tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50729942774368801812024-03-13T10:42:29.662+07:00Peter In Peter OutNakhon Phanom Rockland Phnom Penh JakartaPeterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-68818888257487118462013-11-05T11:31:00.002+07:002013-11-05T22:18:16.105+07:00Under My FeetThe story begins quietly enough. I wanted to visit the Philippines for some time and for many reasons: its presence as the only Catholic nation in the region; the history they share with the US; the natural beauty; the prevalence of English speakers. Our weeklong October break seemed like a perfect time to go.<br />
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I want to explore Indonesia of course, but I am trying to cram that in weekends, thanks to cheap domestic flights. Also, my friend in Manila works for the <a href="http://www.ncca.gov.ph/main.php" target="_blank">National Commission for Culture and the Arts</a> and she suggested <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohol" target="_blank">Bohol/panglao Island</a> based on its diving and the fact that she would be there visiting project sites. Perfect.<br />
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I booked into a groovy little <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1036817-d636754-Reviews-Bohol_Bee_Farm-Panglao_Island_Bohol_Province_Visayas.html" target="_blank">organic bee farm</a>/ resort for my first night. Wonderful food and a pretty spot on the more secluded side of Panglao Island.<br />
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Very much what the doctor ordered- a little bit Primo like in its attempt to source locally and grow much of the produce themselves. </div>
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A jarring experience came in the morning when a kitten began screeching under the deck where they served the buffet breakfast. Thinking it was a cat fight/standoff I was considering pouring water down through the slats to scatter the offenders, but a staff member had already hopped the rail to investigate. Peering under the deck, his eyes went wide and he exclaimed, "Snake! Snake!". </div>
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I clambered down to where he was. Sure enough the kitten, now gone quiet, was fully enveloped in the maw of a wild python. The snake was wound into the rocks - I couldn't gauge its length. Thickness-wise it easily matched my bicep. As the only visible remnant of the kitten were two paws and a tail, nothing was left to do but go back to my coffee. </div>
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Word spread. Many of the hotel staff came down for a look. The women mostly shrieked. A few young men picked up sticks or wrapped their arms in shirts, considering methods of action. The other guests were content to look down through the slats for a glimpse of spotted skin. We went back and forth about how to drive the snake out- I suggested hot water, but a worker responded, "That might kill the snake." It was true. Why kill the snake for simply doing what it does to stay alive? </div>
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The coffee certainly tasted a little differently, as did the morning air, considering the dangers of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. </div>
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We spent Sunday visiting one of the sites Bohol is known for, the Chocolate Hills. Though green from the recent rains, typically these are dark brown, funky lumps, several hundred feet high each. They are old coral deposits that mounded and then were worn away by water as the sea receded. The structure of these is quite loose as can be seen later.</div>
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Then we headed down to my <a href="http://www.hayahay.net/" target="_blank">diver digs</a> on Alona Beach, stopping briefly for Joanna to document another well known site, Baclayon Church, built of coral in 1726 by the Spanish. The Spanish influence is palpable everywhere, and there were times I experienced a wave/hallucination that somehow I had been transported to Central or South America. </div>
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In the room at the base of the tower, there was an older woman giving, of all things, foot massages. She had an Italian customer on whom she was working. Though the rickety wooden stairs up the tower were officially closed, I talked her into letting me ascend. I made my way with the flashlight app on my phone, staying on the edge of the steps. The masseuse got nervous, worried about getting into trouble, so I settled for a look out of the third floor, arched windows. I asked Joanna why they had not capitalized on this tower, fixing it up and charging a fee to ascend.</div>
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Tuesday I was scheduled for a 'refresher' dive class, since I had not been diving since Thailand in May 2012. Class was in the afternoon. I rented a scooter take Joanna to the airport to catch her flight back to Manila and work. Twenty minutes into riding, sunny day, perfect temperature, grooving on the countryside and all the sights along the road, moving at about 80 kilometers per hour, I got that terrible feeling of a flat tire. The bike went all squishy and squirrelly. </div>
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Shit, could I have two flats? Damn that rental place...I eased off the gas, slowed to a crawl and did my best to get a look down at my front and rear tires. Hmmm. Nothing there to see. I had just experienced a back flat on a scooter taxi in Jakarta and I was sure this had to be it. Still, everything seemed fine. My imagination? </div>
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Anyone who has ridden motorbikes ofteb knows that uncertainty- particular road surfaces- like grooved pavement- cause it. There is a metal bridge in NYC I especially hate for the way it causes the tires to float. On a bike that rubber to road connection is everything, tickling the edge of the subconscious as you corner, brake, and accelerate.</div>
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I resumed speed- wrote it off to a potential acid flashback/mental anxiety creation. Moments later I turned the corner and came up on this:</div>
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People screaming, crying, wandering dazed.</div>
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Here was the same church the day before when we stopped in to use the WC.</div>
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Somehow my disbelieving brain did not yet connect the wobbling of the tires with the collapse. Because <u>I</u> had not felt an earthquake, the church had simply collapsed on its own, a defect of time come to pass. </div>
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We drove around the side, asked if there were any people needing help. Approaching the structure seemed beyond foolhardy. I couldn't hear any screams from inside. I thought about the kitten. </div>
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Joanna had a plane to catch and by then there were plenty of other people, including police, who had come onto the scene. We rode on across the bridge into Tagbiliran; with each passing meter the reality of what happened crept across my imagination.<br />
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Oh.<br />
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Hmmm...<br />
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In a very poor country where many buildings are dilapidated or only partially constructed, it can be hard to tell where natural disaster leaves off and poverty begins. By now my feeble brain was digesting the bike wobble with the entire city being on the streets in shock. What to do? Even the police seemed dazed. Who to arrest? Where to start?<br />
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It wasn't until we reached the airport (which was relatively unscathed) that I got my first full account from an English speaker- well, an Australian speaker- of what had happened. She was an EMT worker on holiday from Melbourne, about to buy her ticket when the shaking began. Experienced with stress, she was ready to wait it out. Everyone else had a different plan. She said the security people ran out first, followed by everyone else. The shaking lasted 42 seconds in total, registering 7.2 on the Richter scale.<br />
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As my feet hadn't truly felt this, I continued to feel a measure of remove. A two inch cushion of air between my world and those around me. Since the terminal wasn't damaged much, I thought all would be back on track within a half an hour or so. Joanna would be on a plane. I would head to my dive class.<br />
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The first big aftershock was an appropriate slap across my silliness. I was standing between two parked cars which lurched violently enough so that their shocks and springs rolled and bounced. Everyone raced back from under the shade of the buildings.<br />
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Oh.<br />
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Then about five more in the span of the next 35 minutes. Pandemonium. The mayor declared the airport open. The guard I told this to said, "The mayor isn't here is he?" Word of numbers of dead began rolling in. A ticket agent from Zest air took the role of making announcements. All flights cancelled. Ferry terminal closed. People began bitching about their connections in Manila. People would drift back to the shade, the world would shudder, everyone would race back out under the hot sun.<br />
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It was time to go. We hopped on the scooter. Joanna wanted to go to see the Baclayon church, as someone said it had been damaged as well. We headed ten minutes south, ducked the scooter under the police tape blocking the road, under the downed power lines.<br />
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What to do or think? Built in 1726. Gone in 42 seconds. I stood next to an ancient Filipino woman. She couldn't have weighed more than 70 pounds. She was shaking her head, teary-eyed. I put my hand on her shoulder and said how sorry I was. I leaned in to hear her soft voice. "So strong. So strong." I wondered at what she was getting at. She pointed and said, "Mary. So strong. Nothing can take her."<br />
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I was focused on the destruction of these old hand-built houses of worship laid to waste. If there was a message, it seemed to me that someone might not be so happy with the religious powers that be. Here was a woman of faith, finding only a message of strength, a way to persevere. A life of poverty putting setbacks into perspective- interpreting the world differently.<br />
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Here was my tower.<br />
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In the foreground is the wife of the Italian who was getting a foot massage the day before. He had scheduled an appointment for both of them for that morning. We wondered if the masseuse might be dead under the pile, but he was sure she was not, since his appointment was for an hour post quake.<br />
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The news that night relayed photos from the Chocolate Hills.<br />
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You can see the same bell in the background of a photo I took 24 hours before the quake.</div>
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It turns out that for whatever reason, the tiny resort town of Alona Beach where I was staying was shaken but not stirred. We had power thanks to a German resort owner well prepared for the worst. Within 12 hours we actually had internet and were back on the grid.<br />
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Joanna's flight was rescheduled for the next morning, but with the president and the accompanying entourage of mucky-mucks, secret service, and army generals in their helicopters and private planes, we waited for hours and hours of unannounced delay.<br />
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Joanna's final comment before boarding the plane was, "I guess I will have to request more money than I thought." </div>
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Making light of a situation that had claimed hundreds of lives, and created billions of dollars of destruction. What else was there to do? </div>
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I went back to Pangalo, did one day of diving, looking up through each of the ensuing aftershocks, some measuring as strong as 5.4, seeing what was overhead, considering as each commenced if I should get off my ass and head towards open air. But none lasted longer than 5- 8 seconds. Strangers got used to looking across tables, giving a shoulder shrug- <i>That was a big one, yeah?</i> </div>
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I got drunk with a German resort manager who was DJing what he called a 'survivor dance'. Trying to get out of under the stress of waiting, of not understanding how to process the experience. </div>
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Sometimes the shudder would be purely in my mind. I could not separate the world beneath my feet moving from an internal momentary swaying. There came a certain uncertainty in the earth being a fixed platform. It was all in flux, all an illusion.</div>
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The obvious lessons were here- about everything being luck and timing; about living in the moment because at any given moment even the most permanent of structures and notions can fall into dust; about the brain's perception and the connection to social expectations and group think. The earth round? No way. That big snake thing will eat me? No way.</div>
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There was the embarrassing delight in the being there- in making the New York Times, of having a story to tell and a few pictures to show. </div>
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Of course with the telling comes the frustration, the confirmation that no experience can be shared. <i>Really? Wow! Glad you're okay... Hey did you hear about Sally? She's slept with Joe!</i></div>
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But here I am, trying to tell you about it, for what its worth.</div>
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<i>“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” </i></h1>
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Why is that? Because if I am telling it, it is past and gone? Or because you weren't there and I miss you as well?</div>
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Oh.</div>
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Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-29016162798220497082013-09-01T23:25:00.003+07:002013-09-01T23:33:06.699+07:00First Things First<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My father, and he was not unique in this, was a big believer in first impressions. He spent time going over the <i>best</i> handshake, not too firm (aggressive and over-confident) nor too mild (the <i>dead fish, </i>a sure highway to derision and casting out). I don't suppose Stephen Hawking paid too much mind to such things, nor Bill Gates. Perhaps not mean advice though perhaps shallow. It did serve in reading <i>Death of a Salesman </i>- "<span style="background-color: #f4f4f4; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><i>Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." </i> </span>Oh Willy, you poor, sad sack of American pipe dreams. I recall a pair of interviewers at my last job fair who said I "presented very well" as a gentle way of telling me they had hired someone else. Apparently they had trained themselves to look past my perfected hello grip. We fathers so desperately want our sons not to be somehow <i>left behind. W</i>ho amongst us is not guilty of promoting, consciously or not, <i>getting ahead.</i><br />
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What is the use of first impressions, really, unless they reveal the longterm self? I know. The proverbial foot in the door. A chance to <i>prove oneself</i>. But there is another, more pertinent idiomatic saying: <i> Truth will out. </i>Shakespeare, natch. Is there anything the man did not know?<br />
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Side bar- you are going to put Shakespeare and Mozart into a room- who is the visual artist included? And should it be Mozart? Child prodigy and musical genius, certainly, but are there others whose depth over time exceeds his? Bach? Beethoven? Maybe it is all simply <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/angels_dancing_on_the_head_of_a_pin" target="_blank">angels on the head of a pin</a>.<br />
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Anyhoo- First impressions. I have seen such a very small slice of Indonesia- of what value can my thoughts be? Acknowledged: my feelings will evolve with experience and time. Still. Above is how this lovely young person who makes delicious egg custards responds to an odd, sweaty foreigner in his silly shorts, asking politely as possible if he may take her photograph. A response of genuine warmth, a gaze without guile. Graceful forbearance. The opposite of a facebook <i>selfie (</i>which, by the way, has <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/28/_twerk_and_selfie_added_to_oxford_english_dictionary_nope_and_stop_saying.html" target="_blank">NOT</a> officially made it into the OED-subtle distinction is not the stuff of the modern age, needless to note).<br />
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This is the response of the bulk of the Indonesian people I have encountered. Whether they are working making small cakes-<br />
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or escorting the local version of the armored car-<br />
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I don't have photos, but the first remarkable feature of Indonesia, or I should say Jakarta, is the prevalence of bomb searching security, including at my school and every shopping mall. The efforts are neither thorough nor effective, but they are constant- almost a cultural quirk of sorts. It is clear that the guards in question have little in the way of training or interest, but they push the militaristic look and manner to the extreme. Just what the threat is remains a mystery to me at this point.<br />
