2012 Year in Review

The sheer amount of life that occurred in 2012 astounds me. It’s impossible for me to believe that everything happened that did, and yet it did. Somehow.

The list is endless, the highlights are: 

• I fundraised, choreographed and rechoreographed, workshopped and coached, and then shepparded and took care of three dancers to perform in a festival in Paris, a stressful, frustrating, and magical time that took me back to my beloved city and back among my friends, and left me with something to be really proud of. 
• I graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University. 
• I co-produced a showcase, fought and coached dancers much more experienced than me in two pieces, and somehow got it onstage in Manhattan. 
• After a semester of planning, applying for a grant and not getting it, communication, I bought a one-way ticket to the other side of the world and left Manhattan in the middle of the night like a refugee, flying 16 hours in the company of the Indonesian navy.

And then there was Cambodia.

And I don’t know what to say about that, except that it was nothing like what I expected and now I’m having trouble remembering what it was I was expecting. I have no ability to intellectualize the country. I wasn’t lost, or changed, or fundamentally altered as in Paris, at least, not to my knowledge, but I must be because this place which was so strange is not so much anymore.

In six months, I found four jobs, two apartments, several friends, got to a very basic level in the language, organized a showcase, danced in a performance, gave four workshops to over forty students, got addicted to rice and learned how to deal with fish heads, got in one bike crash, one moto accident and several more near misses, got sick a couple times, spent two weeks in Siem Reap and saw the temples, learned and taught Thriller, met some amazing artists, and rethought my entire life plan at least twice.

The highlights are:

•  The first time my kids invited me to eat with them after the workshop performance.
• Meeting Linda, who I’m still looking for,
• Dancing in a real performance again, and
• All the many times I looked around and realized I was the only Barang, and yet being totally accepted by the surrounding crowd.

The greatest gift I received this year was a realization sometime in September that had been germinating for quite some time, since I met the Beyond in Paris. I had been obsessing over the latest One That Got Away, and the Ones Who Got Away before that, and feeling down about learning that I was making half as much money as I thought I was.

Resistance is the struggle between what is and what you think should be. Let go of what should be, embrace what is, and create from there.

I found a way to live out the axiom that things are the way they are and that’s that. I don’t believe there is any other or higher meaning than that. It’s just the way it is and everything is always perfect, even if it was different. Every possible reality is as perfect as this one is. 

And the resistance went away. I enter the next year much more peaceful, and much more zen. I know what I have, what I don’t, and that’s where I begin.

In the next year, I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this crazy adventure called Cambodia. I’m looking forward to:

• Taking some time to rest and relax and process, having not done so in a year,
• My trip home and to Paris in March and April to reset and touch base with the places and people I love the most,
• Setting a show of my own in motion here and moving towards my dreams,
• Improving my Khmer and deepening my understanding of Khmer culture and life,
• Being open to the richness and vibrancy of the arts and of life here with all of its caveats,
• Keeping in close contact with the people I love the most and hopefully seeing some for visits here, and
• Traveling around the region, saving a little money, and getting some things on my wishlist.

The past two years I've ended these year in reviews with little sayings, goals I guess, what I want people to say about me, but this year I have nothing, in line with my realization. What is, is, what I am, I am, where I am, I am. Sometime along the way, that became enough.

Merry Christmas from the Pixie Dust Chronicle!

I'm a day late, I know. Although I did have my computer with me the past four days spent in Kampot in a beautiful guesthouse right on the river, I used it to skype my family and check Facebook. I quite ambitiously brought a book, my notebook and journal, and some markers with me, thinking reflection would come in the form of words, but as it turns out there was no reflection and more of just staring at the world going by.

I'll publish a 2012 year in review in a bit here, but I will say that it has been one year of complete insanity, and I haven't stopped moving since Christmas last year. This vacation -- somewhat ill-timed as there still remains a shit ton to do and projects in full swing and projects just getting started -- was so, so necessary. I needed the four days of not thinking, which was startlingly successful consider my usual issues with remaining thought-free.

It was a great vacation. We rented motos and puttered into town about once a day, exploring the villages and the salt flats in the area or just poking about Kampot, which is a very sleepy, small town, where the most activity happens on the trampolines randomly set up in the middle of town and everything is 'close to the durian," a large and random sculpture of a durian in the middle of a roundabout.

The rest of the time was spent at the hotel, eating or sitting by the pool, or talking, or swimming in the river. We swam across the river one day, which was lovely. And eating. There was Christmas to be had, and a huge barbecue that included an entire pig, a tree to be trimmed, Christmas cookies being baked by a couple other guests (who were actually some friends of mine -- small world here!!), skype calls to make, greetings to be had.

The motos, by the way, were fully automatic, which means you sort of perch on top of them. Both hands have brakes and the right hand has the accelerator, which I found confusing. They are also much heavier than you think, and especially compared to a bike they are much less agile, however much they look like toys in the hands of the teenage drivers. Figuring out the balance was a challenge, especially on the very bumpy dirt roads from town to the hotel.

So naturally I had to bail a couple times as I was learning how the thing worked, one time when I was trying to turn for the first time (oops), once when I was trying to pass a bike on the tiny backroads in the little surrounding villages and discovered I was heading directly for a very unflexible looking piece of palm tree, and stopped too quickly, and once when I apparently revved at precisely the wrong moment on a piece of mud and dropped the moto on my foot -- and sliced it open from sole to heel on the inside of my ankle.

So there was a trip to the hospital in there and a lot of blood, but six stitches and some bandages later I was patched up nicely and busy thinking how I might get in the pool while leaving one foot out of the water. It is still quite sore and quite annoying, and I still get the willies looking at it (fortunately I don't have to, it's covered most of the time). I suppose I could take it as a sign to never get on a moto again, but I don't think I will. I've never done it before, I don't know how to deal with mud and dirt, and I'll probably learn.

Also, better to get the crashes out of the way first, right?

Foot cut open or not, it was a lovely, lovely Christmas and vacation. Kampot is much, much windier than Phnom Penh and therefore much cooler (I wished I had brought a cover up for the evenings!). Amazing how different weather can be just a two hour drive away. There were even hills there, adding some texture to the incredibly flat landscape around here. The dirt was this lovely burnt orange, there was real grass and actual birds, and getting back into Phnom Penh today was a shock of people and traffic.

The only thing wrong was not having my family around and I missed them terribly, especially with my sister having some serious health issues and the family kind of tense, worried, and waiting. Still, through the miracle of skype we were able to spend my Christmas morning and their Christmas eve together. It wasn't perfect, but it was still beautiful.

It was my first Christmas in the blazing sunshine, certainly.

I've sent most of my Christmas greetings already from email and Facebook, but just wanted to post it here. Here I am, in Cambodia, celebrating Christmas in 90 degree weather.

Craziness.

Go away, borohte: "Foreign Living Art"

After filming the informal showings during my summer workshops, and collecting the footage filmed by my translator on his iPhone, (and minus all the footage from my solo workshop thanks to an ill-placed spectator), I had a lot of film, and a friend of mine named Bernadette Vincent mashed it all up into a lovely reel style 7 minute video (link is here).

Cambodian Living Arts, who after all, facilitated the workshops, picked up the video and put it on their website and facebook, and prompted an entire cultural debate.

One person said, this isn't Cambodian, CLA used to do good work but now this? He asked, shouldn't it be called Foreign Living Art instead?

Others responded that this IS living art, it evolves and grows and creates. But it is destroying my culture, the guy repeated. Only Khmer can save Khmer culture.

He's not alone. For many people it is a legitimate fear. How do you deal with a generation more interested in contemporary than the classical? People here have seen their culture almost entirely vanish during the Khmer Rouge. There are no teachers, masters left. No wonder they are anxious. They have only begun to reconstruct, and now this western kind of culture is mixing in with the old and they worry, and perhaps rightly, about that what came before.

I'm sure you know where I stand. You can't keep culture in a box. I responded at one point, but I'm not trying to save Khmer culture. I'm just here to teach and encourage and experiment and learn. My background is in Western dance, and that's the only thing I know how to teach. The students enjoy it and I try to encourage them to be proud of their work, take control of their art, and be unafraid to create.

Is that destroying Khmer culture? Am I distracting them from focusing on what's important? Is it the west doing what the west does and would every one be better off if I took my westernness to the west where it belongs?

Of course I don't think so, and of course I don't know for sure. I think it's not about any one culture but the cross-culture, two fundamentally opposing cultures and dance learning from each other to explore what's possible.

Is that destroying Khmer culture?

Honestly, I think that'd be giving myself FAR too much credit.

Tuesday Night Chatter

I have other things I can probably be writing about, like all the various things I promised.

