a planet set apart from a planet set apart from a planet [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 2:45am
i shove a roll of toilet paper, a Nam Cao book, and my trip journal that i barely write in into my black knapsack. today i visit my friend from college, who just arrived in Vietnam a week ago. Tay Ninh, a 2 hour drive to a place half countryside and half town.

in the small minibus that looks like it’s about to fall apart, i am squeezed against the window as the workers cruise around the street, shouting at people to come and take a trip to Tay Ninh. there are 12 seats and they manage to swindle 15+ people into the small vehicle. the young men with the sweaty backs shout at passersby and the woman next to me curses them.

“why don’t they just go? this thing can’t fit anymore people? money grubbing assholes…”

i pass out from exhaustion and wake up in the sleepy town of Tay Ninh. i get dropped off, negotiate a meeting place with my friend’s aunt, and wait at a gas station. the girl working there looks like my friend, making me think maybe the whole town looks like her.

my friend pulls up in a brand new car with her aunt (holy crap her aunt is loaded) and it’s like we only met last week. old friends are like that, like another friend once told me over a ridiculously expensive double cheeseburger in London. your true friends, you can see them anytime and it’s like you never left. we pick Chom Chom fruits and i make fun of her for her unease with the unflushable toilet. and then i make fun of myself for not wanting to use it either.

on the road towards an amazing countryside river scene i can’t, and won’t, bother to describe, we see crowds of people on both sides of the road. the car i’m in slows down and i murmur, “what’s going on.. must be an accident.” as we pass my curiosity possesses me and forces my head to tilt up, allowing me to peer over the window. i see bare feet and black pant legs, people standing above and looking down, just like i was looking down. a bright red trickle of blood across the man’s sole shocks me and the sense of DEATH flashes across my eyes. my friend gasps. i look to the other side at the other crowd, and see another pair of legs, motorbike lying by his side. more blood, more people staring down, me just like everyone else.

i cannot see their faces.

“why isn’t anyone doing anything? why doesn’t somehow drive them to the hospital?” i repeat over and over, in a low voice, a weak and defeated cry to no one in particular. i want to shout at my friend’s brother to stop the car, so i can run out and do something. i read in a book once that sometimes no one drives the victims to the hospital unless they know them. or unless a foreigner offers them money. if they wait for the police, they will be dead by the time the ambulance arrives. i want to shout, to stop the car, to offer someone, anyone, money to get these two guys to a hospital.

“someone’s driving them!” someone in the car says. i look behind and see an old man with grey hair and stubble on his face, a sweat-stained shirt clinging to his tired looking body. behind him sits a younger man, and across the younger man lays an unconscious man, blood streaming from his face. something in me breaks and i shrivel up inside. from behind him comes another motorbike, also with two people, and the second victim lying across. my friend’s brother mentions something about this being a small town, so people know each other. i ask him,

“if no one knew the guys who were in the accident, would they drive them to the hospital?”

my friend’s brother replies, “no”. i know it’s not the case always, but it still drags my mind down to the ground, below the car. i look back again and see the old man with the grey hair and beard stubble, a tired yet determined look on his face.

“there are a lot of things i don’t like about this place” my friend says. she hasn’t been back for over a decade and now she is beginning to see clearly the little facts of a larger picture that doesn’t always fit with the ideal.

a cop asking for money. a temple, with the design of a supreme eye representing god, a religion that worships Mother Theresa, Jesus, Hindu deity Brahma, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill among others. a mentally and physically retarded man in a white robe, smiling at me and scaring the kids, bowing and gesticulating with clasped hands towards pastel colored stone lions.

i arrive back to the company to see my relatives hard at work, putting together the plan i had devised to “increase efficiency and productivity”. i shove down a pizza i order and roll up my sleeves, helping them hammer nails and drag tables across. a sense of peace swirling in the middle of some horribly dark reality, putting to fact that i am on a planet set apart from a planet, set apart from a planet.
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field mice, porcupine, deer, and yesteryear’s presuppositions [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:22am
being multiple is
being human

watching square houses trolling by
like my life
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[ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:09am
there’s talk about something happening, and then it happens. you can’t plan for things like this.. like the cliche that the profession chose you, not the other way around, when you know deep down it was a mutual love affair.