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Yes, we are still in SE Asia, so the bus/truck loading and driving quirks apply. The particular driving mannerism I have noticed in Jakarta is the <i>swerve</i>. They win the prize for coming closest taillight to headlight while changing lanes. The bikes above were headed back to villages for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Fitr" target="_blank">Eid al Fitr</a>, the biggest holiday of the year. My arrival in this country, home to the largest population of Muslims in the world, coincided with Ramadan. Much more on that to come, Allah willing. Suffice it to note, all other concerns aside, I am happy I have come for that part of the experience.<br />
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What else? Malls. Lots of malls. Jakarta seems to have the corner on the world market in two areas: traffic and malls. Don't they go hand in hand? Vast landscapes of parking and shopping. Gigantic swaths of neon and macadam. It is what one does here, recreationally, culturally (the latest iteration is marketed as a combination of art exhibit and shopping experience), communally. I direct the cabs by giving mall names. To get home I say <i>Mall Teraskota</i> and though small it serves more reliably as a marker than my actual street name, which I still do not know.<br />
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There are malls for every budget and style shopper. Acres of granite and stainless steel. Boxcars of shirts and underwear. Stacks of coffee shops, piles of sushi.<br />
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The good side of this is the availability of indulgences.<br />
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Though the cost is exorbitant - $6 for this bar(faneffingtastic if I may say so), it means I can, with a little digging, get things like an excellent cup of joe.<br />
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...It also means living in this suburb of Jakarta is far from cheap overall. The greatest expense is naturally alcohol, upon which a gouging tax is placed. Yesterday I spent $70 on two Chilean wines I would not have spent more than $6 -8 each in the USA. Believe me, it is a different sensation downing a perfectly average bottle of red with a friend when you know it is setting you back $35. I believe <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113627/" target="_blank">Nicolas Cage</a> would have run out of money long before his liver gave out had he cashed in his pay here.<br />
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More on this aspect of life in an Islamic country to come as well. By the way, the porn-soaked culture of the West still feigns mock outrage at Miley Cyrus shaking her ass on tv, so don't pretend Christians have it together, okay?<br />
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What, besides wandering the mall, replaces the social lubricant alcohol here? Well, food for one. I also went to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah" target="_blank">shisha</a> bar one night, a lively place full of young people socializing and flirting.<br />
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Malls and shopping. If you know me, you know my tolerance for this kind of buzz. A buzz that turns to a bomb-dropping drone in my brain, destroying the rustic villages of my psyche pretty quick.<br />
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Between the malls and the traffic I occasionally wonder why the hell I am not in Maine, awaiting the arrival of sharp fall air and impending winter. I have to be careful to avoid certain <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV58fxXOQuE" target="_blank">songs</a> and look for what pleasures I can. Luckily there is that Indonesian smile, and the local market my new friend Phil showed me.<br />
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So, I will focus my researches there, as my French cousin Jean Baptiste would say, will attempt to get past the initial take and go deeper. Will do my best to get past the hello to the heart of the matter.Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-18649050496614386862013-08-14T21:19:00.001+07:002014-01-14T11:58:56.519+07:00Serves Me RightThis is a total side track from my travel entries. I started it and now I am impelled to finish it. Feel free to go back to your web surfing at any time you find your attention wandering...<br />
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<span style="background-color: #eadfc5; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-pro-1, ff-meta-serif-web-pro-2, Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #eadfc5; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-pro-1, ff-meta-serif-web-pro-2, Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;">Around 1984 I was living in a small town, Lacoste, in the
south of France. I was romantically involved with the owner of one of two bars
in the village, the bar that catered to the night crowd, the wild bar where I
once saw a full-on cinematic brawl complete with fighters parting for the
passing of a full-term pregnant woman making her way to the door, actual glass
bottles shattered on actual human skulls, chairs across backs, the whistling
arrival of a phalanx of gendarmarie in their little blue hats straight out of
Casablanca, the paddy wagon doing its loading, the unique reflective quiet of a riot's aftermath. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #eadfc5; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-pro-1, ff-meta-serif-web-pro-2, Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #eadfc5; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-pro-1, ff-meta-serif-web-pro-2, Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;">It was a local thing; no one glanced my way or touched me. The bar owner was a
rustic gal, ill-mannered and raucous, cousins in jail and siblings dead by
overdose. Anyhoo, this romance meant a lot of free drinking and a lot of
drunken, trumped-up drama, a lot of time to perfect my pinball skills (to the
detriment of any other skill that might have been perhaps remunerative long
term). </span></div>
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for a verdict of some kind as what exactly it was I was meant to do in this
life.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #eadfc5; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-pro-1, ff-meta-serif-web-pro-2, Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;">
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<span style="background-color: #eadfc5; font-family: ff-meta-serif-web-pro-1, ff-meta-serif-web-pro-2, Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;">There were two songs of that era that pushed me up and
pushed me down, like an amphetamine, like a narcotic, like old friends and old
enemies. One was a German song, 99 Luftballons, some kind of Cold War protest
song by Nena. I wouldn’t have known since it was in German (it did have
some kind of resurgence later in English). My other anthem was U2’s New Year’s
Day. Over and over. With beer. With coffee. With Pastis.</span></div>
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<i> I…I will begin again.</i> </div>
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The promise of endless new beginnings is also the option to
stuff things up to infinity.</div>
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<i>I…I will begin again.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Slightly over one year ago, I was in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, signing on to what I believed destiny had delivered to my
digital doorstep. My ideal job. Meaningful, ethical, dare I say it? <i>Noble</i> work. It came with such
coincidence, such serendipity. It came so perfectly tailored to my financial
needs, my geographical desires, my moral requirements. Work with <i>impoverished</i> children. Work with <i>gifted</i> children. Work towards the <i> betterment of a nation scarred by my own. <o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The kids were shipped straight from heaven. My co-workers and the director? Not so much.<br />
<br />
I was off balance, nearly from the outset. I was thrown into the side road ditch by the ambition and cocksureness of youth, by a director not attuned to running a small hands-on program, by my own plan of being flexible and low-key. I spent hours each day wondering, <i>Can this be a nightmare? Is this a strange, unbelievable twist in a sick game in which I am trapped?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I have NEVER personally experienced such joy and misery simultaneously. They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. Considering, it does almost seem impossible that a random universe would contain these polar opposites, these abominable meaningless petty wars and these fabulous orange sunrises over dewy meadows. It is almost as if <i>God's Plan</i> is designed to simply shatter us- leave our hearts and minds in a shamble.<br />
<br />
Designed to force us towards...? Such a cruel game.<br />
<br />
I was fired in March. Ugly stuff. Blackmailed not to fight for my job in order to gain an important supervisory recommendation. Faced with a choice, my knees buckled. Instead of angrily turning and walking out, I scraped the floor for a recommendation. I was simply afraid I might not get another job.<br />
<br />
I lost my dream job. I lost face.<br />
<br />
Once a mother at a dinner party, discovering I was an English teacher, accosted me with: <i>Why do kids have to always read such SAD books in class? </i> A wealthy woman, married to a successful local bigwig. I blah blah blah'd about learning more from suffering than happiness, how it is only in disturbance and turmoil that suspense is generated.<br />
<br />
A year later, her husband developed a cancerous tumor in his spine; he was dead within six weeks.<br />
<br />
A truer answer would have simply been: <i> I don't know.</i> Many drawn to work on the police force are simply drawn to power- telling people what to do while armed with a loaded Beretta. Perhaps those drawn to teaching English are drawn to comprehending sadness. I mean the English teachers I love. I mean myself.<br />
<br />
One of the great outcomes of this terribly happy/sad chapter in my life, this episode of beautiful happiness/brutal sadness, gain/loss, miracle/catastrophe, was simply acceptance- of moving (or attempting to move) beyond <i>good</i> and <i>bad, </i> of <i>happy </i> and <i>sad,</i> into the land of <i>is. </i>Of living in the moment without expectations or judgement.<br />
<br />
To contain, to comprehend, the extremes of my happiness and my sorrow would have shredded my soul, would have rent my mind in two, would have been impossible. Thus I became less a participant, more of a witness. Was this an abdication of my humanity? Was it unfeeling? I am not sure. I do feel remorse that I did not stand up to my director and to my young colleagues. That I was not more cunning and active rather than passive, trying to weather the storm by battening the hatches. Still, the impossibility of understanding carried its own gifts. It moved me to love and live and work hard with my beautiful Cambodian students up until the last second, when they got on the buses and their small perfect faces disappeared into the dusty distance. Rather than dwell on our impending parting, on the hopelessness of my position, I became more like the kids themselves, enjoying the exact second our bodies and breaths occurred.<br />
<br />
Oddly, I took my next job based on professional career advice, choosing this school in Indonesia because a famous director was at its helm, along with a slew of other highly regarded administrators. I passed over another job at a smaller, less prestigious job in Dhaka my heart was leaning towards. The moment I signed my contract, I had a sinking feeling. I had once again ignored something, though I cannot tell you what that something was.<br />
<br />
I signed in March. In May and June all the administrators and the director I had signed to work with were fired in one of the most astonishingly bloody coups ever in the international school circuit. Without exaggeration, individuals among the most highly regarded in the entire industry were in fear of their freedom, advised by the embassy to pack up, keep their mouths closed, and flee the country. It is the talk of our closed town and has been for months.<br />
<br />
So now I go to school, putting on my company tag, one of the most powerful and troubling multinational companies in the world, for a board who has quite clearly demonstrated a ruthless lack of integrity and empathy, not to mention due process or legality.<br />
<br />
Yet here I am. It <i>is</i>. My ninth graders discussing the ethics of political asylum are there before me- my task at hand. My energy is given wholly to their spark, to uplifting their self confidence and challenging their thinking. The futility of the endeavor is not pertinent, the impending darkness does not diminish the focus, the diminutive girl in rags, begging on the street corner a 1000 yards from my air-conditioned-filled-with-the-privileged-offspring-of-fierce-tiger-moms-bent-on-their-promotion, does not spiral into paralytic despair. Only <i>is. </i> There only remains <i>what I choose to do right now.</i><br />
<br />
Someone once said to me, <i>God only gives you what you can handle. </i> Which is bullshit. Poster worthy pablum. Apparently that dinner party woman's husband couldn't "handle" his cancer and died. Yet there is something in the enormity of it- of the extreme nature of the challenge there for us to tap into any time we care to look into the abyss and try to stay upright and uprighteous.<br />
<br />
If this were all a strange digital reality game designed to teach the author of this blog how to persevere, how to get out of bed and get dressed and go to work instead of putting a shotgun into his mouth, I would have to say it is working, still. You could say it serves me...<i>right</i><br />
<br />
If you have stuck through, read this far, I suppose I owe you some sort of acknowledgment. Or is there the possibility of such a thing as debt? Right and wrong, surely. Fair? Serves me right. Serves you right. As Will Munny would say, <i>Deserves got nothing to do with it....</i><br />
<br />
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<!--EndFragment--></span>Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-90020044113298866772013-07-31T00:12:00.000+07:002013-07-31T00:30:04.784+07:00Drawn to the Unfamiliar<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1mLX7zqEnQeyRSYr5NTFu12xgP068I1aorqGd4PsoLqXDjX2O65n4cPeLHnzOd7ssvnDQfPzmvqZJQbnRjRpLRZAIICFlfpetSuFm7PFyNlSE9f-kaSyVCQNKnKhjyZfsVb3x-Fm96zIx/s1600/IMG_0804.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1mLX7zqEnQeyRSYr5NTFu12xgP068I1aorqGd4PsoLqXDjX2O65n4cPeLHnzOd7ssvnDQfPzmvqZJQbnRjRpLRZAIICFlfpetSuFm7PFyNlSE9f-kaSyVCQNKnKhjyZfsVb3x-Fm96zIx/s640/IMG_0804.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">International Manga Museum Kyoto</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On the plane from San Francisco to Tokyo I watched a documentary called <i>The Iran Job </i>about an American basketball player who travels to play in Iran. Debating going, he says: <i>I don't know why I am going. Something the Lord put in me draws me from the familiar to the unfamiliar. </i><br />
<br />
When younger I actively promoted travel and foreign experience, thinking it essential for understanding the human condition. Time has tempered that notion. Today I believe simply there are those of us born to wander, drawn towards unfamiliar environments in spite of the ensuing insecurity, drawn by the opportunities of the unknown. I don't fool myself that travel is the only means of exploring the unfamiliar. For example, every time an artist faces a blank canvas they enter unknown territory, as does nearly every college graduate and every newly married couple.<br />
<br />
I toyed with the idea of going to Japan many years ago, lured by talk of good paying jobs teaching English to businessmen. I was living in San Francisco, studying martial arts in a Japanese dojo in the basement of a Buddhist temple. I was also working for a Japanese carpenter whose skills with a saw astonished me. I moved back East. Japan's draw receded. We take some roads and others must go unexplored.<br />
<br />
How lucky am I then to have had this brief chance to see this cool country. Its impact profound on global culture and history.<br />
<br />
With a scant week, I had to choose. What could I do with only a few days in the country of samurai and sake and sushi? Of Kobe and Kurosawa? Kyoto it was. Roads chosen, roads neglected.<br />
<br />
First up? Navigate the Tokyo subway. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6r1hyphenhyphenQ9iwsuLLY5s3hfVcGaM-H4b-uOCu5YQ3IkJF_4b1oxrlg_Vn0BBsJF_U2niQMyXvo5ZzfNX4Rzy5J8vef6vAG_jhcw3yByc36JT12t8VP8oAyitPZhwvONH-UBY0Rt_41lyU0vmP/s1600/JR.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6r1hyphenhyphenQ9iwsuLLY5s3hfVcGaM-H4b-uOCu5YQ3IkJF_4b1oxrlg_Vn0BBsJF_U2niQMyXvo5ZzfNX4Rzy5J8vef6vAG_jhcw3yByc36JT12t8VP8oAyitPZhwvONH-UBY0Rt_41lyU0vmP/s640/JR.png" width="640" /></a></div>
The Japanese are clearly masters of efficiency and complexity. I could not believe the number of lines, the number of trains, the number of stations. After the BTS in Bangkok, I felt like I was running from Jack Nicholson in the tree maze in <i>The Shining</i>. I did ultimately make it through from the airport to the metro to the bullet trains north.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEJUjcNd3bn0O_IUw1WvhlwxamLivSxgpec3dQy5UMf-JH3fvL77LYtv1btE7PpHe-LuyQFapiWEvEH4bwaeGqekN0NsGQ6oJJG3ZAL2LmLGuR0R1mvdlTtbhuOYq4o6baXsqyTudujcu/s1600/IMG_0858.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEJUjcNd3bn0O_IUw1WvhlwxamLivSxgpec3dQy5UMf-JH3fvL77LYtv1btE7PpHe-LuyQFapiWEvEH4bwaeGqekN0NsGQ6oJJG3ZAL2LmLGuR0R1mvdlTtbhuOYq4o6baXsqyTudujcu/s640/IMG_0858.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Everything advertised and more. Unbelievable smoothness and speed. Banking corners at over 170 MPH. Easily one of the best transportation experiences in my life. And leaving on the minute more than three times every hour of the day. Expensive? Yes, at some $200 round trip and yet no, experience and comfort-wise compared to my cramp-legged, always delayed flights. Smooth as 1000 stitch Egyptian cotton sheets.<br />
<br />
