Tuesday.05.11.04
“where do you go to be free?” [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:15am
people with their faults outlined on their surfaces, who wear their innocence on their sleeves, are easiest to love. my relatives here, many of them from the countryside, have faults. just like me, just like everyone else. hipster drinks too much sometimes and grows one of his fingernails fiendishly long. old awkward uncle gets perversely close to a girl when he gets the chance to, even at the expense of her discomfort. they’re all crude in talk, the most complex of situations becoming mere black and white when presented as such. and then there’s short-stout, who falls into a deep depression everytime his good-for-nothing girlfriend gets mad at him. he’s so naive, believing in the “get married, have children, and a thousand years of prosperity be upon you” confucian bullshit that it’s actually endearing. he’s short, smiles all the time, and finds a way to be jolly about every damned thing there is to be happy about. even the shit of the world he finds time to laugh at. yet, when this girl hangs up the phone on him he goes quiet. but all you gotta do is poke at him, throw some bait and he’ll joke back, laugh with you.
“one day, this company is gonna be big. instead of this small building we’ll be standing on the 26th floor, looking down, rich as all hell” i tell them. i throw them dreams, because dreams are what i live on. the silly and potentially foolish hope that tomorrow will be better than today, that the closing poverty really is closing. we buy lottery tickets in handfuls, telling ourselves loudly, daily, “when we hit it… we’re going to Da Lat! no, to HANOI! and we’ll each get a cell phone, not that cheap $100 one but the decked out $600 all the rich businessmen and government officials carry!”
at dinner the old lottery ticket seller woman who drank tea without paying sat on a chair nearby. the owners of the eating place had pulled out a large blue canvas and strapped it to the tree, providing dry cover for the patrons. it was raining, hard, the thunderous booming of thick water droplets like music to waiting ears. she sighs one, two, three times. on the third time comes a deep push of air, wailing from her skinny frame to my seat. she laughs when i look over, and asks, “sonny, buy a lottery ticket?”
sure, give me four i say. she hands me the tickets and i tell her to keep the change.
“oh thank you, thank you”, she bows. don’t bow, i think in my head, please don’t make me feel like an asshole more than i do already. she shuffles off to the other tables and i am back to my plate of food, now empty.
“if we win, we’re going to Da Lat” i say to a brooding short-stout cousin. his eyes flit up from the ground and a grin appears across his face. he laughs, and replies,
“yea! yea… if we win we’ll go to Da Lat.”
from the corner of my eye i watch old beggar woman in dark brown peasant pajamas, waiting patiently at the other table. hipster chuckles and shakes his head. we buy 13 cent lottery tickets to dream, and dream to live.
at least we have the hope of tomorrow.