Insects, Real and Human

[Phnom Penh, 2/19/23]

With infinite grief, much regret yet elation, I said goodbye to Siem Reap after a three-week stay. Didn’t even get a chance to chirp ciao ciao to Best Mom, but who knows, maybe I’ll be back. On the way to Phnom Penh, our express van stopped in Skun, what a cool, masculine name, and there, I was able to buy not just quail eggs but silkworm pupae. I had had them boiled in Gyeongju, South Korea, but this fried version, with raw scallion and extremely hot chilli pepper, was yummier.

Skun is famous for an insect market. In Philip Short’s Pol Pot—Anatomy of a Nightmare, there’s also this mention of “an unending procession of city-dwellers struggling past the bombed-out town of Skoun, fifty miles north-east of Phnom Penh, at the beginning of May [of 1975]. The sight of their fires, burning in the darkness by the roadside, haunted him. ‘Those people were truly wretched,’ he told Nuon Chea later. ‘It’s not normal, it’s not reasonable, to evacuate everyone like that. What the Standing Committee has done is wrong.’”

On our van was a German couple, the only white passengers, so I extended to them my plastic bag, “Would you like to try one?”

“No, thanks,” the man said, and he even recoiled a bit, his face blanched.

“They’re excellent!” I urged.

“No, thanks.”

Silky outside but squishy inside, it’s suspended between meat and fruit, a paradox indeed, with a complex, nutty taste redolent of some distant, prelingual past, though not without hints of your totally fucked up future, as embodied and ensouled by its nagging bouquet. The velvety Tenuta Casenuove would make a perfect accompaniment, but if you’re broke, the pissy Ganzberg beer, if you want to call it that, is fine.

Biggest problem with these insect treats is they always give you too many. For $1.25, I got at least 300 squishies, so not even halfway through, I started to think, What the hell am I doing?

Some wise Midtown chef should offer grasshoppers, crickets or silkworm pupae as hors d'oeuvres. For 12 bucks, you get exactly five, tastefully arranged on fine china. Again, I’m giving away genius business ideas, though my Valley Girl Gashes concept didn’t exactly fly.

Before leaving Siem Reap, I thought about staying in a nearby village, but my interrogation of a tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Lam, yielded no result.

“This village is big enough. Surely, there must be a hotel?” I was talking about Prasat Bakong.

“No, no hotel.”

“What about your village?”

“No hotel,” he grinned.

“You must know someone, a relative or friend, who can rent me a room for maybe five days?”

“No.”

Born in 1964, Mr. Lam spent three years in college, studying history, then from 1987 to 1992, he was in the army. With Vietnamese, he fought the Khmer Rouge in Siem Reap and near the Thai border, in Pailin.

More or less homeless, he sleeps on his tuk-tuk at the corner of Taphul Road and Taphul Street. Encased in a sleeping bag on his hammock, he’s like a giant pupa, ready to become one marvelous worm or lightly fried.

In Siem Reap, I also met a Cambodian who was trained in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, as a policeman. Returning home, he lost a foot stepping on a Soviet mine. Another Cambodian told me he had no issues with Vietnamese from America, meaning me, but he disliked those from Hanoi, “The Vietnamese say they’re liberators, but they killed many Cambodians, normal people. I saw it.”

Now, many Cambodians, and Laotians, too, get their higher education in Vietnam. No matter what happens, though, Cambodians will always resent losing a huge chunk of their land to Vietnam. Thailand also swallowed a swath. Imagining they were reviving the glories of Angkor, the Khmer Rouge briefly called themselves Angkar. Wakanda it wasn’t.

A total whore, I can’t help but gush over any place I happen to be in, so Phnom Penh is the shit, man! Walking around just after dawn, I was orgasmic over the various views, always fresh and eternally astounding, of the Central Market. It’s my Eiffel Tower.

Phnom Penh’s architecture is grossly underappreciated, though I’ve probably said the same of Scranton, PA. Years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Vann Molyvann’s Olympic Stadium. Ashamed at being so blessed, I gaped at its natty, severe lines and deft irrigation system, to deal with the monsoon, you see. His Independence Monument is gorgeous in an entirely different way.

Many of his works, though, have been destroyed, but at least Molyvann had a chance to execute them, unlike the Albanian writer Musine Kokalari, who was only allowed to publish one collection of stories, before she was humiliated, tortured and silenced.

