Shit Happens

Especially here.

The thing is, the food is good. It takes a bit of getting used to, and I don't just mean the whole fish thing. The spices are different, the vegetables are different, and how it's cooked is different. Some of it is a little too strange for my taste, but on the whole, I do enjoy it.

But the thing is here, shit happens. It happens to barangs and khmers equally -- we're not just talking the delicate constitutions of westerners. It's just part of life. Yep, today is gonna be like that. Okay, well, it'll pass eventually.

Essentially food hygiene hasn't made it here yet, except in the nicest restaurants. There's no real sense of needing to refridgerate things during the day, so meat eaten in the evening may or may not have been cooked since this morning and lying around since. Cold cuts came from god knows where and aren't cold. At the local place, there's a huge cooler of water with several cups on top. People take a cup, have a drink, and leave the cup (I like eating there, but have never touched those cups).

I remember working for a restaurant a few years back and the breakfast buffet had to be kept at a certain temperature at all times, hot or cold depending on the food.

You tell that to someone here, and you'd probably get a look like you have two heads.

On the contrary, you bring the safety experts from America here, have them eat at the local corner place I always go -- one look at the fried eggs, cooked since who knows when, sitting in the cart with the cooked meat, with no refridgeration, and they'd probably keel over on the spot.

I don't mean to say this as an example of how backwards this place is -- but rather, how behind it is. I haven't been out of the country, but I'm told you see it the second you step out. The Khmer Rouge didn't just destroy the people, it destroyed all the modernity and industry that Cambodian had gained under King Sihanouk's rule in the 50s and 60s. The country is at least forty years behind many of its southeast asian counterparts in terms of infrastructure and standard of life.

It's not a bad thing or proof of any lack. It's just a fact. Just like it's a fact that if you live here, every so often shit happens.

And that's just part of life in the developing world.

Café hopping to avoid the power outage: Phnom Penh hobbies

When I was in Colorado, we had about a 40 minute power outage following a thunderstorm. The next day, I heard people talking about the "long power outage," which I found absolutely hilarious.

There is a lack of electricity in Cambodia. During the hottest days, such as in the last few weeks, everyone is using it, and since there's just not enough, grids go out regularly. Outages last anywhere from a half hour to several hours. Outages of one to two hours are not unusual.

Outages of five plus hours, or seven, or eight, are, but not unheard of. Case in point: today, when most of Phnom Penh has been dark since lunchtime. When I got home around two, it was out. I was already planning to go to a cafe and get some work done, and figured that, as it usually is, it would be back by the time I got home.

It was not. A few minutes of waiting around, and a friend returned a call from the day before, asking if I was free right then. I was, and went to a second place, assuming, once again, the power would have returned when I got back.

It had not. I thought, you know if this was the US, I'd trust that someone was working on this. As it is, I don't at all. I imagine someone's idea of fixing it is waiting until it works again, though I could be wrong about that. In any case, faced with a stifling apartment, I plugged in my dongle and checked café hours.

Success: Brown was still open, for another hour. I packed up and went out, and that is where I started writing this. I was somewhat pessimistic this time about the possibility of power being on when I returned, but I did have a friend with power willing to let me loaf lined up just in case.

It's interesting -- sometimes the stoplights go out when the power is out, sometimes they don't. On my way home from the second café, I was really excited at the fact that the nearest stoplight was working again, but as soon as I turned down my street, I knew it was a no go, the whole street dark, except for the few fancy places with generators.

This time, on the way home, seeing promising signs like streetlights, but I wasn't convinced until I turned down my street and saw streetlights there.

It was like finding the promised land.

Honestly, I spent close to ten dollars -- green tea, a green apple smoothie, and a mixed berry chiller (being sort of sick was a blessing in disguise, as coffee and food, two things I wasn't much interested in today, are more expensive) -- just to avoid the outage, hunkering down in places with generators and air conditioning, internet and plugs for the computer.

Coming back in my room, with lights!, and turning on the air con (!), I thought, I would be absolute toast in a time and place without electricity. Seriously, what did people do? 

One thing's for sure -- they probably didn't run away from it, gathering all manner of electronic devices and running to the pockets where the lights go on when you press the switch. And you know what?

I think the ten dollars was worth it.

The rains, bubble tea, and oh yeah, I am living in Cambodia

It's not quite yet the rainy season, and I guess at the end of the dry season here, the world has been cooking for so long that heat has wormed its way everywhere, the walls, the air, bones, skin. Air-conditioning pushes it back for very short time, the epic battle of our time. I imagine the cold air doesn't even make it to the walls, just hovering there with the heat, waiting on the other side.

I took a friend's moto out for a spin today, as I'd like to more or less know what I'm doing by the time I buy one of my own in a couple weeks. It was in the heat of the day, and the sun basically laughed at my SPF 15 sunscreen and, while I'm not burned to a crisp, my skin is noticeably darker. I was out for 25 minutes, maximum.