a chance the company could go under in one shot.

a chance the company can be worth more than i will ever be able to make in my lifetime.

i’m still alive (for now).

a man is slamming, gracefully, two small hammers onto rocks shaped to form perfectly melodic tones. the notes move in slow harmony and cascade back and forth. then, the slowing of tempo and a lull to false peace. he is leaning over the rocks, tapping each note with steady precision. the vision of myself and the world rises before me, an emotion, a feeling, a sentiment which cannot be visualized. i feel tears rising up to my eyes as the grey-skinned face of a girl with a hard-back stares at me from behind my own eyes. enlarged heads with enlarged eyes shouting my name. so far away. i am inside myself, spiraling down and up at the same time. it is something i can never explain, that force which had moved me here. not thoughts.. not imagination.. not even ideals. it’s the feeling you get when you hear that your grandfather has passed away, the peel of your mind as you watch children cross flooded streets wearing rags and a beaten cap. i see it everyday, along with my hope for a future that can never be reached, alongside my relatives who will never understand that efficiency is what will save their country from certain poverty. they don’t care, because they’ve got it good, in 3 square meals and hopes of a family. 2.5 kids, someone to give a shit for you if you die, meaning in this worthless world. for someone who’s seen the reality of love, the complete and utter bullshit of it, and the absolute power it has to make all things right… where do i go?

“so you’ll work on Japan ok? if things go well and you get close to getting a contract, we will fly you over there.”

i’m a speeding bullet, heading straight towards myself. i can’t claim to know myself and can’t say i really ever knew where i stood. i tried to find myself in my friends, my family, and even in love. in the end i see nothing but everything, my life flashing before my eyes every morning as i wake. it has been 5 months since i graduated and left America to “follow my dreams” and i end up flying and falling, falling and flying, writing nothings in a blog that, truly, no one reads anymore.

today the singers in their costumes sang and their voices stabbed me, over and over, and if i had blinked once more i would’ve cried for the tiny hands that once reached for my face.
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[ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:14pm
10pm and i’ve worked straight from 9am, and i’ve got so much to do, so much to do. i’m reading up on integrated supply chain management and suddenly the song i’m listening to tears me down the middle. bombs drop, people scream, and death is everywhere… all over this world. those kids in the orphanage with the broken bodies… why does nobody care?

why did i leave them?
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[ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:14pm
from inside the small room the rain sounds like a roar of voices. tiny voices, big voices, crying sad voices. a clanging of metallic purity penetrates the glass doors and i hear the tapping of metal on metal, a boy somewhere, tapping to let people know he can run and get them a bowl of soup in this drenching rain. a woman with a conical hat pushes a shoddy looking cart down the street, water tumbling down. it is like a symphony, the rain and the clanging of the metal, so clear and resonant i pull in a breath of air with a gasp. my stomach is knotted, i’m dizzy, and the world seems to change at a phenomenal pace. i had read a journal entry of the moment right before the plane landed in Saigon, in a notebook, and it was so different. where had i gone? i ended the entry with “life’s not life without a fight”, and in response to myself i wrote another entry today, proclaiming i’m still fighting. to attest to that, my body is telling me something’s up, the 10 hour workdays peeling my mind dry. yet, i love it. target markets, conical hats, break-even analysis, calls for trash, Vietnamese-american chatter and glimpses of my past. how did i get here?

