countryside memory 1 [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:47pm
i sat on the ground, looking out.

“here, have some Thanh Long fruit my boy” my countryside uncle offers me. all around are rice fields and Thanh Long fruit trees. you eat so much you get sick of them, he had said. you never go hungry, you can eat your fill of Thanh Long all you want someone else had said. the two kids stood on the dirt path, looking out at their home, their heaven, the peace of earth. in front are two farmers, bending down and working at their fields. my uncle pointed to them and said,

“see those people over there? they work 12 hours a day, dawn to dusk, and then go home to cook for their families. after that they watch a bit of tv and then it all starts again the next day. isn’t life rough?”

my countryside family have a smile about the way they talk, eyes perpetually wrinkled with laughter. my uncle’s voice is soft, slow, and surprisingly comforting. the whole concept of living among family this large, of walking for 10 minutes in any direction and being able to walk into a room without knocking, to sit and talk as i had done those few days. everything was so simple, so happy. i murmured a yes and we continued to look at the sky, darkening by the minute as it began to sleep. the moon, as bright as ever, stood above, large face peering down at us. the picture i took, which you can see below, is of two of my cousins. my family living in the US, particularly those my age and younger, have no idea who they are. and i feel sorry for them, because i left a simple Vietnamese countryside a better person than i was when i came in, despite all the muck that comes with being human. they’re all angels, beautiful smiling angels, from the gurgling newborn carried on the hip of a child to the toothless grin of an 84-year old man who spoke fluent French and contemplated worldly facts of which even i was unaware. my family.

in the orphanage today i peer close to the faces of the children, bend down to those who will spend the rest of their lives lying on their stomachs. wide open smiling mouths and closed eyes are the responses from an action as simple as a hand on the back. sores, blue salve, and at one bed dried puke pooled at the boy’s mouth, a row of ants marching in from the outside to pillage the nutrient. a smell of feces, a baby holding onto the side of a pen as he’s wiped down after being hosed, and how dirty they all are, how happy they are despite their destitute condition, how sad their eyes when you look close. they cry out to me, shout my name, call me teacher teacher as they wave to me to come over. a boy waves a bottle of milk in my face and i see that the sucker on it is worn out, ripped with a crooked hole where there should only be a pinpoint opening. at the window the girl with the monstrous skin and slow movements plays with an empty snack bag. they have nothing to play with but garbage that can be found in the street. the boy with the enlarged head and sweet voice cries out to me,

“teacher! teacher! can you ask her to give me the bag? i want to play with it.”

i coax the grey skinned girl to pass it, and she slowly gives it to the boy. she grabs the bars of the window and peers outside.

“unngh!” she shouts, pointing outside.

“yea… look, a woman.. a boy…” i begin to explain to her. “people….. society….” i find myself murmuring, rambling on in Vietnamese, instinctual response to a child living a life from behind window bars, within a cage of a pen. below are people in motion, students at plastic tables upon dirt paths, a continual bustle that is the story of this city. i pat the girl’s back and it is hard as a rock, like the ones i drove across to get here, embedded in dusty brown dirt.

it comes time to go and i wave, they wave, and they all shout. goodbye teacher, come back again please, goodbye teacher.

goodbye my friends, i’ll be seeing you again.
Comments (1)
and what proof does awe give? [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:47am

and one more song for the breaking morn [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 7:41am
i don’t know how many times i’ve stopped to look at the sky and the rush of lights on the streets around me, but it’s been all i’ve been doing for the past few days.

everything is black, something is said, and then a few hard knocks on the door and i’m awake. i brush aside blue gauzy mosquito netting and open the door to see my cousin.

“let’s go…”

our last day in Phan Thiet.

on the road the motorbike shakes on springy shock absorbers, swirls of dust spilling out from the wheels of motorbikes around us. in the whir of the street i see a young boy i recognize, a mentally slow boy who attends the deaf and mute class at the School of Love because he can’t keep up with the regular class. i tell my cousin to turn around and we’re back at the place where i spot him, an unfinished brick square house with rough skinned workers standing ankle deep in sand and construction materials.

“hey! remember me?” i ask.

he stares at me as if i’m some sort of apparition come back to haunt an old home. i had seen him only a few days ago when i went to visit the school, and he had recognized me then. a man nearby, dirt stained baseball cap pulled tightly down to the ears, stares at me with unmoving expression.

“where are you going?” the boy asks without emotion. i tell him i’m going to get a haircut and then head back to Saigon. other men on top of the roof and inside the house hammer away, dust rising into an atmosphere already infused with dust. the boy stares at me until my smile drips off my face.

“hey… you go back to school tomorrow right?” i ask.

his fingers hold onto something, flicking back and forth, feet planted firmly in the sand covering the yard. he nods his head.

