Sunday.05.09.04
washable pain drumming the concrete lanes [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:52am
we step out into angry tears rushing down from the sky, fistfuls of rainwater crashing on the black concrete streets.
“shit, it’s raining!” my uncle exclaims.
i shove a cap on my head, pull a cheap plastic raincoat over myself, and rev the engine of my motorbike to warm it up. it sometimes shuts off in the middle of the road and i have to step down hard on the starter, a metal rod with a plastic tip. when that happens, there’s usually a heavy force pushing back from the rod, like an invisible hand holding on that doesn’t quite want me to leave. it takes a few tries and you have to rotate the handlebar accelerator at the right moment, but eventually something catches and the engine snaps to life. then you rotate the handlebars some more to make it roar.
we tread water, watching little red squares light up on the back of motorbikes as people press down on their brakes. the air is cool and finds its way beneath my raincoat. we shout words back and forth. jokes, self-made proverbs made on the spot, proclamations that there is no such thing as tomorrow. a comment on the niceness of the rain. half of it is incoherent but it doesn’t matter, i find myself laughing just for the sake of laughing. too much shit, too many problems, too many people with brown eyes matching the dirt all around, too many people driving SUVs when some can’t even buy new clothes for themselves. shouting and laughing, that’s how i spend my time, the rest just sort of melts into cyclic thoughts and flashbacks of people and memories i used to know. to my family and friends i am probably just a faint image, imprinted somewhere in the back of their minds where they keep books they’ve read but can’t quite remember anymore, where phone numbers are missing digits from lack of use. i am forgetting that other world, where none of this exists and where it wouldn’t make any sense, and i don’t miss it one bit. i came here for this, to know this. a car rushes by and sends a wave of water over us, soaking the legs of our pants.
“holy shit!” i yell.
“motherfucker!” my uncle screams.
we both laugh at our misfortune, at the insanity of it all, at the simple things in life that don’t mean much unless you take it as it is, just moments in time. laughing and crying, they’re both pretty much the same thing. it’s just what you decide to interpret, which you think is proper for the occasion. i look forward to lunch daily, where we walk to the same old eating place and order almost the same food, every day. i work hard during the day, analyzing target markets and fishing for adjectives to make people want to invest in the company, sporadically running off on errands on my motorbike (which stays above 40 km/hr most of the time). because it’s my family’s, and it could be big quite soon. i could be rich or barely squeezing by, and it doesn’t matter. i have absolutely no idea where i’ll be next year, and it doesn’t matter.
i drive fast because it’s exhilarating, i look forward to eating because food tastes good, i laugh with my cousins and uncles because life is sad and life is happy. most times i haven’t more than a buck in my pocket because i’ve either spent it showing my relatives how Americans run a night on the town or i’ve given it all away to the street people. nothing left to hold in my hand, nothing to worship behind plastic protectiveness. i’ve got all i need on my body right now, and that’s a brain, a functioning body, memories and the hope of better things to come. the rest is extraneous.
the other day an old man in a taxi-bus asked me for directions and today some new students mistook me for a native Vietnamese. i’m a shadow, a sad shadow, a happy shadow, and i live to eat, not the other way around.