EVEN GODS CAN FALL

Coming back to Canada last week, on the airplane, via THE GLOBE AND MAIL (Canada's National Newspaper), I read about the handful of Canadians killed by fire (both friendly and decidedly unfriendly) in Afghanistan, and, scanning the photos of the deceased, I realized that I knew one of them.

Or knew of him, anyways. Had shared the same track, at least, way back when.

I sat there in disbelief for a few moments. Could it be the same guy I knew as a teenager, the towering sprinter a few years older than us we had so admiringly dubbed 'Zeus', in awe of his size, speed and general invincibility? I didn't want to believe it -- but how many black Canadians named Mark Graham were there? It had to be him, damnit.

I soon learned that it was, in fact, the Mark Graham that had once ruled the Ontario high school track circuit. And I suddenly felt older. More mortal.

As teenagers, us distance runners at the Ontario championships would sometimes stop to watch the sprinters strut their stuff. Distance running and sprinting share as much in common as ballet and target shooting. The track events that we participated in -- the 800 metres, the 1500 metres, the 3000 metres -- emphasized endurance over speed. (Yes, the 800 metres is fast, but it's nothing like a sprint.) Those who ran in the 100, 200 and even the 400 were a breed apart. They moved. They soared. They flat-out fucking flew.

Mark Graham was big. And fast. Almost titanic. I remember lounging on the grass lining the oval track, my own events gratefully completed, my mouth sucking back water, waiting for the sprinters to do what they were built to do.

The sun shone. The sky was blue. Mark Graham took to the track and buzzed on by like a Japanese bullet train. The whoosh of his speed -- I still remember it. Us distance runners looked at each other and shook our heads and wondered what it would be like to fly that fast. Only minutes earlier, we had run that same track, but it was his now, his to mold and dissect with his strength and his power.

And now he's dead.

Killed by American friendly-fire in Afghanistan, so far from the world he grew up in. At one point in time we were both high school students sharing the same track meet, competing in diverging events, only the sun and the sweat and the joy of our bodies linking us together.

I felt very old, reading that newspaper on that plane. Reading about the death of someone my teenage self had known as 'Zeus'. Trying to imagine what you could say to the teenage Mark Graham, that invincible sprinter: "One day you will be killed in a land called Afghanistan, serving your country, helping to rebuild a sick and stricken land." Would he have believed it? Would anyone?

Then, days later, a deranged lunatic shoots up a Montreal college, killing one, wounding dozens. Only two hours away from where I type these words.

There's the temptation to wonder: What's going on here? Is the world hopeless? How can young and decent men and women die such violent, terrible deaths?

I thought of Cambodia, where I lived for over two years, and the madness of its genocide. I thought of Japan, where I lived for four years, and the unrivalled animosity of its solidiers during WWII. The Japanese and the Cambodians are the nicest people you will ever, ever meet -- and yet they, too, have known violence. Have embraced violence. (As have the Germans. And the Rwandans. And that Canadian gunman, weapon in hand, eager to kill. Just because.)

The only comfort, for me, is the realization that each day, covertly, the world over, acts of kindness and grace also find their way into the light. People being civil to one another. People helping one another. People doing good because it is good to do good.

To see violence as an aberration, an anomaly, endemic to certain countries or particular races -- that, for me, is a skewed viewpoint. Violence is a part of our nature, a part of humanity, an offshoot of evolution, perhaps, inevitable and unavoidable. How to contain it, how to divert it, how to not give in to our own lesser natures -- these are the questions that must be considered. We will never eradicate violence; we can only seek to prevent it as best as we can, and attempt to unleash our own, nobler angels as much as possible.

Still.

The students at Dawson College began their day of terror the same way we begin all our days. They woke up, pissed, downed some cereal, argued with their parents. ("Whatever, Ma.") Mark Graham woke up, showered, strapped on some guns, made some jokes. Then was killed. Makes no sense. And never will.