Kyoto was even cleaner and more disciplined than Tokyo. A city where the ancient coexists with the future.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNDfci2ML4PO4zEgEisRbwc15rRQ8Q5XMwfCKcWSo0piMhnNGnboh_YjL83fRcM2boViFsYFuuq4Yl1XgyaCvwpiym71xb-WsB4aIu3Oj-EXMSd-PgQ7ZDLxYVlV8wFJYKZci7AkFTo7Bz/s1600/IMG_0849.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNDfci2ML4PO4zEgEisRbwc15rRQ8Q5XMwfCKcWSo0piMhnNGnboh_YjL83fRcM2boViFsYFuuq4Yl1XgyaCvwpiym71xb-WsB4aIu3Oj-EXMSd-PgQ7ZDLxYVlV8wFJYKZci7AkFTo7Bz/s640/IMG_0849.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are not 'costumes'. I regularly saw denizens wearing them. No one bats an eye in their presence.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSSHL1SW62zXb01XqMKx4noDepQaZnDgAaeCZXDuApWGx9nfJRRTGYf3Xk929hFCqyGxFaDcpKuf6z6m8f5yg-9v8j4_dedn5M9ixDCL-2TLp-avX6C10Sg82X9hK5pueh8q0fFnJE7fnc/s1600/IMG_0725.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSSHL1SW62zXb01XqMKx4noDepQaZnDgAaeCZXDuApWGx9nfJRRTGYf3Xk929hFCqyGxFaDcpKuf6z6m8f5yg-9v8j4_dedn5M9ixDCL-2TLp-avX6C10Sg82X9hK5pueh8q0fFnJE7fnc/s640/IMG_0725.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tucked behind a gate in the 'old' wooden section of town.<br />
<br />
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My hotel in Kyoto was much more spacious than that in Tokyo. Limited by time I had to choose among scores of worthy sites. I considered renting a bicycle but opted for the simplicity of walking to the temples, most of which ring the city's higher surrounding mountains. There are a wide range of sacred and personal sites. Here are two shots from one temple:<br />
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This continues to be an active Buddhist temple. One cannot help but be put into a tranquil and meditative state.<br />
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All around the city were humble touches that evoked joy in my heart, like this small menu on a winding back lane:<br />
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And, as ordered, quirky touches of cultural strangeness:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Provided in the restaurant washroom- How thoughtful!</td></tr>
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Space was always at a premium:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sink in my favorite restaurant.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Parking Double-up</td></tr>
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In addition to the Manga Museum and temples, I also went to a hilarious and thought-provoking invitational show including a wide array of artists on a particular theme. Can you guess what it was?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yep...</td></tr>
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It was a fun and well curated show.<br />
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Speaking of such things, there were many, many stunning young women in Kyoto. Remarkable, actually. Throughout the city. Their main occupation seemed to consist in intense conversations on their iphones and gazing at their stunning selves in shop windows.<br />
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Their absorption was certainly not disturbed by this old <i>gaijin </i>wandering the streets in his stylish Crocs. Which, by the way, gave me enormous blisters on my toes. Not good daily walkers.<br />
In general the reserve of the Japanese was very notable in contrast with places like Cambodia and Thailand. Very little noise or laughter in the streets, and except when engaged in a transaction, very little personal eye contact or intrusion of strangers' 'bubbles'. When at a crosswalk, no one ever set foot into the road unless the little electronic man changed from red to green. I felt positively criminal if after waiting and looking I crossed- which, come to think of it, I was. Once I did cross boundaries of personal space- either to ask for directions or to buy something, I found the locals to be terrifically generous and sweet. Yet the tenor of the streets left me feeling a little lonely and isolated.<br />
It was less so when I returned to Tokyo on my way out, where I had a great time eating street food with two French men and their Japanese wives. I will definitely come back again to explore further, if fate allows it, since I have barely nicked the surface, and I also had the best best best sushi by approximately 100,000,000 times over anything in California or New York or Boston or ANYWHERE. A revelation.<br />
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Next up: JakartaPeterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-35766606296104640752012-10-27T14:42:00.003+07:002012-10-27T14:42:51.413+07:00He Was a Goodly King Ten days ago the body of the King Father arrived in Cambodia.<br />
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He died in Beijing on the actual morning of Pchum Ben- the day of honoring ancestors. His body was flown in and thousands upon thousands gathered to honor his transport to the Royal Palace. This marked the beginning of an intense and emotional nationwide memorial which saw hundreds of thousands of Khmer citizens coming to the city.<br />
I knew he had died, but I was unaware of the arriving flight until I went out into the street and saw the waves of mourners filling up the streets.<br />
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It was an odd atmosphere- somber and sad, but with a tremor of celebration too- just a certain moving unity of purpose and identity.<br />
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Initially tentative with my picture taking, I relaxed when embraced with typically welcome smiles and generous comments. I chatted with several other photographers about lenses and shooting in the bright sun. Everywhere people pinned these ribbons on each other and later, unasked, a young woman came up and pinned one on me.<br />
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Hours and hours went by, the patience of the Khmer seemingly bottomless.<br />
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I moved up to the balcony at Java Cafe, where, thanks to the fact that we were all jammed in, drinking coffee, and waiting, I had a terrific conversation with two young successful Khmer women. We talked about Sihanouk's incredible lifetime journey, gaining independence for his country from the French in the 50's, being buffeted back and forth by enormous political forces beyond his control- used by the USA, then China, then the Khmer Rouge. He did also oversee the regaining of certain territories from neighboring Thailand and Vietnam. Certainly he made some unfortunate choices, and he was far from an ascetic or selfless- but given his choices? My new friends indicated that they found him to be a worthy representative of his time- charming, artistic and most often trying to benefit his people as best he could. God knows the Khmer deserve a benevolent figure to bring them together and allow them a measure of pride.<br />
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Finally the police cars came down the street and then this set of royal vehicles. One had a small band. It rocked a bit as it rolled, but the music was anything but rock and roll.<br />
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Then came this dragon monk-mobile. I think it might be the coolest thing I have ever seen go down the road- and purpose built for this rather than some tacky Macy's Day-NBC crap.<br />
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<br />
Then the casket of the King Father passed. All became somber, as if a wave of sadness came rushing with it, as if we all finally remembered why we had gathered and sat for 4 hours.<br />
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<br />
Horatio<br />
<i>I saw him once: he was a goodly king.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Hamlet<br />
<i>He was a man, take him for all in all,</i><br />
<i>I shall not look upon his like again.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I did not travel to the following days of mourning which took place in front of the Royal Palace because I left the next morning to Kampot. Even when I got back, every day the city traffic intensified, and the emotions rose day by day.<br />
<br />
One night a rumor that the King's face could be seen in the moon went viral, and all over the city people stared up and pointed. Several foreigners crossed boundaries and raised the ire of the crowds- first a Thai reporter who stood with the King's portrait at her feet, and then two Chinese factory managers, one who tore up a photo of the King because the workers were "distracted", another who folded up a picture of the face/moon. It was lucky the former was not killed. She was ordered to prostrate herself in front of the King's photo publicly, was thrown in jail, fined and deported. Though I condemn absolutely ideologically inspired violence, I couldn't help but feel these fools' insensitivity deserved harsh measures- and with the horrible conditions of the garment factories, I found myself gloating at the story of the manager. I hope she felt a little of the fear and degradation imposed on the poor daily, though I know she herself is most likely an underpaid and simple pawn in a much larger machine. Though the Chinese government condemned her actions and actually branded her "an idiot", it is the Chinese who use and abuse Cambodia for their benefit.<br />
<br />
And I felt lucky to be here as a witness to this historical passage, to see so many Khmer join together, even if it was in sadness.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-65997243803106617602012-10-19T19:06:00.002+07:002012-10-19T19:06:19.918+07:00A Certain Kind of Sadness <i>They say:</i><br />
bad things come in threes, and the lizard-brain part of me sloshes lazily along with the notion. I don't ask who 'they' are that say these things. I don't ask why they say them. Of course, if I do, I don't have to wonder long. I can google it and read a blog post from a woman who writes: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">For a long time now, I’ve believed the superstition that things come in threes...</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">I know it’s silly, and the thing is, I’m not a superstitious person. After all, I believe that God is in control, and He has a plan...</span> <br />
<br />
Interesting, the intersection between numbers and beliefs. I hope sometime after I am dead the pattern of our humanity, the logic of our biology, will be revealed.<br />
Did Jesus every say anything directly about numeracy?<br />
No google answers.<br />
<br />
Maybe bad things come in googolplexes. That is a number for those too young to recall.<br />
<br />
This is the tail end of our first vacation week. I was planning on going to Vietnam, taking a train up the coast and then flying back from Hanoi.<br />
Then I looked at my finances. Not good.<br />
<br />
Then my right knee gave a little pop and provided some unfriendly shooting pains each time I stepped <i>just so</i>- I became convinced that the constant walking that comes with travel would exacerbate the problem. I would be stranded, crippled.<br />
<br />
Then my wholly self-indulgently purchased television went black and wouldn't turn on.<br />
<br />
So, okay, adapt. Catch up on the blog and sift through the 2000 photos you have taken<br />
<br />
Then I worked for five hours editing photos of student work and for my Bright Uprising blog, closed Lightroom without saving the catalogue, and all my photos went somewhere into the software void.<br />
<br />
Then, from sitting so much in the heat, I got a rash on my lower ass. Ugh.<br />
<br />
Stuck in PP.<br />
<br />
I went through other old photos, transferring them to a separate hard drive so I could free up space. Way dangerous, coming across former selves, sons, and siblings while sweating alone in your apartment. And way too heavily fraught with symbolic significance.<br />
<br />
I listened to a catchy, sad song by Gotye too many times.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY" target="_blank">Somebody That I Used to Know</a><br />
<br />
I went to Howie's Bar, wasted $30, felt even lower, with a headache to boot.<br />
<br />
<i>They say:</i><br />
when the going gets tough, the tough get going.<br />
Not me. Apparently when the going gets tough I revert to a mopey teen. <br />
<br />
<i>You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness. </i> Nice line, that.<br />
<br />
But then.<br />
<br />
Mike, who works at the embassy, called about tennis. The knee withstood two full hours of court play- two days in a row! Tennis!<br />
<br />
The TV guys came by in a truck and took away my TV and then brought it back <i>fixed</i>! <i>Free!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
My friend Richard e-mailed me with instructions how to recover my photos. So only the edits were lost, not the originals.<br />
<br />
They say:<br />
When you find yourself stuck deep in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.<br />
<br />
The streets were so quiet and calm PP was like a ghost town- and surprisingly marvelous in its desertion. I could walk up and down the normally busiest of streets without a care. In a way it felt <i>mine.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I made a small project of sampling the coffee at every coffee shop in my neighborhood. I found the one I liked the best three doors down from my apartment. By the third visit the wonderful waitresses knew me and my order by name. I was a little bit more somebody, with a smidgeon more of a home.<br />
<br />
I met some strangers and had inspiring conversations- First with a funny young Cambodian American who moved to PP and started a cafe and is attempting to start an import export business, then with an older woman newly arrived from LA to volunteer with the Cambodian Children's Fund, and finally with a very educated and passionate Cambodian as we waited for the King Father's casket to pass.<br />
<br />
<br />
They say:<br />
every cloud has a silver lining.<br />
<br />
Had I gone perhaps I would have had a wonderful journey. Yet I wouldn't trade it for the one I took staying here. Next I will post about that historic memorial day.<br />
<br />
And yes, thanks to a nice pharmacist my ass rash is mending!<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-53862951644238601992012-10-13T15:32:00.001+07:002012-10-18T17:14:20.952+07:00The Shipping NewsIn my mind's eye: a lone rower, battling the currents and tides somewhere off the Maldives in the Indian ocean, determinedly and steadily stroking through thunder and downpour, burning heat and circling sharks, one ragged nautical inch at a time... or maybe my lone figure is not moving at all, stranded on a jagged splinter of sandy land, deeply enamored of a volleyball imprinted with a vague likeness of a face created by her own bloody handprint. Either way, there is perhaps my package, under her watchful and righteous eye, a little torn on the far corner, just slightly soggy from that last typhoon, in spite of her heroic care and sacrifice.<br />
<br />
Someday...three months? Three years? In the distant future when Romney is wrapping up a second term?<br />
<br />
A knock will come at my door. Gentle, tentative. A shy smile greeting my quizzical gaze. She points to the deeply faded, nearly illegible address. I will marvel at the strength of her hand, the deep and wizened look in her eye.<br />
<br />
<i>I apologize for the delay, sir. Can you sign here?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
(miraculous romance ensues)<br />
<i><br /></i>
Or, more likely, my effing Go camera and motorcycling goggles are in a giant government warehouse, under a gobzillion other dusty boxes going nowhere fast.<br />
<br />
Given that alternative, I almost hope it was side-tracked by one of the many working hands en route- that my things are bringing <i> some </i>happiness to <i>some </i> son-of-a-biscuit <i> some</i>where.<br />
<br />
Shipping brings a shocking dose of reality to living in PP. Even in backwater Issan, I could count on a US Postal International box arriving at my director's house in about 10-12 days. I can skype and e-mail here, stream the presidential debates or Premier League soccer, get a wonderful baguette. But try moving something physical in and out and the picture darkens rapidly.<br />
<br />
My friend Nica tried to send in her absentee voter ballot (her first voting as a newly minted US citizen). Cost of DHL shipping (the only game in town other than Fed Ex)? $55- for an envelope! My USPS box was sent over six weeks ago and I have given up on it. Timeline wise, it puts Cambodia back to what? The 40's? Pony Express?<br />
<br />
The long and the short of it is this. Driving at night my smoke windscreen is too dark to see. So much debris in the air means eye protection falls into the "must" category. Solution? Go to the local optical store and buy a slammin' pair of "Oakey"[sic] frames, pick out some clear, scratch proof lenses. 40$ and an hour later- <i>Voila!</i><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPuRo0WdUAEJGNkKCgzwFKMp9SjGdbheZlyWSH7BjioFP1_TPhUkikHCcseVnG0SvKiFrube9Z1o16A2NQxRhGkEnEuTG-mSWHgVHMtYFpzO1Bw7pTkeTVjzHnDcb-S2wQMX1J5bteBy-r/s1600/DSCN1185.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPuRo0WdUAEJGNkKCgzwFKMp9SjGdbheZlyWSH7BjioFP1_TPhUkikHCcseVnG0SvKiFrube9Z1o16A2NQxRhGkEnEuTG-mSWHgVHMtYFpzO1Bw7pTkeTVjzHnDcb-S2wQMX1J5bteBy-r/s640/DSCN1185.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
I was going for practicality, having no idea my coolness factor would skyrocket the instant I donned them. I chose based primarily on the TESC (total eye socket coverage), which, as you can see, is excellent.<br />
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I like them so much, and feel so awesome and hip wearing them that I am considering getting some readers made next...<br />
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<br />
I don't know what I will do about the Go camera. I wanted it for the kids and to film my crazy commute. And it was expensive!<br />
<br />
The abysmal shipping situation brought me back to Lacoste when I lived there in the early 80's. Because the French postal service was given to striking on their own about once a month and in sympathy with other unions occasionally as well, my lovely blue tri-fold airmail letters would arrive in little bundles- some a scant few days old- others weeks and sometimes months late. It was irritating, but then perhaps that is socialism at its finest- quirky and given to human foibles- some lazy, fat Alphonse letting my missives languish, some empathetic and responsible Veronique blowing the dust off and sending them on their way.<br />
