Last night, swimming. Hotel. Under a Cambodian moon. So long, since I swam last. Over two years ago, in Japan, in a health club. Watching row after row of elderly Japanese ladies walk through the water, knees rising, smiles fixed in place. And me, sometimes joining the line. There is something oddly strange and comforting and familiar about walking through water. You are in motion, but barely. You are moving, but with difficulty. There is no pain, only resistance.
That moon. A remark I've remarked upon before, but it comes back to me. A Cambodian moon, yes, but also a Thai moon, a Fijian moon, a Khazakstan moon, a Canadian moon.
You can explain the physics of it, the science of it, the logic of it. I may even understand you, or at least pretend to. (I'm good at pretending to understand.) I know that when you are in a car, and the car is moving, and you look out the window, and you see the moon following you, possibly even stalking you, that that is not for real. I understand that. But as a child, in the backseat, I would close my eyes, wait a few moments, open them, and see if the moon was still there, gliding at the same speed of the car. And it always was.
But how can that be? I look up at the moon in the clear dark sky from the vantage point of a swimming pool in Cambodia. White mist shrouds that moon; the glow from the hotel's lights somehow adds its own, incadescent aura. And yet I know, I'm positive, that people in Thailand, in the same time zone, are staring at that same moon, just above their head. And back in Canada, where it's almost morning, the moon is a clear, gray orb, visible in the morning sky, a backdrop to a Canadian flag flutterling slightly in the summer breeze.
How is that possible?
I watched that moon for awhile. Swam for awhile. Swimming always makes me feel fluid, attached to alternate pools I've inhabited, in other countries. Other eras. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. North Bay, Ontario. Different versions of myself, younger, more agile. I remember one chilly March night in Myrtle Beach running with a bunch of others from the hotel pool and onto the beach and into the ocean, into the frigid water, and then racing back up the sand, up the steps, into the hot tubs, alive and well and laughing. A few days before we had been frozen in Canada, and now were swimming, at night, under the stars. Under that American moon. Remembering that I'd remember that moment. And I have.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
GIVEN THE CHANCE
If you kill one life, you kill the whole of humanity.
That's what somebody said on CNN the other day, quoting the Koran, I believe, explaining that every true, bona fide Muslim knows this. Me, not being a true, bona fide Muslim, was not aware of that quote -- but it's one that I like, and it's one that I've heard before, in various variations and echoes.
Dr.Beat Richner, otherwise known as 'Beatocello', is a Swiss doctor who founded and runs a hospital in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (See www.beatocello.com for more details.) Every Friday and Saturday night, all year long, he plays the cello for groups of tourists, hoping for their attention and their cash. The attention for his performance, and their cash for his hospital. When I watched him play last fall, he answered his critics who wondered what the point of the whole enterprise was, given the enormity of people suffering in Cambodia, given the fact that he couldn't possibly save everyone.
"We only get one life," he said. "So to the person whose life you are saving, you are saving life itself." (Or words to that effect.)
Something about the brevity and simiplicity of that statement stuck with me. I see it and feel it everywhere, in places I would not expect. A child shitting in the streets. An old woman begging for change. A bored cop, asking for money. These are all individual lives that, cumulatively, form a society, a world, a universe. If one of them dies, the world does not die. But when one of them dies, a portion of life, a fragment of life, is extinguished.
It's like that other Buddhist quote I like: "Your life is not your own -- it can be taken from you at any time." The drunk driver you don't see. The pop can you trip over. The shot to the stomach from a robber's pistol. We can only control so much. We can safeguard so little. In the end, the life that we wield for ourselves can very easily be stolen and shattered by a stranger.
I used to think of death as an actual, tangible force. Part of the reason why I was so fascinated by the movie Flatliners as a kid was because the characters were able to taste death, taunt death, enter into its realm. What is death like? I wondered. What is death's structure and density? I didn't see death as heaven or hell, but as a place all unto itself -- something akin to purgatory, I suppose.
Now, I think differently. I see death as the absence of life. Plain and simple.
But --
Is life the absence of death?
That's debatable, I suppose. Two sides of the same coin. We cannot have a concept of life unless we have a concept of death, and vice versa. But I believe that we get so caught up in life that we sometimes take it for granted. We fetishize it, even. We buy this and that, go here and there, diss him and praise her. It's what we do.
But every Friday and Saturday night, a portly, saintly man stands on stage and plays his cello and asks for money, because at his hospital, every day, death is postponed, and death is embraced, and life, for what it's worth, is not taken for granted. Lives are elongated, and lives are let go. Life is played out in extreme measures all day long.
A child opens her eyes. The pain is gone! A child closes her eyes. The pain is gone. To the child whose eyes open, life itself continues. To the child whose eyes close, life itself, in this realm, fades away.
You save one person, you save the world entire. Somebody else said that, too. (Mandela, maybe? Kofi Annan? Gotta be Shore, I think. Gotta be Pauly.) You kill a single person, the world dies. You save a single person, the world is rescued. Captain Kirk and his crew knew that, right? He sacrificed his whole career, his whole life, for the mere possibility that Spock could come back from the dead. (See Stark Trek III: The Search For Spock for more details.)
As a kid, that blew me away, that selflessness. At the same time, it struck me as perfectly natural. Spock was his friend; Spock was in trouble. Ipso facto, you do what you have to do.
