Love Me Now

Heard this poem the other night on Don Jackson's "Lovers and Other Strangers":

Love Me Now
If you are ever going to love me,
Love me now, while I can know
The sweet and tender feelings
That from true affection flow.

Love me now
While I am living.
Do not wait until I'm gone
And then have it chiseled in marble,
Sweet words on ice-cold stone.

If you have tender thoughts of me,
Please tell me now.
If you wait until I am sleeping,
Never to awaken,
There will be death between us,
And I won't hear you then.

So if you love me, even a little bit,
Let me know while I am living,
So I can treasure it.

Robert Paul Moreno
16/1/70 - 27/2/87

I tried doing a Google search on Robert Paul Moreno but didn't come up with anything.

You know that there's probably a story there.

There's a story behind every life.

I know. I know. I'm bordering on cheesy sentimentality, but I can't help it. The guy was 17 when he died. What happened? Did he die of some illness? I mean, that would make sense, right? The words to the poem seem to indicate some sort of fatal illness.

I couldn't stop thinking about the poem after I heard it on the radio.

The Art of Correspondence

Do a Google search for elusive designer, Martin Margiela, and you'll come up with next to nothing --- and there's nothing more intriguing than trying to hunt for information about someone who's piqued your interest.

In an article in today's New York Times' Style Magazine, it says, "Since the Belgian wunderkind set up shop in Paris in 1988, no one has seen a picture of him, and no face-to-face interviews have been granted."

Interestingly enough, the Times thought it'd be cool to have former Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren, write to Margiela in an attempt to find out more about the former head designer for womenswear at Hermes.

What followed were a series of four exchanges between the musician and the fashion designer --- going back old school to the world of letter writing and pen pals.

Ah, pen pals!

As a child, was there anything more exciting than receiving a letter in the mail? Rushing out to meet the postman at the mailbox and sticking a chubby little hand inside the letterbox to fish out a bunch of envelopes and to find one --- just one --- with your name written on it by another childish hand?

With the advent of e-mail, I think that, by and large, people don't really write to each other anymore --- no longer filling sheets of paper by hand in illegible scrawl and then tucking it into an envelope, applying several stamps and then waiting, waiting, waiting for weeks on end for something to come back.

Why bother? You can send several short e-mails off throughout the day for free.

But what was interesting --- and exciting, really --- about the Margiela and McLaren correspondence was the writing...The open, breezy way of communication that often crops up when you're not immediately faced with the other person.

What is it about writing a letter? It's like a confessional of sorts. Secrets are easily purged and things that are hard to say out loud are deftly written (or typed) out for a person far, far away.

Finding someone who can write, however, is a different matter.

While it's cool to have a pen pal, finding a pen pal who can actually write is another story --- after all, not all of us are born writers. Not all of us have the knack to paint vivid portraits of our mundane, everyday lives in such a way that it comes to life and seems interesting to the recipient.

Over the years, I've had several people e-mail me and try to begin a pen pal exchange. Most of them petered off after awhile. Most contacted me after reading one of my online journals.

So far, there's only been one person that I still keep in frequent contact with --- a nurse from California who seems to lead a freakishly similar life.

I once joked, "Do you think we're the same person, living out the same life, except on opposite ends of the continent and with you in the States and me in Canada?"

"Oh my God, yes!!!" she wrote back. "Except I'm Korean and you're Chinese."

At times, I've had people write to me, surprised that I'm Chinese.

I remember once, while I was doing an internship at the local newspaper, I hitched a ride with the photographer, who commented that if he hadn't met me and had only talked to me on the phone and read my stories, he would have never guessed I was Chinese.

I couldn't help but wonder if people, in general, think that Chinese people can't write --- that, stereotypically, they're only good at math and scientist and destined for occupations like engineering, computer programming and accounting?

I like to write --- and people have often told me that they enjoy the way I write --- but I know that I'm not all that great.

If I was, wouldn't I have been snapped up by a newspaper or a magazine already?

Playing Favourites

You've probably always suspected it, but chances are, if you ask, your mom or dad will give you the standard, "I love all my kids equally" speech.

I think when you're not the favourite of the family, it's easier to pick up on than if you were.

I told the best friend I'd swing by after lunch today to visit her and the new little one.