I guess I can accept the delay or loss of my goods if it is the price for the quirky wonder of living here. And I supported the local economy to boot.<br />
After all, efficiency and homogenization are excellent only for capitalism and for machines, yes?Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-75937228076325650672012-10-06T22:11:00.001+07:002012-10-07T17:55:30.498+07:00A Partner in HopeAs promised earlier, here are the photos of our weekend trip to another of CamKids' projects. This one is in Kampong Speu, about an hour and a half drive south-southwest of Phnom Penh. Much of CamKids funding goes to supplement existing projects and organizations, so Dom and Benita are especially fond of this one because CamKids generated and designed it, coordinating with three country villages.<br />
<br />
Once we left the main highway south, we passed a large shallow lake. Bannak, who is managing the project for Camkids, informed me that thousands of Khmer had died hand-dredging during the KR days.<br />
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<br />
It certainly altered my perception of this bucolic vista, imagining the suffering and starvation involved in its creation.<br />
<br />
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<br />
We turned of the last bit of pavement and drove several kilometers down a muddy single lane.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Past farming houses made of wood, mostly unpainted, with pools of water from the recent rains.<br />
<br />
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<br />
These are the farms which provide the students for the clinic and school. It was quiet, no sounds of motors save our own.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Finally we came to the new school, in the foreground, and clinic, behind it.<br />
<br />
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<br />
That is Bannak. Many years ago, when Dom first trekked back into Kampong Speu, Bannak (a mere child) ran out to look at the "barangs". He explained that he wanted to someday go to law school and come back to help his region. It was Bannak who eventually set into motion the project. Today he has a university degree and studies law- thanks to some support from Dom, and he is making good on his dream. That is a marvelous aspect of Kampuchea- though there are myriad reasons to despair, there are individual stories of triumph and success, overcoming seemingly impossible odds which raise the spirit and renew faith.<br />
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We toured the new medical/dental clinic. There are living quarters for a nurse; doctors and dentists will make weekend trips to see patients for free.<br />
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The scale and ambitions are small and sustainable. Camkids does not ride in and 'gift' luxury a la Opra Winfrey. Rather they partner equally and longterm with the locals. It is up to the villages to provide maintenance and security for the buildings, so everything proceeds with their ability to do so.<br />
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As news of our arrival spread, future students and a few grandmothers drifted in and began to spruce everything up.<br />
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Can you imagine appreciative children doing this on their own in wealthy nations?<br />
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I saw no evidence of anyone coaching them.</div>
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They possessed a beautiful charm and relaxed happiness, intrigued by our presence yet shy.<br />
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Jo broke through with her camera, showing them what they rarely see- their own images!<br />
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Dom, as he does everywhere, engaged joyfully with everyone, regardless of age.<br />
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By then the elders from the three villages had arrived and it was time to begin the meeting. In the foreground is Sally, a health care organizer and volunteer from Tazmania, here to help get the clinic up and running efficiently.<br />
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It was a sight to behold, and one that genuinely sent my heart soaring, talk of the logistics and purpose going forward, everyone speaking respectfully with such astonishing dignity and kindness.</div>
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The woman shown here, and the young man to her left, are the teachers for the present. He has teacher training, but she has only a sixth grade education herself. Yet it is partly her persistance and determination that have seen the school exist at all. For the last five years, on her own, she has conducted the only classes at all for local children. This woman will maintain a teaching role with the youngest children, as well as additional training in education.<br />
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Though feet are considered offensive to a certain extent in Buddhist culture, I find the feet here fantastic, emblematic of the connection they have to the earth.<br />
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I am considering a coffee table book with nothing but feet and hand shots- whaddya think?</div>
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Part way through the meeting, this mother came in with her son, who promptly fell asleep in her lap and almost flopped to the floor.</div>
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Everyone posed for this group shot, which I just had blown up and framed as a gift to the school.<br />
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All that was left was for Dom to throw a good screaming scare into the kids.<br />
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<br />
Another amazing cross section of feet.<br />
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And another quick shot of Dom, Benita, and the teachers. I blew this up as a gift as well.<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">In another fortnight the building would be filled with 60 or so kids K-6, the potential futures of each child exponentially expanded.</span></div>
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<br />Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-84537737249325738802012-09-29T16:59:00.003+07:002012-09-29T17:05:42.912+07:00Lest I ForgetYes, I am happy here. Kampuchea is a country that feels emerging, feels full of the possible.<br />
<br />
Yes, I feel good about what I am doing. I am working with beautiful, bright, disadvantaged children.<br />
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Yet I carry with me a sense of perspective to shield me from smugness and self-righteousness.<br />
<br />
I feel good here partly because I am relatively rich. All around me are poorer people. Yes there are a notable number of Porsches and Lexus. But I am surrounded by people with nothing. On the overall hierarchical scale, I am way up, in a position of power.<br />
<br />
In the USA, I am a middle class schmuck struggling to pay my mortgage. I certainly won't get much notice or extra service based simply on my presence. Here I drive through the gates of my security guarded building and enjoy triple the space of the average family of five. The guard rushes to help me with my moped kickstand, rushes to open the gate in morning to let me out. If I hand out a dollar tip, the gesture is unexpected, magnanimous.<br />
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Naturally, that power assuages my ego, and I feel more alive/confident/important. If I were a barefooted construction worker earning $2.50 for a full day's manual labor, or a woman in a sweatshop working 48 hours per week for a $61 a month salary, I would not be so sanguine.<br />
<br />
Talking to my studly young bartender friend, a third my age, possessing twice my charm and ten times my sagging looks, he mentioned that it must be easy for me since <i>girls always go for the Westerner</i>.<br />
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For the male ego, an irresistible trap. One sees them by the score, decrepit gray skeletons (or else rubicund and corpulent pigs) proudly sporting a sexy fledgling on their arm.<br />
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How much of this is responsible for my sense of happiness?<br />
<br />
And, too, my good works.<br />
<br />
I can do good because Kampuchea is poor.<br />
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Why is it poor?<br />
<br />
Because in order for there to be fabulously rich countries, where we can consume towering luxuries of excess, there must of necessity be very poor countries, where people produce in deep pits of suffering.<br />
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And why is it poor?<br />
Because the impossibly snobby French or the ridiculously self righteous Americans or the ravenously aggressive Chinese have now or ever given a real stinking weasel's-assed shit about what happens to the people here?<br />
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Here is a map I carry at all times in my head. I have pondered it so many times it feels branded on my retina.<br />
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I remember hearing about the bombing of Cambodia when I was a kid in school. I imagined, probably for a span of about 10 seconds, some planes dropping some bombs along the border of Vietnam.<br />
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Looking at this map I feel physically ill.<br />
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An excerpt from the site <a href="http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf" target="_blank">Yale</a> :<br />
<br />
<i>The still-incomplete database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that </i><br />
<i>from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far </i><br />
<i>more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941</i><br />
<i>tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as </i><br />
<i>having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed </i><br />
<i>at all. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier </i><br />
<i>than is widely believed—not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson.</i><br />
<i>The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past </i><br />
<i>three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that </i><br />
<i>had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting </i><br />
<i>in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a </i><br />
<i>coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately </i><br />
<i>the Cambodian genocide.</i><br />
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Today the Chinese are throwing money this way, drying up lakes and throwing out villagers to make way for high rises, so they can steer the Kampuchean votes their way at ASEAN conferences. A scant 150 years prior it was the French seeking to line their pockets and increase French prestige.<br />
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I read about the anger and terrorism again blowing up in the Muslim countries, and I can't help but wonder, not why it is happening, but why it is not happening everywhere, all the time. Surely the maps of Africa and Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Middle East share similar biographies.<br />
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If that map above were, say, Texas, or France, or An Hui province, scorched thusly by aliens, where would they be? How would they feel?Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-85899287360084888102012-09-22T14:54:00.001+07:002012-09-22T14:54:23.313+07:00Wakey WakeyJust before 7 am this Saturday morning, I sat in bed drifting my way through the New York Times online (long ago I lost the ability to sleep late, but I might as well be asleep for all I get done between 6 am and noon most weekends). I grew dimly aware of the level of voices leaking across my 6th floor balcony. Not the usual decibel from the street. I glanced out, saw this:<br />
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There is something that does not belong in this picture- can you spot it? Good for you - you are not as blind as me! Let's get something on and go for a closer look, shall we?<br />
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The exterior paint job begun last week had reached my floor. </div>
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I'm not sure who got the bigger kick out of our encounter. The look on these guys' faces is the best thing about living here. Unadulterated sweetness. If I had more damn Khmer I would have told them about my painting days- hell I might have put on my flip flops and joined them because they made it look like a relaxing way to spend the morning.</div>
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You can see that safety is job # 1 here in Kampuchea and that OSHA is all over it. <br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">Can someone explain why his presence, there in flip flops, minus goggles and helmet and harness, is so marvelous? I am aware- a false step and he falls to his death. That his appearance thus is a result of poverty and a lack of societal protections and civil governance. Yet it is why I am here, why I love so many moments of every day. I don't believe the attraction lies simply in the exotic nature of the sights- the impossible gutted-pig load flopping on the back of a decrepit moto, the dark-skinned beauty in her pajamas selecting greens at a roadside market, the clownish traffic policemen rushing after my moped- rather it is the lack of polish and veneer. </span></div>
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It is like this: when I was a kid I loved the Olympics- Jim Mckay and his gang, earnest and genuine, working without irony or slickness. Of course, I wasn't the only one who loved it. What ABC did worked, so they tweaked it and smoothed it and sanded it, until it looked the way it does now on NBC. It is process perfected to the point of being perfectly awful- The shitty sob story background milked dry, the patter, the nationalism. Everyone knows it, yet to say so is to echo every old timer bemoaning progress. To open myself to the Pfister Anti-Americanism accusation.<br />
But that is not the point. Black and white may not be better than color, analog may not be better than digital, silents may not be better than talkies- or they may be. But that is not the point.<br />
And it has nothing to do with the USA.<br />
The point is this: when all the wrinkles are ironed out- all the legislation passed to protect against any contingency, all products perfectly targeted to every desire, when a child is mothered from cradle to grave, by the state, by the schools, by their mothers and fathers- there is no room for the possible and the impossible.<br />
What I love about Kampuchea is that there is still the sense that every day, any moment, something- anything- could fucking HAPPEN!<br />
That guy could fall off and die. The pig could slip off that seat, under my front tire. That fat policeman might actually block my path.<br />
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John Dewey once said <i>We only think when we are confronted with problems. </i><br />
Now there is a digression I did not see coming. I only meant to tell you about a funny way to wake up.<br />
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But waking up wasn't the end of my exciting day. I tried to make do with the wicker furniture that came with my apartment. I used all of my anti-materialistic training and I held out as long as I could. Then Benita called from her design shop. Uh oh. A <i>deal...</i> The flesh is weak...<br />
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Today my COUCH arrived.<br />
Yes I want all this adventure and newness but I also truly need a very comfortable couch in which to plant my ass to watch my gigantic television.<br />
I was absolutely sure this burnt orange monstrosity was not going to fit up the six flights of stairs. For several moments it was touch and go. I would have taken photos, but I was helping the truck guys and my apartment super get it up here.<br />
A lovely woman who came with them put it back together, laughing at us huffing, puffing, and sweating.<br />
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<i>Voila</i>! I was broke until September 30, and happy.<br />
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I expect blogging will increase markedly now that I have a nest within my nest. Neil Young, featured in a great piece in the NYT recently, once sang that <i>A man needs a maid. </i> I would add that he also needs a couch and a large TV, and now I have all three.<br />
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<br />Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-19692717809415447202012-09-20T22:44:00.001+07:002012-09-21T21:20:47.444+07:00Put Away WetRainy season, Phnom Penh.<br />
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Rain here is targeted like a... oh does anyone have an untired metaphor here? For the moment I will use <i>laser </i> as a place marker until I can think of, or someone suggests, an undamaged alternative. Anyhoo, I can endure the downpour of the decade near my apartment in Wonderland Villa (BKK 1) steaming the engine on my moped, flooding the streets ankle, shin, knee deep and the next day I will ask Robert, who lives out by the airport (a kilometer away) how he liked the deluge, if he had pairs of animals knocking at his door, he will reply, "It didn't rain yesterday at my house. Not a drop."<br />
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There seems to be a special God of Rain Timing and Location pinpointed on my sorry ass come quitting time at school. Maybe it is a message: <i>Stay longer and help those kids more you lazy dog (</i>chiguy kchul in khmer<i>).</i> I know it is wrong to personalize such matters, but I fully understand the urge to pray for and curse the weather. There isn't a whole lot else to do,after all. I have thought about rain pants and a proper coat. Sounds bulky, carrying it around 'just in case'. And like the doctor appointment that instantaneously cures all symptoms of malady, carrying a massive and actual waterproof ensemble would surely result in infinite blue skies. Not a bad idea, but I would hate to do that to the farmers, and besides I do love the rain in many conscious and unconscious caverns of my soul.<br />
