greetings from phnom penh, where i've been for a week tomorrow. i'm here for one month to do some archival research and learn a bit of beginning khmer - if i can utter one phrase without stuttering or crazy long pauses or jacked up vowels by the end of this, i will count this trip as a smashing success, but more on those good times later.
arriving in phnom penh felt strange. i felt like i was coming back to a long lost friend, even though i'd only spent 1 day here before this trip. there was something uncannily familiar about it, even as i looked out of the taxi onto language i could not read, cultural institutions i did not know - signs of varying sorts i could not decipher. it was not like my two months in vietnam in 2008, the trip that saw the birth of fravina, this glorified diary. it was somehow closer to those first few moments in hanoi in march of 2000, when i stood on one side of a small street at 5pm on a tuesday, needing to cross to the other and having not one idea how to proceed. this long lost friend, i realize, is less related to place than it is to sensation, and specifically, the "what on earth was i thinking when i dreamed this shit up?" sensation.
i immediately felt overwhelmed. immediately. like before i even got out of the taxi, immediately. and sick. i felt sick (i figure it was some physiological response happening, as if my body was like, "alright, you want to be in southeast asia? we'll see about that. i hope you splurged for a hotel with a decent toilet").
i'm feeling a bit more settled a week in, though the sensation has not entirely left me. it would probably be less pronounced were i not getting my ass handed to me by this language (though i can at least order fried rice, negotiate a motorbike taxi, and ask for a toilet now)... and if the filmmaker i'm writing about hadn't recently flipped me the virtual bird... and if i would actually *go* to the archives i'm researching... it would probably be less if the streets were not numbered according to a logic that does not, as far as i can tell, respect the rules of continuity or ascending/descending order. and if i could get on one motorbike with a driver who knew where he was going (i suspect these two last issues are intimately related)...
and you know what? i'm not 24 or single anymore. suddenly i'm worried about helmets and rabies and sun damage (i know, most normal people would be worried about these things, regardless of age, but i was blissfully flippant 12 years ago). i'm at every moment walking a razor thin line between exhilaration and exhaustion, and i think i feel too old for that particular liminal space.
this has little to do with phnom penh itself, i think, which i dig. it's remarkably similar to hanoi or hcmc in terms of sensory experience: the noise (in addition to the traffic and dogs yapping, there is a bit of a korean-funded construction boom happening here), the odors (that distinct mix of incense, sewage, and grilled meats); the heat (though i'm here in "winter" so it's not really that bad), the activity spilling so far out onto the sidewalk that pedestrians use the streets, the chaos of transportation (motorbikes, bicycles, tuk-tuks, and more land cruisers and lexus suvs than i've seen since leaving texas!)... none of this really poses a problem for me, not on a conscious level anyway. and in fact, once i figured out how to cross that hanoi street 12 years ago, i found that i actually love the moment of entering into and navigating the stream of traffic. some of my favorite moments involve stepping out in front of a crazy wall of traffic - there's something communal and very right-brain about it that i find almost... i don't know, zen-like.
this fatigue, this wariness, it's not phnom penh, it's me. it's a new project, a new culture, a new tradition. being here has implications, expectations, weight. maybe even consequences. it not only connects me to a past, but also projects years into the future, a future that has no form yet, a future ostensibly mine to shape. a future i started shaping when i got out of the taxi last week. the problem is this: starting a new project is like stepping out into the street at 5pm, but i haven't yet figured out how to find zen in the chaos.
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