Zeus, dead and gone. I remember watching him streak. I remember the sunshine of those days. I remember our youth. We were all so strong and fast and aiming for the finish line, knowing it was close, not realizing how fragile those days were, how arbitrary that line was. Everything we needed was there. Everything was available. We had our shoes and our numbers. The track was ours. There would always be another day, another race, another chance, next year, perhaps, to watch Zeus demolish the competition. Another opportunity to revel in our possibilities.

INTERSECTIONS

While running through a cool and crisp Canadian morning I encountered a misty field, a shroud of white, almost smoky dew that hovered atop the ground as if hesitant to descend, afraid to disperse. The sky was blue and the grass was green and here, in the almost empty Ontario outdoors, the silence of the morning broken only by the sound of my own footsteps falling on highway pavement, I could feel, if only for a moment, at home, yet reminded also of away, of another place, a distant place. For in the Philippines, in Baguio, the clouds touch the mountains; here, in Ontario, the mist touches the grass. Between two solitudes -- east and west -- I almost hovered.

When you've lived abroad and stayed abroad for any extended period of time, coming back home, if only for a week or two (or, in my case, three) is almost inevitably a shock to the system, a tiny volt of lightning to the heart and the brain. Not enough to fry, no, but certainly strong enough to jolt. For everything is different and everything is the same. Abroad, away, memories of home are simultaneously vague and vivid; it's all there, in your head, just stored and stuffed into boxes both bursting and empty. You open the drawers every now and then to reacquaint yourself with who you are and where you're from, but it's only when you arrive, again, in the land of your birth that you see who you are and where you've been. (And maybe where you're going.)

People on TV look a little older. Strange new fonts adorn the local papers. Malls and movie theatres have come up and come down. And in between these cosmetic trivialities lies the you that was here before, and the you that is here now. Thomas Wolfe famously said that you can't go home again, but I wonder if that's necessarily true. I think if you come home expecting to find the country you left, and the you that you left, then, yes -- you are pursuing a sense of place that has long ago packed up and headed off to Hawaii. But if you come back hoping to unravel another sort of mystery, an enigma of the soul, an intersection between that which raised you and that which remains, then perhaps, just perhaps, you can find a place in this new and familiar land.

People have moved on, yes; time has marched forward, definitely. But so have you, and to return is not to revert, or regress; to return is to discover. To seek. To consciously endeavor to unearth aspects of the self and the nation that may, just possibly, align themselves once more, in strange yet compelling contortions.

Before leaving Canada I had no interest in its history, its politics, its outlook and prospects. My immersion in Asia led to an interest in world affairs, world history, and so it's perhaps no surprise that I find myself eager to learn more about my country's past and its present, its political parties and nefarious politicians. Soon I will be back in the Philippines, but my home-hearted interests will linger.

As will the mist. I'm sure that tomorrow, as I run, the mist will return. I will stare at its translucent state; I will wonder when, and how, it will shift to sleet, then snow. I will be reminded of the place I left less than a week ago, and the clouds that cross the mountains. I will stare at the fields and wait for the sun to finish its rise. I will be happy to hover between two worlds for at least another day.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD, ANNABELLE...

After high-tailing it back to Canada for a hastily planned three-week holiday (and enduring a slightly exhausting travel schedule that found me taking a five hour long night bus to Manila, a plane to Seoul, a fourteen hour wait at the airport, a twelve hour flight to Toronto, a one hour flight to Ottawa, followed by a five hour car ride back to Toronto a day later), I was rewarded earlier this afternoon at around one p.m. when I was introduced to my brand new niece at the North York hospital in Toronto, a five minute walk from where my parents spent a year or two in their early twenties and a short car ride away from where I spent my own four years at York University, and the baby is named, eloquently enough, Annabelle Christina Spencer, born approximately an hour or two earlier via ceasaran section after quite a lengthy build-up.

The wait was worth it.