But I'm just going to put this here, these little thoughts on a Tuesday night that I am actually convinced is Wednesday night. I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that one of my students who usually has rehearsal on Wednesday came today after missing last week, in theory to rehearse and actually just ended up hanging out.

Some of the pieces are in decent shape, others that have barely started 4 weeks out and appear to be moving at snails' paces, choreographers who show up with no idea what to teach dancers and then ask ME to do it (whoa whoa whoa there suckers, that's cheating). All of the choreographers need coaching not about dancing but about leading, how to get and keep dancers' attention and what to do with it once you have it.

I decided to attempt to cook something besides dumplings and salad for dinner tonight, and made an omelette of epic proportions with red onions, some mushrooms that for whatever reason looked good at Lucky (I don't even like mushrooms I don't think, not unless my Dad cooks them with an unhealthy amount of butter and garlic), speaking of which garlic, cherry tomatoes, and cheddar cheese.

Honestly, it wasn't really that good. Maybe I didn't add enough butter, though I suspect it is the lack of spices instead. Well, hey, I tried. Tomorrow it'll be back to pasta and the tomato basil sauce I have. I don't eat khmer food for dinner as I don't know how to make it and don't want to eat out.

Speaking of which, that is money, which is required to eat out, I realized that my health insurance that I had bought for six months was expiring at the end of this month and decided that basic or not, having the option to get flown out the country in case of an emergency is kind of important in the case of, so I renewed it. The premium went up, and a lovely lass named Sallie Mae has gotten my attention...hello to the world of paying back student loans. Thankfully my monthly payment is very low as thankfully Columbia didn't make me get too many loans, however --

Well, it just makes me feel like an Adult with a capital A.

I've started taking some time in the day when I'm home to sit out on my balcony and watch the world outside go by; I spend too much time on the computer anyway and I've been craving time to just process and deal with the insanity of the past five and a half months, during which I didn't really have much time to process and blasted through as I tend to do.

Now, with an indefinite amount of time here and a brain too full, a few set projects for the next month or two, I'm trying to take some relax time. My instinct is to run to the next thing and try to figure everything out now, but I really don't want to. I get the guilty twinge that I'm wasting time and I should be figuring out how to start the company so I can do so as soon as possible, but then I'm just like, chill.

Realistically, nothing is going to happen until after I get back from the States and Europe in mid-April, and probably not until Season of Cambodia is over in May. Sure, that's another five months from now, but who cares. If that time is well-spent processing, researching a bit, and resetting, so that when I do tackle the next big project, I can do so with full attention and energy, five months is nothing.

Anyway I think my point was, I like my balcony. I like my street. I watch all the various lives going by and existing and watch the tin roofs and palm trees and speculate on how many apartments go for in the Cambodian equivalent of a high rise across the way. I wonder why the neighbors are boxing up twenty wireless keyboards, and if the other neighbors are ever going to let the dogs out of the alley where they keep them, and if the empty lot across the way is ever going to be used for more than a parking lot.

And that, these days, is familiar. Times change.

Me vs the Motos (I always lose)

The bikes are at the bottom, competing with the cyclo taxis for last place, but since a loaded cyclo is not stopping as quickly as a bike, the bike get the bottom spot.

Next are the motorbikes, who all have inferiority complexes and like to think they are on top, even though they're smaller. They also think they're faster than everyone else, which isn't true, everyone goes at right about the same pace. But the motos think they're fast and they think they're important, and they always cause the most trouble.

Next are the tuk tuks, though they are arguably below the motos, as even though they are bigger they are slower. I can't figure out how they got the reputation for driving too quickly.

Up next are the smaller cars, which are usually somewhat unobtrusive but bigger than the rest.

Then the large SUVs, the number of which is booming as the nouveau-riche find various ways to show off, and so the bigger and the more prominently "lexus" is splashed across the side, the better. The drivers, usuall checking or talking on one of their three iPhones, know they are bigger than everyone and just go when and where they want -- except they, unlike the motos, stop for red lights.

Above this is a collection of large lorries and trucks, and in and out of the above mess are your various moto trailers. Not counted are the vendor carts, usually on bicycle or moto, puttering along.

In the U.S., if there is no light and a four way stop, everyone will stop and one by one go in order. Here, everyone goes forward until someone is in their way, and then waits to sliver through whatever available space they can find. Red lights do not mean stop, they mean if there is traffic, stop, and if not, go.

There are the hotshots on their absurdly large motorbikes that you sort of crouch strangely atop and blast through traffic, something that motos piled with young school students also do. One of the worst is, I think, the female drivers, who are really quite passive-aggressive. They sit with their knees held daintily together, and worm their way through the traffic, pulling past so close you just have to brake and let them pass.

Someone is always getting cut off. Someone is always going down the wrong side of the street, and there is always a near collision between someone at least once on every ride. People seem to accept these as everyday, as they don't honk, just screech the brakes and wait to see who will move first. At most a dirty look or two is exchanged.

The horns are used instead just to warn people they are coming.

Although I know how to deal with it, it's always stressful and I still get frustrated with the moto drivers. I think if they just learned that red light means stop, and the city invested in some stop signs, already life would be improved.

And in the mean time -- I'll just keep getting cut off.

Sibling/Sweetheart: The more confusing nuances of the Khmer language

In Khmer, you call people different things depending on their age in relation to you. There's no real equivalent in English except maybe "Sir" or "Ma'am" as a sign of respect. However, in a culture with family as the central unit, everyone is part of the family, sister or brother, or aunt and uncle.

The one you hear most often is "bong", which is used for anyone older than you but roughly in the same generation. It can mean sister or brother, sometimes to avoid confusion "bong bproh" or "bong srey" (older brother, older sister). When trying to translate, Khmer people often call me "sister", which is much nicer than "lady" as you get on the street, or "madame" which I hear sometimes, and one time "sir" (after which the guy seemed surprised I didn't say anything back!)

If someone is younger than you, you say "oun" (like 'own'), which means younger brother or sister. For those much older, the men are "pu", or uncle, and the women are "ming", or aunt, though someone once told me  you should always call women "bong" to avoid insulting them.

Often people will ask how old you are so they know the appropriate way to call you. Somewhat confused by the whole thing, I asked what you do when the person in question is right around your age, in which case apparently you just use the name.

However, that isn't the most confusing thing, as "bong" and "oun" can quite confusedly also mean "honey" or "sweetheart." In a relationship, the woman calls the man "bong" and refers to herself as "oun," and vice versa. While I have all sorts of things to say about how this sets up the hierarchy of the relationship, it certainly does throw a wrench in things.

Apparently, to avoid confusion, a guy friend will call a girl "pah-oun". I can't remember if there's a way to avoid confusion for the opposite situation, probably just with the name, or with someone older than you, you can default to "pu", but that also seems strange to me.

I have not yet figured out why in the world the same word means brother/sister and sweetheart, and naturally you could make all sorts of nasty jokes about it but I'm sure in the end there's a reason for it. To me it is heartily confusing.

Generally speaking, I call the students I know are at least four or five years younger than me "oun", four or five years older than me "bong", and names in between. I'm trying to be careful about what I call the servers as sometimes I'm pretty sure they are younger than me. The instinct to guess ages to know the proper title is definitely going to be ingrained soon if not already.

And in the meantime, hope I don't accidentally call anyone sweetheart. Or if I do, it's obvious that I actually mean brother or sister.

Professionalism, Performances, and serious Déjà Vu

I suppose it's anywhere you go, the madness and the last-minute nature of things. Anywhere you go something goes wrong on opening day, Cambodia or New York or Paris. However, add in all that and mix with cultural and language differences, and you get quite a mess.

The one problem with the arts scene in Cambodia is the lack of venues, for performance and for rehearsal. The only "western" style professional theater is Chenla, which is kind of on the outskirts of town. I don't know the rates for that, but probably fairly expensive. But aside from that, it leaves few options.

I was asked by a friend to perform for the year-end school of the new ballet school in town (my friend runs it), and immediately agreed (especially seeing as I wasn't being recruited for a ballet, but a contemporary piece.) The piece ended up being a 15 minute duet (including a five minute solo) with a lovely Scottish woman, and it's been incredibly nice to have some time to just do what someone else tells me to do instead of the madness of creating, producing, and etc.

The evening was rounded out by a one-act ballet provincial style, with bales of hay and all the other various props that go in ballet-ballets (so much ballet...), including a posse of ten or so kids to hop in a circle at various intervals, and a community outreach contemporary piece, performed by eight Khmer students. My friend is determined to put together a professional school and not just the place you send your kids to fluff about for awhile, and he's doing a pretty good job of it. He has a real passion for teaching and it comes through.

