, and reached out his hand, as if he were Obi-Wan Kenobi and had decided to use his masterful mastery of the Force to stop traffic in Phnom Penh.

The driver of the van wasn't fazed. (In Cambodia, you expect, and usually are rewarded, with various forms of traffic hurtling into your path at any and all times.) He simply honked the horn, and the kid stared at the driver for a moment or too longer. He then lowered his hand and continued on his way across the street, ready for more cars, more honks, more resigned indifference to his powers and his fate.

A lot of street kids here get off on sniffing glue from plastic bags. They sniff and they sniff and they huff and they puff, and they don't blow any houses down, no, but the slowly, methodically snuff themselves out.

I don't know if the kid I saw wandering into the morning rush was high on glue or yaba (the other drug of choice here) or his own unique illusions of life, the ones that told him that cars are anxious, if not eager for him to block and stop oncoming traffic. I do know that there are a lot of lost boys (and girls) in this town that remain hidden much of the time, not lurking, no, because their intent is not necessarily sinister, but stuck in the shadows nevertheless.

Every so often they come out of those same shadows, into the bright light of day. They make their presence felt, they are acknowledged, and then they go on their meandering way. Somewhere.

I'm not sure if I will see that same kid again, or if I'd even recognize him, but there are others to take his place. Other misplaced, displaced youths with deadened stares and outstretched hands. I don't know if those hands are reaching out to smack someone or caress someone.

But I do know that they're reaching.

YOU AMATEUR, or KEEP LOOKING FOR THE NEXT SEPTEMBER

Do you remember when you learned to tie your shoes? Ride a bike? Blow a bubble? Whistle?

I can answer a definitive yes to all of the above questions (or at least most of them), because as a kid we're learning something new constantly, relentlessly, and we're proud of that fact, if not boastful. Look what I can do and look what I did and watch me do a wheelie. Aren't you impressed? Aren't you envious? Aren't you freakin' jealous?

And our brother/sister/mother/grandmother/therapist will nod and smile and say "That's nice, dear", in the same way that the lady resonds to her son while visting Niagara Falls in Superman II, where the kid is proud of the fact that he's holding-and-letting-go of the rails directly over the Falls, which leads to him falling, which leads to Superman soaring down below the mist and catching him, which leads to the brilliant, almost muted throwaway line from the crowd of cheering onlookers that is so strange and out-of-place that it works, barely heard beneath the soaring music: "Of course he's Jewish."

We graduate elementary school and junior high school and get our driver's license and finish high school and graduate college or university and get our first job and then...

Life.

That's what struck me the most after graduating university: life. There was no more ladder to look forward to. Before, there'd always been another September to begin the whole process of achievement and accomplishment again. Upon leaving the world of higher education, there was only, well, tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Followed by that magnificent experience known as Wednesday.

The best, most concrete thing I've taken from living abroad is the satisfaction gained from acheiving and accomplishing simple things. Living abroad, you become a kid again. You feel good when you make it out of the airport in one piece. When you figure out how to use the Japanese train system, how to purchase a ticket, how to read and understand the Tokyo subway map, you feel like Magellan discovering, um, what ever Magellan discovered. (I skipped History class that day. And okay, yes, you got me, I still haven't quite figured out the Tokyo subway map, but have you ever seen that motherfu--er? It looks, I swear, like some berserk-Picasso model of DNA that exploded in a thousand random routes.) And after spending a week in Phnom Penh, you feel like you've graduated into the I-can-do-anything-and-go-anywhere club. After spending two years here, you've graduated into lunacy. You resort to crack or crystal meth, or writing a blog.

So, be aware. (And beware.) Be aware of the things you learn. Be thankful of them. Be conscious of the unknown methods and manners of life that slowly, almost insidiously become habit, then second nature. Second nature is nothing more than 'I don't get this's evolution into 'It's not really that difficult'.

And second nature should always be suspect, as it can lead to contentment, and lethargy, and reflex. Not necessarily evil in and of themselves, no, but it's good to be a beginner and an amateur, and better to stay that way. It means there's always another September to begin all over again.

EVERYTHING'S BASIC, IN FICTION AND LIFE: EITHER a) A STRANGER COMES TO TOWN, OR b) SOMEONE GOES ON A TRIP...

For a few years after graduating from university and coming to Asia I didn't write much of any kind of fiction at all, because the life I was living (and am living), both in Japan and Cambodia, made the appeal of constructing fantastic realms blending imaginative fantasy and emotional resonance feel somewhat, well, redundant.

Fiction's job is to take us to places we've never been, or show us the hidden depths of the places we (think we) know so well, but the places I was in and the depth I was experiencing in my everday life made the printed page's equivalent somewhat, sort of, in a way, I don't know, kind of, a little bit, basic.