All we have in this life is life itself, and that translates to people. Life. Is. People. The person sitting next to us on the bus, and the teacher at the front of the room, and the boss who scratches his balls when he thinks noone's looking. That's it. We are life personified and they are life, too, in the flesh, every last one of them, like it or not. Not participants in life, and not players in life, but life. Period.
You don't have to stand on a stage and play the cello for them, or children you don't know, or refuguees you'll never meet. You don't even have to like them. (In fact, if you did like your boss who scratches his balls, I'd be worried about you. Especially if your boss is a woman.) But, if ever given the chance, you have to keep them here, these people, or at least try to. We endure to help others endure. I think we're all here to keep us all here.
That's what somebody said on CNN the other day, quoting the Koran, I believe, explaining that every true, bona fide Muslim knows this. Me, not being a true, bona fide Muslim, was not aware of that quote -- but it's one that I like, and it's one that I've heard before, in various variations and echoes.
Dr.Beat Richner, otherwise known as 'Beatocello', is a Swiss doctor who founded and runs a hospital in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (See www.beatocello.com for more details.) Every Friday and Saturday night, all year long, he plays the cello for groups of tourists, hoping for their attention and their cash. The attention for his performance, and their cash for his hospital. When I watched him play last fall, he answered his critics who wondered what the point of the whole enterprise was, given the enormity of people suffering in Cambodia, given the fact that he couldn't possibly save everyone.
"We only get one life," he said. "So to the person whose life you are saving, you are saving life itself." (Or words to that effect.)
Something about the brevity and simiplicity of that statement stuck with me. I see it and feel it everywhere, in places I would not expect. A child shitting in the streets. An old woman begging for change. A bored cop, asking for money. These are all individual lives that, cumulatively, form a society, a world, a universe. If one of them dies, the world does not die. But when one of them dies, a portion of life, a fragment of life, is extinguished.
It's like that other Buddhist quote I like: "Your life is not your own -- it can be taken from you at any time." The drunk driver you don't see. The pop can you trip over. The shot to the stomach from a robber's pistol. We can only control so much. We can safeguard so little. In the end, the life that we wield for ourselves can very easily be stolen and shattered by a stranger.
I used to think of death as an actual, tangible force. Part of the reason why I was so fascinated by the movie Flatliners as a kid was because the characters were able to taste death, taunt death, enter into its realm. What is death like? I wondered. What is death's structure and density? I didn't see death as heaven or hell, but as a place all unto itself -- something akin to purgatory, I suppose.
Now, I think differently. I see death as the absence of life. Plain and simple.
But --
Is life the absence of death?
That's debatable, I suppose. Two sides of the same coin. We cannot have a concept of life unless we have a concept of death, and vice versa. But I believe that we get so caught up in life that we sometimes take it for granted. We fetishize it, even. We buy this and that, go here and there, diss him and praise her. It's what we do.
But every Friday and Saturday night, a portly, saintly man stands on stage and plays his cello and asks for money, because at his hospital, every day, death is postponed, and death is embraced, and life, for what it's worth, is not taken for granted. Lives are elongated, and lives are let go. Life is played out in extreme measures all day long.
A child opens her eyes. The pain is gone! A child closes her eyes. The pain is gone. To the child whose eyes open, life itself continues. To the child whose eyes close, life itself, in this realm, fades away.
You save one person, you save the world entire. Somebody else said that, too. (Mandela, maybe? Kofi Annan? Gotta be Shore, I think. Gotta be Pauly.) You kill a single person, the world dies. You save a single person, the world is rescued. Captain Kirk and his crew knew that, right? He sacrificed his whole career, his whole life, for the mere possibility that Spock could come back from the dead. (See Stark Trek III: The Search For Spock for more details.)
As a kid, that blew me away, that selflessness. At the same time, it struck me as perfectly natural. Spock was his friend; Spock was in trouble. Ipso facto, you do what you have to do.
All we have in this life is life itself, and that translates to people. Life. Is. People. The person sitting next to us on the bus, and the teacher at the front of the room, and the boss who scratches his balls when he thinks noone's looking. That's it. We are life personified and they are life, too, in the flesh, every last one of them, like it or not. Not participants in life, and not players in life, but life. Period.
You don't have to stand on a stage and play the cello for them, or children you don't know, or refuguees you'll never meet. You don't even have to like them. (In fact, if you did like your boss who scratches his balls, I'd be worried about you. Especially if your boss is a woman.) But, if ever given the chance, you have to keep them here, these people, or at least try to. We endure to help others endure. I think we're all here to keep us all here.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
THE DON KNOTTS/NORMAN FELL/LEE MAJORS APPROACH TO RELIGION, WHICH, WHILE NOT LIKELY, IS THE BEST I CAN DO AT AGE 29
Almost finished reading Freedom At Midnight, about the carving up of India that led to Great Britain's backing out of the country they had ruled for centuries, the creation of Pakistan to give India's millions of Muslims their own homeland, and how all of this somehow resulted in Gandhi's assassination. Vivid, fascinating stuff. New stuff. To me, anyways, whose knowledge of Indian and Pakistani history and politics and religion remains, shall we say, inadequate.
But boy, is it an interesting tale. Full of bloodshed and grace. Horror and humanity. And through it all the albatross and enlightenment of religion. Hindus slaughtering Muslims. Muslims killing Hindus. The Sikhs somewhere in between. And Kashmir, a mostly Muslim land declared Indian territory, at the heart of the dispute. (Or one of the hearts, anyways.)