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So what I do is get wet or some days buy a rain coat on the street for 2000 riel (50 cents) like most everyone else. I rock it like all the cool kids..<br />
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And the pack I bought for my camera and laptop has a handy pullout cover so that usually gets me home more or less soggy rather than soaked.<br />
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The plastic is just thin enough to be ineffective, and the seams are, I think, held together with spit. This may explain why the first time I put one on I ripped both sleeves off at the shoulder. Or it could be the size. Those sleeves are fully extended in the photo. Anyway, as I ride the rain eventually blows up my legs and then into my crotch.<br />
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The rain is warm, so the real challenge lies in seeing where I'm going through my dark smoke and water coated visor (when it gets thoroughly blurry I opt to drive with my 'beaver up'), and navigating the flooded streets. An already narrow and twisty event ramps up to "Expert Gamer" mode, everyone trying to hog the somewhat dry center section of tarmac. Good fun. Once my Go camera gets here I plan to put together a tasty collection of the commuter death spiral I wend through twice a day. Stay tuned.Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-54699574684264210892012-09-15T22:59:00.002+07:002012-09-16T07:36:11.931+07:00King Dom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I propose that every macrocosmic or microcosmic universe has its center. A still point. A gravitational force holding in a cyclical orbit otherwise randomly hurtling objects. Even a chaotic blob can be charted and parsed to locate a 'middle' point, no? It makes sense to this less-than-brilliant-and-logical mind (a real muddle of all things sensible and reasonable diluted and polluted with the hopelessly sentimental and superstitious- I actually convinced myself that my headaches over the last two days were surely a brain tumor- ignoring the cheap beers I drank until the wee hours rolling dice and playing four in a row against the bartenders at Howies). Don't disabuse me of my insight, please. For the moment I am fond of the idea, a bit protective.<br />
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The Liger Learning Center is not a chaotic blob, though it is a little raggedy in its perambulations and foggy in its permutation; it is a grand experiment after all, and experimentation is not about repeating preordained steps from a reified text. Yet it is a complex shape, with many layers past, present, and future, whose definition/perameters I am far from understanding to date.<br />
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Still.<br />
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I can throw out that I have located its core. I am not speaking of its values (ingenuity, stewardship, determination, optimism, integrity, appreciation) though the center of which I write certainly embodies all of these. Rather the locus is a person. Not the person(s) one might expect- our munificent benefactors (profiled on my other blog www.brightuprising.com), or our highly regarded director. No, the Liger Center's Center is Dom.<br />
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Dom Sharpe, lately of the UK and originally of Australia. As one approches this spontaneous, silly, amazing, talented, intelligent, hilarious vaudevillian, one has to ask- how can such a loon be so deep? How can such an unassuming figure, never jostling for attention or power, command such universal respect? He can seemingly do anything and does. He oversees the grounds and building people, the teachers, the interns, the kitchen staff. He even has been driving the "bus" with the day students from the city twice a day. How does he do it? When does he sleep? Dom has no training in education, no riches. Likely he will not win any beauty contests, national, regional, or local. Yet to know Dom is to fall in love- man or woman, septuagenarian or infant.<br />
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Part of his gravitational force rests in the fact that he is not a single entity. Dom is a family man, which somehow neither diminishes his time or availability, but radically increases both. Dom is not Dom without Benita, his phenomenal English wife.<br />
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Together Dom and Benita ran a highly successful design firm in London. They hobnobbed with the likes of Gordon Ramsey and a slew of rock stars. They designed homes for the hoi polloi across continents. Then after the birth of their son Jack, which nearly cost Benita her life, and the subsequent adoption of their daughter, Theevey, they raised funds, moved to Cambodia, and vowed to work until they were broke. They founded CamKids, an umbrella organization that supports worthy projects with finances and governance. <a href="http://www.camkids.org/" target="_blank">http://www.camkids.org/</a><br />
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Their original concept was to be here for a few years and work their way back to Australia, Tasmania to be more precise, Dom's birthplace, so that their family could experience life in each of their 'home' countries. Ten years later CamKids has distributed over a million dollars to Who Will Children's Center (where the very first Liger student, Dalin, was chosen), Empowering Youth in Cambodia, and dozens of other deserving projects. No one, including Dom and Benita, has ever earned a single cent for their work for Camkids. The administrative cost is zero- so unlike the many government and NGO's here. To earn a living, Benita works locally for a designer, Dom now counts on his position as program director at Liger. He was brought on early in the Liger project, simply as a consultant because of his many Khmer connections, and then permanently when it became evident that this was a man whose presence exponentially increased potential for success. My second Skype interview in the Liger application process was with Dom. It convinced me that I would have a place in the organization - if Liger would hire the Australian Bush Poet (he had a regular gig for a long time on a popular London morning radio show), if was the right place for yours truly.<br />
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Last Sunday I had the immense privilege of going with them to Who Will. This is the small pond house where we spent the afternoon, sharing the fruit Dom brought, singing songs in Khmer and English, and playing charades.<br />
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Just a small project. Just this many lives...<br />
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The young people are provided with a bed and meals, clothes and English classes and support with school and job training. The English classes are run by volunteers, who must commit to at least a month (contact me or CamKids if you know someone interested).</div>
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Here are the house mothers leading some of the kids back over to the dorms for lunch.<br />
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Much paper and thought is spent on leadership- what it is, how to do it, how to train for it. And for good reason, obviously. We need generals and directors and bosses- visionaries (I suppose- perhaps John Lennon would ask us to imagine a world where we didn't). But maybe more time should be spent on studying 'centers' and how to be one.; the platoon sergeant who actually gets his men to implement the general's orders. They say that a leader's job is a lonely one, and I don't doubt it. The center's is the opposite- all love and relationship and communication. They are the glue that binds. Who is to say which is more crucial to eventual success?<br />
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Tomorrow I travel to Kampong Speu to a new children's project deep in the countryside about which Dom is terrifically excited. I will document it and post on it next.<br />
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So here's to King Dom (as we jokingly refer to him) and Benita, energizing, uplifting, inspiring me daily.<br />
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<br />Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-5597588877494938432012-09-05T21:41:00.002+07:002012-09-05T21:41:54.984+07:00Only the Lonely<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It has been a while- a hell of a while in terms of my life trajectory- since I last lived in a city. I pulled out of my Jersey City (motto:if you could live inside of an actual turd it would be preferable) apartment in the fall of 1989, packing a three-month-old first son, Noah, an Irish setter mix, Bailey, and our paltry possessions into Monica's 1986 Honda Accord and taking off for 23 years of small town and country living. I have a photo of city-departure day somewhere- me standing in the little park across the street from our dismal apartment, holding fragile Noah in a front-side baby holder. I can rekindle them in my mind- the predictable steps- from living single with Chris and then Trey in Midtown Manhattan, working days, drinking nights. The lure of night clubs and notoriety gradually revealed as insubstantial and hollow. The intriguingly lovely strangers turning out to be merely fellow lost and lonely seekers. And next, stepping outside of the fashionable zip codes into the welcoming and secure arms of Monica, the simple joy of sharing a life with her dog, stepping (stumbling? falling? leaping blindly?) into marriage and then fatherhood.<br />
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Leaving Jersey City was easy, since by 1989 I despised everything about daily life: the hassles of commuting, the noise at night, the trash and rats on my doorstep, the obese upstairs neighbor who angrily stamped on our ceiling the moment a three day old Noah began crying at night- the infant thing brought all of the awfulness to a head. The one night Monica and I tried to troop into the city to show our faces at a friend's post opening party, we spent over an hour getting there, the elevator doors opened, Noah began wailing, we waved a congratulations to our friend, the doors closed and we dragged our silly and embarrassed new parent selves back across the river home.<br />
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Our small rented home at the tail end of the St. George peninsula through the winter of 1990 provided a landing spot, as if on a lovely distant planet. I went to work where I was the only man on the floor with a college degree, and Monica stayed long days with Noah and Bailey, many days her only adult contact a few minutes with the Port Clyde postal lady.<br />
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Landed and lived for 23 years. Another story.<br />
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But this. This Phnom Penh. It is small in some senses, but growing rapidly. I read today in the Cambodian Daily that the population has doubled since 1998. That in 1998 1 in 20 Cambodians lived in PP and today 1 in 10 do. Around the edge of the city are the garment factories where the greatest percentage of women work. They come, as they do in poor countries all over the world, seeking opportunity, a better life for their children.<br />
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Speaking of which... when they have open application days at my school, when I show up on my moped at 7:30 am and there are 10 - 15 women, dark skinned, in dingy clothing, on bikes and cobbled together ancient mopeds, hoping to give their children a better shot, and I know 99.9% of them will go away disappointed...those are the days when I think my heart will break from the strain, when a dark cloud passes over the joyous sunniness I embrace each day as I work with my 47 students.<br />
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But this- what I set out to write about when I started this- the particular loneliness of a city. I remember it exactly from New York those many years ago.<br />
If I were in Thailand, up in my bare concrete room with the geckos and the flies, writing a blog entry, I was alone but calm. Here, by contrast, I sit on my deck- still sipping a Leo beer from Thailand- and below is the glittering neon of "The Classic Night" night club (never been), the shouting of friends in the street below. In my immediate neighborhood there exist probably 100 bars and restaurants. The promise of life, of the possible. I know if I go out I will spend money and find very little satisfaction or real distraction. I could say it is because I am an old geezer, but I believe it has always been so for me. It harkens back to high school on Friday afternoons- where would the action be? How could I make sure I was in on it? And of course 'the action' was lousy and dissatisfying- like the Limelight and Nell's and The World in NYC in 1988. Inevitably the thing I like to do best is simply drive around the city. Get some breeze going and just move after the gridlock of the daytime traffic.<br />
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It will be interesting to see how this changes over time. In a year from now, will I choose to stay in the city? Will I find new digs closer to the school in a village or on the river?Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-49015318609168075822012-08-12T21:54:00.000+07:002012-08-12T22:01:20.190+07:00Dig the New DigsSo tonight will be the first night in my new apartment- The Wonderland Apartments with "Luxury Forniture" and "Approximately Lucky Super Market Restaurant" with "Terrace Over Look Independence Night Piece". I can't complain and in spite of its slightly tawdy broken bits and shopworn corners, I am in love with it because of.......<br />
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My BALCONY! I sit on it now, typing this and listening to Sunday night far below, enjoying the fine crossbreeze. I can't wait to fill it up with orchids and other plants. The rest of the apartment is just a regular box. but the large sliding doors out onto MY BALCONY let in oodles of light and a pretty good breeze as well.<br />
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There is so so so so SOOO much to tell that the temptation is just to do a running travelogue of the plot rather than the planned and edited pieces I prefer. There are my co workers and the site and the administration and the city and the food and the TRAFFIC and, as of today- THE KIDS! I will post some photos of them on brightuprising.com if I can manage to stay awake. Today was arrival, so we dipped by and I ended up singing Where is Thumbkin with a group and then they sang me the Cambodian National Anthem (very long- all of us at attention) and then I belted out the Star Spangled Banner (we all put our hands over our hearts). Kind of better than being in London for me, I think.<br />
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So I am in a busy area with lots of NGO workers and tourists, but my street is kind of on the fringe of that. Of course it is changing so intensely rapidly that I will surely be swallowed up by boutique hotels and spas within the year. Bustling hardly covers it. It is more like a Hurricane Katrina of development and change. I agonized over whether to live out of the city on the river, but many Khmer co-workers cautioned against it and I thought it would be interesting and different to do a "city year" since I have not lived in one since New York/New Jersey in 1989. I hope to have my Khmer down to a degree and know the local area well by next fall and then make my decision of whether to stay or go bucolic then.<br />
Above all of my other impressions is how lovely and genuine are the Cambodian people I have met.<br />
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Here are a few more from the posh palace I am inhabiting.<br />
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I decided not to take the apartment...Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-25594154555300501532012-08-05T23:10:00.000+07:002012-08-06T07:26:21.728+07:00KepSunday night, late. I am wiped out, so I won't say much- I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Suffice to say we had a weekend overseas staff retreat 3 hours south on the beaches of Kep, and quite frankly it is one of the most exquisite and heartwarming places I have ever been. I want to gush. I want to indulge in hyperbole of the most rampant sort. As I wrote to a friend, my heart was literally filled to the point of bursting with gratitude many times over for a sight, conversation, a meal, a gesture... Here are a few samples from a crab market zipping with early morning energy, to others from the bike loop Jess and I went on:<br />
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I'll report as soon as I can about the fabulous new co-workers I am so happy to call my friends. One week and the children arrive!!!!Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-5815499452959809312012-07-31T22:12:00.000+07:002012-07-31T22:12:51.901+07:00Cambodia!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO51XCEK7ivbjJ_SBUezqNCDMsqpGIwtnsvM48ggSSvbFbYAnCN2i3cCqzLGadgVmQg7r8jxcMJnLLm7D2yO4fT0PQdo_9JqO0B5EDPbbufGsuZ7t5e9QzYgRXSGYb8fIApl6RpC7FDvwb/s1600/IMG_0588.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO51XCEK7ivbjJ_SBUezqNCDMsqpGIwtnsvM48ggSSvbFbYAnCN2i3cCqzLGadgVmQg7r8jxcMJnLLm7D2yO4fT0PQdo_9JqO0B5EDPbbufGsuZ7t5e9QzYgRXSGYb8fIApl6RpC7FDvwb/s640/IMG_0588.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>Here is a photo which captures my initial impression of Cambodia in its current state: You have the independence monument on the left there, undergoing cleaning and restoration- probably the single easiest landmark to find at the center of two important main thoroughfares. Cambodia is rising again as a national entity, asserting its sense of pride. Then you have the Cambodian flag- the only flag in the world depicting a thousand-year-old crumbling ruin, demonstrating the ancient nature of its people's civilization. Followed by a gigantic and lovely temple, the soul of the culture here- perhaps the reason why even as American, coming from a country which illegally bombed Cambodian villages, made false promises to support a leadership and democratic ideals only to abandon them to genocide, I am warmly welcomed and treated with kindness and aid at every corner. Followed by a massive construction project the likes of which are everywhere, thousands of laborers mixing and lifting concrete by the ton skyward. And in the foreground bicycles, mopeds, trucks, and cars. The only thing missing is a massive black Lexus, which rumble everywhere, taking up the sidewalks, the new moneyed upper class. Finally, there is no NGO aid vehicle- second only to the Lexus in their numbers and sense of priority.<br />