She is small and tiny and looks just like babies are supposed to look. (Only prettier.). Her behavior impressed me, I have to say. If it were me, and I had been floating, chilling, hanging out in that wonderful warm womb for a good nine months and change, and then I suddenly found myself thrusted into this colder, brighter, scarier universe where all of these creatures of various shapes and sizes suddenly fondled me with monstrous hands and shiny white teeth, I'd be freaking out. But the kid actually seemed to enjoy it.

Half Chinese (but all Spencer --and no, I'm not sure what that means, either), I predict young Annabelle will be quite the stunner. She's already considerably cute at, what, eight, nine hours old. Just think what the future has in store for her.

So, much, much, much congratulations and good cheer are extended to the new father (my older brother, Ted), the new mother (his wife, Elaine), her younger brother, Jason (my new fellow uncle), the proud grandparents, the proud great-grandparents, as well as the friends and family that are all equally ecstatic.

Quite a day, and quite a cool welcome back to Canada.

I wonder what tomorrow has in store...

09/02/06: ME AND HELEN, ELEVEN MONTHS (AND COUNTING) OVARIAN CANCER SURVIVOR

MIAMI VICE

There's something about Michael Mann's Miami Vice. (Not the television series, which I've never seen, but the movie version, which I just saw.) Something emotional and true. Emotional, because the film wisely spaces out its gentle and lyrical peaks. True, because much of the movie is made up of dozens, if not hundreds, of stereotypical story archetypes that, nevertheless, can still carry a mythic resonance underneath the common grime: the white cop and his black partner; their beleagured women; the enemy female who cannot be trusted; the snarling South American crime lord. We've all been there, done that, seen this. Just today I read an interview with novelist and screenwriter Michael Tolkin, who made an interesting argument as to why so many movies recently so blatantly suck: that the mythic structure perfected and articulated by Joseph Campbell, utilized by George Lucas so well, has been superseded by the reality of real life atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. We, as a society, are no longer that which the hero-structure claims us to be, and we've all seen that structure co-opted by a thousand, million action movies, making its hollowness even more multiple and muted. (Only kids are immune, as they're being introduced to these myths for the first time.)

All of this may be true, but the best movies have recognized this for the longest time; a story is not about its twists or its originality, even, but about how it makes us think, and feel, about itself and about life itself. Miami Vice is such a film, and Michael Mann does not even attempt to dazzle us with his originality. He knows we've paid money to see a movie based on a twenty-year old TV show that was all sizzle and little steak. (Or so I'm told.) Mann is, first and foremost, a filmmaker of style, period. In another artist's hands, this could be, almost has to be, a blueprint for the superficial. Under Mann's direction, what we get, instead, is something inside of the style. Something indefinable and alluring amidst the cliches.

Bottom line, Mann cuts through the bullshit. There's no flashy opening credits. There's no light, comical introduction to the characters. Crockett and Tubbs don't strut around projecting 'cool'; they are experienced, and weary, and tough. Whatever 'cool' remains is the nasty residue of their immersion in the shit of their jobs. They share no Lethal Weapon banter, no in-jokes, no sly winks to an imaginary audience. These men know themselves and each other (or think that they do) and their city, and we're left to insinuate and figure out the rest.

The film is hesitant, and deliberate, and paced. Not fast-paced, or slow-paced -- just paced, period. Mann shoots his characters against a backdrop of city and squalor, water and sun. His compositions almost always place his characters in the foreground of their locations. We see, with the crisp, pristine clarity of digital cinema, high-rises and highways, urban slums and ocean blues. Like the best Japanese filmmakers, Mann understands filmic space and how to use it -- that who we are is always in relation to where we stand.

Here, that stance is in Miami, yes, but there are no glittering, gleaming montages of babes and buildings, landmarks and street signs. Well over half of the movie takes place outside of Miami, in Haiti and Colombia and on the open sea. We watch the men at work. We follow them around. No time for frivolous nonsense. Their business is adult and grim.