So frustrating and confusing this notion of religion is. So unsolvable, this dilemma. Here we have the human desire to reach out, reach up; here we have Gods without number worshipped, deified. And, in the names of these Gods, so much blood has been shed, so much prejudice has been enacted, so many castes have been formed. And all of it based upon our own, individual and collective notions regarding the supernatural.
I don't know what to make of it. Religion. Spirituality. The whole deal. I often yearn for a more spiritual west that is free from restrictive dogma -- but is spirituality even possible without some form of dogma? Buddhism seems the most accessible, least painful alternative, but even Buddhism has its problems, not the least of which is the notion of one paying in this life for the sins of one's past life. (Leading to a disregard for the poor and the wretched in places like Cambodia.)
I look at the map of the world, and I see so much division, and so much of it on ancient, religious lines. A Pakistan put in place for the Muslims, Iraq torn apart by lunatic fundamentalists, and on, and on, and on. I think it's fundamental within us, this need for gods. I think, in large part, it serves and satisfies a purpose. But when you see the division with the United States, often over religious lines, and the bloodshed in Iraq, and the ongoing, unending disputes in the Middle East, it makes me wonder.
Wouldn't it be better, and easier, to say: Okay, we know (or believe) that there's a God, but we're not gonna name it, and we're not gonna it classify it ; the God is there, so, by all means, worship. Worship your brains out. But don't fight the guy next to you because he thinks God is black and you think he's white. Don't demean his book of belief because it isn't your book of belief. Don't fight over which land is holy and which isn't. Dirt is dirt. Sod is sod. We can live whereever, and find divinity whereever. Don't deny someone a job or deny someone a life because you were born into a family that believes X is the truth and the whole truth, and therefore their belief, Y, is misguided, archaic bullshit. We know this will be hard. We know that a lot of religion is culture, and culture is religion. We know that history and family have formed the way you view the divine. But when we cloister ourselves into our own little sects, we separate ourselves. And anytime we separate ourselves, we drift further and further apart. So, believe, by all means. Just, you know, say a little prayer, look up, and believe. In a general way. Don't get into specifics. It will be hard not to, maybe impossible not to, but try. Specifics only leads to division. It's like: We can agree that THREE'S COMPANY was a cool show without getting into who was the better landlord, Roper or Furley. They were both good. They both had their qualities, if you will. You may think THE FALL GUY was not Lee Majors' finest hour, being partial to THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, but we can both agree that Majors was 'cool' personified. Let's agree on what we can agree on, okay? If He/She/They are up there, then He/She/ They're sure as hell hearing our good wishes and prayers. And then when you do that, you can call it a day. Maybe even ask the dude next door if he needs any help with his lawn.
Naive, implausible, unworkable. I know all that. To each his own; I know that, too. It's just, reading that book, the one about India and Pakistan, and learning about how many thousands of people were killed in the name of religious riteousness, makes all the old questions new again. So much of the earth is guided by their relation to the One up above. I guess sometimes I just wish that so many of us would stop looking upward and keep our eyes more firmly fixed on the ground beneath our feet, where others, neighbours, stand alongside us.
But boy, is it an interesting tale. Full of bloodshed and grace. Horror and humanity. And through it all the albatross and enlightenment of religion. Hindus slaughtering Muslims. Muslims killing Hindus. The Sikhs somewhere in between. And Kashmir, a mostly Muslim land declared Indian territory, at the heart of the dispute. (Or one of the hearts, anyways.)
So frustrating and confusing this notion of religion is. So unsolvable, this dilemma. Here we have the human desire to reach out, reach up; here we have Gods without number worshipped, deified. And, in the names of these Gods, so much blood has been shed, so much prejudice has been enacted, so many castes have been formed. And all of it based upon our own, individual and collective notions regarding the supernatural.
I don't know what to make of it. Religion. Spirituality. The whole deal. I often yearn for a more spiritual west that is free from restrictive dogma -- but is spirituality even possible without some form of dogma? Buddhism seems the most accessible, least painful alternative, but even Buddhism has its problems, not the least of which is the notion of one paying in this life for the sins of one's past life. (Leading to a disregard for the poor and the wretched in places like Cambodia.)
I look at the map of the world, and I see so much division, and so much of it on ancient, religious lines. A Pakistan put in place for the Muslims, Iraq torn apart by lunatic fundamentalists, and on, and on, and on. I think it's fundamental within us, this need for gods. I think, in large part, it serves and satisfies a purpose. But when you see the division with the United States, often over religious lines, and the bloodshed in Iraq, and the ongoing, unending disputes in the Middle East, it makes me wonder.