He rented a theater called "the Department of Performing Arts." I am not sure if classes take place there or really what it is for, but it is hidden back amongst the houses around it and you have to be looking to find the alley way that leads to it, a large, somewhat oddly shaped building with stairs unnecessarily wrapping around it. It looks big, but isn't particularly, seating 150. The stage is a decent size, but there are no dressing rooms or backstage areas. The bathrooms are downstairs and you have to go outside to find them. Mirrors for makeup don't seem to exist anywhere. The stage is wood and nails creep up here and there.

In addition, nobody bothered to tell us that while we could be in the space all day, if you run the lights that long they burn out, and halfway through the afternoon all the dimmers blew, leaving us with access to the four mains onstage and the bank of spots in the front of the house. The only way to turn them on and off was by unplugging and plugging the cables. On or off, no in between, and the production staff decided to blame  us for using the lights so long.

That pushed the rehearsals back, the hair and makeup people were running late, the people coming to do the hair for the community piece were late, the film crew turned up two hours late, and with my friend overwhelmed and running around, it was left up to me and my duet partner to warm up the kids.

I don't know how to warm up a bunch of seven year olds, but nevertheless, we played some silly games. They ran around. I taught them a bit of Thriller. They got bored. We stretched, they were even more bored. But we'd wasted ten or fifteen minutes and they pronounced themselves ready to dance.

A word about the kids -- all expat kids, their parents here for work. French, British, American, earnest and adorable, asking endless questions and adoring the older dancers, their hair in two french braids and little dresses (the one boy in green trousers and a white shirt). They were all me, fifteen years ago. I could see it so clearly, their parents helping with the show like parents do anywhere. Only in Cambodia. It's just where they live, nothing special. Back in America, they say, it was like this, but I don't know here.

It was such a mind-twist for me, to see myself as I was fifteen years ago, the little ballerina girl with the blond hair and hamming it up, but here, in Cambodia, in this somewhat rickity, imperfect theater.

The show sold out. They had to turn people away. Everyone had a good time, the lights didn't look awful, and no one was any the wiser. I didn't overbalance on the tilt. The kids were great. The community piece looked beautiful in a shadowy light, with their white costumes and crazy hair.

I guess, wherever you are, the show must go on.

Apologies, and what to expect

I've been so bad the last couple months. I hardly write, and when I do, it's become a study in how-much-gillian-has-to-do and complaints about being tired or this or that.

It is true that I've been incredibly busy and will continue to be for the next month at least. However, I'm going to try and be better about the blog.

Expect in the next couple weeks to find :

-- recounts from a day trip to Kien Svay and picnics Cambodian style,

-- a more in-depth discussion of the hierarchy of traffic and vehicles,

-- a full update on the new project with my students and the ups and downs of trying to teach professionalism,

-- a new job announcement and all of the stories of its process and actualization, and

-- news from Kampot, where I will be spending Christmas.

Cheers!

Christmas finds its ways to this side of the universe

I suppose with a strong expat community and a commercial potential, you'd expect such a thing to happen. It's a chance to sell merchandise, and that above anything seems to highly motivate the local businesses to go all out in what they understand Christmas to be.

The local movie theater in the city mall has a tree and "Merry Christmas" strung up from the ceiling, which was bizarre enough, and then Lucky Supermarket got in the act, plastering its windows with tree stickers, displaying stacks of Santa chocolates, outfitting their entire staff with Santa hats, and playing "We wish you a merry Christmas"  on repeat.

As far as I can tell, the locals treat it was some bemusement, but I would guess as a grand opportunity to sell stuff, which is unfortunately what Christmas is about everywhere. It is kind of sad, though, a little upsetting, to see that part of it in its extreme -- for most people, I think, Christmas is the commercial but also the family time, tradition.

Here it's just the commercial without the tradition or the idea of spending time with the family. You can sense the locals don't give one whit about the holiday itself or what it may or may not mean. Maybe they see on TV  what it's supposed to be like, and I think they really are trying to recreate it for all the crazy barangs, but with this kind of confused distance.

Essentially, it's the side of Christmas I am not at all a fan of, and I'm already sick of it.

In the mean time, today is December 1st. It is hot today. There has been no real change in the weather, though I think it is slightly less hot than it was. I miss the cold and watching the seasons change.

Hot winters and Christmas in the Cambodian supermarkets -- the best word I can think of for it is surreal.

Tuesday Night Chatter

Instead of trying to lasso the kids one by one into rehearsal, I decided to postpone rehearsals for a week and get them all into the same room to confirm the schedule, which I was trying to avoid doing. It's probably much easier this way anyhow -- though the excuses I've heard so far for their lack of presence at rehearsals have been pretty lame.

Hey, they're young, and don't know how to take initiative (some people never learn.) With me, they'll learn soon enough, as I am not intending on holding anyone's hand through this process...

The one responsible individual in the bunch is naturally the one with rehearsals at 8 in the morning -- that's gonna be tough. I'm already quite sleepy today as it is. There might have to be nap time worked into my day somewhere.

CTN is taking their sweet time in doing anything, which is a bit annoying but they did at least deign to give me a timeline, which I appreciate.

Everything is kind of shut down for the non-existent water festival, cancelled because of the King Father's death. Usually it's the time - so I've heard - when Phnom Penh is overrun with people from the provinces and everyone here flees on vacation. Most everyone is gone, in other words, except no people coming in, no boat races, no nothing.

As such, I am still working because I have far too much to do to stop, but with the CLA office technically closed and my boss in NYC, I've taken to taking over the ED office and working there, which is great. I have a real desk, air con, and feel quite important indeed, though today the internet was out and I hadn't brought my key with me, so I went to a café instead.

For some reason it is still raining, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be the dry season now. We had a lovely afternoon shower today -- just after I got home from work, thank goodness -- and I sat on my balcony and watched it coming down in the sunset. I live on a really pretty street, I think, and the light was quickly turning golden. I caught myself looking at the palm trees -- I hadn't really even noticed before -- and was thinking about how back home it's 31 degrees fahrenheit.

It has its own beauty, this place, and I was looking at the tin shanty roofs and the moto drivers on the corner and just thinking how different it is from where I've been before -- and at the same time, how comfortable (as much as I think it can be) it's become. Some days it's uncomfortable as all heck, but more often these days I don't notice it so much.

It's coming up on five months since I've been here. The thought is still strange, but it feels good. It feels like just now things are beginning to gel, and could really be swinging in the months to come.

I've discovered a cache of movies on the website for my internet, and have been taking advantage, as watching movies is the one sure way I can get myself to stop working. It's taken the place of watching sports, as finding football on the TV is rare, hockey is out, and I'm not too interested in watching soccer and boxing.

So I'll make myself some salad and dumplings, curl up for a movie, and head for bed early.

Happy Tuesday, however much I would like it to actually be Friday...

What do you know about Cambodia?

There's been a lot of discussions that I've found myself a part of or eavesdropping on about the art here and where its inspiration comes from.

There are various schools of thought as far as I can tell.

There are those, like Cambodian Living Arts, who think it incredibly important to move past the genocide, as there are now generations of artists who never experienced it and although they hear the stories and probably their family was affected, they are removed from it. It doesn't figure into their every day experience. CLA, and many other organizations, think that this is the way to move forward now, some thirty, forty years after the fact. Reconstruction is done, now is time to develop.

There are others, however, who believe that all the art should take its inspiration from the genocide because it is only through art that people heal. Everything should reflect and deal with it, in order to heal and move on.

I think this goes much past art. This generation -- if they know about Cambodia at all -- knows only about the American bombardments and the Khmer Rouge. They know it through films like "The Killing Fields." And yet, for centuries preceding, Cambodia was known in the Asian-pacific region for its art and culture.

I admit it's all I knew about. I don't even know if I knew that much before meeting my friend Nettra in university. I'd never heard of the place, or anything about it, and when I did hear about it, I heard about the Khmer Rouge. Because I decided to come, and therefore needed to learn, I read some wiki articles, and learned about how the country is just wobbling back to its feet after the genocide and the war. Because I was looking, I learned about the dance.

But I had no clue. I knew nothing about the culture, about the history, didn't know a lick about the arts, created a workshop without having any background on the general way of teaching and tradition here.

So what's the story here?

I think as always there must be a balance. Without films like "The Killing Fields" (which I admit to not having seen...) and a certain focus on the Khmer Rouge, people like me would never know about this place. But that's only one side of the story, only the black where there is a whole lot of gray to go with it. Something that has become very important to me is communicating to people back home that this place is more than a "post-conflict nation."

When I told people I was going here, I got a lot of strange looks and "that's great, but why Cambodia???" as though to ask why anyone in their right mind would go here. It's for that that I want to do my part to spread the word about this little country on the other side of the world from most of my friends and family and contacts.

The genocide was here, and it is part of the history. But it is not all, and --

nor, I think, should it be.