“tell everyone i said hello, ok?” i tell him.

he continues his look and i tap my cousin on the shoulder. we turn around and my cousin turns his head slightly, not wholly leaving the view of the road in front of him.

“the kid doesn’t remember you.”

i am taken to the countryside, pulled from the smooth and consistent concrete streets to uneven dirt roads. the motorbike rolls from one bump to the next, throwing me into the air, scenery flowing like water flows down a river. small squarish houses line the sides, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, other times on both sides. wooden goes the average house, concrete goes the rich. many of the fences are made of what appears to be old barbed wire twisted in repeating waves, lethal rusted remants of war undulating in such plain patterns that you’d think it was a normal fence if you didn’t look close enough. an unbelievably crystalline pond greets us at one bend, small flowers budding white floating serenely to the side. the morning sun comes down across the water, striking it at the surface and bringing a light to everything around the pond. breathless, i ask my cousin what type of flowers they are. he says something and i forget. i ask a lot of specific questions that i know deep down i won’t remember. i think i just want to hear the name, feel the grace of the sound on the tip of my tongue, let it sink down into my being. where i can never recall the name again, but where i know something has changed.

the occasional motorbike passes by, a man driving a crate of goods to sell, a man heading to things that must be done. deeper in we pass children in school uniforms, white shirts on blue slacks, smiles in laughs and laughs in smiles as bright as the sun shimmering down the pond. little shoots of rice crop stick out from shallow pools of water, filling massive square tracts of farm land all around. the brown of the city has now effectively been pushed to the dirt road, where it belongs, and on the skin of those around us. but everything else is full of color, green fields that span to the edge of all vision, piercing blue sky above, foggy grey mountains in the distance.

at my great uncle’s house i drop off my bag and am greeting by a small beautiful girl of about 10, carrying a baby across her hip. one of my small cousins, she smiles when she sees me and the other little cousins come out. their faces are shining beacons of innocence, eyes so full of light that i can’t help but smile back. we head out to take pictures of the countryside and two of them tag along, the small girl and an even younger boy. they trail behind and giggle. and then i challenge them to a race and their giggles turn to laughter.

“race huh?” the little boy asks. more giggles. i start running and they shout with laughter, pushing their feet into the ground to try and beat me. they have the benefit of energy but i got the long legs. one of my strides equals 10 of their little pitter patters and i find myself winning over and over. i tease them,

“oh man! you countryside kids are supposed to be really fast! and you let this gawky overseas vietnamese beat you!”

they go crazy with laughter and run ahead, shouting, “race!! race!!”, to the point where they start winning because i’m exhausted. i guess in the long run energy wins over long legs.

later that night we return on the same path, this time under the blanket of darkness. the headlight of the motorbike reveals parts of the dirt road and green plantlife on the sides. my cousin turns his head halfway towards me and remarks,

“you know, you’re the first overseas Vietnamese in our family to stay and play in the countryside. the first!” he chuckles.

we shuttle from house to house, visiting various relatives, each time sitting on wooden benches and sipping strong tea from tiny porcelain cups. with every meal, every conversation, time doesn’t exist and silence injects itself into the middle of the sentences passed back and forth. i remembered silence back in the States and it was an uncomfortable type of silence. in the rush rush of American society, silence is a sign that something is wrong, something isn’t being done when it should be. but here, particularly within the countryside, silence is nature’s punctuation, the existential comma that only serves to remind us that life isn’t meant to be rushed. at my aunt’s house, a box of a place shining light from open doors into a pitch black field of Thanh Long fruit trees, i sit and talk to people i’ve never seen before in my life. i don’t know them yet it’s as if i’ve known them all my life. the reflection of the florescent lights off of the standard house paint seeps the familiar blue-green, a warm glow on everything inside. outside the children talk and joke. crickets and a billion other insects hum lowly, a symphony of living music. every few minutes a slight reverbating ror ror ror increases in tempo until there is nothing but a loud shouting of tiny voices, speaking in a croaky singsong language i can’t understand. frogs, hundreds of them, thousands of them. and then the chk chk chk chkchkchkchkchk clicking of geckos, hanging on the walls and on trees. little creatures that listen to everything said, as well as the peaceful silences of things unsaid.

the rain comes down hard, bringing a layer of deepness to a place already overflowing with deep. we stop to buy a raincoat and return to the dirt road. the rain slaps against our faces and my cousin laughs so loud it sounds like a shout. and then i do the same.

finally we are back at my uncle’s house around 12 midnight, a one story wooden box of a home. the toilet consists of walking far enough so that no one sees, and just going. i am pointed to a hammock strung to a sturdy wooden block running across the top of the room, an old tire stretched at one end as it holds the hammock above the ground. old bricks that look like they’ve been handmade cover part of the floor. it’s near midnight and slowly people pile in. before i had asked my cousin which house was his and he replied, with a smile,