Wouldn't it be better, and easier, to say: Okay, we know (or believe) that there's a God, but we're not gonna name it, and we're not gonna it classify it ; the God is there, so, by all means, worship. Worship your brains out. But don't fight the guy next to you because he thinks God is black and you think he's white. Don't demean his book of belief because it isn't your book of belief. Don't fight over which land is holy and which isn't. Dirt is dirt. Sod is sod. We can live whereever, and find divinity whereever. Don't deny someone a job or deny someone a life because you were born into a family that believes X is the truth and the whole truth, and therefore their belief, Y, is misguided, archaic bullshit. We know this will be hard. We know that a lot of religion is culture, and culture is religion. We know that history and family have formed the way you view the divine. But when we cloister ourselves into our own little sects, we separate ourselves. And anytime we separate ourselves, we drift further and further apart. So, believe, by all means. Just, you know, say a little prayer, look up, and believe. In a general way. Don't get into specifics. It will be hard not to, maybe impossible not to, but try. Specifics only leads to division. It's like: We can agree that THREE'S COMPANY was a cool show without getting into who was the better landlord, Roper or Furley. They were both good. They both had their qualities, if you will. You may think THE FALL GUY was not Lee Majors' finest hour, being partial to THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, but we can both agree that Majors was 'cool' personified. Let's agree on what we can agree on, okay? If He/She/They are up there, then He/She/ They're sure as hell hearing our good wishes and prayers. And then when you do that, you can call it a day. Maybe even ask the dude next door if he needs any help with his lawn.
Naive, implausible, unworkable. I know all that. To each his own; I know that, too. It's just, reading that book, the one about India and Pakistan, and learning about how many thousands of people were killed in the name of religious riteousness, makes all the old questions new again. So much of the earth is guided by their relation to the One up above. I guess sometimes I just wish that so many of us would stop looking upward and keep our eyes more firmly fixed on the ground beneath our feet, where others, neighbours, stand alongside us.
Monday, July 18, 2005
SARTRE, SANDLER, AND WHY KNOWING A LOT OF STUFF DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN SHIT
MAN: Boy, it looks like you guys make your own fun around here, eh?
ANOTHER MAN: Everybody makes their own fun. Otherwise it's called 'entertainment'.
(A more-or-less accurate quote from David Mamet's State and Main, which I've never seen, but I heard about the quote, and I like it...)
I remember a review Roger Ebert wrote a few years back, about a movie I'd never seen, whose title I can no longer recall. It starred Mike Nichols and Wallace Shawn; I do remember that. (I could google it, I'm sure, but my refusal to do so is my way of maintaining a little mystery in life, however small and transient it may prove to be.) The reason I can recollect it at all is because the central idea of the flick sounded intriguing: Can we be too educated?
Meaning, is it better to live a life full of references to Satre and Schopenhauer, existentialism and Jung, the Middle Ages and the modernism? (The sad thing is, in university I took a course titled 'Modernism and Anti-Modernism', and I can barely remember which is which; I DO remember my instructor patiently explaining to us all that 'anti-modernism' actually came BEfore modernism'. I remember nodding solemnly. I remember thinking: Thank God ross-country practice starts in one hour...)
In other words: Is it better to be a fisherman living in a small village in the north of Cambodia, raising a family, living life, marking the seasons and moving on? Or is one's life fuller, richer, more sentient by simply knowing more stuff.
I don't know.
It's personal, I suppose. I like knowing stuff. I like learning stuff. But I'm not sure that it really makes one intelligent, simply knowing stuff. Most young Cambodians know very, very little about the outside world, about the stars and the sun, about astronomy or cartography, geography or history; and yet I would say, in all sincerity, that I consider most Cambodians of university age to be fundamentally more intelligent than most Canadians of the same age. Their education has been abysmal. Their political system is a joke. Their prospects are few and far between. And yet, their English is often sensational, their observations apt, their questions incisive. Donald Rumsfeld once famously said something like: "There's what we know. There's what we know we don't know. And there's what we don't know what we don't know." A lot of Cambodians, most of Cambodians, don't know what they don't know, but they seem happy, or at least content. They live. They don't need Freud.
The thing is, learning can be contagious. It can be seductive. And yet, it can also be an intellectual dead-end, I think, when the whole goal of life becomes simply ingest, ingest, ingest. It's why, so far removed here from western culture, I look at it with more than a little degree of alarm: all anyone seems to do is complain about nothing is good any more, nothing is intelligent enough, nothing is entertaining enough, nothing is (insert complaint here) enough. It's always everybody else's fault, not on our own. Our own engagement in life too often seems to be predicated on what somebody else can do for us, rather than we can generate for ourselves. And that makes me sad.
I love the scene in Adam Sandler's Mr.Deeds where Sandler, playing a small-town hick who has inherited a bunch of cash, tells off a snobby rich dude in a fancy restaurant. He says something like: "You know, if I spent an hour with your friends, at the end of the hour they'd think I'm a pretty good guy, but if you spent an hour with my friends, at the end of the hour they'd be beating the shit out of you." Or something like that. Meaning, the snobbery would be too much to handle. And what is snobbery but: I know more than you, therefore I'm better than you.
I don't know. I'm not saying I want to take a bus up to Rattanakiri province in northern Cambodia and exist as a fisherman for the rest of my days. But there's something to be said for living life on its own terms, at its own pace, free from the pretense that seems to govern so much of our short little lives.
ANOTHER MAN: Everybody makes their own fun. Otherwise it's called 'entertainment'.
(A more-or-less accurate quote from David Mamet's State and Main, which I've never seen, but I heard about the quote, and I like it...)
I remember a review Roger Ebert wrote a few years back, about a movie I'd never seen, whose title I can no longer recall. It starred Mike Nichols and Wallace Shawn; I do remember that. (I could google it, I'm sure, but my refusal to do so is my way of maintaining a little mystery in life, however small and transient it may prove to be.) The reason I can recollect it at all is because the central idea of the flick sounded intriguing: Can we be too educated?
