Like sand slipping through my fingers

I am leaving Cambodia.
I am leaving pieces behind, for pick up when I return…I realize this on the plane and smile.
I leave Cambodia having developed a new relationship with time…its amplitudes are different; its velocity varies but defines itself by infinity. Sometimes it slips through my fingers like sand. Sometimes it feels like space full of invisible pulses….
I leave Cambodia with the smell of jasmine surrounding me. I am drawn to it and I have smelt it long enough that it has become a part of me – a smell that I always recognize and find myself lingering and drifting to inhale …that is the beauty and magic of flowers: they can make us do that.
In Cambodia I learned patients. I lost my temper once and spoke with a strong voice. The moment it started happening, it felt foreign to me, too high pitched, bouncing off everything. I realized how pointless it was – trying to fill up a space with an aggressive approach result in others retreating and shutting down, shutting you out and you end up somewhere in the periphery. It felt terrible. I hung my tail between my legs and sought out the smell of jasmine.

I leave Cambodia with a new understanding of human nature – it’s much more raw, much more penetrating, much more sensitive than I ever imagined. From the bottom up, I realize and see capitalism and democracy (the ying and the yang of it) in a new form. Cambodia is the epitomy of free enterprise…everything is for sale, everything has a price tag. Pulling people off motos to steal a purse, cutting off hands to steal a rolex, robbing a man bleeding on the ground after he’s been in a moto accident; none of it is personal, it’s all a random act aimed at possessing something. It’s amazing what we’ll do for the material possessions and the monks continue their teachings that liberation exists when we let the materialism go. It’s almost like a subtle form of anarchy that a few a try to grasp and change but most are willing to utilize and exploit.
Family. At a western dinner party, the first question is: what do you do? Whereas at a Cambodian dinner, the first questions are: are you married? how many children do you have?

Family is the beginning of self-identity and definition. The family is the social support and the social fabric upon which people rely. I don’t know what is better-being able to rely on your family or the political structure…probably something in the middle – is the middle the place where we find peace because that’s where the elements are balanced?

Prostitutes. Over some amok and ice tea during an afternoon thunder storm, a couple of Cambodian women explain to me the role of prostitutes in Cambodian society from their perspective. It’s normal for a Cambodian man to go to the prostitutes to have sex because their Cambodian girlfriends cannot (and will not) have sex with them before marriage. They explain what else is he going to do? The wonder and ponder for a moment with tricky eyes looking at me: is it better for women to be like western women that sleep with many men and are easy or let the prostitutes deal with the aspect of male nature? I laugh at my nativity. I’ve never been so close, as a western, to such perceptions of what I represent (directly or indirectly). These Cambodian girls I’m talking to laugh at my response that I would not be ok with my boyfriend having sex with prostitutes, that I’m not comfortable dancing at the night club because all of the other girls on the dance floor are prostitutes awaiting and looking for a customer. I laugh too at my social ingrained responses and behaviours! We keep talking in circles explaining to each other, and then ourselves really, the role of the prostitute in our lives. Prostitutes as a functional part of the society- this is new ground for me…my mind creaks towards another understanding, even from a distance.

I leave Cambodia freely. Amongst the chaos I have found a freedom and peace I was looking for, almost desperately, in Canada. I am thankful to Cambodia for that. In the past, exits were always so emotional, so dramatic. I would leave with nostalgia in my heart…today, now, I leave quietly, full of new wonder and curiosity, packing my bags as if for a vacation. I am not sad to leave. Perhaps because I truly feel that this is only the beginning…