BRAIDED AND PLAITED

In my efforts to promote what I’m up to I stumble up against militaristic metaphor and simile all the time. Nevermind me; we all do. ‘A weapon in your arsenal’, “an arrow in my quiver”, “cannon fodder” (me), the ol’ “Silver Bullet”; the nefarious ‘War against Blah,Blah,Blah’. It’s an easy trap to fall into and it don’t mean much. But you’re talking to a guy who won’t (and has never) worn ‘camo’ for the same and, prolly, puerile reasons.

I killed a squirrel with a pellet gun at the cottage when I was 8 and that was enough for me. I’ve never gotten over it. I might not be firing on all 6 chambers, but I am on all 8 cylinders. And at good times, there’s some nitrous in there besides. So I’m feelin’ good and I’m ready to go, but I ain’t “locked and loaded”; I’d like to say I’m braided and plaited, but that gets me into white dreadlock territory; it’s not a good look. No one ever said it’d be simple. One way or the other the trigger is always cocked and there’s one in the chamber.

The gleeful rampant killing thing makes me jumpy as a frog. I mean, it’s well documented; people develop a taste for it. Can’t get enough. It happened here. Take Tuole Slang, the super- notorious “S-21”. It was a primary school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into 4 buildings worth of torture and killing chambers. All the ghoulish medieval stuff. Tourists take tuk-tuks first to S-21 where somewhere between 14 and 20 thousand innocent peeps were ruthlessly exterminated, and then out to the so-called “Killing Fields” where hundreds of thousands more met grisly horrific deaths. Usually bludgeoned in order to save bullets. I did S-21 on my bike and then called off the rest and will now just claim I went to the Killing Fields. Anyhow I got the t-shirt, the hat, and the ticket stub. Too much of a bad, bad thing. This in the 1970’s while most of the world ignored it and, just for good measure, the Americans bombed them into the Stone Age and Laos for good measure and for no reason at all at all at all. Go figure. Next time I see an ‘Ideologue’ I’m gonna punch him in the nose; and I’m a pacifist. Be happy to punch a Republican too, ‘specially if he looks like GW Bush.

I might not be pacific, but at least I live on it, normally.

Anyhow, here we got amps and plenty of them. Most people tread on landmines and ‘Boom!’ is the answer. But it’s happening an awful lot less now due to the diligent efforts of de-mining organizations like MAG, HALO AND CMAC. A less understood source of death and mutilation is the scrap metal trade. Shockingly, many of these peeps know exactly the danger they’re up to and go ahead allthesame hoping to salvage some heavy-metal money. And, here’s one for you: a lot of new amputees are born here, especially in the provinces, cuz they knowingly find landmines and try to recycle them for ‘dynamite fishing’. Who knew. Poverty, starvation and ignorance.

Hello Chairman Mao! Let’s kill off the intelligentsia and see if something intelligent happens!

Always worked in the past….

Car accidents are now outstripping landmine accidents and the better of the relief outfits, Handicap International in particular, are doing their best to tell people not to drive up the wrong side of the road at night with their lights off and not to perform parlour tricks or skip-to-my-loo with unexploded bombs. The latest figures aren’t in yet, though, it’s clear, some of them, the figures that is, are missing limbs. NGO figures are always missing limbs, or have extra ones where necessary.

‘There’s amps in them thar hills!’ My buddy Bill has a buddy Blair, who’s a buddy of mine for sure. He’s an old SE Asia hand and has married a lovely Khmer woman and has a couple of chop kids. He also has an exquisitely pretty farm due West of Battambang City, about 3 or 4 K from the little town of Banan. I rode up there to meet him and Billy, to see his farm, and, hopefully, to sleep in a stilted house. And then move on next day to check out Samlot, which some people say is the most heavily mined area on earth. So you can be sure there’s a few amps hoppin’ around; and, nowadays anyways, there’s most always a mirror on the back of my bike. I roll now with a mirror the way, in my teens, I rolled with a comb in my back pocket.
Up to Banan was unbelievably benign. So nice. Gladed river scenes all the way up. For the first time in Cambodia, terrain started to rear its head.