Meaning, is it better to live a life full of references to Satre and Schopenhauer, existentialism and Jung, the Middle Ages and the modernism? (The sad thing is, in university I took a course titled 'Modernism and Anti-Modernism', and I can barely remember which is which; I DO remember my instructor patiently explaining to us all that 'anti-modernism' actually came BEfore modernism'. I remember nodding solemnly. I remember thinking: Thank God ross-country practice starts in one hour...)
In other words: Is it better to be a fisherman living in a small village in the north of Cambodia, raising a family, living life, marking the seasons and moving on? Or is one's life fuller, richer, more sentient by simply knowing more stuff.
I don't know.
It's personal, I suppose. I like knowing stuff. I like learning stuff. But I'm not sure that it really makes one intelligent, simply knowing stuff. Most young Cambodians know very, very little about the outside world, about the stars and the sun, about astronomy or cartography, geography or history; and yet I would say, in all sincerity, that I consider most Cambodians of university age to be fundamentally more intelligent than most Canadians of the same age. Their education has been abysmal. Their political system is a joke. Their prospects are few and far between. And yet, their English is often sensational, their observations apt, their questions incisive. Donald Rumsfeld once famously said something like: "There's what we know. There's what we know we don't know. And there's what we don't know what we don't know." A lot of Cambodians, most of Cambodians, don't know what they don't know, but they seem happy, or at least content. They live. They don't need Freud.
The thing is, learning can be contagious. It can be seductive. And yet, it can also be an intellectual dead-end, I think, when the whole goal of life becomes simply ingest, ingest, ingest. It's why, so far removed here from western culture, I look at it with more than a little degree of alarm: all anyone seems to do is complain about nothing is good any more, nothing is intelligent enough, nothing is entertaining enough, nothing is (insert complaint here) enough. It's always everybody else's fault, not on our own. Our own engagement in life too often seems to be predicated on what somebody else can do for us, rather than we can generate for ourselves. And that makes me sad.
I love the scene in Adam Sandler's Mr.Deeds where Sandler, playing a small-town hick who has inherited a bunch of cash, tells off a snobby rich dude in a fancy restaurant. He says something like: "You know, if I spent an hour with your friends, at the end of the hour they'd think I'm a pretty good guy, but if you spent an hour with my friends, at the end of the hour they'd be beating the shit out of you." Or something like that. Meaning, the snobbery would be too much to handle. And what is snobbery but: I know more than you, therefore I'm better than you.
I don't know. I'm not saying I want to take a bus up to Rattanakiri province in northern Cambodia and exist as a fisherman for the rest of my days. But there's something to be said for living life on its own terms, at its own pace, free from the pretense that seems to govern so much of our short little lives.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
A CERTAIN SYNCHRONICITY: PAGING MS.OTSUKA
While browsing through the bookshelves at D's Books the other day I came across an old paperback copy of Chekhov's plays that bore the handwritten inscription on the title page: "Julie Otsuka -- New Haven -- 1980".
And, because I'm weird, and find myself with a little more time on my hands than usual, I decided to google that information.
To my surprise, I realized that the 'Julie Otsuka' who had neatly written her name on that page is the same 'Julie Otsuka' who is a Japanese=American novelist, and recently published a popular novel entitled When The Emperor Was Divine. From an interview, I learned that she waitressed in New Haven, Connecticut for a few years after graduation. So there you go.
( haven't read her novel, though I did see it a copy of it in another bookshop here a few weeks ago.)
I love weird little moments in time, moments in life like this. All those years ago, when I was, what, only five years old, she sat down in her bedroom or kitchen in New Haven, and opened that Chekhov book, and wrote her name on the front page. She didn't know she would, one day, be a successful novelist; she might have hoped that that would happen, sure, but she didn't know it.
And exactly how did that book end up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, twenty-five years later? How many hands did it pass through? How many people turned its pages? (Judging by its' rather pristine condition, I would guess: not that many.)
I feel sorry for the book. I do. In that intervening space in time, its' one-time owner, Ms.Otsuka, has gone on to live a life, to write a novel, to do a book-tour. While the book itself, the Chekhov book, has been sitting on a shelf. Maybe for months. Possibly for years. Dusty. Surrounded by other lonely, unread tomes. Waiting.
I want to go back to the shop and buy that book. I would like to wait until Ms.Otsuka's next book tour, and go to one of her readings, one of her signings, and present that book to her, the book that she owned a quarter of a century ago, when the world was young. I think it would mean something to her. Because when you write your name on the title page of a book, you are not merely claiming a possession; if that were the case, we would label our TVs and couches and chesterfields in a similar manner. No. When you write your name in a book, along with the place, along with the date, you are saying: "This is who I am, at this point in time, in this place. This is what I was interested in. I was here and I mattered and I had this book in my hands."
To return it to her hands, all these years later, all this life later, would result in a certain synchronicity. It would prove that that which is lost can sometimes be found. It would show that sometimes life has a way of rebounding in on itself. It would prove that the young woman who read Chekhov and dreamed of being a writer had had her dreams fulfilled. It would do all and probably none of those things. But it would be cool.
Or I could let the book sit, on those shelves, in this city. Allow it to run its due course. Perhaps it was not meant to return to Ms.Otsuka's hands; perhaps it was meant for other hands, other inscriptions.
And who knows? If I choose not to intervene, it could, still, somehow, end up with Ms.Otsuka. Maybe not next year, or the year after, but in five, ten years time. As she browses through a bookshop in San Diego. Or scans the used-books at her local library.