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There is much to report, and after months of talking about it, months of anxiety and anticipation, it feels wonderful to just BE here. This will be a very different experience from Thailand- there are many foreign tourists, many expats retired or newly carving out business opportunities ( I had an exciting conversation with a young computer geek this morning who is part of the first e-commerce business in Cambodia). Temporarily I am living on a busy street in a hip part of town. I have AC and cable tv; maid and laundry service is included in my 450$ rent.<br />
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Certainly Cambodians are essentially different than their Thai neighbors- especially the frenetic and sophisticated Bangkokians. I have been watching and rooting for the American Olympians on the youtube IOC channel, but in a scant 48 hours, Phnom Penh has settled comfortably into my heart. How could it not? Check out these awesome dudes tearing apart a Honda:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rather than say goodbye to this blog- or not so much good-bye but <i>See you later,</i> or <i>Until we meet again, </i> or perhaps just, <i>Latress on the menjay, </i>I am proposing a split- you could consider it an extra credit assignment if you choose to follow both, or simply a good old American stock split, or a choice to appeal to shifting demographics.<i> </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a variety of reasons, my next iteration needs a fresh face and a new title (which I will get to momentarily). I settled on PeterInPeterOut before heading out to Thailand in 2010, a silly, last minute concession to my failure to come up with anything else. I assayed cute and clever, erudite and philosophical, heartwarming and sincere, and then in a hurry to get on with it, more or less took an odd phrase with my name in it and said <i>F**k it. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In retrospect PeterinPeterout has been fitting, since the blog, and my experience, was at times floundering, weird, and connected to a<i> personal</i> rupture/reconnection. I left my friends, family, wife, habits, hobbies, job, language, country- to step beyond<i>. </i> I like the notion of trickling associated with the title, because that is how learning seems to happen for me- it eeps in, over time, through experience. I also like it because I feel, even at 53, as if I am discovering what it means to be a human being, and seeking a righteous ethic of living.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hadn't anticipated the blatant sexual overtones of <i>PiPo. </i>Like the <i>Oh ho ho! Thailand eh?Bangkok! </i>Nod, nod, wink, wink. Yes, I find a good fart, toilet, penis joke as endearing and timeless as the next eternally adolescent male, but sometimes <i>a Peter is just a Peter </i>(I won't go so far as to say it would smell as sweet by any other name).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my new blog, the students and the Liger Learning Center endeavor will be in the spotlight (in fact, I tried several title combinations with the word <i>endeavor </i>in it), while this will separately track my groovy ramble.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tricky business, names and titles. I went to the stalwarts- Shakespeare, the bible (already heavily mined)- and then to personal touchstones (Four Quartets, Housekeeping, etc). With the millions of bloggers out there, it is easy to see why anything remotely catchy or memorable is already snagged. Approached conceptually I ran into much of the same- <i>hope, heart, promise- </i> the results were ill-fitting or taken.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Eventually, with Conor's</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">help I arrived at <i>Bright Uprising</i> which I loved for both its sound (the
repetition of the long i and the</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">br</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">followed by the</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">pr</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">) and its sense. I like the multiple connotations
of Bright- fitting since my Cambodian students have been chosen after an intensive,
far reaching search, chosen for their motivation as well as their leadership
and academic promise, and Uprising since optimism is one of Liger's 5 core
values (+ integrity, stewardship, ingenuity, determination). I also dig the
edgy feel of the word</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">uprising,</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> since the
world feels in need of a new paradigm going forward, and these are kids of
little means, rising up in the world. So see you there <a href="http://brightuprising.com/"><span style="color: windowtext;">brightuprising.com</span></a> and here, when you have a
moment.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-1842101450541351672012-02-12T11:59:00.000+07:002012-02-13T10:22:30.902+07:00Back To The Future<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span> confession. I am many bad things. I am a
government worker, greedily consuming all its fat perks and lazy-man incentives. I am a
teacher - profession of elitists and pedophiles. Worst of all, a true
American atrocity, I am a quitter. At 52 (53 in a scant five weeks), I
should be settling into the juiciest portions of my American Dream. I
should have my Rush Limbaugh blubber-chin that says to everyone I
meet:<i>I have fed well, my friends. I have the proportionate belly
and requisite SUV to prove the wisdom of my ways. I am ready for my last
move upwards, the bronze plaque on the door, the season tickets to the
big league sports of my choice, the larder stocked with fat steaks and
high end booze - all preview to a wonderful sunset ride of golf, consulting,
and honorary board memberships.</i><br />
Life should have taken on a certain frozen cast at this juncture. I should know myself and my capabilities. I should have built my breakwater to stem the winds and create my own private halcyon...<i> </i><br />
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<i> </i>No such luck. I have two pounds of organic brown rice in the cabinet of my sublet condo. I have a bicycle in the garage, last year's rental stock, bought at discount, my commuter on even the coldest and rainiest of days. I am on tiptoe, the steadily rising waters of debt trickling down my nose, threatening to fill my lungs and send me to the bottom in a final, spasmodic, gasping frenzy. And I am heading to Cambodia to work with foreigners, seven to nine year-olds, on a project so far-fetched that when I describe it I sense I am trying to pitch a plan to host the Winter Olympics in Death Valley. <br />
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I have signed a two year contract to work for the Liger Learning Center in Phenom Penh. <a href="http://www.ligercambodia.org/liger-learning-center/" target="_blank">http://www.ligercambodia.org/liger-learning-center/</a> I am only sorry I couldn't sign for ten, or simply <i>until death do us part. </i>When I interviewed with the director, Robert Landau (whose father was a television writer who wrote, of all the cool possible things, for <i>The Wild Wild West), </i>I told him my greatest fear was that he might consider me genuinely insane if I revealed even a fraction of the enthusiasm I felt for the position. Truth be told, it was as if I dreamed the job, as if my psychic desire and emotional need fractured the time-space continuum and placed it there for me to take. <i>A pioneer school project in Southeast Asia for highly gifted students- for orphans and villagers. A school outside the boundaries of any institutional curriculum. A school whose sole aim is to raise up its most promising children to help direct its people towards a sustainable, positive, healthy future. </i>Yes, my job is, in fact, facilitating the learning of the children who are going to save the world. So yeah, I am Charles Xavier. It beats the hell out of being the g.d.s.o.b. government worker who is sucking the tea party's pockets empty. Sadly, they have a point, these tea partyers(have you ever been to a less fun party?) I am ashamed of what I am accomplishing these days in the American school system. I am doing few of the students I love so dearly any good. I have trouble believing any of what I tell them as they run bell to bell.<br />
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Going feels good. Actually, it feels ridiculously more than that. I can't wait to visit Thailand before I report to Cambodia August 1st. To visit a Thai market and see, smell, and taste non-corporate food. To see Alan and Nok and all of my Thai students. To leave what frankly feels way too much like a bit part in a brain-eating zombie movie. I'm tinged with guilt. As if I am in a raft, looking back on the gigantic, multi-tiered cruise ship, back on the folks who are quite busy arranging the deck chairs. They would wave goodbye to me, but they have to keep one hand on the railing, seeing as how the glistening icon of prosperity is listing so sharply (could that explain how those deck chairs keep sliding so irritatingly?). But everything is okay. Captain Edward Smith has just come on to say so on the intercom.<br />
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Here are the details: I am one of five teachers (two of whom I helped interview- incredible!). There are also four interns (I helped interview three - had to turn away recent graduates of Yale, Brown, and Williams!), four Cambodian teachers, and four sets of Cambodian House parents. I will be living in an apartment in the city. We are making everything up as we go based on five core values (integrity, stewardship, optimism, ingenuity, determination) and four essential "lenses of focus" (Environment, society, economics, health). There will be 32 boarding students and up to 18 local day students, for whom everything will be free including a four-year university education anywhere in the world. It's a grand experiment. A veritable wild rumpus. <br />
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I will miss things. Will miss granite and pine; feeding Conor dinner and having him rave about my salmon. Singing Monteverdi with Voxx. The Triumph on Route 97, curving through Spruce Head.<br />
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I am rowing towards the sun, where it is rumored I will burn up. <br />
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I will miss the cold, a little. The ice on my face as I walk the breakwater in the descending winter night. I turn my face towards the wind and inhale the snowflakes, knowing I may not see their like again in my lifetime.<br />
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Perhaps I will bring my prodigies north, since to save the world they will have to know it in all its variety.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOLIjLWZYQ8&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOLIjLWZYQ8&feature=youtu.be</a><br />
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First though, I will have to teach them to swim...<br />
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For me, there is something about a bike, and particularly this configuration of bike, that helps me to become fully alive and present. I also own an absolutely stunning, top of the line, Cinelli (exquisite really, in its craftsmanship and lines. I will post some detail photos of it when I get a moment), but this humble Trek, that began its useful life as a rental at Maine Sport, has a particular magic. It is fast and smooth and its shifters reveal a wonderfully advanced machining precision. But no one would confuse me with a racer. The other afternoon a fluorescent-clad racer, all carbon fiber and wrap-sunglasses, blew by me on his training ride. He certainly felt no flicker of testosterone competitiveness from me, though I did chug away on my plastic pedals, behind my Wal-Mart headlight, seeing if I could keep his pace until my turn off to the Samoset road. No, this is not hip, or retro, and no one would mistake me for an extremist, log jumping, hootenanny hollering mountain biker. Rather, I feel a clear connection to my steed in Thailand, so there is that nostalgic bit, but more widely, I feel very much a <i>commuter</i>. I feel a certain solidarity with the millions across the globe for whom a bike is a lovely and practical way to get from home to work and back again. I think of the factory workers in Shanghai, or the groundskeepers in Angor Wat with their handmade brooms in Cambodia. I think of the office workers in Helsinki, who, according to my young friend Alex Bucholz, ride through the winter on studded Nokia tires. My short commute takes but 12 minutes or so, and there are some small variations that offer me the possibility of slight change- I can take Pine and pass the dilapidated small house for sale for 50K, or I can head straight down Spruce to swing by the natural foods coop. It is a quiet ride, especially in the mornings, and especially on those mornings when I have to be at school at 6:40 am for meetings. And it has gotten progressively colder and darker, naturally. In September I used to have some companionship in the bike rack at school. I never did see who the other bikes belonged to, but I did feel some sense of kinship. Nowadays the Trek awaits me alone. The students are slightly confounded by my choice. <i>You must be cold as hell!</i> But, really, it isn't so different from skiing or skating or just walking outside. The wind does factor in, but it does not penetrate my mittens or coat. It is hard for them (or my principal in his very cool, hopped up Jeep, who often roars by me in the dark morning) to believe that I <i>like </i>it. Of course, my choice is driven partly by my poverty. If I had the money for a second car, I probably would have bought one. If I had a car it might be very tempting to get in it on a freezing black morning (so far 20 degrees is the chilliest). But to shut myself in that cocoon would be to deprive myself of the air rushing across my cheeks, the sun's rays breaking up over the far horizon, the chugging of the motors lined up a the McDonald's drive through. It would deprive me of the strain of my thighs and the chest expansion of my breathing. Riding provides me with 12 minutes of <i>existing</i>. It bookends the arrival and departure from teaching so beautifully because I go from the physical to the intellectual and then back to the physical. Even if brief, it serves as a helpful reconnoitering with my non-mental self and with the physical world. And even on rainy days- like the one above, I inevitably respond with simple <i>gratitude. </i>There really isn't any other word to describe it. It isn't gratitude for anything specific- my health or the wind or the beauty of the geese floating on the edge of the harbor- it is more of a <i>zone of blessedness.</i> The thing is, I know my Trek is much nicer than the shitty bikes many people commuting must endure. And I think the leap to this level of bike- that is not so much to ask is it, for everyone? Just a functional, practical, sturdy friend?<br />
After my ride I ran in, stripped down, and dried myself and my clothes by the heater. It was perfect.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBYuG1NbRxr6s581FlUJyIYjTk9xPEHtazmIzYdKYJLDFTJDmSXJABEosP2qZZYu0Om810Zc1h_0-59dj5g_RXIhzodA3R5BOWmHAx5G9y4rTTS59C9Wgkw2fhrWEm93i1IRGpFC8KPvJU/s1600/DSCN0959.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBYuG1NbRxr6s581FlUJyIYjTk9xPEHtazmIzYdKYJLDFTJDmSXJABEosP2qZZYu0Om810Zc1h_0-59dj5g_RXIhzodA3R5BOWmHAx5G9y4rTTS59C9Wgkw2fhrWEm93i1IRGpFC8KPvJU/s400/DSCN0959.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-91124028270274705072011-10-30T03:53:00.000+07:002011-10-30T06:03:38.140+07:00Old News is...In the fall of 2004, to get <i>hip</i> with technology, I began a blog with my AP Literature group. The idea: each week someone would put up a quote or a question and we would free write. This was in the good old days of 80 minute, five days per week classes. We unspooled and relaxed as it was fine to diverge from the program. We would then read a certain number of each others' blogs and comment on them. Interesting and productive in its own way; to find them floating out in cyberspace 7 years later gave me pause. I have read about the dead whose works and photos are now digitized and floating in cyberspace as long as there exists electricity to keep them afloat. Speaking of which, read an interesting article today <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8850575/Facebook-to-build-server-farm-on-edge-of-Arctic-Circle.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8850575/Facebook-to-build-server-farm-on-edge-of-Arctic-Circle.html</a> about the agreement the owners of facebook had struck with a town on the edge of the arctic, chosen thanks to the low average daily temps (servers generate a shit ton of heat and must be cooled) and the availability of hydroelectric power (they will consume the equivalent of 16,000 individual homes) for their new, three-football-field sized servers. All this so the teens in my classes- and I!- can tell the world what our current '<i>status</i>' is and post pictures of ourselves and our food, along with hilarious clips from youtube. Anyhoo- here is the post I wrote nearly exactly 7 years ago:<br />
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<h2 class="date-header">
Tuesday, October 26, 2004</h2>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5072994277436880181" name="109880177529921921"></a>
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Dreaming of home
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Right now, I have a headache. I am sitting in a cinder block room
and my eyes are sore from the light that glares through the clouds. It
is fall in New England and the leaves have gone past their prime to a
point of sickly yellow green and brown. Why am I here? What
circumstances have led me to find myself in this particular location?
