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.

Philosophy from observing a moto accident

Someone got hurt today. A lexus turned, and three girls on a moto fell straight sideways. None were wearing helmets. Two scrambled up. One wasn't moving, clearly unconscious. No blood, but the bowels went, and the thing was -- she was just not there. Maybe she was dead, or maybe just knocked out. It was surreal, the friends shaking her, trying to get her up -- no doubt making any injury more severe. The driver wanted to leave, of course. For a culture that hates conflict and avoids blame at all costs, it goes against everything. It doesn't make it right, of course, but it's clear where it comes from.

I always thought watching something like that would be painful, violent. I guess if she was bleeding it would have been different, or if I knew her. But the thing is, it was clear that it was the ones around her that were suffering. But her, she was just gone.

She was young. Her life was too short. But that was a fight for the living, for the present. They are the ones for whom it is violent and unfair. Of course dying is awful for some people, but just then I thought, it's simple. Death is once. When you go, you're gone. Whoever she was, whatever she wanted to do, however much her family and friends loved her, she had gone, and she was at peace. It was the world around her that screamed, but she was simply not there. She had moved on. Maybe she came back, I don't know. I don't believe that her soul "went" somewhere, but either way it was gone, faded, what had mader her "her" was not there.

I fear death. For those I love, for the emptiness, and for myself, not having enough time and for the pain it would cause those I love. But seeing this was strangely calming. Yes, it reminds me to always wear a helmet, and be careful, and that it could all be gone in a single flash, and yes, it's scary. But it also tells me that death is simple, like opening a door. It is only violent in the aftermath, and no, she probably didn't deserve to die, or be injured. If she did, she did. Deserved, forced, at fault or not, whatever it was that she was, was gone. And I had the overwhelming impression that she was, in that instant, perfectly all right.

Death is not something to be sought, and under no circumstances caused (I'm quite firmly in the 'never justifiable' camp), or excused. But I did think that maybe it's not something to be feared.

Living or Traveling: Culture divides and people like me

Ever since my year abroad there, I have wanted to live in Paris. I can't explain what it is, just that I have never felt so at home in any other city. I feel like I belong there. It's not just the city -- I've met a lot of people who have great things to say about the city and nothing good about the people, but I love the people. I speak the language more than just the words.

But I didn't go to Paris after graduation, I went to Cambodia, and I've found all sorts of amazing opportunities here that are exciting and interesting and I'm quite sure that it's a fantastic place to begin my career. The problem is that sometime over the past several months, I got it into my head that I could never actually live in Paris and do what I want. In Europe, maybe, but not in Paris. That is, of course, ridiculous.

As you know, I just went back to Paris, and was quite surprised to find that I still loved it just as much as before, perhaps even more, and felt just as home as before. In fact the amount to which I did feel at home was really disturbing -- after the first day, when I felt like a tourist and THAT was upsetting -- so much that I  kept forgetting in I was in Paris, this grand city and word that was this far-off, inaccessible place in my mind. I guess in self-defense, I decided that since I could never live there, I should forget how much I enjoy being there. The Ego is a crazy thing, isn't it?

What I mean to say is that for the last several months, my life has been nothing but cultural divides and language barriers. The experience I'm getting, the amount I'm learning and growing, is already noticeable to me and to others, and I have no doubts whatsoever that years down the line, it will count as one of the most marking experiences of my life.

However. It's strange, I hate saying this, because I do love learning about new cultures and immersing myself in them, seeing what it's like on the other side and in some ways it feels like dissing this place. But I'm not, and I don't have to be.

The fact is that I want to spend my life somewhere where I am not a stranger, where I get the culture and the language and have a mutual understanding with the people around me.

Here, walking out my door brands me immediately. I cannot go anywhere anonymously. The Cambodian people are warm and friendly, but I will never be one of them, never truly belong. I am Barang. And then everything else, but first I am white.