Walking sideways on the edge of the world

(by the time I return, I think, I'll have begun to flip right side up,
enough to find my own people equally upside down, 
and will have to find the way to walk sideways, 
on the edge of the earth). 

I wrote that awhile ago, near the beginning of my stay here.

On Thanksgiving night, I had a wonderful meal with good people, with all the staples and the good stuff, good conversation. I very much enjoyed myself.

But the food was too much. I'm not used to eating that kind of food anymore, and I felt kind of bloated. I wanted rice the next day, or fruit.

The next morning, I was on skype with my family, looking at the apartment and wanting to join them, but --

Sometimes I do feel kind of like a stranger in both worlds. I can already tell how strange it will be to be back in the US, even for a visit, and how the poem is making itself true. I'm flipping, and I don't think here will ever be fully right side up, just sideways enough to make things back home look pretty sideways too.

I guess it just comes with the territory of living in a culture that is so different. Staying where you come from is a lot less complicated than navigating the unsettling culture shock, tiptoeing around home that is not home. Looking at where you want to be and knowing that because of where you have been, what you remember it as will not be the same when you step back in, both you and the place itself changed.

This week was a violent mix of brilliance and stress, beauty and exhaustion, feeling under-appreciated and feeling heartily blessed, and the two have mixed badly, like oil and vinegar being forced to co-habit. Although I still have much to do and many things to accomplish and deal with and sort out and wait for the world to turn in the next week, I'm trying to take some time off this weekend.

Waiting until everything stops spinning around me -- or at least, to just let it spin and not spin with it for a time, until I can jump back in.

Tuesday Night Chatter

Pretending you don't have work does not unfortunately make it go away.

Someone should fix that.

I am doing a rare double post, because I wanted to talk about the auditions of this morning but thought it was not appropriately scattered for an edition of Tuesday Night Chatter, which keep mysteriously disappearing to the "Oh, yesterday was Tuesday!" syndrome.

I like being an assistant especially because of the high level clearance I have to eavesdrop on high level conversations. It's kind of funny to be "the people" from the "I'll have my people call your people and we'll do lunch" cliché, but I really don't mind. I do think though that this month has gone well over the 12-15 hour a week limit and will probably quietly remind my boss about it, but I think everyone has been working overtime this month.

Currently in the process of wrapping up one job -- set the end date today -- and starting another, discussed in tonight's previous post, which makes everything seem doubly as urgent as it probably is.

It is kind of an impediment to a job where you are expected to remember things when your brain gets so full that things start leaking out the ears, but I think for the most part I've succeeding in holding all the gray matter in or at least catching it when it starts sneaking out the back door.

However historic it may be, Obama's visit is wrecking all sorts of havoc, closing random streets and causing traffic jams to forever. Uniformed officers with machine guns are stationed at some of the major intersections and the Cambodian drivers seem to be more annoyed than awestruck. Occasionally, while pulled over and waiting for traffic to move again, you see the motorcades going by, all blacked out windows, suits, vans and flashing lights, with the police escorts.

It is cool, of course, but for the most part it's just madness, and he's spending his time running around like a madman, and I think everyone will be pretty happy when things go back to normal tomorrow.

Apparently you people (well, most of you) are getting into holiday season, which is really quite surprising for me. I'm having a Thanksgiving dinner with some friends, which will be great, but the holiday energy is not here. It's been cooler (relatively), but this is no winter for me and it seems very bizarre to think we are in mid-late November.

As with absolutely everything here -- not bad.

Just utterly different.

Auditions

I don't like 'em anyway you cut it, auditionee or auditioner, because either way someone is staring at you and expecting something, which has always made me uncomfortable (see: why I refuse to teach in a classroom and have had to be talked into teaching contemporary technique classes). As much as I can talk about being one of the few trained choreographers here, I still often feel like a little kid on the big kid's playground.

Anyway, this one was kind of a mess, somewhere around 25 young kids, of two hip hop groups, mostly guys and of the seven girls, only three or four could actually dance. They did a routine of entirely sexy movements, while all the while staring at the ground. Charming. The guys were a bit better, in the one group all tough, the other group looking like a motley crew of kids in comparison, but turned out to be equally good dancers.

I was looking for a couple things -- the plain old ability to move your body is pretty important and not that obvious apparently ---

Well I guess I haven't actually said this yet because I haven't actually signed a contract yet and I didn't want to talk myself into where I'm not, which I've done before, but seeing as they're having me audition dancers I think I can safely say that I'm signing on with Cambodian Television Network to choreograph the back up dance for their weekend concerts. They have five, three are "slow" and under my responsibility.

The current state of backup dance on the concerts is pretty abysmal, with freelancers that aren't together and have no energy or stage presence to speak of (sorry, just telling it like it is.) They are hiring a whole new group of dancers -- proving to be more complicated than anticipated thanks to the turnout at auditions -- and choreographers (yours truly) to build it up from the ground and make something worth watching.

I think it's going to be a fascinating experience for me and my career, and am quite looking forward to it, but getting the songs on Wednesday for a Saturday concert and thus having two days to prepare close to 12 songs is going to be extremely challenging -- especially since I'm going to have to basically teach the entire vocabulary and technique to the dancers.

As such, I was watching for fast learners, very important. I always watch for stage presence. This time I added a couple other criteria to the list -- do they respond well to being put under stress (learning a lot quickly and being tossed out on their own, corrections, etc), and do they seem like fun people?

The last might seem strange, but let me tell you what -- if we are going to be working together every week under extreme conditions, we damn well better like each other. We don't have time for butting heads or personal problems.

Drama comes here too -- one of the groups was upset because the assistant for the fast choreographer taught their phrase, which they felt gave that group an unfair advantage. They were still talking about it when I left. I hate drama. I try to avoid it as much as I can, though artists have a disproportionately large amount of it, which I've never understood.

Anywho, it will probably all come to naught, as the production managers get last say, and they'll probably stick me with my last choices. Welcome to television, Gillian!

Imprinted on my eyelids: Friday night out

I remember the place like this: black chalkboard walls and low blue light, people and live rap and then whenever someone took a picture, everything would go pure white for a full second except for whatever I had been looking at at the moment the flash hit, imprinted in white.

The latter half of the evening was like that, flashes of white and the memory of an image floating in my eyes, like capturing little bits of eternity. It was a fundraiser for detainees and the heart of the urban art scene here, spoken word poetry and performances, on the spot rapping, some crazy reggae style Khmer band, and DJs, in a little random bar where the bartenders juggle the bottles while making one of the three cocktails available.

I was there until about two, dancing and as happy as a clam, but at a certain point I was getting tired and my feet were hurting, having worn heels (and jeans, it's been positively cool), so I managed to head outside precisely as a rainstorm was hitting and was absolutely thoroughly soaked by the time I arrived home.

The night didn't begin there, though, it began in a really too-cold auditorium at a show that started a half hour late and ran an hour late for the closing of the Youth Arts Festival. The show itself was an eclectic mix of things -- a somewhat too-long but nevertheless interesting shadow puppet performance, a duo of old, extremely good musicians singing apparently hilarious stories in Khmer to judge from the audience reaction, and a blind, very old man sitting in a chair and recounting a story with at least five characters -- by himself, each character with a distinct voice and style. It was really quite surprising.

What followed then were a couple of attempts at contemporary dance, one made by the kids I worked with in Siem Reap (who have been a joy to see around at the festival, as they are also so happy to see me and so sweet) which left me with my hands over my face and solemnly swearing I had nothing to do with the piece (which I didn't), and one choreographed by someone I don't know but danced by a couple of my students, which left me scrambling for a notebook and a pen.

I don't want to say they were bad, but they looked to me like what someone thought contemporary dance should look like. It looked like people doing technical movements without having the backing or the training to do them cleanly and well, and the second piece was essentially taking what the two kids do best -- for one, looking statuesque and sexy, and the other, bending in all sorts of crazy ways -- and doing it for five minutes.

In any way, it told me exactly what I need to teach them, so that was fine.

The coolest part for me was afterwards, when one of my other students was performing with her band outside, and I got to have some dance bonding time with the kids. I did notice sometime halfway through that I was the only white person around, but no matter, they didn't care and I didn't care. It ended strangely with the group very angry because apparently the organization was terrible and they were frustrated with CLA because of it. I guess drama is everywhere you go, and as always with drama I'll be staying very far away, especially if it's between an organization I am intimately implicated in by working for the ED, and students to whom I am very tied to as well. As always, I'll just stay on both sides and let it play out as it will.

But in any case, the night continued for me in spectacular fashion, as I saw another student, now more friend, at the event and got to chat for a bit before hitting the dance floor.

Good music, good friends, and dance, dance dance. That is all I will ever need.