On a dark and stormy night, it really was, I caught the young pianist Anton Ryzhenko at Kiev’s Bar Baraban. Dude was ruthless. Placed in a saner environment, Ryzhenko would be raking it in, or at least adequately loved. If still in Ukraine, he might be maimed or dead. Pol Pot died of old age, and so will Clinton, Bush, Trump and Biden, etc.

[Kiev, 2/11/16]

Perhaps Ryzhenko got out in time?

Is it time for you to evacuate?

This morning, I got another email from my German buddy in Frankfurt, with “Getting ugly” as its subject:

They’re ramping up their war rhetoric (if that’s the correct word), preaching solidarity with Ukraine while condemning the Russian barbarians…

Now we deliver German tanks. They think of shipping depleted uranium ammunition too. It gets crazier and crazier.

I have prepared a plan B, should things go down very fast…

If the battle is lost, then flee. You can’t be too cute with your timing, though. At the risk of looking foolish, it’s better to escape too soon, but that’s assuming you can.

The good folks of East Palestine clearly shouldn’t be there, but what about those a hundred or five hundred miles away? Seriously, though, is there any safe place left in the USA, under a Satanic government determined to cripple you intellectually, psychically, politically and economically? Before the world and history, they’re turning you into seething fools, but hey, let’s register and vote.

With Ohioans and Pennsylvanians terrified, suffering and afraid to even take a shower, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg cracks a joke and Biden says nothing.

Some East Palestine residents were extras in a disaster comedy, White Noise, based on the Don DeLillo novel. Less than a year later, they’re fleeing toxins from a train wreck, almost exactly like in the movie. These many coincidences strongly suggest we’ve been toyed with, as in having evil shit rubbed in our faces continuously. Just about every musical award or Super Bowl half-time show is a reminder of this.

KTLA out of Los Angeles, though, sees nothing but hilarity in possibly the greatest ecological disaster in American history. With chuckling, smiles and general gaiety, four broadcasters cover this catastrophe.

His lit eyes smiling, a carefully coifed, smooth skinned and vapid geek begins:

Good evening, super light buzz today. Definitely no anxiety over here. This story is one of the weirdest coincidences ever. People living in eastern Ohio evacuated their homes last week following a train derailment and chemical spill that sent toxic chemicals into the air. The crazy thing is they did the same thing for a fictional disaster film a year ago.

All right, I'm going to break this down here. The movie is called White Noise. It came out on Netflix in November […] The premise of the movie is this, a freight train derails and explodes, and families have to flee the toxic fallout. The film was shot all over Ohio. It features extras in evacuation scenes, including a family from New Palestine […] Then, last week’s train derailment in real life and fire happened less than a mile from their home. They had to leave for real! Isn’t this wild?

A second man cracks, then flashes his teeth as he goofily tilts his head, “Man, at least they weren’t in Don't Look Up!” It’s clearly rehearsed. The two women cackle. This is no inadvertent slip but a skit performed by four professionals.

In DeLillo’s novel, the main character is also above it all, “These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and manmade disasters. People in low-lying areas get the floods, people in shanties get the hurricanes and tornados. I’m a college professor. Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods? We live in a neat and pleasant town near a college with a quaint name. These things don’t happen in places like Blacksmith.”

He soon loses his smugness, and so will the rest, in real life.

My first day back in Phnom Penh found me mostly walking around or sitting in an alley, writing this article. A homeless band living in it has disappeared. They used to take turns sleeping on two cots, a hammock and a raised platform.

[Phnom Penh, 11/13/22]

Since the snack and drink stand is still there, I happily order my 62-cent cans of Cambodia. When the owner’s small daughter saw me photographing her again, she marched over with a stern face, to see what was on my laptop. Returning to her cushion on the ground, she resumed staring at her cellphone.

At night, meat is grilled, and if you don’t see the small skull, you may think it’s pork. Burnt black, it grins bitterly as smoke rises. The living must be fed.

Soon enough, I will walk down to the river. It’s blessedly uncluttered and leafy. There is a ferry to Akreiy Ksatr, where there’s a beautiful Vietnamese church with two Virgin Marys, fished from the river.

Of Phnom Penh’s gorgeously distinctive cathedral, only lousy photos remain. Nearly 2,000 Buddhist temples and monasteries were destroyed, and 25,000 monks murdered. Progressive social engineers were in charge, so death got super busy.

Hate energizes haters. You’re getting a taste of it. There’s laughter because it’s hilarious. Nothing is funnier than the death of those they hold in contempt.

Despite all that, the Cambodian spirit never died.

[Phnom Penh, 11/13/22]

[Prasat Bakong, 2/16/23]

[Steung Saen, 2/19/23]