Across the border

Ca Khẩu Quốc Tế Mộc Bài, or “Moc Bai” for lazy tongues, crosses the border into Cambodia. My friend and I got up early, even earlier than usual in case of delays at the border crossing. The glowing yellow sun is emblazoned in the sky every day, is burning down at noon and under no circumstances should you let it get so far that your own “hot [] heart [...] [n] oh heavenly tears and thau drizzle”¹ consumed, so we usually strapped 5 liters of water onto our luggage rack.

You would think that such a man-made line between one country and the other would be invisible and apart from the large number of officials at the transition, not much of the world would change. As we are surprised to find out, this is not the case. After the ups and downs of Vietnamese coastal areas, the many crowded villages and cities, and the towering mountains, the country is suddenly far and flat in front of us. A gigantic sky stretches from horizon to horizon in the bright light of the dawning day.

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Upward flowing flows

What would Nietzsche have said about this flat country? Because despite the promising names, we will see neither the Cardamom Mountains nor the Elephant Mountains. The country remains a pancake for us, which is true for more than 2/3 of the country. A large part is only so few meters above sea level that during the rainy season, the river changes its flow direction, no longer flows to the sea but to Lake Tonle Sap, which promptly swells from an already considerable 2,500 km² to up to 20,000 km². Lake Constance, for comparison, is only 536 km² in size.

Nietzsche's desire for conversion would therefore have had a nice figurative equivalent. And who knows what a funny divine spirit was at work when he flattened Cambodia's middle with a magnificent paw. Shouldn't a free spirit, traveler and adventurer in the Nietzsche sense feel at home there too, who “[m] with a bad laugh [...], which he conceals, finds spared by some shame: [d] he tries to make these things look like when You reverse them”²? ... But Nietzsche didn't exactly love the level.

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Of heights and challenges

It would not have been enough contrasting for him, because the contrasts of landscape could never be enough for him, as well as for his philosophical prophet Zarathustra: “I am a hiker and a mountaineer, he said to his heart, I don't love the plains and it seems I can't sit still for long. ”³ The telling blissful islands on which Zarathustra stays with his friends are not only naturally by the sea, but also house an entire mountain ridge and a “sad black lake” (ibid.). It should go from the highest altitude to the deepest depths, because life in its full fullness can only be experienced by those who are able to span the most extreme contrasts. On the other hand, anyone who just wants to be “comfortable” in their lives doesn't understand much about happiness, according to Nietzsche: “Oh, how little do you know about Glücke of man, you comfortable and good-natured! — because happiness and misfortune are two siblings and twins who grow up with each other or, as with you, with each other — Stay small! ”⁴

We know that according to Nietzsche, no challenge is ever big enough and if there were no high mountains, we would have to scoop them up ourselves to climb them. And indeed, this shoveling together could be required of us in a godless world. Because after we — also according to Nietzsche's philosophy — took the sponge “to wipe away the whole horizon.”⁵, it is now up to us to happily grab brushes and put islands with mountains on the back line.  

In any case, we cyclists through Cambodia do not see any mountains. We see the big lake, whose surrounding wooden buildings are stuck on piles in the reddish brown mud of the slum area. We see tropical steppes, and “[b] oshaft evening sun views”⁶, which squint through black palm trees, we see the yellow, red, green stubble steppe and the blue dome of the sky above us. I've never seen so much sky, so many sunrises, so picturesque clouds.

Leaning plane

No, you can't call this landscape uninspired. So what words would a Nietzsche cycling on a bicycle have written if not this one: “Since Copernicus, humans seem to have fallen onto an inclined plane — they are now rolling away from the center point — to where? In nothing? In's'pierced Feeling his nothingness? ”⁷

