Entering Cambodia with a Book (part 2)

There are both certain times and particular places where I grow angry to the extent that I am uncomfortable with myself.  I value feeling the range of human emotions, for this makes me feel human, but I do not like the way intense anger leads me to mentally pace like a caged lion, almost salivating at the thought of leaping from the cage and clobbering those who have done great wrong, even when they died long ago.  I try to remember the words of Gandhi, someone who had much to be angry about and yet was known by most for his poise and peace-seeking spirit: "I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world."

I changed boats at the border, collected my visa, and continued upriver toward Phnom Penh.  Surely it was my imagination, or maybe it was the switch from a wooden boat to a metal one with few windows, but the Cambodian portion of the river seemed stiflingly more hot.  I was traveling toward the Cambodian capital in a sauna.  The scenery along the banks struck me as dull and I quickly grew bored of it.  I sat in the boat's innards and looked at the map of Cambodia, which I had done many times before.  Only now, however, did I begin to wonder: are its borders in the shape of an embrace or a strangulation?

In Neak Leung the boat docked and the passengers transferred to buses for the final leg of the trip to Phnom Penh.  Driving down the Cambodian highway as we were now, I imagined the masses of troubled people who were emptied from the cities and forced out into the countryside in the spring of 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia.  As we drove, I looked at old, tall trees and felt a connection to those refugees who would have seen these same trees as they fled.  I noticed the political party signs (e.g., Cambodian People's Party, Sam Rainsy Party) in every town and hamlet and was reminded of the rickety and corrupt political system in this country.  I saw the poor grinding out another day of hard labor for little money as my bus rocked through pot holes on a major national road.  And all this led me to imagine what else I knew was there even though not necessarily visible from the bus window:  landmines, beggars, amputees, widows, 12-year-old sex slaves, and other nasty pillars of brokenness.  I enjoy looking out bus windows, but in Cambodia the view left me restless in my seat.

Seeing Cambodia, I remembered well the quest to develop my muscles as a teenager.  It was an uphill battle for a skinny guy like myself, but I certainly tried.  I remember a mental image I had developed to help me squeeze out that last push-up on the wooden floor of my room, doing my best not to groan too loudly lest my family hear me in another room.  I would have my nose to the floor and take a deep look at the picture of a helpless woman and child stuck in the Killing Fields.  It was an image implanted in my mind, shaping my heart, and even contributing to the meager but valiant growth of my triceps and chest.  I sometimes pictured them suffering and this gave me the impetus to push myself up one last time.  Other times I envisioned how my ability to assist such as these could hinge on that extra bit of strength I would have if I only did this one last push-up.

One of my favorite films as a teen was The Killing Fields.  I admired Dith Pran and the sacrifices he made to help an American New York Times reporter cover the unfolding drama -- or trauma -- in Cambodia.  He could have been airlifted to safety with his family.  He could have made a choice that would have put him in a home with his loved ones and kept him out of harm's way.  Dith Pran stayed in Cambodia, however, and soon disappeared into the complete insecurity and brutality of the Killing Fields.   Fortunately, he survived and was reunited with his family.  One of the unintended consequences of his decision to remain in Cambodia that day in 1975 was that, more than a decade later, a teen in Papua New Guinea often was able to do numerous one-last-push ups.

One more thing regularly involved in my teenage workouts -- including some long distance hauls in my kayak designed to work the shoulders, back, and stomach -- was White Lion, a 1980s heavy metal band.  Their song "When the Children Cry" was part of the soundtrack to my mental image of the Cambodian mother and child:

Little child
Dry your crying eyes
How can I explain
The fear you feel inside
because you were born
Into this evil world
Where man is killing man
and no one knows just why

What have we become
Just look what we have done
All that we destroyed
You must build again

When the children cry
Let them know we tried

This is a portion of the lyrics and the last two lines are what I remember most.  Rarely has a month passed when I have not sung this song to myself.  I've sung it on the sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea.  I've sung it on top of Roan Mountain on the North Carolina/Tennessee border. I've sung it on my balcony in Cairo.  And I've remembered it during a couple tense periods in the West Bank.  "When the children cry, let them know we tried."  A ballad sung by a heavy metal band contains two of the most moving, motivating lines in the history of music.

Interesting.  I appear to have just confessed that I am a product of Hollywood and heavy metal.

(Part 2 of 4)

To read Part 1, click /viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766281.

To read Part 3, click /viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766727.