in the chinese district my uncle points out the fact that the chinese have been here for centuries, have assimilated yet kept their language and customs. vietnamese words mix with chinese characters and the smell of roasting pork hits me hard. like chinatown, nyc, except 5 times as large. inside the restaurant a rough sized woman stamps her feet firmly with each step, lurching forward to take our orders. her dark eyes bore into me… i am falling…. falling.. and then some vietnamese, some chinese, and an old woman slowly shuffles in. a bag to hold the lottery tickets she is selling hangs close to her stomach. my mind swims out and i think about the company, about making a new beginning, about hitting it big so something can happen. about one day being able to give $1000 in cold hard cash to the small dirty child with the plastic bucket used for begging, just because i can, just because the thrill of the insane is what makes life worth living. something, anything. the leisure days of sipping coffee have been replaced by frenetic rushes towards something amazing, something i never quite understood. i have $200 in my bank account, a nagging feeling that in 10 years i may not be alive, and always the dreams of tomorrow. i want to keep this blog updated, i want to tell everyone the insane shit i’ve seen and thought, the things that have happened. but i can’t. even if i had time, it’s all lost on what-ifs and situations that would be misunderstood for all who cannot see this. vietnam is not what you think it is, it’s not even what vietnamese-americans think it is, people who have lived here for so long. because i watch my family and friends return and they are no longer connected to this, to the dirt and brightness and grime and to hard truth. there is no reality but the one that people here are living. i have the faint feeling my parents, and countless others, have lost that reality when they left Vietnam. i never grew up here and it’s coming back to rip me apart, make me face who i would’ve been, what i could never be, what i would never want to be. i have this blue packet of paper that says i was born in the US and that i’m an American citizen. i’m going to take this piece of paper, and everything that’s inside my foolish brain, and i’m going to fucking do something. because i can and they can’t, because i have and they don’t. because frankly, there is little else left to do.

i research and write business reports and plan for profit, and i give everything in my pockets to beggars. i spend money in the fancy districts, and then i eat with the locals with whatever i have left. i am a fucking contradiction, what i’ve always known myself to be. you can’t feel truth because truth is, in itself, a contradiction. you have to accept that everything you believe is false, to even begin to realize the amazing reality of this world.

the ragged vietnamese pop music comes out low and without bass but in my mind i’ve got the melody of a sad song sung decades ago, from a time when bombs dropped and people sold their souls to save themselves. from where my history calls me, a place i can never reach.
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erstwhile finger cup, two speeches at a seminar and business suits to go all around [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:50am
out of nowhere the small girl in the jean jacket and ruffled hair appears from the dark air in front of us, a cute face on a confident gait, 6 years old maybe. im shovelling fried frog legs and scrambled fried fish into my mouth, rice coming in after. food’s become a sort of distraction for me, taking me away from the work that has pretty much consumed my life. funny how things happen… once i looked down on business as a fool’s game, a steady climb up an unending ladder that would eventually end in unhappiness. quite possibly a mid-life crisis somewhere along the line. but i’ve had my mid-life crisis, am having it now… the way i drive and spend my days, i don’t think i expect to live past 30. she struts up to the table, her coolness stopping my hands holding the spoon with the rice in mid-air.

“mister, i’m gonna drink this tea ok.”

more of a statement than a question, pudgy little fingers reach out and grab a small and white plastic cup, the color shaded light brown from old age. she pours a bit of tea into it and drinks it slowly, watching me with her cool eyes. finally, she finishes drinking and puts the cup back in its place, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her jean jacket.

“some good tea huh?” i ask her. short-stout laughs and adds, “so luxurious, just coming and drinking like that.”

she watches us with her eyes as she steps to the side, to get out. pointing her fingers at my sweet orange drink (a sugary concoction by the name of Twister, 1/3rd the size of the foreign brand Cokes and Pepsis), she asks with a slight push of conviction,

“what’s this?”

i follow her fingers to her face, a face not smiling but not frowning either.