And yet, it is all basic, fiction is, as my old Creative Writing teacher Richard Teleky used to say: "A story is either about these two things: A stranger comes to town, or somebody goes on a trip." Upon hearing these words, after much careful, analytic, university-honed thought, pehaps five seconds, total, I decided that I absolutely agreed, and still agree; stories are either a) about the intrusion of the known into an unknown scenario, or b) the intrusion of the unknown into a known scenario. Don't take my word for it -- think of your favorite book or movie and see if it fits into my teacher's dictum.

(And I was the type of guy, and still am, to a certain degree, that is distrustful of what anybody proclaiming to be a 'teacher' tells me, so for me to go ahead and agree with Mr.Teleky is a big deal, and my initial adolescent vow of never becoming a teacher was put to the test severely, as the first real job I got after university was as, um, a teacher, for, um, five years, so if I'm quoting the guy, you know his word is bond. If you can trust a guy like me who so willingly abandoned his admittedly-not-very-well-thought-out principles.)

For years I tried to write stories that deconstructed the small-town environs that shaped me and made me; confronted by Asia, practically assaulted by Asia, by its people and food and weather and streets, I didn't feel the need to do that for awhile. I still read fiction, yes, but I didn't write it; didn't crave constructing my own imaginative extrapolation of my current surroundings because the real, uncanny world around me was imaginative enough. Why delve into the fantasy when the reality is even more interesting and evocative?

The interesting thing about writing fiction (or trying to) is that it requires you to simultaneously retreat into yourself and remove yourself from the world while also observing, interacting and engaging with the real, concrete people and places around you to a degree that is distracting, if not unhealthy.

In order to write fiction, you have to have read a lot of fiction, yes, but knowing the shapes and countours and crevices of the art form itself does not mean that you, too, can practice it. (Although it certainly helps -- never reading fiction while trying to write fiction is kind of like a musician never listening to music, or a painter never looking at art.) Writing fiction requires a deeper, stranger embrace of life; it forces you to look at all the casual and random events that seek to rob us of our dignity and our stature, forces you to deny the intrinsic randomness of things. What are stories, after all, but a series of interconnected events that gradually, hopefully cumulatively gain meaning? Gain resonance?

In fiction, every scene has a purpose; every line of a dialogue has a reason and a rhythm. In life, we rarely, if ever, begin and end every single conversation with a definitiveness purpose in mind. When we do, such conversations are usually cold and clinical, like phoning your dentist to book an appointment, or else our best-laid conversational plans inevitably end up veering off into divergent, more horrific directions -- the get-well phone call that ends in a break-up, or the I-haven't-seen-you-in-a-long-while embrace that ends up with oh-and-now-I-understand-why-that-is headlock.

Fiction writers look at life and plot and connive and construct. They map out characters that will speak to us of truths we had always known and suspected but never had confirmed. The older I get, the more unreal fiction -- both literary and cinematic -- sees to become. By 'unreal' I mean unrealistic, disconnected from life, more of a stylized form of life.

Which is why we go enter into those realms. Kids embrace fiction because it shows them a new and magic world, or else it shows their own everyday life rocked and distorted with innovative glee. (Hence the appeal of Stephen King and Harry Potter to adolescent minds.) In other words, preteens and teenagers are all too often bored and suspicious of the schools and houses that dot the landscape of their lives, and fiction gives them a larger, more vivid world to connect to. Eventually, many young readers and would-be writers start to see that within those very same schools and houses that used to alienate them so much dwell the secret sources of the stories that in fact speak to our deepest, darkest truths.

The world around us can be, if not explained by fiction, at least translated to a more manageable form, a world of paper that we can hold in our hands, and that our hearts and minds can recognize to be true. That's where the best stories arise from -- that desire to find the mythic truth in everyday encounters.

So, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time I took a stab at fiction again. Time once again to have a stranger come to town, and time to take a trip.

Both of the above possibilities seem, at this moment, wonderfully inviting.

I DON'T KNOW JACKSQUAT (AND NEITHER DO YOU), SO ALL WE CAN SAY IS: HOORAY!!!

A sampling of the questions I ask myself before sleep:

