I had read about how people were tortured there. Somehow though, reading about physical torture I was able to get my head around it. Horrible as it is, I can imagine how someone could electrocute a prisoner, how they could beat them, even how they could rip their fingernails off. I know it's happened before, and how it will happen again. I had steeled myself against all that. I thought I was prepared.
Our guide showed us a gallon jug. It had been filled with salty fish sauce. They would deny a prisoner water until they were ravenously thirsty. Then they would give them fish sauce, which they would guzzle down and become even thirstier. Hearing about that wanton cruelty was just too much. I stood there, crying, pulled between the desire to run outside to get a break from it and the desire to be strong enough to listen and channel that emotion into whatever pictures I could make that day.
The fact is, this history is very recent. Perhaps that is one of the most moving things about it. The torture that happened there happened in my lifetime. It is still remembered and felt there today. As we were leaving one of these cells, three Cambodian men approached the cell we just left. The man in the middle, he couldn't go in. He stopped at the door, and turned away. His head hung down. His two friends escorted him away, patting him on the back supportively. He probably had a family member who had been taken there. He still remembers. This place is very real.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Rain on the window, Seattle-Bremerton Ferry, Seattle, Wa
I dragged my friend Mark to two movies this week. He rarely goes to movies so it was something of an event. Curiously, they both were about young men who killed themselves, and though both movies were sad, they were also strangely inspiring.
You can't help but to compare and contrast them; the sad, short life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis (Closer) and the short, fascinating life of Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild). The thing that struck me so about these two boys was the incredible impact they had on so many people.
I am absolutely convinced that the music of Joy Division saved many a depressed teenager's life (in the same way that The Smiths and Nirvana did later). Just by providing those kids with proof that they are not the only person who ever felt like this, that there is someone out there who knows exactly how they feel. All a kid has to do is dial up Joy Division on the ipod and feel just that little bit less alone. Its the kind of thing that no one at the time could ever have predicted -- this small band from Northern England became one of the biggest cult bands in rock and roll, and I think this is why. Its the same reason why The Smiths and Nirvana have such a huge following as well. Sure the music is great, but that's not all it is. People love these bands with the love they have for a best friend, and the reason is the emotional bolster they've gotten from them. That kind of impact is amazing. It's more than anyone could really hope to achieve, especially only living until 23. If he had been able to see for a moment how important his music would be, would he have given up?
McCandless, who died at nearly the same age, traveled the west as Alexander Supertramp, the self-styled quasi-hippie exile from a privileged yet emotionally barren childhood. While traveling around, he met lonely people and made them feel less lonely. His guilelessness and willful desire to travel without many of the survival equipment that most people's common sense would have demanded is at once infuriating and oddly inspiring. Having the fortitude and crazy stubbornness to hike for miles into the Alaskan wilderness with little more than a tent and a book on edible plants is inexplicable, but that's what makes it so fascinating. The desire to become another Thoreau or Jack London is quixotic and almost arrogant, yet at the same time its the desire to strike out and do something totally at odds with your careful coddled upbringing is nothing short of exhilarating. If McCandless had had a map, he could probably have hiked out of the wild and survived. But he would not have been Alexander Supertramp if he'd had one.
You can't help but to compare and contrast them; the sad, short life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis (Closer) and the short, fascinating life of Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild). The thing that struck me so about these two boys was the incredible impact they had on so many people.
I am absolutely convinced that the music of Joy Division saved many a depressed teenager's life (in the same way that The Smiths and Nirvana did later). Just by providing those kids with proof that they are not the only person who ever felt like this, that there is someone out there who knows exactly how they feel. All a kid has to do is dial up Joy Division on the ipod and feel just that little bit less alone. Its the kind of thing that no one at the time could ever have predicted -- this small band from Northern England became one of the biggest cult bands in rock and roll, and I think this is why. Its the same reason why The Smiths and Nirvana have such a huge following as well. Sure the music is great, but that's not all it is. People love these bands with the love they have for a best friend, and the reason is the emotional bolster they've gotten from them. That kind of impact is amazing. It's more than anyone could really hope to achieve, especially only living until 23. If he had been able to see for a moment how important his music would be, would he have given up?
McCandless, who died at nearly the same age, traveled the west as Alexander Supertramp, the self-styled quasi-hippie exile from a privileged yet emotionally barren childhood. While traveling around, he met lonely people and made them feel less lonely. His guilelessness and willful desire to travel without many of the survival equipment that most people's common sense would have demanded is at once infuriating and oddly inspiring. Having the fortitude and crazy stubbornness to hike for miles into the Alaskan wilderness with little more than a tent and a book on edible plants is inexplicable, but that's what makes it so fascinating. The desire to become another Thoreau or Jack London is quixotic and almost arrogant, yet at the same time its the desire to strike out and do something totally at odds with your careful coddled upbringing is nothing short of exhilarating. If McCandless had had a map, he could probably have hiked out of the wild and survived. But he would not have been Alexander Supertramp if he'd had one.
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