The White Building

The White Building is not white, but it is notorious. At some point it was built to house artists, a kind of low-income, subsidized housing project. Since then, it has adopted the tag "slum" and if you google it, the majority of the articles talk about the prostitution and drug dealing that found its way inside.

It's often used as a symbol of Cambodian poverty, with its graying, dingy exterior, prison-like halls, washing hung out on the deteriorating walls and tin roofs.

However, it is also home to many artists and families. I have heard all sorts of differing things, the good the bad and the ugly. I see it all the time, stretching down Sothearos blvd and just behind Cambodian Living Arts' main office. It certainly looks awful, people milling about and the usual shops on the ground floor.

I'd never been inside, as I never thought it was my place, and I'd heard enough mixed reviews not to have any particular expectations when, as part of the Cambodian Youth Arts Festival, I found myself among a group of people heading there to check out a gallery that had been set up inside.

I did feel strange about being there, even with other barangs, just because you are such an anomaly and I'm pretty sensitive to energy like that. Despite how helpful the guys chilling in the stairwell -- just sitting, in the dark -- were in directing us to the second gallery, or the residents watching you go by, it did feel like intruding.

The galleries themselves were fascinating -- one was in clearly a schoolroom, where they had classes in everything from ABCs to Yoga, and had set up about ten small TVs, each playing a tape following one resident and letting them discuss their relationship to the building. They were subtitled in English, and that was interesting.

Then the second was much more of a traditional gallery, young artists from the building -- photography, painting, collage, music and video, and a young man working on the spot -- drizzling paint into a Styrofoam box filled with water and passing a sheet of paper in the water to pick up streaks of paint. All the materials used were apparently readily available in the building.

The apartments I saw were cozy and well furnished, and the hallways were filled with young children, who shouted "hello" as loudly as they could and touched my hands as I passed. They loved the exhibits, crowding around the TVs and giggling, or hovering, fascinated, as the artist working with the paint, water, and paper.

I can't say I made any judgments or learned it to actually be one thing or the other. As with many things, I think the truth is always more complicated than the words spoken about it. It was clearly a community, clearly desperately poor but still going on, the kids still kids. It was precisely what it was, and nothing else.

I'm glad I got to see it.

Things are changing, or I'm noticing what has always been

I'm still a spectacle.

It is not unusual for the inhabitants of a tuktuk full of Cambodian people to openly stare when I bike past, or for one to poke their friends and point. I wonder sometimes what they are saying to each other, if they are making fun or just remarking. Heck, white people in tuktuks stare too and comment to each other, and I wonder about that too.

Sometimes I think it's amusing. Mostly I just find it annoying and somewhat perturbing.

And yet.

A kid in Brown café smiled at me the other day. I don't know why he did, as he was almost certainly gayer than Christmas, but he was there with a friend and when I left, he offered me the most stunning smile.

In town for the Youth Arts Festival, my students from Siem Reap have started, as far as I can tell, a contest to see who can get the most hugs from me. They smile and wave and generally cause an uproar whenever they catch sight of me.

At the opening of said Youth Arts Festival, I found people I knew everywhere, the heart of the arts scene here, and was truly disappointed that I wasn't able to talk to all of them.

Again to my surprise, I think I've been adopted.

I don't really understand how it happened, but honestly -- it's wonderful.

EDIT: I just used the tag "home" for this post. In fact, the toughest thing about being here is how far away my family and friends are, and I can't just go for a visit whenever. But somehow, as places tend to do, whether or not I have anything to do with it, I used the tag because I think it's becoming true.

Very much to my surprise, I'm staying

You might remember that at some point on this blog, in a fit of uncertainty and culture shock, I wrote that I had no idea why I'm here.

Well, actually?

I still don't.

And yet, somehow, despite everything -- I think I'm staying. For how long is anyone's guess. I'm going home for a visit in March, that's for sure, but when I come back -- and yes I'm coming back -- I think I'm here until I leave. My head is trying to attach a date, because it likes doing that and it feels uncomfortable enough with the concept that I somehow ended up here, of all places (like every single one of my friends: why Cambodia, of all places???).

But my instructions from the universe are pretty clear: stay until you know it's time to leave. (Thanks, that's super helpful...)

I don't know why. When I think about it I'm very confused. Not three months ago I think I was muttering and cursing about how I was sure as hell learning a lot but damn it get me out of here when the time is up.

But if I kick my head out of the game, I am left with this calm, perfect certainty that this country is not done with me, nor me with it, and for whatever reason this is precisely where I need to be, until such time as it is time to leave.

Intellectually, what my brain can understand is that I'm very used to spending short, intense amounts of time in places, smushing a bunch of life-changing experiences into 6-11 months, at which point I go home to Denver and have my parents help put me back together for another go at it, onto something else. That was what this trip was supposed to be like, too.

Except it feels different now. This isn't anymore about packing a boatload of experiences into a short time and then moving on. When I go home in March, it will be as a visit. And then I will return to the same place. This time I feel like I'm actually building something, maybe setting groundwork for a much longer something. I'm not on the semester system anymore and maybe my soul is transitioning before my mind can. Okay, we don't have to move every six months, so I'm just gonna sink in some roots here, do you mind? 

Uh....well, I guess not?

Tuesday Night Chatter

Can be summed up quite simply:

Stress.

And the elections. (which is a main cause of said stress.)

It is not the only, as this week is the first week of about a month long stretch of insanity. On the work side, I'm leaving one job (I think) and as such have a million projects to finish, starting another (I think) and getting a trial by fire as far as I can tell, and then on the job that isn't changing, there are two incredibly important things happening (a festival and a delegation) both of which I am doing a lot of work for, not including the incredibly important grant for which I am in charge of translating all the documents. (ulp!)

On the personal projects side, I had to pull the plug on one project due to a gross misunderstanding of the project's goals, process, and expectations with my collaborator, for which nobody is really at fault but you just can't work like that. Until it was resolved yesterday, it was cause for a lot of uncertainty and anxiety on my part. Then, in a couple weeks, I'm starting a new project, which I'm very excited about but will add about 20 hours of rehearsal with my students to the schedule (hence why I'm leaving the one job, I think.)

And then there are these elections.

Which is all I really want to say about them, except that it's very scary.

Anyway, all of this I am assuming is why my stomach has been tied up in knots all day, as that's usually how I process stress. I don't want to be a drama queen and I can imagine you, my dear readers, are wondering to yourselves, so when is she going to talk about Cambodia and not about all the stuff she has to do??? -- and I wouldn't blame you.

To tell you the truth, I don't know what 'Cambodia' is right now. I don't know what stories to tell and what makes a good story. Right now, Cambodia is what I'm doing. It is not anymore the markets or the crazy this I saw. While it is not "home" in that way, and I don't think it ever will be fully -- it is comfortable. The mad traffic is normal -- the fact that four months after buying the bloody thing I realized that my back brakes are controlled by the LEFT handlebar on my bike is not -- as well as the food and the crazy fruit. And the "hello lady" shouts I still get.

I am no less of a barang than I was before but perhaps I am getting used to being one, being the Foreigner, and it doesn't jar me quite so much as it used to. Occasionally I pick my head up, like at lunch today while pulling out the meat from a still very much intact fish (which for my previously fishhead-shy persona would have been impossible), and notice the changes.

It is the subject of another blog post about how I feel about that. In the meantime, I think my point is that these projects, the work -- not the elections, thank god -- that is what Cambodia is right now. If I think of some more adventure type things to discuss, I will.

Basically, tonight is about -- sometimes I think my head is not big enough to fit everything it's supposed to be keeping track of -- and the bloody elections.

We should talk more after tomorrow.

Or not, depending on the outcome -- if it goes badly, you'll find me somewhere in a corner. Then we'll have to talk in a week or two.

Just not my scene: The backpackers

I got talked into going. I suppose in the end it was a good enough evening, but --

I've mentioned this before, and I don't want to point at it as bad or wrong. It's just that in Phnom Penh, and more concentrated in Siem Reap, there is this scene of almost entirely expat, young people, who are here to party, hang out with each other, but just in different countries. Most of them are just passing through, here for  and not everyone who was at the Halloween party at Eighty8 last night is like this, but there were certainly plenty.

Apparently the guesthouse is known as a 'backpacker's hangout'. In Phnom Penh these are more spread out, though we have our own version of Pub Street on 278, where I also found myself last night.

I don't want to get into a holier-than-thou kind of thing. I freely acknowledge that I am becoming more boring by the minute, as anything that doesn't have to do with my projects, work, and career is getting less and less interesting and I literally have to be dragged out at night. It's not because I'm trying to make a point, it's just not where my head is at right now.

And for whatever reason, I just don't understand this backpacker scene. I don't get why you would go to a foreign country and spend your time partying among people like yourself. Maybe it's just an evening thing and you spend the days exploring, but what if you're spending the day just seeing the sights, looking at the places the guide says to, and then going back to party? Or maybe I'm missing the point.