I don't want to say that Cambodia is not a good country, the culture is bad, or anything of the sort. It's just different, fundamentally and in every possible way, from what I know. Because of it, there is and always will be some disconnect between us, a gap that is just too wide to leap. We will always be negotiating, meeting in the middle.

I don't want to live forever like that. I count on staying, as I've said, for anywhere between two or three more years, and intend on using that time as fully as possible. But after that, it will be time to find some place where I can be home. Whether that's somewhere in the world with my parents, or even better, in Paris (and that's always on the list, always the place where I am going).

In many ways I feel more French than American and often feel like a stranger in America. Paris needs to be where I end up -- and therefore I'll find a way to do what I want there -- because it is home. It is where I am at home, where my energy syncs up with the energy around me, and living is as easy as breathing.

Going back reminded me how beautiful that is.

Re-entry: calm and chaos

Mosquitos. Horns. Loud and busy and why the heck is it raining. Shop fronts and no sidewalks. Loud. Where did that moto come from and driving slowly with a helmet this time. Power cuts and internet spottiness.

I am so tired. Sleeping on the airplane -- my lucky string of discovering the rows with only one other person continues -- did no good. A 3-hour nap I barely dragged myself up from, in bed at eight and awake after nine and still couldn't get up. Another 1.5 hour nap today, and if things don't change, another in the works.

Twelve hours on the airplane and back to the humidity and in a tuk tuk. Side saddle on a motorbike and a plastic bag of trinkets distributed to the dancers. Everything as it was, as though untouched, as though it all froze for a month and only by touching it it came back to life, animated like a wind-up toy.

Everything as it was but it's not, precisely as I remembered but the reality is shocking. I am the only one who has changed, one month away and rediscovering worlds I once knew that became home, became beloved once more, and then left them to their own devices to re-enter this one and I admit as we dipped and descended towards Malaysia, the awful propaganda video playing in front of me, I thought, what the hell am I doing here.

When we descended into Phnom Penh, I was asleep. There was no one in the row with me, no window at the end for whatever reason, just fuselage, and so I closed my eyes instead and only knew we'd arrived by the bump of the wheels hitting the ground. Then I opened my eyes and blinked once into the madness, clambering into a tuk tuk and staring around me.

I knew it. Knew it all, expected what I saw, not the wide-eyed astonishment of the first time, but this time reentering a place that had become familiar, comfortable, easy, and now was strange and chaotic (it was the chaos I missed those first few days in the manicured, carefully crafted first-world streets.)

I know what I'm doing here. I love the opportunities, I'm excited about what I can do here, I have ideas and projects. I have friends. I love the opportunities and so I learned to like the life. I have purpose and a path.

My head knows this, and somewhere I think my heart does too.

But for right now, changing lives three times in one month has left me confused and dazed, stumbling back into a life I used to know so well with blank and unseeing eyes. I'm sure within a few weeks, it will be all I remember and this cloud of culture shock will have lifted. It always does, eventually. But the old saying is true: once you begin traveling, you cannot go home again.

Or maybe, you can, except "home" is different, home is where you are at the moment, and reentering old moments is jarring and uncertain. But the thing about that too, is like the great poet T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration, 
and the end of all our exploring 
will be to arrive where we started, 
and know it for the first time. 

I have returned to where I started, and indeed knew it for the first time, and each time I return I will know it again, and again, rediscovering more of each world I never thought to look for. For that, I am blessed, and acknowledge it freely.

But right now, all I want to do is bury my head in the pillows against the chaos and sleep until I wake and find the eyes I had before, and that this place that I used to know is once again comfortable.

Lost in Paris (Again)

It has been a year. One full year, one year of life and a few hundred lifetimes. I dove into, discovered, adapted to, and built a life inside another world that had nothing to do with the life I had previously, and what was my plan before has melted down and built back up into something entirely surprising. Where I am is not where I thought I'd be. What was immense passion has become sheer obsession, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

And now--yes I know I haven't updated in forever and there was a whole life in Colorado that you missed because I didn't want to stop to put it in language, didn't want to waste time on words when living was enough--I've returned to a life I had.