“it’s orange drink. some good tea huh?” i reply. she steps off and walks past the street, the vendor smiling at her as he’s bringing food to the other tables. i follow her half-stomping walk back to a small stand by the edge of the street, cigarettes and candy stuffed inside a metal container with wheels. carefree, innocent. an old woman in pajamas sits on an old lawn chair, talking to some other woman. i smile for some reason, a smile to break from the flurry of activity that fills my days, a distraction from the bigger dreams and pervading sense of duty.

i’ve been working close to 10 hours a day, taking things that were once mediocre and ugly and transforming them into something polished and worthy. it’s not the money really… even if this company explodes i don’t think i’ll expect to make more than what i’m making now, which is peanuts to what i could be making back in the States. but it’s that dream, that glimmering brass ring just out of reach that pushes me. i remember my time in London, chasing that ideal, coming here to Vietnam for the first time and feeling shocked as i walked down the dirty streets. i was afraid, in awe that i was actually doing something i thought of and wanted to do, not what someone else expected. the business could get big.. really big. and although i hated business, i am now in a position to finally affect something, bring to Vietnam what it so desperately needs right now: American-style efficiency to rake in the dough and to give people some livelihood.

short-stout and me, we run errands like crazy sometimes. i’m not sure why he does it. he said to me the other day, “you know, living by yourself away from family, you live a kind of ‘vo tu’ existence. you don’t think about the future and just live for the day.” and even though every action i perform is rooted in the implications of the future, of days where i can see my students again and not feel heavy in the chest, of the time when i can do something instead of wither at the sight of deformed hands and feet, i nodded and replied,

“there’s nothing wrong with that man.”

because the sun comes up tomorrow regardless of what i do.
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underside mirages [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:41am
the little girls stay in step with the tall foreigners, foreigners with light skin stretched luxury-taut over crew cuts and slick shavings, upon flowered shirts and cargo shorts.

“you buy you buy? you buy you buy?”

it’s nearly 2am in the morning and there are children with candy, lighters, odd bits and ends, ready to sell little shoddy convenient goods that make no difference whether they exist in your hands or not. one girl with short cropped hair down to her chin catches me watching her and comes over. her little hands offer something which my mind forgets, because i’m too busy swirling in her young baby face. can’t be more than 9. 10, maybe. i shake my head no and point to old-awkward uncle.

“ask this man, he’s a returning vietnamese, he’s filthy rich.”

the girl turns to old-awkward for a moment and meets his laugh. she swings immediately back to me, arm still reaching out. i point to my uncle and she turns back to him. finally i ask her,

“why are you selling so late?”

“because we need money for the rent,” the girl replies matter-of-factly.

“wow, you kids living by yourselves, paying the bills and stuff huh?” i joke. out of nowhere i find myself saying, “you know what you have to do? you have to make it look like you’re hurt, pretend to cry.”

i make boo-hooing sounds and she giggles. another girl with long hair tied in a simple ponytail, holding a plastic bin of goods, stops pestering one of the foreigners and looks over.

“and you have to pretend like you’re sick, real sick. like this..” and i bend my right foot at the ankle, dragging it across the ground. a quick drag, limp, stop, another quick drag. the girl laughs and her selling face vaporizes.

“like this? like this?” she asks, dragging her foot across the ground. the sound of flip flops on the concrete echo the sounds of sweeping i hear sometimes outside my window at night. her friend bursts out in laughter and also mimicks having a hurt foot. i smile, and continue,

“wait! wait! you have to stick out your hand too, you can’t just drag your feet. man, this is your profession and you don’t know anything.” i then stick out my hand, dragging my feet on the ground. one of the dance-bar prostitutes walks past me, smiling at us goofing around, a sincere smile breaking a face normally stone cold with determination to make the buck. the foreigner, who had previously ignored the little girl out of habit, is now looking amusingly at the small spectacle of a gawky vietnamese kid teaching street kids lame tricks. another small girl is behind the two girls. soon the three are all laughing and joking, copying my technique.

“and finally, you have to stick out your tongue. like you’re really sick” i add. i stick out my tongue, drag my feet across the concrete sidewalk, and make grumbling noises. the foreigner continues to watch me, a bemused expression on his face. the girl with the cropped hair breaks out into laughter and grabs my arm. i flinch for a second, touching my pocket lightly to make sure everything is there. when you live in this place for this long, you learn a few things… and one of the most important things is never trust street kids with stuff in your pocket. but as quick as my fingers brush my pockets i release and we are back to the game. a moment of shame for suspecting a little girl for pickpocketing me but this is society, this is reality, like the reality of these girls. they continue to drag their feet, sticking out their tongues and laughing.

