Without color...

I can’t believe it is December. Without the dramatic change of the seasons my life feels far less grounded - I am floating through time and it doesn’t seem to be passing. Perhaps this accounts for the seeming agelessness of so many of the people here. But then all of a sudden they are very very old - I feel that here I only meet very young people and very old looking people. That’s probably because a generation in the middle was erased.

Today I bolted home to watch the sunset - weaving in and out of traffic. And now I am sitting on the roof, watching the sky, and the colors are just starting to come. Salmon and lavender, bright peach fire in the very bottom when the sun is saying it’s last goodbyes for the night. As if he has to call more attention to himself, because otherwise people will just keep looking down at their tired feet and empty stomachs, too hungry and tired to appreciate beauty. As if to say, what is not bread, cannot feed us. And when you live like that, your world is in black and white.

A few days ago, I was in an art gallery of some modernist artist in Cambodia. He must be pretty big, to have a whole gallery right next to the national museum to himself. All the paintings were some pretty lame collages and abstractions of dancing apsaras and temples, as well as some black and white photos of dancing apsaras and temples that were messily painted in with oils. a little warhol-y. Faking that tinted old photo look, but obviously exaggerating it. And all over them was this slogan, “without color, people die”. I mean, it was just so ridiculous. What does that have to do with temples anyway? They are all gray and brown. The whole thing was just so obnoxiously arbitrary but would certainly make some trendy bs to hang in the house of a tourist who wanted to let people know about the socially minded trip they took to Cambodia.

I talked to one woman in Lowell who told me about her experiences during the Pol Pot time in Cambodia. I think she said she left when she was about 6 or so. and she said that all her memories were in black and white. Black uniforms, gray skies, no color. and when she went back to Cambodia for the first time when she had grown up, she was struck by the intensity of all the colors, flying over the country side of bright green rice fields and lush tropical forests and bright blue oceans.

Cambodia is a country of color. And also a place of intensity. People don’t die without color, because we live in a world of color. But people die of many things here all the time. Things that would not kill someone in my home country, because the cures are so simple.

Last night I watched a play called, “Where Elephants Weep”, a Khmer Rock opera. it was part in English and part in Khmer, mixing Khmer traditional and contemporary music, as well as dance, shadow puppetry, and costuming. I thought it was so beautiful and touching although my friend didn’t like it so much because of the aspect of “dark tourism” referring to a lot of the audience being foreigners and what could be seen as an oversimplification of Cambodian culture and their situation. I thought the message was poignant though, mainly that the pol pot time and the trauma that has happened is not a reason to keep perpetuating it. Which is something I have been thinking about a great deal. There is one part where one of the main characters is talking about Cambodia, and why he loves it. he lived there when he was a boy, left to go to America, and came back as an adult to find his heart and soul again. he said, “Cambodia is a place of very sharp joy, and also sadness.” and it struck me that these extremes need to be coexisting...they make and sustain each other on some level.