Shadows of Angkor

After nearly a quarter century of living and traveling in Asia, I have finally taught myself how to use chopsticks with my left hand!

My baby has a webcam and Internet access at home now. I am so relieved to finally be able to see his face again.

Yep, that's me!

After ten excruciating days without any contact from Narorn, I was so delighted to wake up this morning and find these pictures and a lovely message waiting on the Internet for me.

Tonight at 8:00 pm, my dear will step onto an airplane for the first time in his life and begin his new adventure in Denmark.

Yes, I am alive. The very high flood waters are making it very difficult however to do much aside from stay at home. In this picture you can clearly see me enjoying a very bubbly bath.

Recently, I read something in an international newspaper which has really had the wheels in my head turning. The article posed the question, “Is your life an episodic or narrative tale?”

 

Since I do not normally think along those lines, I at first had to rephrase the question and ask myself, “Is my life like a television series or a movie?” Are our lives punctuated by a series of tangentially related events tinged with subtle or not recurring themes? Or, are our lives and the events within them seemingly meaningless until the story comes to a grand close? 

 

Yeah, I know, deep shit. Who has the time to think about stuff like that? There is an apparently irreparable hole in your bedroom ceiling that drops rain on your feet every night during the monsoon season and you have just confirmed your handsome mustachioed driver has been fucking the teenaged housekeeper everyday while you have been at work.   And yet, trying to find and piece together meaning in events and details is precisely how my brain works when it is not attempting to face and solve the annoying and constant problems of daily life.

 

Even as I write this, the answer to the question is humorously clear. Not only is my life, and perhaps those of all but the re-imagined lives of historic figures, while unfolding most certainly episodic, my life in particular seems to be a goddamned telenovela full of bad dialog and melodrama, with me, the show’s aging star constantly on the verge of a nervous break down, smack at its center!

If you wish I had a camera at hand while my driver Chamroeun was playing Nintendo two nights ago for the first time in his life and squealing, then you would likely really wish I had one with me when I went home momentarily yesterday and walked in on him fucking my housekeeper in the guestroom!

 

I, of course, attempted to laugh it off, as I tried in my broken Khmer to explain how much I would have preferred them to do their fucking AFTER cleaning up the dog shit left on the floor from the previous night, before I realized I was in the midst of a pretty culturally heavy drama with potentially grave consequences.

 

Within seconds of opening the door and gleefully repeating, "I knew it, I knew it, the driver IS fucking the housekeeper, Chamroeun was as those prone to clichés say, sweating bullets, and retreated to my bedroom where he assumed a fetal position and a look on his face which pleaded, "Please do not kill me!"

 

My dotting Khmer brother David, who familiar viewers may recall had in previous episodes been stricken catatonic by imagined Muslim magic, and my ever angelic husband Narorn who is soon to depart to exotic Denmark, were absolutely livid and seemingly wanted to execute Chamroeun on the spot. Meanwhile, I the immigrant spouse from the land of free loving, furrowed my brow at their reaction and tried to laugh the situation off, while saying again in my broken Khmer, "No problem, no problem, wash dishes first, then make play with fingers and lips, I don't any want baby making in my house!"

 

It was not for several hours until I could illicit an explanation from either Narorn or David as to why they reacted the way they did, and stranger yet, why Chamroeun looked suddenly primed for impromptu castration. Only after loosening their lips with chilled beer did David and Narorn explain what my driver did, if not legally, was most certainly culturally prohibited. Scarier for me still was to learn that Cambodian culture not only allows for, but practically forces, retaliation against anyone who compromises or sullies the good name of a family or household. And according to my husband, my household’s name was most certainly compromised.

 

I, of course, was left screaming to near tears who, if we kill the driver and banish the housekeeper to the countryside, will drive me and clean my house!

 

Close-up on me popping a tranquilizer, cue canned melodramatic music, and roll end-credits.

Watching CNN of late has done nothing to convince me otherwise - at least 50% of Americans are just plain fearful and ignorant.

Yesterday, as I rode to work, the following haunting words kept rolling around inside my head... "the future darkens as the past gets brighter."

I am not a particularly pessimistic person, and I had to wonder why I was thinking along these lines.  It is quite remarkable how the human brain functions; often with little input by the user.  The French have a phrase "au courant" which I have always used to explain how my brain receives ideas which are simply "in the air."

While drifting to sleep last night, I recalled this week marks the disturbing anniversary of a pivotal moment in human history which should not be forgotten or casually dismissed.  It was on August 6th, 1945, only 21 short days after the first nuclear test explosion near Alamogordo, New Mexico, that  a uranium "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

I have not been back at work yet two hours from my much needed holiday and I am already thinking how the past gets brighter every day.