For some reason, I so want to believe that the cycle of life has an innate, revolving sense of symmetry. That that book should, eventually, return to the lady who owned it so very long ago. That the marking of a book with your own name, using your own pen, gives you a kind of cosmic, eternal claim on it.
It could happen. It might happen. It should happen.
And, because I'm weird, and find myself with a little more time on my hands than usual, I decided to google that information.
To my surprise, I realized that the 'Julie Otsuka' who had neatly written her name on that page is the same 'Julie Otsuka' who is a Japanese=American novelist, and recently published a popular novel entitled When The Emperor Was Divine. From an interview, I learned that she waitressed in New Haven, Connecticut for a few years after graduation. So there you go.
( haven't read her novel, though I did see it a copy of it in another bookshop here a few weeks ago.)
I love weird little moments in time, moments in life like this. All those years ago, when I was, what, only five years old, she sat down in her bedroom or kitchen in New Haven, and opened that Chekhov book, and wrote her name on the front page. She didn't know she would, one day, be a successful novelist; she might have hoped that that would happen, sure, but she didn't know it.
And exactly how did that book end up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, twenty-five years later? How many hands did it pass through? How many people turned its pages? (Judging by its' rather pristine condition, I would guess: not that many.)
I feel sorry for the book. I do. In that intervening space in time, its' one-time owner, Ms.Otsuka, has gone on to live a life, to write a novel, to do a book-tour. While the book itself, the Chekhov book, has been sitting on a shelf. Maybe for months. Possibly for years. Dusty. Surrounded by other lonely, unread tomes. Waiting.
I want to go back to the shop and buy that book. I would like to wait until Ms.Otsuka's next book tour, and go to one of her readings, one of her signings, and present that book to her, the book that she owned a quarter of a century ago, when the world was young. I think it would mean something to her. Because when you write your name on the title page of a book, you are not merely claiming a possession; if that were the case, we would label our TVs and couches and chesterfields in a similar manner. No. When you write your name in a book, along with the place, along with the date, you are saying: "This is who I am, at this point in time, in this place. This is what I was interested in. I was here and I mattered and I had this book in my hands."
To return it to her hands, all these years later, all this life later, would result in a certain synchronicity. It would prove that that which is lost can sometimes be found. It would show that sometimes life has a way of rebounding in on itself. It would prove that the young woman who read Chekhov and dreamed of being a writer had had her dreams fulfilled. It would do all and probably none of those things. But it would be cool.
Or I could let the book sit, on those shelves, in this city. Allow it to run its due course. Perhaps it was not meant to return to Ms.Otsuka's hands; perhaps it was meant for other hands, other inscriptions.
And who knows? If I choose not to intervene, it could, still, somehow, end up with Ms.Otsuka. Maybe not next year, or the year after, but in five, ten years time. As she browses through a bookshop in San Diego. Or scans the used-books at her local library.
For some reason, I so want to believe that the cycle of life has an innate, revolving sense of symmetry. That that book should, eventually, return to the lady who owned it so very long ago. That the marking of a book with your own name, using your own pen, gives you a kind of cosmic, eternal claim on it.
It could happen. It might happen. It should happen.
Friday, July 15, 2005
DOWN WITH KRINGLE
There is no such thing as a gullible cynic. This is what I've come to believe. It's one of those thoughts I have late at night or early in the morning, when the lightning is crackling and the rain is strong and daylight is far, far away. Sometimes words and phrases pop into my head and I tell myself that I have to remember them, write them down, make sense of them, but then I drift back to sleep. The sound of rain on a rooftop does that to you.
Whenever I start to feel that I'm getting a wee bit cynical, I remember my gullibility. Stephen King has a wonderful introduction to his 1992 story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes in which he recounts that, as a child, he tended to believe anything and everything that anyone and everyone told him. I'm the same way. (Just, you know, minus the marvellous storytelling ability and the millions upon millions of dollars in the bank. Other than that, we're identical.)
A few months ago I happened to be at a small dinner party thrown by the French manager of the Cambodiana hotel, one of the biggest, classiest hotels in Cambodia. (Granted, that doesn't take much, does it, this being Cambodia, but you get the picture.) We were in the living room of his apartment, which happened to be in the hotel itself, and what an apartment it was. Not large, no, but stylish, decorated, compact and comfortable. On the wall were various paintings that looked quite familiar. They were Picassos, I noticed. One of them was even the famous sunflower picture. (Or wait -- did Van Gogh do the sunflower one? I think he did. Which just kind of proves my point to come...)
"Is that the real one?" I asked, pointing to the picture.
"Yes, it is," the manager said.
"Wow."
Of course, the logical part of my brain, that part that paid attention in school, should have realized: Those must be copies. But I didn't think of that. Where I come from, where I grew up, people don't usually hang reproductions of Picassos (or Van Goghs) on their walls. So here was this guy -- rich and French and owner of the swankiest hotel in the country -- and, well, it was certainly possible that he was loaded, and had bought the real thing. Wasn't it?
Uh, no.
When a few other guests and the managers chortled that chortled that makes you realize you are, without question, the biggest knob in the planet, if not the galaxy, you slap your hand to your forehead and tell yourself what a goofball you are.
Of course it wasn't the real one, Spencer.