If we want to forget for a moment that riding a bicycle under burning sun rarely gives you the feeling of rolling downwards, unless into “nothing,” then we can voilà “turn around” the inclined plane, replace “rolling” with “pedaling” and these lines evoke in me the image of a cyclist in Cambodia. By the way, Nietzsche wrote nothing about landscapes in this section, but about humanity, whose grandiosity has been offended by science. The insults have become even more famous since Nietzsche, he himself is sometimes added, otherwise it is conventional when we are prepared to follow Freud's slightly self-enamored self-stylization, as we know: Copernicus: “We are not the center of the solar system,” Darwin: “We are not an image of God, but the closest relative of the ape,” and Freud: “We are not the master of our own psyche ' According to Nietzsche, the interesting thing is not so much the insult as such, but that we are proud of it. That we have honest respect for the honesty that so disparages us. That is an extremely sublime religious feeling: “How small a person is,” what “nothing a person is.” Science and religion have a common ground, their root in the ascetic ideal, which denies, disregards and rejects earthly, human life.

Nirvana and nihilism

And where we have just arrived at 'nothing' and religions: Buddhism is present everywhere in Cambodia. The monks' robes dipped in the colorful orange of the morning sun immediately catch your eye. We meet monks alone or in groups on the street, in cafés and, of course, as if they had been painted by an artist, on the harsh, grey walls of Angkor Wat. However, not everyone seems as averse to life, at least not to earthly pleasures and addictions, as a few smoking monks suggest. Nevertheless, as Angkor's numerous etiquette signs tell us, a woman should avoid touching one of them as much as possible so as not to contaminate it. Well, we are used to the misogyny of religions, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam or even Buddhism, over there. As a woman, it is a little harder for me to regret that humanity began to wipe the canvas with a large sponge a few hundred years ago...

Yet you can't help but feel a bit melancholy about the loss of transcendence when you roam through the jungles and temples of Angkor. More than 1,000 temples are located in the approximately 200 km² area. Angkor Wat itself is the largest temple complex in the world. The first were built around 700 AD, the last around the 13th century, when the center of the Khmer Empire slowly shifted to Phnom Penh.

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Ephemeral deities

If you scramble up the large, black steps of Baksei Chamkrong, which seem to be made for a giant, you can hardly help but feel that you have shown yourself adequately to the dignity of a god, as Shiva, to whom the temple is dedicated, may have already chosen his victims himself among pilgrims who have crashed on the stone steps. From the heights of Phnom Bakheng, you can look at the tops of the jungles, listen to the sounds of the animals, admire the smoky streaks of sunlight that travel through branches and leaves. High spirituality, self-discipline, striving, the old hard walls seem to challenge, whisper, ask: “Who are you to be able to climb my height? '

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Des Thaus Trosttropfen

I stand high up and think that an elitist spirit is fluttering around me. All around me, I see all the tourists flocking through the hallowed halls of the Tomb of the Old Gods in their colorful “am on vacation” gagarobe. I feel there was a narcissistic moment with Nietzsche when he only wanted to grant individual freedom to himself and his ilk: “[E] s is a first-rate emergency that commands and demands here. The rest of us are the exception and the danger, — we need defense forever! — Well, there's really something that can be said in favor of the exception provided that it never wants to become the rule.”⁸

But I'm afraid that I too am not the child of the spirit that he would have liked to see in his esoteric circle. After seven days in the lofty heights of the past, we cyclists will get back on our bikes, continue exploring the bare plain and won't long for mountains. At the very first crack of dawn, we head towards the Thai border, and soon it is time for a new crossing. Lo and behold, this morning, as we set off from Sieam Reap, there is a soft fog over the fields, as if Cambodia wanted to comfort us that there are only tombs of gods in this country too. And I feel as if I hear a voice whispering softly:

A drop of Thau's? A haze and scent of eternity? Don't you hear it? Don't you smell it? My world has just been perfect, midnight is also noon, —
Pain is also a pleasure, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun — go away from it or learn: a wise man is also a fool.⁹

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Link to part 3 (Thailand)

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The pictures for this article are photographs by the author.

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footnotes

1: So Zarathustra spoke, The song of melancholy, 3.

2: Human, all-too-human I, Preface, 3.

3: So Zarathustra spoke, The Wanderer.

4: The happy science, Aph 338.

5: The happy science, Aph 125.

6: So Zarathustra spoke, The song of melancholy, 3.

7: On the genealogy of morality, 3rd abh., para. 25.

8: The happy science, Aph 76.