When the rains do come, as they are currently doing, it cools everything down for a brief and incredibly welcome time. I've learned to tell that the hottest, heaviest days are usually the ones where the storm is coming. Whenever I do leave the bubble tea place that is my newest addiction, the rain will be gently leaking from the sky and the air will be cool against my skin.

The bubble tea place was introduced to me by a friend this week, and we became quickly inseparable. My apartment cooks in the day time, and since my room has no windows, staying in there with its flourescent lights is not that appealing, despite the air-con. I'm starting back with my old job this week and my free time will be cut down, but for the moment I've had a lot to spare and no interest in staying at home, so I've been here the past three afternoons, drinking bubble tea and working. I'm busy cooking my latest project.

I picked up a book the other day about moving to Cambodia, a kind of all-inclusive guide for expats. I flipped through it out of curiosity. I remember reading stuff like that, about ten months ago, CultureShock manuals and articles my somewhat panicked mother (she has since calmed down, by the way) sent me.

It was all useful information, but it seemed strange to see it on a page like that, that it was necessary to take this life and string it into words, paint pictures with language. I thought, reading the safety section, that the words made this place feel much scarier than it does, but then again, I don't walk anywhere late at night or carry purses that are easily pulled off anymore.

Mostly, it was just strange to look at all these words, trying to explain something that I'm living, day by day, things I've known intellectually since before arriving but am only truly understanding now. It was a reminder that I'm here, yes here, in this place that before was barely even a word in my mental dictionary. Yes, it is a place that needs to be bashed into words for westerners coming to live, and even those are completely inadequate for the daily negotiations. Some people do it more than others -- some trying to bash the world into the words they already know, some just trying to learn the language of life as each word presents itself, some diving deeper, to find what is underneath the words.

Really, what I mean to say is, I looked at the words and saw a surface, and underneath an ocean. Every day here is spent in that ocean, drinking in what you started to know before now, and are only knowing now.

Commercial is a dirty word: reconciling art and money

Last week, in a smoky speakeasy style bar, an argument took place. The participants were from all different backgrounds, American, French, Cambodian, Dutch, or some combination of the above, from artists to advocates to researchers. The subject of debate was the title of this post: is it possible for art to be commercial without losing its creativity and artistic integrity?

It was such a fascinating discussion that I wanted to make a post about it with my own thoughts, as I think it's a pretty common debate among artists. It is actually the foremost problem for artists. How do you make money and be an artist?

The common answer is, you can't. Or at least, not much. Art is not about making money, in fact, is the common thought. And if it is, it's "commercial", and is therefore less artistic, because it was created to please an audience.

There are two extremes, as far as I can see. There is the extreme business side, which views art mostly as a waste of time and will only give it the time of day if it thinks it can be sold or marketed. It's the "only what can make money, and if it can't, it's not worth anything" side of things. Then there is the extreme art side, which is the idea that art should be made only for arts' sake and only to express the artists' feelings, that it's not meant to be understood by a larger audience, where the spectator must put himself into the artists' shoes, thoughts, and philosophy in order to truly see what the piece is about. This is the side that sees any concession to the business side as betraying the artistic integrity of the artist and their work.

As for me, I'm firmly convinced that while the two extremes certainly exist, a middle ground also exists, where the two cross and blend. Somewhere where art can be sold and appreciated by a larger audience, but still keeps its integrity.

To make commercial art -- that is, when you make art with the idea of pleasing an audience -- does not make you less of an artist, someone in the group argued, but it is less creative. I disagree. If I create something that I think will please an audience (and myself), it is still an act of creation. If I didn't create it, it wouldn't exist. Yes, but doesn't that make you less independent? was the next question.

Does it? Maybe. But I don't want to be independent. I don't want to create something that only I can understand, that comes only from me and is created only for its own sake. I'm interested in creating work that can be shared, understood. Is it about the money? No, it's not. It's about the experience.

That's where I think the cross is. When it is "entertainment," "commercial," "artistic," it's under a label. But how about shared human experience? Something that humans can look at and understand something of, whether it be a gesture or a story or a painting. Because they recognize something of their own humanity, they like it, buy it, consume it, watch it, whatever. But the act of portraying something of humanness, human experience, is purely artistic.

Do I think I'll be rich as an artist? No, I don't. Do I think I'll have enough to continue? Yes. And yes, I do think art can be "commercial" and still retain its integrity. Creation is creation, whoever it's made for. One of my friends used the example of Frederick Ashton, the artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London. He deliberately made ballets with the intention of pleasing the audience, and yet you will find very few people who would not call his work "art".