Where would I be if I could be anywhere? I looked at my atlas for a long
time last night. What a tiny world. What a big world. No place looks
"just right". What an odd place to find myself on the globe. The US
looks rather stupid when you look at the flat maps. That this shape,
like some bloated running animal should dominate so much of the world's
attention in this day and age. I have been dreaming of moving for that
past few years- my wife and i fight about it from time to time- she is
settled and happy in midcoast Maine. I'm not unhappy, but I have the
heart of a rover- and so much about living in the dominant world power
leaves me feeling hollow and burnt out. I'm not home with so much of
America and I do want a home. My dream place involves a climate, but it
is more a culture I'm looking for- a pace of life and an outlook.
Unfortunately, most of the planet has been corrupted by the capitalistic
foolishness that infects the US. I am of two minds. One part of me
tends towards Europe and its cities. I would love to have a garret
apartment in Paris or Rome. I would frequent the corner cafe for an
expresso in the early morning. I would wander the streets and bridges
and museums at my leisure- contemplating the achievements of the major
and minor artists of western civilization. I would return to my cozy
nook overlooking the busy city and read the new-old book I discovered in
my favorite used bookstore- the one with the dog who sleeps in the
doorway and the couch with the broken springs. I'd work on my screenplay
with Hodding over the internet and write a letter to my sister in
Colorado. Late afternoons and evenings are when I would earn my keep,
tutoring a variety of young and old people in English. With some of my
clients, I would barter. I'd especially love the fresh vegetables I get
from one young farmer who comes into the city on Saturdays to the co-op.
In the evenings I would stroll to a jazz bar or go to an all Bach
concert in a cathedral with my sculptor friend Jedd. But when the
weather got too hot and the tourists began to arrive, I would jump on my
motorbike all the way to the coast, where I would jump a sailboat as a
crew member heading east to my shack in Micronesia. On the tiny island I
have my surfboard and my only clothes- flip flops, three t-shirts, and
two swim trunks. THe grey ones are starting to get a little too worn
and I have to think about replacing them. Maybe I'll swap my friend who
owns the surf shop some labor,though I still owe him for the used board I
got last year. It's hot out, but not so hot that I'm uncomfortable- not
an oppressive heat and not overly humid. Just right so that if I lay in
the sun for a while I'm ready to paddle out into the current and catch a
few waves. Thee waves aren't really all that big. I'm not looking for a
thrill after all. I know I'm no accomplished surfer and the lack of big
waves means that this is no surfer's hotspot. That's fine with me. I
like the solitude and the uninterrupted landscape. The beach is not
picture postcard perfect which means no high rise tourist hotels. There
are 607 islands in Micronesia, but only 65 are inhabited. There are only
a few thousand people on my island, Yap, and most of them are
indigenous. I love exploring the native culture and though I'll never be
a native or truly accepted, I like that i have chosen this. I give and
take on a purely local level, and I spend a great deal of time
meditating and doing yoga- focusing on my breath and tuning into my
soul. I wander through the forests and when I get island fever I hop in
my dugout and paddle to other islands. I'm getting old now, but I am
content. I can feel my life force gently joining another, greater one.
</div>
</div>Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-13680714146754747882011-10-24T10:11:00.000+07:002011-10-24T10:16:50.610+07:00The Good<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Just a little over a year ago I snapped a photo of Conor loading wood into the house in preparation for the coming winter. The next day I left for Thailand. So here I am, back at it, this time loading it in for Monica, participating in the cyclical routines of New England once more, all those last year logs gone up the chimney. It feels good hauling wood, purposeful and sane. Now some two months home, I have many blessings to count. The weather has been lovely. The leaves have turned a million fancy colors. I have seen a Met opera production in HD, soccer and field hockey played by exuberant teens on manicured green fields under crisp blue skies. <br />
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I reside in an incredible condo perched on the Rockland Harbor, so I wake up to the ferry and the fishing boats heading out and grill freshly caught seafood on my deck in the evening as they return.<br />
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When I need a bit of a walk I can saunter in moments to the breakwater .<br />
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I find it difficult to take in the landscape and views- they are overwhelming in their immense perfection and loveliness. Granite. Pine. Seaweed and saltwater. Too, there are old friends. Well, face it, I am not great in the friends department. Mostly there is Dwight, who ditched me by taking his own year leave of absence to run a start up business. There's Tomas via a virtual connection in Portland. There is tennis and great gobs of good beer and dark chocolate. There are my cholesterol numbers- WOW! One year saw my level drop from a borderline <i>Uh oh </i>231, to a <i>you are going to live forever </i>183. There are many habits and consumables which have lost their luster all together- fodder for the next Negative Nancy post. There is my classroom and all the funny and endearing and tear-my-hair-out students, new and old. I like teaching, and it means I am getting to read some interesting new books, like <i>The Devil in the White City</i> and <i>The Emperor of All Maladies</i>, and revisit some old chestnuts, like <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>.<br />
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There is reuniting with the Triumph. That is more than good. That is a buzz on the balls that brings me one hundred percent into living in the present moment. <br />
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There is singing again with Voxx. That brings back the exquisite possibility of tuning into a group harmonic.<br />
But the best of the best of the best thing about being back? An easy one- the chance to see and reconnect with my trio of wild sons. Each has grown in my absence, becoming increasingly interesting and independent beings. What a lucky father I am to know such rambunctious free thinkers. <br />
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<br /></div>Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-5213677862829281582011-08-26T17:21:00.000+07:002011-08-26T17:21:18.381+07:00Reverse Transitions <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">For the sake of argument, let’s just say that it might be interesting for us all to see how the USA looks and feels through my eyes now that I have been immersed in Isaan culture for a year. I mean the title of the blog has always had two parts- the In and the Out, and it began with the leaving, so for my own sake at least I will carry on, if for no other reason than to process my reentry, to ascertain my identity. Speaking of identity, I met an affable young man on the flight from Taipei to LA whose wife was getting a master’s degree in International Development with a specialization in identity issues, specifically the effects of moving to the US for young Asians. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Since I got on the bus in NKP- all the VIP seats were sold out and I rode the cheap bus which was 15 dollars, or about $1.25 per hour travel time, not the nadir of bus services, 12 dollars, this one charging more because it had, unfortunately as it turns out, a bathroom. Said bathroom did not provide me any particular relief, but it did provide such a strong stench of urine that I looked down on the isle floor more than once to see if a great wave might be barreling my way- as I was saying, since I got on that bus, though more accurately I should say since I got off that bus which was full of “my people”, Isaan villagers headed to lowly jobs and universities in Bangkok, I feel as if I have been funneled, first a trickle and then a torrent, of globe trotting travelers. It really does have that feel- a tributary where I met three young Italian medical students, a bearded, smiling and laughing young man and two stunning raven-haired women, fresh of a trek of Laos and Cambodia. Just on appearances, and their happy-go-lucky liveliness, I would have guessed them hippie university students. So…<i>Italian!</i> Then there was a French couple back from Myanmar, and later a half besotted young Dubliner bending my ear about his wild times in Phuket and his admiration for Obama. <i>Dingle Mate! Of course you would have been to Dingle! Americans, they all go mad for it! </i>Followed by a near disastrous backwards spill when the automatic walkway ended. The tributary found its big brother in the customs line where I let a turbaned Arab cut in line ahead of me, sensing his time-crunch anxiety (requested and rewarded with his gentle, apologetic smile) and the chatty Chinese student, soon to be moving to Thailand, who asked me to be her <i><span> </span>teesher </i><span> </span>via e-mail about Thailand since I had lived there and knew where to go (though I am quite sure she was interested mostly in where the best mall shopping was more than where to get down in the dirt with poor villagers, so I doubt I can help her much), and then there was a further shuffling and resorting and spreading as we hit the alluvial plain of Taipei and people ricocheted off into myriad directions and I was on a plane bound for LAX seated between a<span> </span>portly Taiwanese<span> </span>businessman who speaks no English and a former Vietnamese refugee now a US citizen living in Oklahoma where she owns a smoothie shop in a mall <i>Always many customer. </i>There was the young barbwire-tattooed LA hipster who pulled his hoodie up to hide away and make sure I did not talk to him (How is it while we are young that we trick ourselves into thinking we are so interesting, unique, and important? When I see that so-cool young man, I see myself in France at 25- so full of imagined smoothness and resilience, yet to my 52 year old eyes so pathetically insecure.) My story, the story of working in a poor Thai village, echoed so recently by 12 others in our Saturday conference room, now diluted so that it is but a small green leaf lost in the flooding mighty, increasingly less Asian river. The faces, the variety of stories floating by, I love. The endless airport duty free shops, overflowing with ever more pseudo-luxurious goods, mostly tobacco, liquor, and perfume, those still pain me somewhere deep. And the more mass produced the product (they are in every damn airport, often up to a half dozen selling the same brands- Chivas, Mont Blanc, Dior, Coach) the more desperately the attempt to establish exclusivity and a sense of the ultimate- the velvet lined, sliding-doored, gigantic, decantered Chivas, the diamond-encrusted Mont Blanc. In Taipei 4 and 5 and sometimes even 6 immaculately dressed, lovely salesgirls hovering by the gleaming merchandise, ready to descend like peregrin falcons the moment one crossed the shop’s threshold. Who buys this overpriced shit? Who pays all those young beauties? But someone must. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The essential question is ridiculously simple- How do you want to live your life day to day? Which in turn could be asked- What matters to you? Not big questions like conservative economics or freedom of the press- but: Do you like to sit and read a book quietly, or play video games? Do you like to shop and buy things? Do you like to eat strange new foods? Does your car matter to you? Do you like being with children? Do you like working on a computer? Do you like checking your phone every 10 minutes for facebook messages? Do you like eating big boxes of doughnuts and massive coffee drinks? I look around and people are <i>doing things.</i> They are buying and moving and talking and eating- they are making a thousand choices a day. Who am I to say if they are happy or not with their choices? The world is headed in a certain direction because most those things that don’t make me happy make lots of other people happy. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I am in Los Angeles and many things strike me. Some nice things- America is very diverse- at least in the LA airport. The <span> </span>passport line for US citizens had all colors, languages, sizes. Some quite friendly. But there are other aspects I haven’t been around for a year: People rushed and intense- as if most of them are on some very pressing and important mission. They ooze a sort of <i>confidence.</i> Constantly exhaling an aura that exclaims the necessity and completeness of their existence. Isaan people don’t exude this. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well- maybe Rambo. But I think that it intimidates even his coworkers who are much more reserved, almost shy. Certainly compared to the muscley small town cops here, with their batman belts of guns and tasers- as if the high schoolers smoking pot cops so busily chase on Friday nights might secretly be backed by Al Quaida, or to be prepared for a secret casting agent for an episode of Fox Channel’s <i>COPS. </i>Ready to <i>Take Down</i> some pathetic shitfaced redneck after a wild car chase. Cleaning up the mean streets, one bad guy at a time. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I had my first Sam Adams Lager in a year and talked to a nice young man soon leaving the navy. He told me, <i>I want to go undercover, because, you know, I don’t like drugs. I don’t like drugs and I want to clean them out. </i>I could see he actually believed it- that he could put on a uniform and get out and <i>Clean out drugs.</i> If the airport bookshop is any indicator, quite a bit of that kind of believing is happening - lots and lots of angry sounding titles talking about <i>Taking Back America.</i> Like if enough people put on white hats and that slacker underclass taking all the government handouts gets up and works real hard all these contemporary problems will be gone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Also it strikes me how few people are on any given station compared to all the other countries I visited- more automation and self-service. Fifteen customers trying to fumble through the “automatic” check in process while a lone, undertrained worker runs about trying to smooth out the kinks.<span> </span>No wonder unemployment is so high. A store that in Taipei had 6 girls in perfectly pressed uniforms has but one pimply and pasty-faced teen perched behind the cash register, knowing only how to scan barcodes, another sweeping the floors and restocking the shelves. The profit motive cycle complete. <i>Where can we cut? Labor costs.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDdf4_dsdNkK3lOK_cXNBF6EsvhH5gRq0gFv2ofVZ28cyV0j7_YJvHs9ongzmsAn3B8ExaBTqT2sJcs1LGEPUnWsL8dCh1P9tIBs98YEzM4hklQq2fv9hEd0KlMqtkvlC0wwrpv-8DKZrW/s1600/DSCN0783.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDdf4_dsdNkK3lOK_cXNBF6EsvhH5gRq0gFv2ofVZ28cyV0j7_YJvHs9ongzmsAn3B8ExaBTqT2sJcs1LGEPUnWsL8dCh1P9tIBs98YEzM4hklQq2fv9hEd0KlMqtkvlC0wwrpv-8DKZrW/s400/DSCN0783.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">At least flying in to Maine is more promising. The beautiful coastal landscape abides, the scale of the airport is conceivable and the process of getting though less painful than LAX. Perhaps Maine is my American Isaan and I will be safe. Time will tell. I will try to keep this up as long as it feels genuine. I hope you will tag along.</div>Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-91472403416276691262011-08-20T10:01:00.002+07:002011-08-21T22:54:24.146+07:00Mindful MatterAlthough I have a few unfinished posts to edit back in Maine (not <i>home</i> anymore exactly- or maybe it is, maybe I have just joined the mega-rich and I have <i>homes all over the world)</i>, this will undoubtedly be my last from Thailand. I have the 12 hours bus to Bangkok tomorrow and then my flights from BKK to Taipei to LAX to NWK to PTL. Somewhere in there I jump the international date line and pick up that day I lost back in 2010. I will have to wait and see whether two August 22nds are worth the September 30th I gave up.<br />
