Writing from a while back

Theory of Relativity
we have a second to birth, breathe, feel, think, love, die
in every moment I have felt as if I knew everyone before we met
since the first goodbye impermanence and death have held my hand consciously
there is an order to the dyed particles of the karmic kaleidoscope which escapes each viewer
can’t stand still; can’t move
the lens has been lifted towards the sun so we assign our own meaning to the fractured light
the millisecond of childhood is the closest we come to understanding

One year in Cambodia

Time has flown by and though it seems somewhat unreal to me, I have now been living in Cambodia for one year. From the first few months of living in Traing district, Takeo province without electricity or indoor plumbing to my current home in Maung Russey district, Battambang province it has been an interesting experience so far. Whether it is something as simple as greeting someone new or more complex normative social beliefs, Cambodia is certainly very different from everything I was accustomed to in Augusta, Georgia. As a new group of Peace Corps Volunteers enters the country this week I am struck by the fact that things that once seemed strange and foreign to my Western mind now seem ordinary and everyday.

There is little Western context for some of the discussions I have had here on a fairly regular basis. For example it is common to be asked if you believe in ghosts. At first this may seem to be a childish question that offers little insight into the people as a collective, but as time progresses the fallacy of this first impression becomes apparent. In a country thirty one years removed from a genocide that claimed the lives of millions there is a certain inexpressible something that lingers in the atmosphere of Cambodia. Most commonly I am asked about ghosts by teenagers who were born after the genocide and saw limited amounts of the civil war that followed the Khmer Rouge's forced evacuation of Phnom Penh. These teenagers have hears the stories of family members and know of many of the atrocities that occurred, yet in they seem to have a certain amount of disbelief as if they don't believe that their fellow countrymen are/were capable of such things. In Takeo I was told that I lived down the street from a unmarked mass grave and the belief in ghosts was fairly high I gathered from the limited conversations I had with the people around me. As time has passed I have set aside the horror movie idea of ghosts for one that I find far more real and frightening. From hearing what I thought was initially a silly question, I have come to believe that there are ghosts throughout Cambodia. These ghosts are the unresolved traumas of a people that have seen and experienced too much; these ghosts inhabit every aspect of the alcoholic men forced to watch their family members killed or starved to death when they were ten years old. Ghosts torment the mothers who have been told that the only way to survive is to remain quiet and subservient in their daily lives. These ghosts feed on the suffering of the young women pushed into prostitution because of economic desperation; the young men who rape and abuse these women are haunted by the same ghosts that have made them unable or unwilling to see their own inhumanity and hatred. The common image of ghosts here is a disembodied head that is in search of a body to feed upon and the reality is just that; the great suffering to which everyone above the age of thirty was forced to endure still inhabits the minds of most in one way or another and seeks peace in the only way it knows, more destruction of self and others. Pchum Ben is the holiday in which the people make offerings to the ghosts of their ancestors and believe that they can ease any suffering of their ancestors in the process. No other Theravada Buddhist country celebrates this day, but in a land of ghosts, disembodied spirits of suffering and pain, it makes sense. While last year I simply observed the holiday as an outsider, this year I will make offerings for those ghosts haunting the living and the dead.

The ideas of material gain and success that I grew up thinking were the norm for every society have been proven false from my perspective. In a malnutrition and preventable illness kill many people every year, I see no value in having a big home, SUV, and televisions in every room. These things aren't bad nor are the people that want these things, but for me they are ways we use to escape the suffering of the rest of the world around us. For example, I don't have to think about the homeless man sleeping outside the local church when I am watching American Idol. Even now I feel that I am too far removed from all the pain around me. The true value of expensive clothing is not lost on me when I know that a pair of jeans in America could easily feed a Cambodian family for a week. Is looking nice more important than their hunger? This is what I ask myself and even now living on a volunteer allowance (far from a salary) I find myself feeling guilty for too much self indulgence when those near me are struggling to have just enough. There is a pronounced difference between the "have's" and the "have not's" in Cambodia and I have no interest in becoming part of the former if it means denying the latter. Too often this is what the price of "success" is and I now hope for something different. In reference to the ghosts of the last paragraph, it seems clear to me that seeking my own material gain while denying assistance to those with little or nothing is inhumane and continues the feeding cycle of those rapacious spirits.

Certainly I have noticed far more changes in myself and differences between life in my childhood home and now in Cambodia, but at the moment they hardly feel worth mentioning. The most important aspects of my experience in Cambodia are inadequately worded in the last two paragraphs and I don't have any desire to lessen or cheapen those observations with some of the more obvious differences. It may seem corny to some, I know I would have thought of it that way at another point in my life, but I find myself always adding "Peace and love" when ever I am communicating with anyone via the internet; this has a distinct reason. That is what is needed here and by "here" I mean in Cambodia, America, all over the world, within yourself, and within me. Everything that is truly beneficial to others and ourselves flows from peace and love and until we have these in abundance we will all be haunted by our own ghosts to varying degrees.

New collection of thoughts in the form of a poem...

I forgot my story

In the sight of you
there was a space in time where I forgot myself;
all the stories of who I am, what I want/need/like/believe,
all conception of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences, political affiliation
all fears and hopes, fantasy and fact,
fell away instantaneously in that moment.
Without identity, the only thing left breathing was an agonizing love,
a cellular wailing
that fully recognized the tears of my brothers and sisters as my own.
In the face of famine our spirit starves,
in genocide dies,
in homelessness is without refuge,
in exploitation is raped and beaten,
in poverty is without resource,
in prejudice is hated and unwanted.
In the sight of your face, in that moment,
all truth was made known and I rejoiced from soles to soul,
complete in the reality that my soul and your soul was our soul…