The business business has no time for art, and the artist artist has no time for business. It is very rare to find someone who is both a brilliant marketer and a brilliant artist. But I do think the two can work together, if both are open to each other, and find a way forward.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

10 months into my stay here and with a new strategy in place to connect more with the country I'm currently living in, I decided it was time to go to the genocide museum, Tuol Sleng, the site of the infamous S21 prison. 

I'm not sure what took me so long. In many ways, I was reluctant to go because I had heard so many stories, knew what kind of atrocities and misery took place there. What happens when you enter that energy? I wasn't sure I wanted to find out. 

S21 used to be a high school. It was converted into a prison, one of the worst during the Khmer Rouge regime, and tens of thousands were detained, tortured, executed. These days, the buildings stand largely unchanged from the time. It is not so much of a museum as it is a testimony. The grass has grown back, the trees are blooming, but the barbed wire still rims the outside. There are few explanations - though guides can be used for an extra six dollars -- but for a few detailing the history of the place. For the rest, the buildings stand as their own witness for their bloody history. 

The signs of what happened there are small, but no less damning. The arch where prisoners were yanked up by their hands behind their back until they lost consciousness is still there, as are the pots that used to be filled with filthy water, used to make the prisoners regain consciousness in order to continue questioning. In the classrooms converted to cells, the bed frames remain, as well as the bar and cuffs for the feet. Or the cement block and the chains used to keep them there. 

In the Building C, the former classrooms are divided into tiny cells by brick or wood. The air is close there, but the cells are empty now. There is no smell, no remains, nothing but a few bloodstains on the floor. 

I had no way to connect to the sheer horror of what happened. The faces of the prisoners, in the pictures taken as they were checked in, are of all ages, men and women, children and older. They are just looking, uncomprehending, numbers on their chests. One was smiling defiantely. But they are only pictures. The blood on the floor, the bed frames -- only the grainy, black and white pictures of prostrate bodies where they were found are proof there were people here, suffering and dying. But the ego cannot think of it, can't even conceive of it. 

Something that I particularly noticed was the pictures of the citizens cheering the Khmer Rouge, thinking the civil war was over and peace was on the way.  

I was numb, wandering through the mostly empty halls and rooms, just the few remnants of pain scattered across swept floors. Even the room with the skulls, crushed bones, the pictures of fields filled with skeletons, it hardly seems real, these grainy photos of suffering.

I wanted to feel something, get a sense of the energy. But all I saw was suffering too great to be touched, to be shared at this instant in time, except to understand that what happened is beyond words. What happened there are memories now, but still there, like the building itself, right in the middle of the city. Quietly a part of life, inconceiveably ugly in its history and unnoticed by the outside world, but here.

The only real thing for me was a quick conversation with a curious and friendly the young Cambodian woman studying history, who wanted to know where I was from, how long I was in Cambodia, and if I was married (I'm 22, honey, not gonna happen any time soon), and the crew of motodop drivers trying to read the tattoo on my leg and asking, as people do when they figure it out, if I like to dance. It was like the color against a black and white world. 

That and the grass in the courtyard, brilliantly green and unkept. 

Tuesday Night Chatter

Surprise!

Don't get used to it. It's been months since TNC was around regularly and probably won't be coming back. But today is Tuesday and I'm posting, so there you have it. I'll leave it up to you to decide if I should have taken a rain check.

I almost left this morning. I don't know where to. Anywhere would do, anywhere a one way ticket cost less than 300 dollars. I don't know why. It's never happened before. I found myself thinking of the King's birthday holiday coming up and thinking about where I could go, anywhere at all. Siem Reap, Thailand. Not here.

It's been happening ever since I got back. Re-entry shock became restlessness. Maybe it was the waiting, a conversation here or there, the moto accident I previously wrote about it, or just the fact of going back to what was before and then willfully choosing to come back here and dealing with the repercussions of it.

I'm quite interested by it, actually.  I've wanted to flee somewhere before (like Evergreen Colorado before college), but that time I was pretty clear, I wanted to flee to New York and university. This time it's kind of a throw-reason-to-the-wind-and-get-the-heck-out feeling.

But I'm not going to leave. The chances of me actually going to the airport and buying the next affordable ticket to wherever the hell it might be are pretty slim. So now what? Is this just re-entry shock? What happens now that I choose to stay and ride it out, and see where it leads me? What kind of changes do I need to make to make this work here? What's the right life for right now?

I have some ideas. Most of them involve getting a little more connected to the country and the people who live here -- Cambodian AND expat, the long term expats. Earning a hell of a lot more independence when I buy a motorcycle at the end of the month. Getting out of my solitary isolated life, which is just not at all good for me.

I think -- I know -- it will end up being a good thing. Wake up calls are good for that. And so is riding out the storm. It's furious in the middle, but the aftermath is calm, and lovely.