New Trick For An Ol Dawg And Hounds At The Gate

It has been a long time since someone has come through town that I knew from the other life. The one that ended back in the spring of ‘99.
A function of distance I guess, of the fact that when one uninitiated contemplates Asia whist living somewhere beneath the fat grey nimbus in Vancouver, one’s mind does not turn immediately to Indonesia despite its physical size and robust population and tumultuous recent history.
Monkey, my best and longest, came last year for a X-country bike trip that took him and Wolf – who’d been here the year before and ended up marooned on the far side across Java with a collapsed ocean kayak and 100kms of snake-, panther- and croc-infested jungle between him and civilization – across 1,100 kms of Java, knocking off volcano climbs along the way.
Those hours together were slashed by the Afghan campaign and my sojourns to C Asia and so it has been 18 months since anyone somewhat close flung open the gates here on Jl. Rembang.
Marsh and I worked together at a Vancouver-area paper, The Surrey Leader, for three and half years. He’s an understated fellow who rarely rises to the bait and could be counted upon during editorial meetings to interject some semblance reality into proceedings whilst others, myself in particular, searched for the Grand Conspiracy Theory, or got caught up in some minor wrangle with the competition over issues that I’d be embarrassed to admit to now.
We shared many hastily hacked butts and putrid cups of coffee together with the enforcement guys from the Liquor Licensing Board, the shivering junkies visiting the third floor offices of Legal Aid and posses of pale teenage skells forced by court order to attend the youth outreach classes downstairs, all of whom loitered about the rear doors of our building on King George Highway. We had a few pub nights, watched a bit of hockey and even got it together towards the end, to play some tennis after work.
That was kinda where it began and ended, though. He lived single in the ‘burbs and I had a gal in the city and so we didn’t become what I would call close.
I am really pleased to say though that I was about the other morning – wee hours – when the call went out to my former boss with the word that, guess what, Marsh’s not coming back to work. Ever.
I remember the day I cut those ties. It was the final act in a painful, year-long peel, the extrication, the salvaging of soul and sanity from the smoldering ruins of one life and the beginning of a new one. If they experienced the agony, the act of shedding that skin would, through some evolutionary necessity, cause snakes to molt but once in their lives. Or not at all.
And of course that was the danger my friend faced until sometime around 4 am Jakarta, April 5, 2003: To fail to renew. To lack the imagination, the will or the courage to walk away from the familiar at a time in his life when it was still possible to do it. Like me at that time: no wife, no debt, no obligations and a toolbox containing the basic kit needed to survive in the real world.
I don’t know who was happier about finalizing his decision! And so if your business takes you to Hanoi, where he’ll be based, and you’ve need for competence and fluency then drop him a line at marshinasia@yahoo.com
And meantime, there’s the shitty Iraq thing. Watched a couple of Marines being interviewed this afternoon on FOX (All War, All The Time) on the driveway of Saddam’s main palace. The younger of the two, a Captain I believe, said he planned to step into one of Saddam’s bathrooms, crack up his “gold faucets and take my first hot shower in 20 or 30 days.”
After the predictable backslapping and slavering over the reliability and power of US armor, they whipped out a Georgia State University Bulldogs (football team) flag (mistaken by a FOX commentator for the Third Infantry’s colors) barked and pumped their fists in the air.
Thankfully (?) they said they didn’t plan to fly the Stars and Stripes over the palace – ‘because we’re here to liberate Iraq, not conquer it’ – but it was never established whether of not we can look forward to a NCAA College Football flag snapping in the wind a stone’s throw from the Euphrates River. Maybe the World Wrestling Federation would be more appropriate.
I’d laugh if the news this evening over beers hadn’t been that News Corp photographer John Feder, a friend from E. Timor days, and a print colleague from the same agency have been missing for several days, and two other journos are believed killed in an Iraqi counter-attack.