Wednesday.06.09.04
thoughts on the grill [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:08am
looking back on this blog i’m quite surprised at the length. this thing is crammed with words, words repeating, sad words, happy words. i think to date only a few people have read the entire thing and i wonder what they think about it all? their vision of London and Vietnam has been given through my eyes, a faulted human just like every other fool out there.
i had been working on a business plan for the past 6 weeks and finally finished. me, the computer science major with aspirations of wandering the world teaching english, i wrote a business plan that, after everything is said and done, will number close to 40 damned pages. the business plan is for money, for investment money, so a group of people can spend money in order to make more money. so they can buy shit they don’t need and die in a better state than the one they came through. i remember getting paid, and for some reason money struck me as horrible. the smell, the look, the idea of people stepping over each other just to get a piece of it, made me sick. and as entrenched as i am in business right now, money still digusts me. i spend money to make money, i spend money to eat and pass the day, and i feel guilty everytime i do. the only time it feels right is when i take everything in my pockets and shove it into some street kid’s hands. but when you think about it, that money isn’t doing shit. nothing does anything.
there’s a janitor woman here who always wears the same light blue shirt and pants. she looks almost like a doctor in the pale uniform. i see her throughout parts of my day, sweeping the stone floors or cleaning some other part of the building. she smiles a lot and talks to everyone. people would call her “nhie^`u chuye^.n”, someone who gossips and is intrusive with her need to know. sometimes i think she’s a spy from the powers that be, making sure our company doesn’t do anything excessively wrong. and other times she’s just the janitor lady, her life imagining itself into my mind. she watches the television in the glass house when she’s free and comments every other minute, sort of like my mom. i’ve been here more than 4 months and i don’t even know her name.
my relationship with my cousins and uncles has slowly settled into an ambiguous state where i’m not sure if they hate me, see me as a fool, or accept me as the one who’s right. when i first came here they slacked off all day, chatting online, doing as they pleased. no one dared to say anything because they were family. and somewhere along the line, among the fucked up things i saw and experienced, something snapped and everything changed. at first they welcomed it.. knew that it was what needed to be done. no more messing around int he office while people worked. put in some help when help’s needed. but after awhile, the responsibility lapped them. there’s a distinct difference in how the vietnamese view life. if given the chance, they’d coffee their days away, spending what little money they had on things that could never make them more money. once, i had moved towards this idea. take life easy, smell the roses, relax and enjoy the sunset. you only have one life to live right?
and then the dirty child hands came, the gaunt faces of grandmothers and grandfathers begging, 15,000 prostitutes with wasted futures. those who didn’t choose their lifestyles, and those who did, and a conglomerate of confused motorbike honking. in college i read a lot, felt i could do something and change the world. you don’t change the world… the world changes you and what you become after affects the world. affect.. not change.
today a girl came in to start work as my assistant. in a few more weeks another person will come and the three of us are going to try to get this place called Japan to do business with our company. it’s so complicated, so crazy, so simple, so sad… this world we live in. i know once my blog held objective descriptions of faraway places and the faces of sad little children. i haven’t seen the orphans with the broken bodies and devastated skin for more than a month. i abandoned them, because i didn’t have time, because of business. 6 months ago if i had heard this, i would never believe it. i am still fighting goddammit, i am still fighting… the nights pull past midnight and i’m still fighting, still believing that change is possible. the methods have changed but i’m still here.
a few days ago a small child fell asleep and put his tiny feet over my legs. just the sleepy hum of rain on a car, an old friend, and a moment without the pain. my past often comes to me and it’s odd that they seem to push me farther everytime i visit them. i remember the stupidest details, like laying on top of a frozen lake among snow, running through a forest at the peak of night, watching an amazing meteor shower from the top of mountain clearing, stupid little jokes various friends have shared with me and i with them. i remember the pain i inflicted on others, the fucked up shit i did, the good shit i did, the times i felt human and the times i felt like nothing. i imagine everyone else ot be the same but i have no right to speak about anyone else. my blog.. it’s become nothing. i want to understand all of this… put order to chaos of seemingly irrelevent experiences that lead up to an equally irrelevent existence. what the hell is the point of anything?
my past often comes to me and keeps pushing me away. as if it wants me to move on.
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