Either way, I don't get it. I guess if it works for the people inside it, that's fantastic. And it's not like I'm saying I want to avoid all expat scenes. Part of the challenge of being here is learning to balance the cultures -- eschewing western culture altogether is not the solution, and I find often that a good western coffee shop does wonders in the midst of a crazily different world.

But there's a different energy, between the backpackers and the coffee shop. The former just has an energy I'm not comfortable with.

New plan: embrace what has been called my "getting-old"ness and zone in on what matters the most to me!

Tuesday Night Chatter

It's not quite Tuesday night yet -- and I've been convinced all day that's Friday (which always makes for an unhappy surprise) -- but after my Khmer lesson I'm going to a Halloween party at a good friend's apartment and I wanted to get this written first. I'm repeating costumes from last year and going again as MJ, except this year I have a wig. Be afraid.

The new apartment is nice but it still feels like somewhere I'm staying and not home. It's been making me actually quite homesick the past couple days, I think because it is not yet a "safe place" that is recognizable and comfortable. I know in a few weeks that will fade, but at the moment it's definitely odd.

It's also a new neighborhood, and definitely not an expat one. On the one hand, that's great, but on the other, the guys haven't yet figured out that I live here and therefore there is no end to the comments and kissing noises when I'm biking or walking around.

Sometimes it's just a more or less suggestive "hello" shouted from the side of the street, but sometimes -- like this morning when I was trying to find the nearest market and got somehow in the middle of a motorcycle market area -- they scream unrepeatable things as you bike away, probably in a desperate attempt to get you to look around. I never do.

It's not unique to this country, of course, you get it everywhere, but it's still really annoying. Harassment is never cool, and I always have to resist the temptation to retort with something like, Okay, I get it, I'm white and a girl, now can we please move on? And by the way, shouting at me does not make you sexy. Thanks.

I did manage to find the fruits, though, and picked up some goodies for the week. I do kind of miss my friend the fruitseller at the other market, but it is too far to bike all the way over there when the other market is so close -- and, if I'm right, cheaper.

One of my favorite fruits here is the pomello and I bought one this morning. My friend used to peel them for me, but this one came as it does from the tree, leaving me the task of unpeeling it for an after work snack. It's quite the workout; on the outside is a fairly tough green skin that smells vaguely of sap, and underneath that is   about an inch worth of this kind of pink foamy substance, which has to be pried off the fruit.

When at last I dug my thumbs into the main fruit and split it open, I was sweating and had a great sense of accomplishment -- and yes, it was very yummy too. First pomello peeled successfully. Score.

As part of missing home, I found myself missing the cold and the seasons change. The seasons do not change here, and it's always very strange for me to think that it is almost November -- is it really? I keep sort of hoping it will get cooler here, but I think that might be a vain hope. Hey, a girl can hope, right?

Tomorrow is a day off, which is good as I didn't have much of a weekend, and the rest of the week promises to be busy as always.

Oh, is that what happened?

The other day, a dear friend commented on a facebook photo how glad she was to see how I've embraced Cambodia.

To be honest, I looked at the comment and thought, "Is that what I've done?" I kind of feel like I resisted doing so, muttering and bad-tempered and weaving through traffic, except when it comes to my students and my work, of course.

Is that what I did? Embrace Cambodia? Is that how I now very much despite myself find myself thinking seriously about staying much longer than anticipated?

When the heck did that happen?

I guess during all the moments when I had -- and still don't -- no idea what was going on or how to begin to talk about it, when I couldn't say anything but hey, it's happening and I'm still running. Whenever I wasn't paying attention, maybe that's when it happened, when I wasn't homesick or thinking damn-it-I'm-learning-a-lot-but-get-me-the-hell-out-in-eight-months, that somehow my feet just sunk into the soil and the roots starting wrapping up my body.

I guess it's the transition from 'project' to just 'living'. I am used to moving on and moving along, enough time for a project or a semester or a summer, and then kiss whatever's there goodbye and start anew. I do it a lot and get myself into tricky situations constantly of having to leave behind lives, people, and work that I love dearly. In fact, one of the times I did that was in Paris and I still, no matter what happens here, intend on returning long term at some point before too long.

But if everything goes well -- I should know by the end of the week -- I'm thinking that maybe it is time to stop my mad globe-trotting and settle to do something for real, spend a little more time building houses instead of just laying foundations.

The fact that it's happening while I'm here -- is that embracing Cambodia? Is that what I'm doing?

If it is --

I did it behind my own back.

Come for the circus, stay for the story: Sokha

This country defies expectations.

You think you've got it pinned, you gather what knowledge you have and assess and make some kind of general assumption or theory, and then it goes away like the roads in the rainy season.

I had never seen the group Phare Ponleu Selepak, nor knew that much about it except that it was a school that taught circus (apparently among other things) and based in Battambang. I knew it was French influenced, as the website is in French, and I had heard that the work they did was fabulous.

Therefore, when I bought tickets to their current traveling show in Phnom Penh, I was expecting something Cirque du Soleil-ish, slick and artistic and impressive, where the story functions as a link between the acts.

Naturally, I found nothing of the sort. A stage set up in the middle of a huge arena -- more like a large box with a curved tin roof smacked on top -- the lighting was iffy, the sound echoe-y, and filled with the questions and shouts of the restless small children, slowly reaching their tolerance of being able to sit still. The acrobats wore simple costumes. On the sides of the stage were easels with canvases and in addition there was a highwire set up, a rolling table, and a large number of cardboard boxes, which served as set pieces.

The circus itself was rough, though still impressive. Almost purely acrobatic (no aerial acts at all), the small troupe of about eight acrobats were clearly still young and clearly still learning. They were good, certainly, but unpolished, and in fact --

The show was not at all about the circus.

It followed the story of a girl, Sokha -- the only girl in the troupe, in fact -- going through the Khmer Rouge, fleeing to America, becoming part of that culture, but then returning to Cambodia to heal and teach. It began and ended with her as an old woman, hunched and bittersweet, surrounded by her students and still haunted by her memories.

The choreography was incredible, the acrobatics integrated perfectly into the story: one of the guys handbalanced in a skull mask as his fellows stumbled around the boxes in the background, showing the systematic executions; the prisoners stumbled across the high wire as they tried to make it to safety; later in America, the death character returned to prompt Sokha's nightmares, which led her into a contortion act.

The canvases turned out to set the scene, as they had an artist with them, and painted live as part of the story. During the Khmer Rouge period, he lit paintbombs, then threw red and yellow onto the canvas, and as the story went on, he painted a skull, hideous and leering.

It wasn't all so heavy -- the darkness was balanced perfectly by the moments of levity and joy. The acrobats hammed it up and laughed freely in the moments when all was well, and stumbled and shook as prisoners.

It was impossible to sit unmoved.

I confess that at the beginning, seeing that the acrobatics were just a small step above that at some of the circus camps I did, and the iffy lights, and the terrible venue (the audience was so far, as the stage was plopped in the middle of what seemed to be a basketball court), and the many restless small children (I can't imagine why they were there, as it was NOT a show for small children), I was skeptical, but it wasn't the circus that caught me.

By the end, it was all I could to not just start sobbing in the arena, not just during the Khmer Rouge scenes, but especially at the end, watching Sokha grow old and encourage her own students, watching them grow into confident acrobats but then still caring for her. It was not a sad story, but beautiful, and very well-presented.

I have a lot more to learn about this country, I think...

The stage, the dust, and the prettiest afternoon sunshine you'll ever see

It's pretty clear that the Khmer Arts company is out of town, as the normally immaculate stage was covered with a fine layer of dust, and I left footprints where I walked, the fine dust making my feet slip more than usual.

I think it was the nicest day of my entire stay here, the sky a brilliant clear blue and not a cloud to be found. The afternoon sun was hot, but not overbearing, and it had faded to a deep gold when I arrived at the Khmer Arts theater on the back of a moto, stepping into the empty theater.

Normally there are people there, rehearsing, the orchestra and the dancers together or otherwise, but today it was silent and still except for the ants and the birds and the monks on the loudspeaker from a nearby pagoda. The stage, which usually has a block or two on it, was clear, and the sun was making the temple-like building at the back stand out, playing on the green plants.

I think I could have stayed forever. I only stayed an hour, working on the Linda piece and practicing what I know of Cambodian classical dance (not much), but it was the most peaceful, quiet time. My driver chilling out in the back of the theater as he does while he's waiting, the relative quiet, and the golden sunshine.

In the middle of a week in which everything is changing and my mind is constantly racing, the time to just be with the stage and the dust was very welcome. There are some very exciting things happening and I can't confirm any of it yet because it's not set, but it's surprising and fascinating and let's just say that life does what it does and I'm just trying to keep up.