Why is the sky blue? What does the 'C.S.' in C.S.Lewis's name stand for? Why do birds of a feather flock together? What's the Caramilk secret? Are numbers real, Platonic things? What does the 'WKRP' in WKRP in Cincinnati stand for? Did John Wilkes Boothe act alone? Does anybody other than voluntary researchers actually live in Antarctica? Are there Antarticians? (If yes, where do they go to chill?) Is there such a profession as an Icelandic-Japanese translator? Why do snowballs melt when you put them in a freezer? Who came up with the names Canada and Toronto and Ottawa? And if all these names are native Indian names, why do we treat them so poorly? What the fu-- did happen to Amelia Earheart, anyway? Did everyone decide if Tony Danza really and truly was the boss, and if so, why wasn't I invited to the vote? Was Socrates as smart as we think he was, or merely an overrated blowhard, the Greek equivalent of Phil Donahue or Rush Limbaugh or even Howard Stern? How many countries are there? Who invented economics? Was Charles really in charge all that time? (Seems unlikely, because Scott Baio is just one man, goddamnit, not a miracle worker.) Why do most men have two nipples, and why don't I have any? (That's a joke, I swear, I can prove it.) What's Dr.Phil hiding? (Cause I know he's hiding something, that smug s.o.b.) What are you not telling your parents, and why? Why does fire change colour? Why did Michael Jackson change colour? Who was Deep Throat in the Watergate case, and why was he/she named after a porno flick? How do fish breathe underwater, and how do they sleep? Knowing that we're all going to die, but not knowing when, how do any of us sleep?

These are just a representative sampling of the myriad questions that I just, don't, know the answer to.

We like to think, those of us in our late twenties, early thirties, that we're suave and sophisticated and basically all that, but the reality is: We don't know shit. And we never will.

Cause for despair?

Of course not.

Pondering life's improbabilities and unknowns makes life itself worth living. So much to learn, see, contemplate.

Not the least of which is probably the most mystifying, unexplained paradox of them all: Was Colonel Sanders an honest-to-goodness colonel? Like, in the army or navy or marines? Did he fight in WWII? If the answer is yes, as I've said before, then I would like to write and direct the film that details in exquisite and brutal detail the untold tale of Colonel Sanders and all of his fighting-Nazi ways, exemplified by Tommy Lee Jones, acted with a just a hint of the facial growth that would, some day, when the war was over and order restored, blossom into that full-blown beard of the Colonel's that we all know and love so dearly.

AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

I'm stuck.

The thing is, last night I woke up at about three, three thirty, with the title of today's post stuck in my head, flashing neon: An Embarrassment of Riches.

I didn't know what it meant, or what it referred to; I still don't, and yet here I am, writing this blog, and there you are, reading it. (I'm assuming you're reading it, of course, which might not technically be true. You may be skimming this post, rather than really reading it, which is fine by me, kemo sabe; many a blog, many a site has been nothing more than background music for me, too, as the real stuff of life plays itself out before me. Let this site be the wallpaper of your day.)

Sometimes promises made in the dead of night should not be kept. Even promises to oneself. In my groggy, half-there, half-nowhere state of mind, I decided that I would, come hell or high water, write a blog with this title today. (And no, I don't know what 'come hell or high water' actually, truly means, either. I mean, the problem with this particular image is that the really strong, truly frightening component has been placed first -- 'hell'. And so what are we left with to round off the phrase? 'High water.' Oooooh. I'm scared. Either hell is going to get me or, no, it can't be - high water! How terrifying! Maybe I'll get wet and even have to change my shirt! Then again, I chose it, didn't I, so my bad. Which is another phrase, 'my bad', which somehow became popular while I was living in Japan and attempting, in vain, to master the infinite subtleties of Japan's ancient and equivalent phrase -- sumimasen. I think it's already gone out of fashion, 'my bad'. But I'm still using it and hoping to be so unhip that I'm hip. Let me know if it's working.)

So, I apologize, is what I'm trying to say. Here you were, taking time out of your day to find something interesting, enlightening, or at least not-boring, and all I can tell you for the time being is that I was required, by my conscience, to write a post with the above title, even though it doesn't really matter if I change my mind and decide to write about another, even more interesting topic, like Working with Shika or Dating Jacoba Style or Five Things You Should Really, Really Know About My Sister-In-Law -- all future posts, by the way. You've been warned, ladies, and only time will tell if I'm joking. (Cue spooky Dr.Evil laugh...)

There's nothing particularly embarassing in this post so far, despite the title. (Unless you count my writing itself; I'm praying you won't, and don't.)

In fact, all I can relate to you is the flash-flame of memory that lit some kindling in my brain this morning as I was being driven to work in the company van, and something felt familiar, oddly familiar, something about the van, and the people squished together inside of it, captors in a Corolla, and then it hit me, the, I don't know, vanness of it all, and I remembered being in high school, travelling to track and cross-country meets in the backs of vans, and university, too, travelling to various cities around Ontario each and every weekend, a bunch of twenty-something runners crammed in a too-tight van, with one particular wiseass by the name of Lucas Kent, a good guy, sitting in the back of the van and tying the rest of his teammate's shoelaces together, the type of stunt you see in a bad teen movie, and yet there it was, in real life, the group of us trying to stand up at one time only to be jiggered this way and that way by our illicitly linked laces, our cheeks turning red as Lucas laughed his ass off, and we being embarrassed in spite of ourselves, while Lucas laughed his deep and rich laugh.

So there it is: an embarrassement of riches.

Over and out.

Mission accomplished after all.