We met for a beer and headed up the first hill I’ve seen in Cambodia to the pretty temple of Wat Banan. You can see where the gun placements were, and the boys told me that the kids used the anti-aircraft guns for carousels and that the women strung laundry lines between them … . Nevermind, there’s a resident monk there who will tie a red string around your wrist to help you both forget it all and remember everything; the craftiest of the Buddhist tricks. Don’t forget to give him a buck, cuz he’s prolly an animist too and could be visualizing you as a Voodoo doll as we speak. It gets prickly. I guess that’s the theme tonite. Not that Monks are Pricks; that’s not what I’m saying, though my favorite writer of all time, François Rabelais, said it allthetime. He would’ve known. That’s why KRAFTWERK did the song: “Monks are Pricks, Monks are Pricks”, it’s on the ‘Tour de France’ album. So it’s not just me. Getting a bit goofy here, it might be time to find my pillow.

I’m back, and so is Cambodia. Cambodia, it seems, always comes back. Bless their hearts.
Blair has a Khmer family who live at his farm and tend to the crops in exchange for a share in them, and a wage. A hubby and a wife and two kids and one or two other unidentified peeps. They grow paddy rice, corn, cassava etc. along with big ass mangoes. Super fertile; they call this area the rice bowl of Cambodia. We drank a bunch of beer while the crickets lit up and a tangerine colored full moon pushed up into the sky. It was a sacred day for Buddhists too, the day marking Buddha finding enlightenment, and we could hear monkchant drifting in from all over. Blair showed me the ropes with the well, the bucket and the outdoor shower and while I was hopping around behind a bamboo screen trying to rinse off the big bits I saw hundreds of huge red ants wagon training across the bamboo under my nose. Fearing they were the fearful fire ants I shouted Blair over and he promptly plucked a few up and popped them in his mouth. Not fire ants, but almost as delicious, he says. The man’s gone native. Real dinner was a couple courses cooked by Maafa, the farm hand’s wife and the one I remember best was thin slices of pork sautéed in garlic and onion stewed with about 4 large fresh mangoes; my back up against giant sacks of rice from last season’s harvest. Delicious. I got my wish and slept upstairs, tired and well-contented, on a pallet under a mosquito net with all the windows thrown open and with my own personal fan powered by a 12 volt car battery. This place is decidedly off the grid.

Riding from the farm to Samlot was really, really hot. We had lunch in Trang where the road turned to dirt and the dirt bike boys snickered as I headed off into the tungsten sun for 4o Ks of boney, gnarly riding often through the nuclear winter of someone’s opaque dust contrail. I was pissed. The boyz were bonding and laughing at my plight and both perched on nice 250 dirt bikes with 10 inches of plush nitrogen-charged suspension travel. It started pouring and the clayey roads turned into a morass and I had a sit-down strike at the Samlot Guesthouse – the only one within 50 or 60 Ks for sure. I was still pissed but after my second Angkor Beer and after 15 mins of the rain ratatattatting off the tin courtyard overhang while watching dragonflies chase each other and bug eat to beat the band through my sweet suite and with the fan on high… I was all good.
Blair and Bill arrived as the sun was making the mud look like burnt brown sugar. Blair had a prize: a de-fused anti-tank mine as big as a hubcap and quite a bit less pretty. He also had a haunch of contraband deer that he’d bought from a pirate logger and off we went for dins with my grouchiness behind me. While the stall matron was cleaving the deer, Blair asked, ‘Are you still grouchy?’ I bridled and said, ‘Damn straight. I just don’t know wtf I’m here and wtf I’m s’posed to be doin’ in the most godforsaken part of f*ckin’ Cambodia.’ Blair looked at me level and said, ‘It is Godforsaken indeed, there’re more landmines here than there are stars in the sky…. You wanna stay?’
OK. You win.
While I was grousing, Blair had run off to the village chief and arranged a demonstration for 07h30 the following morning. Blair, is this really necessary? What about, like, 10 am? ‘They’ll be off to the fields by then.’ Off in the fields… . Heat lightning flashing in the sky and under yet another mosquito net; another fan whirring comfort on me and the last cherished pages of a Wallace Stegner novel. Til the power shut off at 9:30 … along with the fan … till 6:30 am next day. Clockwork.
Blair, I don’t got time for all this shit! He goes, ‘Relax Stevo, I got you some gimps.’ (Blair knows he can use the G-word with me and only me – it’s kind of an inside joke and often helps lighten up the situation). ‘Great, but what kind of gimps?’ – ‘Well, there’s good news and bad news.’ (sweet jaysus), ‘I got plenty of gimps but some of them might be a little, erm, out of reach.’
Damn. The guys I saw… it’s not so much that I can’t imagine what they do in those fields; it’s how they get out there. I know where it’s at, and it hurts, and these guys (and girls) are All Fucked Up. Some of these peeps can’t see shit cuz they have shrapneled eyes and they haven’t known their legs for 20 years … . and they’re off to the fields! Oi. Fancullo, I’m Cryin’ now. It kills me. And that’s why I’m here, but it doesn’t stop the tears.