I'm making it sound kind of mannered and laborious, and it is indeed glacier-like, at times verging on boring. But there's something going on here. Something in the way Foxx and his woman play in the shower. In the way, every so often, hints and traces of human emotions are allowed to shine through the grime. In the way Mann is not afraid to be lyrical, almost elegaic, if only briefly. Farell and Foxx slide in and out of these extremes, but they do not swagger and preen; they move fiercely, warily. Foxx continues to prove that he is well on his way to becoming a premier, if not the premier actor of his generation. (Watch the way he morphs from the hotshot football player of Any Given Sunday to the craziness of his converted-Jew middle aged trainer in Ali to the blind genius of Ray Charles in Ray. Wait until he hits his forties, and hence his stride.) Foxx, whose stand-up comedy routines can be hilariously outrageous, whose mere personality is infectious, alert and expansive, is self-contained and confident here -- but not brash. He has a clarity to his delivery that reminds me of DiCaprio and Denzel Washington: we always know what their characters are thinking and feeling. Their emotions are clear; their faces can be read, and understood. (Clarity and understanding being the hardest effects to achieve in art.) Farell, too, has an audacity in his eyes that carries no mirth, only bravado; his Crockett is opaque, but he hints at what he wants, and what he fears, and we get the hint.

There is no more common story than a crime story, and there is nothing here that we haven't seen before. And yet it contains little of what we would expect from a Miami Vice movie. It's as if Mann is purposely throwing away all that we most want to see: the witty banter, the babes, the beaches, the glitz, the shine, the fun. Mann is not concerned with that. He is interested in texture and tone, colour and light, honesty and impact. (Even the deaths here are blunt and brutal.) The film, by its end, has earned its moments of heartbreak and grace. What will you do for your job and what will you do for your life, the film explores. The last shot, simply framed, is utterly clear and completely ambiguous, somehow moving and heartbreaking and hopeful and sad, all at the same time.

By the end, after that final image has come and gone, when the title Miami Vice finally flashed on the screen, the film had made me realize that the 'vice' of the title has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with the wants and needs and hurts of work and love, the true vices that form the undercore of our lives and of this sleek, sedate, superb summer film.

RON 'ANCHORMAN' BURGUNDY'S YOUNGER BROTHER, OR 'CANUCKINASIA'? YOU BE THE JUDGE...

WHY WORKING WITH KIDS ALLOWS YOU TO BECOME THE TERMINATOR WHENEVER YOU DAMN WELL CHOOSE

One of the marvellous assets about working with people under the age of, oh, eighteen is that you can see them in the hallway, and smile at them, and wave at them, and make your finger into a little gun, pointing at their heads while stating flatly in your best Schwarzenegger: "I have come from the future to terminate your existence."

You can then mime shooting them in the face, and they will most likely fall half-way over the stairway railing, managing, in the process, to unleash their own imaginary uzi whose rapid fire bullets strike you in the chest. At which point you can fall to the floor, and they will laugh, and ask if you are alright, and you can stand up, nod, smile and be on your own way to the next class.
And they will think nothing of it. Such goofiness is second nature. Their reaction to your idiotic lunacy will be the same: idiotic lunacy. Kids are hard-wired into avenues of creativity and play that seem like foreign countries I used to visit. They remind me of how I used to think; how I can still think, if I choose. The colours of life can become more vivid, and the gaps between hours richer, fuller, less stolid and adult.

The problem with adults is that we pass each other in the hall, and nod, and smile, and ask how's it going, and pretend to hear the response. We interact without imagination or flair or colour. And our everyday attempts at levity often feel like those old black-and-white movies from the forties that Ted Turner colorized in the eighties-- creepily static and oddly tainted.

Much better to greet somebody you know by pretending to be The Terminator sent from the future to eradicate their existence, only to discover that they, in fact, have turned the tables on you for once and for all, and that you have to fight to maintain your grasp on the here and the now by eluding their invisible arsenal of destruction.

Makes the day go by quicker, is what I'm saying.