Two years is not a long time. And it is.

The last time I was in Paris, I was still a student, still fresh off the experience, still reliving it every day. Now, I've entered into the Big Bad World of Adulthood, and have spent eight months in an entirely different universe, and Paris became a word.

Not a place, but a word, a word that means a time, a moment in my life when everything changed, when I changed and everything I thought was my essence was burned away, and what remained was so much more than before.

But just a week ago, I pushed on the word and found it a door, and behind the door was a world, a city, a place that exists and lives and breathes. Not a dream, but flesh, rock, and bone, and not just a place but a place I know in my bones. It took a couple days, but it's not Paris the city of light, the grand European city that everyone talks about and loves, but a place I know. 

The streets, the metro, the buildings, it's familiar. It's not out there but right here, not a city in the world but a city in my heart. A different language, but one that came rushing back after a day (albeit still imperfectly) to the point where I've started dreaming in French again, and the first language that comes out of my mouth.

I have to say -- it's confusing as hell. It's equally as disconcerting as returning to the United States was after my year abroad. There is a girl in Paris who I knew, the girl I became, but I don't really know her anymore. My life is different now, I'm different now. How do we live together?

It's perturbing, to say the least, to reenter a dream you had. I don't know how to explain it, even to find the words to say why it's so perturbing. Is it good to be back? I don't know. Bad? Can't say that, either. It's not what it was and yet it's exactly how I left it...and that's as much as I can say.

Of Paris, I have no idea what to think. But as for the people here, it has been a very great joy to rediscover them and I have enormously enjoyed it. It makes leaving, once again, very difficult.

Paris is beautiful, but it makes my heart hurt.

Enormous cuts of meat and houses in rows

You can see it the second you step in the country.

It's the people, first of all. What they look like, how their bodies are shaped, how big they are, the look in their eyes, how they're dressed. Then you notice what they talk about, how they talk, the words they use. And what they eat, how they eat, how they pass the time.

But it's not just that. It's how things look from above, the identical roofs and clear cul-de-sacs, little perfect developed rows of houses a stark contrast to the mass of colored roofs and no clear roads. Then it's the streets, the way people use space, wide sprawling highways where the cars drive so fast, and perfect spiraling entrance and exit ramps, and the fact that cars stop and wait quietly if the light is red. The total lack of motorbikes, the huge parking lots, the wide open department stores.

And the prices.

And then there's the supermarkets. The fruits are different, of course, the way they're presented is different. There are a thousand different varities of everything, from oil to jello, but what really got me was the meat.

The most enormous cuts of meat. Pounds and pounds of it, in a single package, thick, boneless, meaty meat, in these enormous packages. I don't know why it was so striking, but it was. And the fish fillets, these huge pieces of fish that don't even look like fish.

A lot of people sort of sneer and say Americans are so privileged and spoiled. The truth is, they are privileged. That's just a fact. Spoiled implies that it's wrong, and I think there's a lot of people who think Americans take their privilege for granted while they should be doing something to help people who aren't as much, and maybe that's true, though that implies that every American is privileged and doing nothing but soaking it up. The reality, I've often found, is much more complicated.

I don't want to make any statements or judgments on this idea. What I do want to say is that it's just clear to me how much the environment shapes you. Seeing the way life is set up here, in every possible aspect, explains to me why people look, act, think, talk as they do -- generally speaking. It just seems to make sense, and now trying to put it in words, it seems clumsy and too specific, but it's just a feeling I get. Like the world and its people fit with each other, and if the world were altered, so too would the people.

And as for this particular world I find myself in, it is most definitely a first-world country and impossibly rich. I don't mean anything by that, only that it is, and it's confusing me.