I won't tell, if you won't tell. 
Happy birthday Kevin!!!
I love you, Denny

Happy birthday Stacy!!! 
I love you, Denny

Click on the image for better resolution.

I have known for sometime now that my husband has been invited to live and study in Denmark.  What I did not know until I received and reviewed the official documents this morning however was when he is leaving.  When I saw "01/09/09," I had to count the months on my fingers and immediately started crying. 

My husband!

Admire him or not, Michael Jackson shall always be an important strand on the popular culture DNA of generation X worldwide.

 

I cannot claim to have ever heard the entire Thriller album, nor could I have even been considered a fan. Yet Friday morning on my little corner of the world,as soon as I saw the news two and a half hours after Michael Jackson died, I immediately began sobbing and let out a wail which alarmed both me and the people around me.

 

I felt as if something I was not even aware was inside me was suddenly and forever pulled out. The force was so unexpected and strong. I was dumbfounded much more by this feeling than I was at the unfortunate news of his passing, and had to shake my head and laugh at myself between tears.

 

For several minutes, I was afraid I would not be able to compose myself quickly enough and possibly risk having to explain to my colleagues why I was late to work. The news of his death was so fresh it had likely not yet spread to the non-English media. I was curious, but did not know what reaction to expect of people as soon as they heard, “Michael Jackson is dead.”

 

 

Much more than most any other American export to these far and distant parts, Michael Jackson’s resonating worldwide fame is oddly still felt. My students have little idea if any who Madonna is until I teach them how to sing “Hung Up” and “Sorry.” But darn if I am not constantly asked about Michael Jackson and asked, “Teacher, may we ask you to please teach us one of his songs instead?”

 

Death in Cambodia, at more times certainly than in the developed world, is palpable. I have learned to expect, but have yet grown used to losing here as many as five friends in one year. The effect of this reality upon people is stoic and numbing.

 

Throughout the day, people turned to me as their source of information on Michael Jackson’s life, music, strange appearance and behavior, and seemingly untimely passing. They could not understand how someone so rich could die so young. I tried to explain the effects phenomenal wealth and fame can have upon people and tried as best I could to also explain vitiligo, painkillers, and cardiac arrest.

 

What I could not clearly explain to people however was why I kept getting choked up and had to avert my eyes anytime I had to think too long to answer their questions.

 

How could I explain Michael Jackson’s presence in the cherished years which formed me and to which I so often wish to return?

 

Unlike any other recent era of which I have first hand experience, much of the last 20 years of the previous century were a period of particular celebration and exploration. In stark contrast to the immediate years preceding my emigration, there was an undeniable something in the air during the 80’s and early 90’s which encouraged defiant self-expression and the examination of the mores of those around and before us.

 

Michael Jackson was but only one of several artists from whom I learned to declare myself. I spent much of my free time on the day he died as I do any other; scouring the Internet for signs of community, curiosity, and critical thinking.

 

I sought a vain return to the years of my youth and was consoled rather to find new music from Annie Lennox, Depeche Mode, Grace Jones and my beloved Nina Hagen much of which still contained an undeniable tone of the 80’s and yet able still to speak to and about the world around.

 

I realized then that essential strand of DNA which had felt snapped was still intact, and although so much great music from the 1980’s has been relegated to “Oldies” channels, several of the artists and, to a greater extent I sense, many of the children from that era, are as strong if not perhaps stronger than ever.

 

 

I believe the daring and hope we are beginning to sense elements of today in the world around us, are direct results of the reaction to the same years which propelled me 15,000 miles across the sea. I am also left however, suspecting if what is yet hardly universal could be possible had it not been for people who remember aqua-net and androgyny.

 

As you likely know by now, I have lived in Cambodia for the better part of five years.  The longer I live away from the culture of my birth, the more I feel as if I am changing.  Often these changes are liberating and oftentimes amusing.  Yet of late, I have begun to feel as if I am losing my grasp on my native language.  Within the next few hours I will attempt to post something I recently wrote which I think clearly illustrates how inarticulate I have become.

I freely encourage and invite all criticism of the piece I will post later.  The piece was particularly difficult for me to write, not as much because of the subject matter as I suspect my diminished exposure to the subtle nuances of native speakers and writers.

Any advice you may have with regards to how I can keep my language skills alive will be greatly appreciated as would be any constructive criticism of the forementioned piece I will post later this evening.

Thank you,

Denny