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There is too much inventory no matter which door I open, and I fear certain ones will unleash a saltwater flash flood so tempestuous, so voluminous, everything will be swept up and sent tumbling. So I keep them locked, ignore the pounding, keep myself busy with movement and details- <i>What to throw out? What last minute gifts to buy? Where do I have to be when? What needs cleaning and mending? Who could use this old thing?</i> I go through one farewell ceremony after another, looking into each child's and each adult's eyes completely and fully, seeking to imprint the particulars while swimming in the conjoining and everlasting whole that supersedes and survives the <i>Nice to meet you</i>'s and the <i>Farewell</i>'s.<br />
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That duality- the individual, temporal wave and the holistic, abiding sea- as a friend mentioned on my last post, does seem to own a more blurred line in Isaan. It may be the Buddhism, or it may be the political history, or it may just be being poorer. Much in 21st century America stretches towards an elevation and focus on the former- individual rights, individual comforts, individual security, <i>me</i> and <i>mine</i> and <i>my personality </i>and <i>personal gain</i>, and <i>seize the day</i>! An easier target for politicians and ad men, surely.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpyFSohKXirzN-e2d_hjqSL1KOB7XBNuElXKRVAt9YDSQ0vs0Atd3cP5OvItq-fWFOMGUL4UWhoYXLsTApDcR7kqS5jEtSRfZiGx1ZtiTcJhInsm0GE3ziltV5VlAjCqiMKDfk8yxHK-Yl/s1600/DSCN0400.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpyFSohKXirzN-e2d_hjqSL1KOB7XBNuElXKRVAt9YDSQ0vs0Atd3cP5OvItq-fWFOMGUL4UWhoYXLsTApDcR7kqS5jEtSRfZiGx1ZtiTcJhInsm0GE3ziltV5VlAjCqiMKDfk8yxHK-Yl/s640/DSCN0400.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>Until I recently read Tich Nhat Hanh, I had always thought of meditation purely in terms of an emptying, towards a blankness. In itself a worthy goal. The same reason I enter into quiet, old, stone churches-seeking stillness and quiet. Yet in Hanh's description, mindfulness begins with the breath, but ends with a transcendence of both emptiness and fullness, of being and non-being, where one is finally mindful of <i>all.</i><br />
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That lone rice farmer, walking through his field, taking each stalk in his hand to push into the mud, to scythe down, to thresh apart. The hand is the grain of rice is the plant is the mud is the sun is the water. <i>Is the water is the past is the present is the future. </i>And perhaps that day I left behind in September is where I am continuously flying to Thailand, where I am never leaving.<br />
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<i>Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.</i><br />
H.C.Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072994277436880181.post-78938858205588592352011-08-16T00:17:00.001+07:002012-10-13T18:06:41.477+07:00Lao. Wow.Okay, so I used this same title in my facebook album. So sue me. It's catchy and it's mine, so I say it's broccoli and I say the Hell with it. Last weekend, in a desperate attempt to cram in every last second with something I planned to do and had not done yet, I booked down to Mukdahan to see my friend Rambo and to cross into Lao. Lao has been on my agenda since I talked to Susie, who runs the New Orleans Jazz Festival and gave us free tickets when I took students to work in the Lower 9th. She mentioned that of all the places she visited in SE Asia, Lao was her favorite. Recently, I also found out that my Oncle Jacques had also taught in Vientiane, Lao over 50 years ago. Jacques has been my secret beacon, since I was a kid. He was an international teacher, a free spirit, drawn to travel and explore, until he was killed in Africa in a car accident, still quite young. As much as I was enchanted by his wandering ways, it was the look in my mother's eyes when she described him that hooked me.<br />
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More and more I have been contemplating, and even occasionally sensing, non-linear time, the oneness of everything physical. There are moments when I am working out in my concrete house in Thailand and I am simultaneously in my attic in Maine. I can't tell whether it is me in Maine in the past and a memory or me in the future after I write this and I am back home. In fact if I just let the right presence work (flow?), past. present, future commingle. For a flash I am me walking on a red dirt Lao road and I am also Jacques working in a hot, sepia toned Lao classroom. Not an imagined projection but a compression and dissolving. A blur and a clarity.<br />
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I didn't know that I could have, for the past two months, gone directly across the river in NKP and gotten a Lao visa on arrival, but going two hours south was part of my plan since it involved a visit to Rambo.<br />
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Rambo took me to a lovely restaurant at the base of the bridge to Lao, and we drank a bottle of Lao whiskey as a proper send off. He regaled me WIth stories of his latest big bust, a gang of Moped thieves who were stealing huge numbers and shipping them to Lao. Of course, Rambo would not let me pay for anything, and we also ended up visiting a very odd new cowboy bar (which could have been transplanted directly from Wyoming), an indie music bar, and a bumping night club. This time I was described as an FBI agent doing some work. Last time I was a very rich computer engineer. In that Rambo reminds me of my deceased friend Drew Griffith, who once took me on patrol and told the local sheriffs deputies (as we, well he, was making an arrest) that I was undercover DEA. In Thailand, when you become close to someone, they will often 'adopt' you into their family, and Rambo and I have been brothers since we sang Unchained Melody to each other back in October.<br />
The next morning I was on a bus, finally crossing the Mekong after 10 months of looking at it.<br />
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So big and muddy and brown thanks to all of the recent rains. Navigating borders suddenly brings home the importance of papers and money and language, and I found myself getting very anxious as I got off the bus, went through the check points and reboarded. As the only falang on the bus I knew every time I got to the window I would gum up the works and sure enough in Lao I went to the wrong window and had to push my way backwards to another, freaking out that the bus would leave me or I would be short some paper or money or they would just rip me off because they so obviously could. Yet nothing actually went wrong and I remembered again how good that anxiety really is- first of all to remember in a very small and indirect way the insecurity that millions of people experience every day across the globe, but also to shake off the dullness of security and routine. The essence of why I travel- not to have my fat ass pampered on a Carnival Cruise, but to get my palms sweating a little and to force my brain to go, <i>Okay, what do I do in this particular strange situation?</i><br />
As I read up on Lao, two astonishing figures clubbed me over the head. One: Thailand has 66 million people. Vietnam as 90 million people. Lao has 6.6. Six point six million? That is roughly the same as Massachusetts, but Lao is 237,000 Square Kilometers and MA is a paltry 20,000! The other figure is unfortunately attached to my home country. Lao holds the horrible distinction of being the most bombed country in the world, ever. Bombed continuously by the USA, a great many sorties originating in NKP where I live. 580,000 missions carried out, which works out to one planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Over 2 million tons of bombs. More than all of WWII together. Of the 80 million cluster bomblets dropped in Lao, some 10 percent did not explode, and still cause deaths to this day. It was all part of the "Domino Theory". If Vietnam went, so would all of SE Asia. We befriended one side, the Vietnamese the other, and poor Lao did not stand a chance. It makes my guts ache to contemplate; when I put my passport on the immigration officer's desk I half expected him to begin screaming in my face. He didn't. The Lao people I met were poor, curious, gentle, and generous. They were not quite as quick to smile as the Thais in Isaan, but most all returned mine when flashed. Not poor on the level of the Cambodia I saw, but again the step down in economics from Thailand was evident- How could it not be after such a devastating recent history? Naturally once all the major player's ambitions were satisfied in the Capitalists versus Commies game, no one gave much of a shit about what happened to the people of Lao. I am sure I could ask every single student at my high school to point to Lao on a map and none would be able to, much less tell me about its importance in the preservation of democracy in the world today. Yet a goodly sum of their grandparents taxes and blood went into what politicians and generals propounded as essential and necessary. Now of course it is Afghanistan and terrorism. New places and catchphrases of fear. Same old bullshit. I saw a lot of charcoal being moved about- demonstrating a lack of electricity, no doubt.<br />
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The trip south was rewarded (or punished in some senses) by a trip in a mini van two hours back the other way. It was a van intended to hold 15 passengers and at one point with a baby in a lap we had 25. Pretty wild considering we also had a huge heavy load on the roof. The most interesting event was when the driver pulled over, went under the van, came out with a four foot long grey, grease-covered cable, started the van back up and we headed out again- after all the people who had run into the woods to pee reboarded. I had a nice chat with a young girl on the way to see a friend. She worked in an export office and welcomed the chance to use her English. She laughed when I asked if she had been to university and said very few people she knew had gone.<br />
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It was hard to get a line on if I was overpaying once I got to Ta Khek and I wrangled for quite some time with the tuk tuk driver over his 80 baht fee to town, since in NKP I typically pay only 20-30. It turns out it was the going rate and food too was about equal or more than in Thailand, since a good portion of it actually is bought there! I used the Lonely Planet guide and treated myself to a nice place for once- here a nice place means paying right around Motel 6 prices. There is a bit of left over French influence in Lao, and my hotel had high ceilings, shutters on the windows, and super coffee and French bread for breakfast.<br />
In the morning I rented a Chinese-made (i.e. dogshit quality) moped (350 baht -had to love the no paperwork, no signing anything, no helmets big enough for a white head) and headed out for my first destination, the so-called Buddha Cave.<br />
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Such a perfect place to drop 2 million tons of bombs don't you think? Well, the rains were wreaking havoc here too and the road was out.<br />
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The local kids loved it, diving into the rushing water. Meanwhile and large contingent of villagers were busy with sandbags and lumber constructing a new crossing. I decided to head further up to see another cave, thinking they might be done by the afternoon so I could pass.<br />
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At this cave a much larger bridge was washed out and the only access was this rickety walkway made of rebar and planks. The cave was fortunately an easy walk. Perhaps because of it however, there was no one else there, a nice bonus.<br />
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As I would expect in Thailand, this was lit up with what we would call Christmas lights. It was nicely accessible thanks to the massive concrete steps.<br />
Then it was back out on the road. No lunch places in sight anywhere- very unlike Thailand in that sense. I did stop at one roadside stand for an iced tea, where they were selling these water buffalo strips for eating.<br />
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Back to the Buddha Cave road, where unfortunately the bridge was not quite yet done, so I headed back into town.<br />
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I went back for a nap which was nice to beat the intense heat, though I slept through the sunset I'd hoped to see over NKP.<br />
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Still, there it was- Nakhon Phanom at night- a nice image reversal seen from the banks I had so often gazed upon at a distance. A sweet little jewel there. In the morning, after a great breakfast I was on a mission- to beat the heat and to see those dang Buddhas. They had been discovered some years earlier by a villager and were dated back some 600 years, hundreds of Buddhas in a small cave. I crossed my fingers and said a little multi-religious prayer and lo! the bridge was done.<br />
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Only a little tricky to navigate and then up 8 kilometers on a busy dirt track. Families were busy getting back and forth now that the road was open and the fishermen where everywhere. <br />
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They use these ingenious nets in Thailand as well, simply placing them on the bottom for a few minutes and lifting them straight up, forming a catchall with the bending bamboo. <br />
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One wrong turn led to this happy crew diving off the culvert into the current.<br />
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Then finally it was the Buddha Cave where due to the water level the only access was by boat, making it even more sacred, quiet, and mystical. <br />
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The cave itself was small and incredible. No pictures were allowed and there were a group of women all in white chanting prayers for a friend who had recently died. Other old women were decorating elaborate banana leaf icons and there was a gong that people rubbed and which produced a resonant overtone. Through a small hole in the floor an emerald green pool of water reflect light upwards. Wholly holy. And to emerge and look out over this. I felt cleansed and blessed.<br />
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A quick jaunt back to town- well not all that quick- on the Chinese moped I dared not exceed 60 K though on the Honda I borrow back in Thailand I regularly hang at 90- and I was on the barge back across to Thailand. It was like getting a tiny taste of the most delicious desert ever, and knowing you were not going to get any more for a long time. Aaaargh. But then again, more reasons to come back to this place I have grown to love so deeply.<br />
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<br />Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17717544460311707701noreply@blogger.com5