Nevermind that, cuz the really wrecked guys are often my staunchest champions. Often I’ll look at a guy who’s blind and mutilated to such a degree, put a hand on his thigh if he’s got one … and he just shusssshes me, and gives me the look: ‘It’s alllll good.’ They sit it out, these guys; they’re front and center at all my little workshops. OK, they maybe sometimes don’t have much else to do, but I honestly feel that many of them are there, really, to show support for their somewhat less messed up compadres, and that cracks me up too; after a while everything starts to crack me up. Or put cracks in me. And so we had a little workshop there, between the stilts, while pinto spotted chicks pecked at my feet and the impatient looked at their watches, cuz it was time to head out from under the village chief’s house and into the fields. These are strong people.
I got a little weak and had to beat it. I mean it flies in the face of everything I’ve said about my tiny mission here in Cambodia: going to the villages in the toughest spots and helping the villagers right there on the spot. But it’s a jagged little pill. Village life in rural Cambodia is tough enough without having a body that’s half blasted to pieces.
I was kinda in rough shape on all fronts as we left town hall and I was staring eye-to-eye with a really hard ride home, Blair flagged down a beat Japanese pick-up with a big load of cassava and drums of diesel. He flicked his thumb at the back and just said, ‘5 bucks and you and your bike are in Battambang in an hour-and-a-half, maybe two.’ By and by a very poor elderly couple hopped on back too for a handful of Kilometers. He saw my fake leg and immediately started yanking at his clothing to show me a body that was peppered with shrapnel beyond belief and tatted everywhere too. Then he started dragging his thumb across his neck in the universal gesture and holding his head at an ungainly angle. Then he reached into his shirt and dragged out an amulet on a thickly braided cord. Obviously cherished and polished with countless fingerings (it was a brass Angkor-style pagoda, probably made from shell casings). At the back of his neck and at the amulet itself, the cord was protected with surgical tubing. His wife started massaging his feet while he was telling his story and my interpretation was this : he was a soldier and everyone he was with was slaughtered. Blown up or throats slit. He alone survived and wouldn’t have were it not for his tattoos and his amulet… . You see, it can be quite relentless, but I HAVE to engage. If I didn’t, well, I’d be every bit as fake as my left leg.

OK, I need to change gears here and get away from those struggling fields, which, at least, aren’t ‘Killing Fields’ anymore; and that’s something. I mean, something’s always something, which is soothing. And if I’m not careful I’ll become Buddhist; worse things have happened, right? I’ve always been on the middle path, so I got that going for me.