If the current things pan out, well, I think you'll be hearing about it.

In the meantime, I took one hour out of the madness to a place where the dust settles, instead of flying through the air, and the world without it was clear, golden, and quiet.

In case you haven't seen it, this is what the theater looks like:

Tuesday Night Chatter

The rains are drumming the roofs and the thunder is rolling the city. The wind is making the rain into sheets and little clouds of moisture, flying off the roofs in waves. When it rains like this I always wonder if it'll just pull down the sky. 

The King Father's passing is messing with life here. The streets around the Royal Palace are closed, except sometimes you can still go down them and I can't figure out when or why, and traffic has gotten exponentially  worse what with all the people here to pay their respects. I haven't been by the Royal Palace yet, but there are always people there. The other night there were a thousand monks praying, and I do wish I was there for that. 

The clubs have been shut down and the bars aren't allowed to play music. I'm not sure how long this is supposed to last -- I had thought just a week but now the NGO is saying that we can't do the Thriller flash mob next week (would be such a bummer!!!). In three months they are having his official funeral but I think everyone is hoping this state of affairs doesn't last three months. 

This morning there was a whole procession going by my window, several thousand people walking the street in their white shirts and black ribbons. I don't know why today -- maybe it's the seven day marker? Either way, it was impressive. 

My life has been infinitely complicated by the arrival of something really awesome, which is a potential (probable?) job as a choreographer for the weekly concerts Cambodia Television Networks, the number 1 station in the country, puts on. It complicates my life because it almost certainly means something else has got to go, which is tough, and also it's a really, really great job, and goes on the list of things that are rooting me here. 

I don't know how I can leave, and I also don't know how I can not go. I want to go home -- and that's not a question, it's staying home to produce a show (oh yes by the way that's a thing), which I really want to do and think maybe now is the right time -- but it's hard to leave so soon after starting this. I'm pretty sure I would train up one of my students to take my place, which would be good for everyone involved, but -- not ideal. 

I don't know. I have no clue. I guess I need to see how this goes for the next couple months. I was not formally offered a job, but I was told to look at the stuff they prepare for me and then come back with a schedule and a proposed salary, which I take to mean they want to work with me. 

I would dearly love to just do dance and choreograph all day, which I think I have the opportunity to do. The question is how to gracefully quit my only non-arts related job without screwing over my boss and not feeling totally guilty, which will be a tricky maze to tiptoe. 

My Khmer tutor today told me he thinks I understand a lot. I was quite proud of myself, especially since -- with many pauses to write down words I don't know and speaking very slowly -- we spent the first half hour talking about this new job and I was able to more or less tell him what was going on. 

Mostly, I'm just torn. There are a lot of opposing wishes in my heart/mind right now, and I'm not sure how to deal with them yet. I think this is one of those times when "sleep on it" is a highly appropriate expression. 

This Week Happened

And that's about as much as I can tell you, I think.

Tuesday Night Chatter vanished, and I realized on Wednesday which by then is far too late. This post has now been open for about an hour, while I stare at it and wonder how to begin. This is a familiar refrain to you now, I'm sure, Gillian struggling with language, trying to take a thousand small infinities and fit them into a few pixels of text on an LSD screen.

Let me start here: my attention the past two days (and before, I guess) has been entirely occupied by two things --- the public performance for my students, and finding a new apartment.

For the former, I finally sat down with them -- most of them -- and managed to hash out more or less what I'm expecting from them and what they want to do and when they can rehearse. That in itself was somewhat of a nightmare, as I returned home that evening with 14 excel spreadsheets with Xs all over them and needed to smash them all together into a comprehensive rehearsal schedule that would 1) work for all of them, and 2) not require me to quit my day job and just rehearse with them all the time.

There are still three of them that have not yet told me how many dancers and which dancers they want to work with, making it utterly impossible for me to schedule anything, plus another one who was not at the meeting and apparently wants to join.

Half of them were a half hour late, which does not bode well for my attempt to drill professionalism in them, but I guess it means there is room to grow. I had a translator and did not tell them I don't plan on using one for the project, but they'll figure that out pretty darn quick. It was mostly just an exercise in watching the X's cover up the pages and watching them bicker about who was going to dance in who's piece and when that might happen.

Well, hey, all projects start in chaos, right? As a measure of how much I've been thinking/worrying about it, I spent the entire night last night having anxiety dreams about it, of them not taking the rehearsals seriously and playing cards or generally goofing off, while I try in vain to get them to work on their pieces. Unlikely -- very -- to actually happen, but still vexing.

Thankfully I had google calendar on my side. My computer looked like this:

Success. I did have to go out and have a drink after that though...I really do hate scheduling. I long for the days when I have dancers who are just in my company and will be readily available...

As far as finding an apartment, that's been a bit of an adventure. I was trying to rent a room somewhere but with no real leads, someone contacted me to ask if I wanted to go in to find a 2bed together. We picked up a third person -- as 3 is cheaper than 2 -- and quickly found a great place, in a good location, but then the third person inexplicably bailed at the last second. Apparently it was too far to walk and she was afraid to bike. Good luck spending 5 months here...!!!

The search for a third person has commenced and seems to be going smoothly. The good part of all of that was practicing my Khmer with the very friendly agent, who eventually did figure out that I wasn't going to go for his advances, but either way he was sweet. My Khmer is bad but for the amount of time I've been learning, I think it's pretty good. 

In either case, I should be moving in about a week -- and will reduce my expenses by half. Score. 

Until next time...

The King-Father comes home

I heard the news on Monday. If you just look at the global websites, you'd probably miss it. Maybe you'd wonder why there were so many people in white, and maybe if you were looking, you'd notice the black fabric going up along Norodom, the flags at half-mast. By this morning, living here it would be hard not to know -- to find on the internet, it takes some digging.

By Monday night, my Facebook news feed was overflowing with pictures and comments. Profile pictures were being changed, pictures were being shared lightning fast.

The news is this: one of the most towering and most beloved figures in Cambodian history, the King-Father Norodom Sihanouk, died Monday in Beijing. He was 89. His biography is long and fascinating, but I won't go into it here. I will say that King Sihanouk was a controversial figure to say the least, known as a hero of independence and for making the very ill-fated decision to support the Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge in its beginning stages. And yet, despite being somewhat responsible for the profound suffering of the Khmer people --

They love him. Adore, even. The news of his death was received with overwhelming grief and mourning. The pictures on my Facebook honored him, a shrine was immediately set up in front of the Royal Palace, and today when the King-Father's body came home for the final time, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to greet him.

I know that because I was trying to get home right about when the coffin arrived and found myself completely blocked in. I couldn't take Norodom because it was closed, I couldn't cross Sihanouk, and to get to Monivong on the other side would involve crossing Russian Blvd, and that was closed too. I biked up and down the city, trying to figure out what to do.

I could have just parked and stayed. I did want to see the coffin, and be a part of the event, but there was something holding me back. Maybe it was just in my mind -- things often are -- but the fact is, Norodom Sihanouk was not my King-Father. I didn't -- and still don't -- know that much about him. I didn't live his choices. I never saw him on TV, or met him, or heard anything about him. I see how much his death means to the people around me, but I can't, and don't know how to, relate.

That wasn't why I didn't just park and watch though. The real reason is that I didn't want to be another spectacle. I didn't want it to be about the one lost Barang, didn't want people to wonder what I was doing there. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, but in some ways, I almost felt like I would be turning what was for thousands of people a sincerely grievous occasion into a sightseeing opportunity, and that just didn't feel right.

As it turns out, in my wanderings, I saw the top of the golden Phoenix float go by, which I later learned held the body. I saw the monks, and probably if I had stayed put, seen the actual coffin. But I just couldn't be a tourist about it. If I had lived here several years, maybe that would be different and maybe I would have been the only one to see myself as a tourist -- but I couldn't do it.

I don't understand why he was so beloved, but I know what I saw and the thousands of people who cared enough about his death to stand in the streets for hours just to welcome him home for the last time. So, to the King-Father Norodom Sihanouk, wherever you are now ---

I hope you sleep well.

Exhibit Barang, the River, 6 methods of moving, and Pchum Ben

I'm not quite sure how to begin this write up -- I could do a multi-part, day-by-day thing, but I'm not sure I want to be that ambitious or if it would be that interesting.

Let's start with the bare bones. Here's how the thing shook out, by modes of transportation:
-Tuktuk to Central Market
-Shared taxi - we bought the backseat, 3 people where 5 usually are, and as a consequence there were 5 in the front seat, including one in the driver's lap - to Kampong Chnnang
-Moto to the riverside market
-Ferry to Kampong Leang
-Walking around
-Ferry back to Kampong Chnnang
-Boat ride around the floating villages
-Moto to hotel
-Next morning, bus to Ponley
-Moto to Kampong Steang
-Motorized canoe ride around the area
-Moto back to Ponley
-Bus home to Phnom Penh.