“like this? like this?” they ask me. their questions sound like cries for attention, like the ones i used to hear from fat kids at the town swimming pool, yelling at their parents to watch them dive into cholorinated summer water. a moment of normalcy, in a continual blast of grimey “you buy”s under the cover of a vacant Saigon night.

their cries die down and i have given myself away. short-hair girl puts out her hand.

“how about 20,000, for the three of us?” i laugh and give them everything in my pockets, something like $3. they go back to their work, “you buy you buy” ringing down the nearly empty streets save for the late-night partying foreigners. they then move back to the front of the dance-bar, away from the men pushing out motorbikes from a parking garage and away from the pack of foreigners. i look at a grimey toddler squatting against the wall near a cement pot, an older woman with clean pajamas squatting next to him. i hear high-pitched laugher and follow the sounds back to the three girls, far off. the are dragging their feet and giggling.

on the motorbike me and hipster go, following short-stout and old-awkward. the fire of living three lives and being two cultures flames outward into my hands gripping the accelerator and i twist the handlebar, slam the gears, fly past short-stout and old-awkward. a taxi with drunken asian couples on the left, the driver looking at the road ahead. i speed up next to them and out of my lungs comes loud shouts of pure emotion, “WHOOO!!!! WHOOOO!!!” we fly beside them, roving back and forth.

i laugh from the bottom of my heart and laugh and laugh and laugh until there is nothing left to laugh about. the needle on the odometer shakes past 60 km/hr and the taxi disappears behind us, like the thoughts of rationality i once had.

cold cool frenzy [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:24am
i stick the flimsy key into the motorbike ignition and press the ‘Start’ button. the green Neutral light dims out and i pull out the starter, the metal rod with the plastic coated tip. a few hard pushes and it comes to life. hipster climbs on and i twist the handlebar, the revving engine causing the small vehicle to shake. snap, one gear, boom and we’re into the street. hipster shouts and laughs at the same time, grabbing at my sides.

“damn man, you start like crazy!”

i look back and grin, then crank the handlebar even farther back, peeling down the street. we pass short-stout and old-awkward on the other motorbike. hipster shouts. eventually i slow down to let the others catch up and we cruise along the empty streets, pale yellow streetlights simmering here and there. no one in the streets, metal grating covering all the square houses. the motorbike doesn’t follow any lines. it just drifts from one side to the next, at one point ahead of the other, at others behind. there are no lines to hold us down, no straight lines to tell us we’re just another step in a long string of instructions. we pass next to short-stout’s motorbike and i shout out, “where are you going?” he smiles and laughs. we shout back and forth, then talk in normal tones. i sing, hipster sings, the words pulled back by the cool night wind somewhere behind us, where our vision has no authority. the mirrors on a motorbike here are just for show. when you turn you turn on the signal or put your hand out. you turn looking ahead and flying into traffic, sometimes honking loudly so people can swerve around you or just plain slow down. always looking ahead, that’s how it has to be.

we sit at a low plastic table and no is awake except for the women cooking the Hu Tieu, a salty noodle soup with chunks of meat floating in the brothy stew.

through the meal i hear the wails of a man singing and a light strum of an acoustical guitar. on the other side sit another handful of late-night eaters. the two beggar men finish their set and slowly make their way back to their motorbike parked on our side of the street, a rusted three-wheeler that looks like it should be scrapped for salvageable metal, not ridden on a street.

“so poor here…” i murmur. short-stout catches the comment and returns,

“Doi sinh vien co cai dang guitar…” something along the lines of the life of a student having one guitar. one of the men is on crutches, explaining why the motorbike has three wheels. he must be the singer. the other old man holds a worn out guitar and climbs on the back. he must be the guitarist. they drive off slowly, talking about something.. their day perhaps, their music, or maybe how the night air was particularly cold tonight.

the boiled meat is brittle and peels off the bones, reminding me of canned beef stew back in the States. the night air cool, the night crawlers flutter about and i am alive for yet another day.

“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.

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.