I felt stupid, but later rather relieved. Because for a second, a moment, I had believed in something that was rather absurd. I had been taken in. I had been had. I wasn't as cynical as I thought. Hallejuah. I'm still able to believe the unbelievable.
I'm still convinced that there could be a Santa up there in the North Pole, working hard all year long, cranking out toys with his merry little band of elfin helpers. I mean, shit. I've seen stuff in Phnom Penh far, far more absurd and ridiculous than a kind old man in a red suit living north of Norway and greasing down his sleigh. Who's to say the dude doesn't exist? Until it's proven otherwise, I'm down with Kringle, is what I'm saying. (And I still plan on writing my Santa Claus novel, someday. Just not today.)
There was a bad storm here last night. Rain, thunder, lightning, the whole deal. The kind of storm that forces you to lay in bed, sweating, staring at the darkened ceiling. Thinking strange thoughts. Coining odd phrases that sometimes dissipate come morning, but every now and then linger.
I hope it rains again tonight, too.
Whenever I start to feel that I'm getting a wee bit cynical, I remember my gullibility. Stephen King has a wonderful introduction to his 1992 story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes in which he recounts that, as a child, he tended to believe anything and everything that anyone and everyone told him. I'm the same way. (Just, you know, minus the marvellous storytelling ability and the millions upon millions of dollars in the bank. Other than that, we're identical.)
A few months ago I happened to be at a small dinner party thrown by the French manager of the Cambodiana hotel, one of the biggest, classiest hotels in Cambodia. (Granted, that doesn't take much, does it, this being Cambodia, but you get the picture.) We were in the living room of his apartment, which happened to be in the hotel itself, and what an apartment it was. Not large, no, but stylish, decorated, compact and comfortable. On the wall were various paintings that looked quite familiar. They were Picassos, I noticed. One of them was even the famous sunflower picture. (Or wait -- did Van Gogh do the sunflower one? I think he did. Which just kind of proves my point to come...)
"Is that the real one?" I asked, pointing to the picture.
"Yes, it is," the manager said.
"Wow."
Of course, the logical part of my brain, that part that paid attention in school, should have realized: Those must be copies. But I didn't think of that. Where I come from, where I grew up, people don't usually hang reproductions of Picassos (or Van Goghs) on their walls. So here was this guy -- rich and French and owner of the swankiest hotel in the country -- and, well, it was certainly possible that he was loaded, and had bought the real thing. Wasn't it?
Uh, no.
When a few other guests and the managers chortled that chortled that makes you realize you are, without question, the biggest knob in the planet, if not the galaxy, you slap your hand to your forehead and tell yourself what a goofball you are.
Of course it wasn't the real one, Spencer.
I felt stupid, but later rather relieved. Because for a second, a moment, I had believed in something that was rather absurd. I had been taken in. I had been had. I wasn't as cynical as I thought. Hallejuah. I'm still able to believe the unbelievable.
I'm still convinced that there could be a Santa up there in the North Pole, working hard all year long, cranking out toys with his merry little band of elfin helpers. I mean, shit. I've seen stuff in Phnom Penh far, far more absurd and ridiculous than a kind old man in a red suit living north of Norway and greasing down his sleigh. Who's to say the dude doesn't exist? Until it's proven otherwise, I'm down with Kringle, is what I'm saying. (And I still plan on writing my Santa Claus novel, someday. Just not today.)
There was a bad storm here last night. Rain, thunder, lightning, the whole deal. The kind of storm that forces you to lay in bed, sweating, staring at the darkened ceiling. Thinking strange thoughts. Coining odd phrases that sometimes dissipate come morning, but every now and then linger.
I hope it rains again tonight, too.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
TAKE ME BACK or WHY STAR WARS WAS, IS AND SHALL ALWAYS BE THE END-ALL BE-ALL OF SUPREME AND TOTAL COOLNESS
You have to understand something. Arguing about why the new Star Wars trilogy sucks to somebody of my age (29) or thereabouts is tantamount to blasphemy, at least in my book. (My book isn 't the book, no, but as a non-Christian and a non-Muslim, the Bible or the Koran ain't going to cut it; Star Wars is the closest I will get to a religion. That and Marvel Comics...)
Then again, I suspect I may be in the minority here, as many folks my age feel wounded, betrayed, kicked-in-the-crotch by what George Lucas has wrought this second time out.
Not me.
You see, when you're seven years old, and you save the proof-of-purchase certificates from four or five Star Wars action figures, diligently cutting them out from the back of the box, and then you send those same proof-of-purchase cardboard ovals carefully in the mail, hoping against hope that the mailman doesn't lose that precious little envelope, all with the promise of receiving an exclusive, can't-buy-it-in-the-stores Nien Numb action figure in the mail, and two, three months later that figure actually arrives, in your house, in a small gray cardboard box, well, when such an act occurs, it is akin to all those folks who see images of the Virgin Mary in pieces of toast. (And if you think I'm exaggerating, think again.)