As you might be able to tell, we spent a lot of time moving. You can't tell from this how much of that time moving we spent in packed public transportation, squeezed in between the motos and market goods and people, with loud motors and odd looks.

Let me put it this way: tourists don't go where we went. I was traveling with a good friend and her uncle, the Uncle fortunately being able to speak good Khmer and have a knack for discovering how to get places. We didn't make a single reservation in advance the entire time, and to get home were literally standing on the side of the road flagging down buses.

Tourists go to floating villages, sure, these strange bobbing clusters of humanity on the river, swollen heavily from the rains, where shops are on barges and everyone owns a boat. But they only go to certain floating villages, in certain places, and not, apparently, the ones we were at. I think we were the only Barangs I saw the entire two days, except for a group of people at the hotel restaurant.

The looks we got were curious, amused, excited, deeply concerned/confused, and uncertain, the primary one being amused confusion. Open stares were more the norm than sidelong looks, and in some cases the staring turned to gaping. You could hear the thoughts, what the hell are these Barangs doing here, of all places? 

In both Kampong Leang and Kampong Chnnang, within some time of arriving, a friendly police officer arrived to say hello, see if we needed anything -- if we were lost, more like. It was really funny, I thought, that they sent the police to deal with us, I guess no one else really wanted to. On the boat ride at Kampong Steang, we stopped by an island Pagoda, filled with people celebrating Pchum Ben, and there it was a monk sent to deal with us -- and attempt to get money from us, but he did it in a very nice way and wasn't upset when we politely refused. We figured he got sent to deal with the Barangs because he had the best English.

Wherever we went, we were a spectacle. The street kids hanging out at the temples came in crowds to follow us and try to get in the pictures we took. The people in the pagoda greeted us very warmly, almost proud to have their very own Barangs. We were like celebrities, but like aliens too. Celebrities because alien, I guess. People -- and not just kids, people of all ages -- waved to us as we passed, shouted hello. We waved back because, why not?

The constant motion and the constant staring was exhausting, but this was contrasted with the peace of the river and the water. The rainy season has made water of the whole land, the trees in up to their branches and green plants floating where mud flats are during the dry season. Something about the water is so calming, even with everything.

During the sunset cruise, we motored by people just living -- fishing, sitting in hammocks, eating, praying, kids playing in the water. A few kids with boats were drag racing in front of the appreciate audience on the riverside at Kampoong Chnnang. We also saw two boats playing pirates with each other, throwing plants and anything else they could get their hands on at each other, and then later on a 'club boat' -- no lights, no music, but a bunch of kids dancing away to the beats in their heads.

Watching the little girls expertly row the boats, the kids playing in the water, the water culture, I thought, they don't know what it's like to live on dry ground. The water is everything to them.

It was a fascinating couple of days, and I can't deny I was glad to be back home. I thought I was a foreigner in Phnom Penh -- and I am, and always will be -- but it was nothing compared to the strange, fascinating, and interesting alien I was there. The scrutiny gets to you after awhile, and I'm still getting over the constant motion. But -- I am glad I went.

Here are some photos from the trip:

This is the kind of look we got. 

The ferry from Kampong Leang to Kampong Chnnang

Sunset on the river, and some awesome little girl rowing.

The boat ride to the hidden pagoda, along a hidden channel.

With some onlookers. 

The monk went to deal with us, my travel partners, and the crowd. 

Taking a rest, what's on TV, and TGIF

Let me be the first to say : It hasn't been an easy week.

I can't say it's been a bad week because, well, those don't exist and there was a lot of progress and good things. But it hasn't been easy, as the overload of things to think about and create and push caught up with me and I caught a nasty cold/cough on Wednesday. That makes everything more difficult, plus the normal hiccups in producing projects.

Yesterday my partner cancelled our meeting for the fusion project as she too was getting sick, and I had the entire afternoon to myself. Despite being exhausted -- from the cold, and from an early morning wake up to attend a press conference for Cambodian Living Arts' new cultural season at the National Museum (Plae Pakaa, check it out) in a swiftly-becoming devilishly hot morning -- I found myself utterly incapable of resting.

Instead, I worked all day. Literally. There was plenty to do, e-mails to send (I still haven't caught up, I found some embarrassingly unanswered e-mails when cleaning out my inbox today), things to edit, Khmer to practice, etc. I only took a break to stare out the window for 20 minutes, and when I ran out of things to do around 9pm, I went to bed.

Some eleven hours later, I wasn't much more rested than the night previously and was feeling even more blah, stomach a bit upset, the whole nine yards. Despite this, I went to work and endured some endless meetings, and then at last decided to pull part-time privilege and go home.

At that point starting to get hungry, I stopped by the grocery store - a bit concerned about the likelihood of anything being open during the holidays this week -- and went home. Except this time, I didn't go to work. I made some tea (I'm out of tea now. The world is ending), had some chocolate, played some stupid games, and when I couldn't stay awake, I took a nap.

I was supposed to visit an apartment tonight, but instead I called the woman and rescheduled. For the hell of it, I turned on the TV, and stumbled on a channel playing Ratatouille, by good chance near the beginning. So I sat back to watch, had a bit of dinner, and when it was done, found a channel replaying the Titans and Steelers game from the other night.

In short, what I mean to say is that at last, I managed to spend a few hours without thinking, planning, or working, a brilliant gift at the end of a long week.

Sometimes that's just what you need. Tell my secretary to cancel all my appointments, I'm taking the night off. I don't want to deal with everything I'm trying to do and make and create and however exciting it all is, sometimes you need to drink a coke, watch a silly movie, or some football.

I was talking about this with a friend the other day -- because everything is just so new here, living is so exhausting because even if you do the same things every day, you're still learning, all the time, every second of every day. I think the best thing about watching a movie like Ratatouille is that it tells you what to think so you don't have to work too hard, just exist in another world as observer for awhile.

It will be a four-day weekend. As best as I can -- and I do try, I really do -- I will take the time to rest and get better. But for tonight -- as exciting, interesting, and wonderful as this adventure has been so far -- I am just so content to sit back and watch some football, because there, at least, I understand exactly what's going on.

Tuesday Night Chatter

I think the most intelligible thing I can say tonight is that I'm tired.

I was supposed to be up at 8:15 for a skype call, but was instead awake at 7:30 -- I was dozing when a friend called to discuss travel plans, or in this case, the lack thereof for the long weekend. Since then I've been straight on one thing to the next. I spent an hour with my Khmer tutor and remember exactly nothing of what I actually learned.

Or didn't learn as I guess the case is.

I also had an espresso after 4pm yesterday, which is a no-no. It kicked in around 11pm, at which point I gave up trying to sleep and started talking to myself out loud, working out with my ceiling how to resolve various issues with various projects that cropped up yesterday.

The ceiling didn't have much to say, but it was a good listener.

I spent a good deal of the day -- this is an exaggeration, but it feels like it -- trying to worm a straight answer out of a stubborn French woman as to the specifics of a grant I am in charge of getting, and managed to achieve exactly nothing besides (probably) make her think that I am an idiot, when in fact I just think she is an idiot. Mutual idiot-thinking does not get anything done, naturally, so now I have no choice but to continue as if I know exactly what's going on and assume that her "jury of experts" will just have to deal if there is one detail off.

That is not a very good way of going about things. I just thought -- wow, is this a commentary on today's world of everyone knowing everything always -- that any future employers will use this against me in the recruiting process. "You wrote on your blog on October 9th yada yada which shows that you blame things on other people." Well -- hey, good thing I'm planning to employ myself, huh??

Ahem. That was embarrassing, however, I think I am going to eschew (I can't believe I just used that word, and probably incorrectly...) taking responsibility for anything I say tonight. Fortunately for you, you get to be on the receiving end of such synaptic vomit. Aren't you lucky.

Yeah, so I'm back to being poor, after a month of walking around with dollar signs in my eyes, as I willfully deluded myself into thinking I was being paid twice as much as I actually am - oops - which I've heard is the reason why lotteries ruin people's lives. So I have plenty enough to live off and that's all I need, I guess. Note to self ---- don't do the above anymore. It's silly.

Had yesterday what my dad would call a case of the "Things aren't following my script", thanks to hitting some resistance about the public performance project, notably the venue asking for rent when it was supposed to be free, and some various other annoyances I won't get into here. It made me very whiny indeed, and I suppose the argument could be made it still is. I think it will be better by the end of this week, as this week is just too much for its own good.

Don't mind me just staring at the wall for the rest of the night....