We haven't been as close as we used to be ever since she got married and had her first kid.

In some ways, it wasn't all that unexpected that we drifted apart --- our lives were totally different now. We weren't two 12-year-olds in grade school anymore, obsessing over boys and bitching about stupid things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter. And despite our fervent belief that we'd always stay close friends, we simply weren't travelling on the same path anymore.

She had a family to deal with now and marriage and parenthood wasn't what she'd expected it to be.

Me, on the other hand?

I was mildly disappointed to discover I could actually relate to Bridget Jones of all people.

You get out of school and you somehow think that things are supposed to be better somehow --- the career thing wasn't supposed to be so hard to launch and finding the person you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with isn't supposed to look some desperate race against time as you feel your ovaries begin to shrivel up and every single guy you're set up with looks like a first cousin of the Elephant Man.

But I digress.

The best friend was happy to see me --- she said she was starved for someone to talk to. And it was so easy to fall back into the way things were before our paths diverged and we started travelling down different roads.

The baby was divine --- but I suppose I'm obligated to say that because she's my best friend.

His light, coffee coloured skin was so smooth and I breathed in that sweet baby smell that made me feel this weird sense of awe. As I traced my finger over his smooth, pristine little cheek, I thought about how his whole life was stretched out ahead of him, with all these ups and downs to experience.

The best friend said that her parents have mostly been doting on her older son, barely paying any attention to the newborn.

She says her mother's always been the type to play favourites and she worries that the little one's going to grow up feeling the way that she did: less important and less loved.

She told me that before I arrived, she asked her mother, "Why do you do this? Why do you always have to have one person that you love more? You had your favourite child --- and now you have your favourite grandchild."

Her mother protested, "No. That's not true at all. I love all of you equally. Your brother was my favourite son, but you're my favourite daughter." (There was only the two of them.)

The best friend shook her head. "Say what you want, but you had a favourite child."

I remember talking about this with my friend, the Social Worker. She said that she always knew she was the favourite in the family and that there was this one time when she was out with her brother and a group of friends and they were all talking about family favourites, too.

"Well, you know mom and dad loved me best," she told her brother jokingly.

Her brother gave her this look and cleared his throat.

"Yes. I know," he said quietly.

And she said that, in that instant, she felt bad and she could only begin to guess at how he felt about the whole thing.

I think it's pretty easy to pick out who's the favourite in the family --- it's the child that the parent talks about the most.

With my mom, I actually know that it's me.

Being the favourite, though, isn't as great as it seems. You have this weird, crazy, intense relationship with your parents where everything seems to mean so much more --- every comment, every remark, every word.

I have no doubt that my parents all love us, but I think there are different kinds of love.

Sometimes, I think the "favourite" of the family is simply the kid who finds it easiest to stay close to the parent.

Or at least that's what I think it is.

Freedom of Expression In Cyberspace

Here's something interesting: if you're living in the States and a newspaper writes something about you that's not true, it's up to you to prove that the newspaper was basically lying and out to get you. But if you're living in Canada, it's a different story. The onus is on the newspaper to prove that everything they've written is true.

Ghanian-born Cheickh Bangoura, a former UN official now living in Ontario, has launched a libel suit against The Washington Post with Canadian courts.

He says the Post articles from 1997 alleging sexual harassment, financial wrongdoing and nepotism while he was working for the UN Drug Control Program in Africa can be accessed through the net in Canada --- and that has a large impact on his reputation considering he's lived in Canada since 1997.

Free online access to the Post's articles is limited to only 14 days and there were only about seven paid subscribers to the newspaper in Ontario at the time the articles were published, according to various online reports.

Today, the Post, backed up by 50 other major newspaper players, posted a challenge to the $6.5 million Internet libel case.

The media group is arguing that if the case is allowed to proceed, we're looking at squashing the fundamental purpose of the world wide web --- major media news outlets would be forced to block access in certain countries.

That'd mean saying bye-bye to reading The New York Times and The BBC World News --- which, let's face it, is so much more interesting and cool than reading any of the papers published in Canada.

But the shittiest aspect of this whole thing is that if the case goes through, it means changing the landscape of cyberspace --- free expression would mean squat. Access to global information would be rendered null and void --- and that sort of beats the whole point of the Internet, doesn't it?

Something to keep my eye on...