So I can, if pressed, rationally explain to you why I actually really, really like The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and, finally, Revenge Of The Sith. I can state that I love how Lucas has retroactively refitted his original story, making it now the primary narrative not of Luke Skywalker, but that of his father, Anakin Skywalker, later to become Darth Vader. I can relate how this is now a saga of a father who chooses the wrong way in life, and is then redeemed by his son, who faces similar temptation, then resists. I can point out how the entire series, all six films, reflects the circular nature of history, how democracies are fragile enterprises that often come undone by the actions of a few misguided individuals, and how the empires that arise are then, in turn, undone by a concentrated group of dedicated rebels. I could even hypothesize that Lucas has attempted something that nobody in cinema has ever done before -- using one family's personal saga, intimate and emotional, and interwoven it with the fate of an entire civilization. I could, on reflection, show how various Buddhist, Christian and Muslim ideas surrounding God, fate, prophecies and prophets are interwoven together alongside the spaceships and light sabres, and how embedded within the entire saga is a subtle critique of how institutionalized religion inevitably becomes corrupted alongside the institutions that govern our lives, and that it is only when the religion itself breaks free from its schematic, regimented requirements that true spiritual redemption arises.
I could say all of that, but it would be bullshit.
Because what matters is that when I was seven years old I sent away for a Star Wars action figure that could not be found at Zellers, or Towers, and it arrived, in my hands, weeks later. A solid, bendable, force. You have to understand -- this was Nien Numb, people, the co-pilot of the Millenium Falcon, Lando Calrissian's right-hand man when they attacked and destroyed the second Death Star.
So, I understand all the criticisms of the new Star Wars films. I even agree with some of them. And again, if a light sabre was pressed to my throat, I could articulate, in an 800 page essay, the political, social and familial themes that Lucas was articulating.
But the seven year old who got Nien Numb delivered by mail to his house would respond:
"Did you see that fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan? And the way Anakin's face, like, melted? And Yoda crawling through that little crawlspace! And how Anakin killed all those Jedi, even the younglings? And..."
When the seven year old inside of you pipes up, you listen, and you listen hard. That boy's religion was Star Wars, and while it may not be a mature relgion, or a real religion, it was mine, more or less. Trying to explain to me why Star Wars sucks is like trying to convince a born-again why evolution is the real deal. I will nod my head and smile politely and concede that you do, in fact, have quite a good argument. But nothing will change.
Very few things in life can take me back to that boy who waited, patiently, day after day, for his action figure to arrive -- and the things that can accomplish that feat, Star Wars or otherwise, I revere, plain and simple.
Then again, I suspect I may be in the minority here, as many folks my age feel wounded, betrayed, kicked-in-the-crotch by what George Lucas has wrought this second time out.
Not me.
You see, when you're seven years old, and you save the proof-of-purchase certificates from four or five Star Wars action figures, diligently cutting them out from the back of the box, and then you send those same proof-of-purchase cardboard ovals carefully in the mail, hoping against hope that the mailman doesn't lose that precious little envelope, all with the promise of receiving an exclusive, can't-buy-it-in-the-stores Nien Numb action figure in the mail, and two, three months later that figure actually arrives, in your house, in a small gray cardboard box, well, when such an act occurs, it is akin to all those folks who see images of the Virgin Mary in pieces of toast. (And if you think I'm exaggerating, think again.)
So I can, if pressed, rationally explain to you why I actually really, really like The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and, finally, Revenge Of The Sith. I can state that I love how Lucas has retroactively refitted his original story, making it now the primary narrative not of Luke Skywalker, but that of his father, Anakin Skywalker, later to become Darth Vader. I can relate how this is now a saga of a father who chooses the wrong way in life, and is then redeemed by his son, who faces similar temptation, then resists. I can point out how the entire series, all six films, reflects the circular nature of history, how democracies are fragile enterprises that often come undone by the actions of a few misguided individuals, and how the empires that arise are then, in turn, undone by a concentrated group of dedicated rebels. I could even hypothesize that Lucas has attempted something that nobody in cinema has ever done before -- using one family's personal saga, intimate and emotional, and interwoven it with the fate of an entire civilization. I could, on reflection, show how various Buddhist, Christian and Muslim ideas surrounding God, fate, prophecies and prophets are interwoven together alongside the spaceships and light sabres, and how embedded within the entire saga is a subtle critique of how institutionalized religion inevitably becomes corrupted alongside the institutions that govern our lives, and that it is only when the religion itself breaks free from its schematic, regimented requirements that true spiritual redemption arises.
I could say all of that, but it would be bullshit.
Because what matters is that when I was seven years old I sent away for a Star Wars action figure that could not be found at Zellers, or Towers, and it arrived, in my hands, weeks later. A solid, bendable, force. You have to understand -- this was Nien Numb, people, the co-pilot of the Millenium Falcon, Lando Calrissian's right-hand man when they attacked and destroyed the second Death Star.
So, I understand all the criticisms of the new Star Wars films. I even agree with some of them. And again, if a light sabre was pressed to my throat, I could articulate, in an 800 page essay, the political, social and familial themes that Lucas was articulating.
But the seven year old who got Nien Numb delivered by mail to his house would respond:
"Did you see that fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan? And the way Anakin's face, like, melted? And Yoda crawling through that little crawlspace! And how Anakin killed all those Jedi, even the younglings? And..."
When the seven year old inside of you pipes up, you listen, and you listen hard. That boy's religion was Star Wars, and while it may not be a mature relgion, or a real religion, it was mine, more or less. Trying to explain to me why Star Wars sucks is like trying to convince a born-again why evolution is the real deal. I will nod my head and smile politely and concede that you do, in fact, have quite a good argument. But nothing will change.
Very few things in life can take me back to that boy who waited, patiently, day after day, for his action figure to arrive -- and the things that can accomplish that feat, Star Wars or otherwise, I revere, plain and simple.
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