I’m back in Battambang kinda licking my wounds and planning my next attack (see…? There’s that military shit again). But and so there’s lots to do in Battambang. I had a super-invigorating session at the International Red Cross here, one of my best so far; it was very indicative too. At first the director said, basically,’Yes,and, well, fine enough, but I haven’t really heard of a case of phantom pain since, well, ’95.’ But he was big enough to just let me go and also to assemble at least 40 or 45 inpatients, and staff too. He also acted as my interpreter and, having introduced both myself and the syndrome and stated clearly that I suffered like a dog for 4 years and don’t at all anymore – when I asked who suffered from it, we were both surprised to see almost every hand rise. Easily 40 for 45. And this is part of it. Nobody wants to feel like a freak; nobody wants to think they’re nuts, and none of us want to be alone. But if we manage to explain it properly, to cast even a little light on its origins, and to convey that it’s common, it’s normal … well, you watch the hands shoot up.
I had a gig at the ‘Emergency Hospital’ too, today. It’s run by Italians and so is a very stylish affair. The compound is literally an oasis; beautiful. But all the same they perform, on average, at least 10 procedures per day. That’s a lot of blood. They are mostly about dealing with trauma but do have a staff of rehab therapists. I’ll be giving them a session on the 22nd. I hit up the Emergency Hospital cuz they get peeps comin’ in there hot,(their site is temporarily down, but here is a post from blogger Marco Boniardi that will help). I endured 4 years of unspeakable pain before I found a bog-stock garden variety mirror; I’d like to save as many people as possible from that dark, dark place.
And today was a nice day, one of those ones that come around like clockwork to cross off the not-so-nice ones. In the morning I went, again with Blair, to CARITAS, the Catholic mission, foundation, rehab center, wheelchair foundry etc. Incredibly peaceful and probably the nicest property in Battambang. Easy, I suppose, to be cynical, but the property wasn’t at all nice, I’m told, until the Church took it over some years back and appears to be just full of kind people doing good things. The father is away for 3 more days, so we didn’t hold much of a session, but the head security guard (a dbl arm amp) and the wheelchair mechanic/custodian was a dbl below-the-knee amp. Both landmines. Among many other good works, CARITAS manufactures and maintains extremely rudimentary wheelchairs and armcycles for the handicapped all over Cambodia – especially in the smaller villages. Nice. So I broke out the mirrors on the floor of the wheelchair repair shop and the shop doggie came and curled up on my one good foot, which I took to be a very good sign.
I’ll go back on Thursday/Friday when the good father (he’s the same fellow that sponsors the amputee wood carvers way over in Banteay Srei) is back and there are more amputees in attendance. I try my best with dbl or bi-lateral amps, and Lord knows there are lots of them, and there are tricks to make it happen and make the pain go away, but it’s hard, it’s a big leap of faith, and I frankly don’t know what kind of results I’m getting. Ah hell, who knows? These people here have already made at least one big leap of faith; this one should be a walk in the park.
On leaving the mission I swerved into a metal fabricator’s yard in hopes of getting my center-stand repaired. Several times I’ve caught all kinds of people sitting up on the rear deck of the UTE while it’s on the stand … I have to admit it’s pretty much irresistible. And, well, finally one of the legs snapped off and the other parted. Happily one leg was still on the bike and one in my man-bag. The guy put me on his porch swing and gave me an ice-cold bottle of water and went straight to work. 10 bucks (I over-paid by a factor of 3 or 4) and the thing is cherry. Some of these dirt lot shade tree guys are magicians. Not all, of course, and I know I’m painting in broad strokes, but I marvel at their grace and economy of movement and how they turn a paucity of primitive materials into a thing of beauty… in this case, all from his haunches with a pair of sunglasses on and a pair of ferrier’s tongs.
Suvette’s like that too. She runs a drink stall down on the river and Bill and Blair have been going to her for their sunset beers since deep in the 90’s. She’s got kids all over the place and, I would say, a 2nd husband and she’s as svelt as her name, smart as a whip, walks like a ballerina and works like a dog. She might take one day a week off but her stall gets put up and does bidniss 7/7. She makes a plethora of sweets and fruit juices/smoothies and plus a bunch of different savory snacks (including satays and those grody eggs that have actual chicklets inside them). I think the only thing that stays up at night is the lightweight shade scrim that is hung between the trees. Everything else comes in on a 3 X 6 cart that’s usually pulled by a Honda step-thru. The brewer’s lights, the blenders, the glass cases, the BBQ the skewers and grates; the utensils and tablecloths, the coolers, the napkin dispensers, the giant heavy sugar cane press … you get the idea. But Suvette is always, always kind, never, ever in a sweat and moves with regal placidity thru her myriad chores and her long, long days and, I presume, her beast of burden trek back to a home that, I’m gonna guess, is not a stone’s throw from the river.
So I’m ruminating on all this like a 3 bellied cow and staring numbly at my tablecloth (one of the many that Suvette will cart home tonite). The rubberized cloth is courtesy of ‘MY BOY BRAND SWEETENED AND CONDENSED AND FILLED MILK’ (filled with what? Milk? Prolly not) – and over it the sun is sinking like a rock @ 1800hrs, the way it will in the tropics. It’s just a great big pink dot, it’s lost its luminescence and has razored edges; a phat pink dot like you see on a printer’s test sheet. That’s it. It’s not an explosion of turbo-charged fuschia like you see just above the lotus ponds. Lotus Pink puts all other pink in the shade. But there’s color, there’s sound too; they are playing BINGO across the river and I wonder if the double arm amps are getting shortchanged and if I should go over there and kick some ass, but no, now they’ve plugged in the Jazzercize speakers and, I swear, are playing ‘By The Rivers of Babylon’ and ‘Ra Ra Rasputin’ simultaneously. Maybe it’s a PodCast. I’m told I should be doing that too, but fuck it. I’m tweeting already when I don’t even mean to. Until my laptop makes me coffee I’m not going any further. I know where Babylon is and who Rasputin was so I’m kinda ahead of the game. I can coast. Tomorrow’s another big day and I gotta get in the trenches… .

BTW: there’s a brief article on me and what I’m up to in Asia Life Magazine.
Baby steps, baby.

Peace & Love (it was Valentine’s today).