“it doesn’t matter. every house is my house… we can sleep anywhere. we’re all family.” and it clicked, that oddness which tags along as you take in new surroundings. we had been going through relatives’ houses all day long and not once had we knocked on a door. the children floated among the houses as if this whole place was one large house, a backyard consisting solely of rice fields and dirt roads and far-off mountains. my uncles and cousin and great uncle sit and talk. i ask why they haven’t slept yet and they tell me it’s because i’m here, because the atmosphere is so lively. once again i hear the phrase,

“you’re the first in our family overseas to spend time in the countryside, to stay half the night.”

we laugh, joke, and i am so at peace i think maybe i could stay a week, a month, hell i’ll stay a year. i’ll learn how to go to the bathroom in the fields, i’ll go into town and buy enough drinking water every few days, i’ll race with my little cousins until i pass out from heat exhaustion. anything, anything to get away from the muck of the bullshit, of the ugliness i have known from watching everything around me all my life. and then reality sets in. i have to work tomorrow. important stuff to do. reality. i swing on my hammock, following my uncle’s example in the hammock beside me. my uncle’s hammock is strung to another wooden pole, old fishing net strapped to one end. the weight of my uncle on the wooden pole makes a creaking sound. creak, creak, creak goes the sporadic swinging. a gecko clicks its nagging call. i swing and swing, the sounds of night coming together in a rythmic motion, setting the tone for the conversation.

“come back next year ok?” my uncle tells me, breaking the silence. “you can stay in the countryside for a week.” he smiles.

the hammock answers for me, swinging back and forth, the rope creaking slightly against the wooden pole as it brushes past. a single lightbulb strung from an old wire sits against the pole, glowing pale yellow on some forgotten calender stuck under it. and above is a tube of florescence, pulling out the pale green and dusty brown of this surreal place, a background for conversation that means so much to me. the phone rings at 1:00am and everyone slowly gets up. we start picking up our bags.

“they’re coming. well.. it’s time to go” someone says. my aunt shuffles around, helping us with our things. i don’t want to leave.

on the minivan we’re crammed in the back, the driver and his accomplice driving to each house and honking five or so short bursts. at each house a man or a woman or a crew of people pull out of barbed wire fences and wooden gates. they are pulled quickly into the van by the accomplice and the van is moving before the door is even shut. the accomplice runs and jumps on, slams the door, and onto the next house we go. my eyes are fixed on the sky outside. the moon comes out so early here and it’s huge. i’m not sure if it’s due to the difference in latitude, but it’s amazing. in the minivan we pass within inches of roaring trucks, the driver pressing the horn incessantly. the sky is clear, no tall buildings, no smoggy pollution. all i can see is a looming moon spreading rays of silky white outwards in perfectly concentric circles, massive clouds dancing all around. it looks as if someone has laced gigantic bags of flour with explosives and detonated them in the sky. on the ground, coconut trees outline the sky with fingerlike leaves. the ground moves, the minivan we’re in moves, but the moon, it stays. it is the night mistress and the beauty it gives is beyond reach. one day i won’t be here, one day everyone i know will have passed to the dust from which we came. but the moon…. it stays.

a fitful sleep and then we’re dumped on the side of a Saigon street.

“back in Saigon!” i shout to my half-asleep cousin and uncle.

the sun is out and the moon is gone.
Comments (2)

silver on black [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:24pm
many times, in the midst of some action or event, i imagine myself running. the background blurred, there’s nothing holding me down, like the kids i’ve seen here running alongside creaky bicycles and the ever-present motorbike. sound cut out, i’m flying with every push off the dusty street.

last night we drove through a street that was full of energy, packs of children playing in a way that made them look like they were dancing, little arms and little legs in smooth motion. everyone in a beautiful dance.

i’ve got a few bucks in my pocket and a promised ride back to Saigon for the night. there’s nothing to want except the chance to hope, right?
Comments (0)

one last song for the afternoon hour [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:37pm
in my uncle’s house in the middle of the countryside i sit on newly furnished white tiles, the smoothness a cool comforting touch to my bare feet.

“i bet the countryside seems so different from America, doesn’t it?” one of my uncles asks me.

i walk out and stand on top of ledge sticking out of a column. far off the mountains are dim in the background, green rice paddies level on the ground below. in some areas Thanh Long fruit fields cover the land with prickly fingerlike leaves. a few buffalos and cows stand still in the distance, like motionless figurines placed for visual effect. i breath in deep so many times my lungs almost feel cleared of the muck and haze of Saigon’s polluted air. i feel at peace, something i haven’t felt in a long time. my uncle remarks,

“the countryside is beautiful only if you return to it once in awhile from the city. it’s boring being here all the time.”

later we walk through a valley walled by steep mounds of bright red sand, the rocky surroundings crumbling in your hands if you press hard enough. we walk barefoot, the six of us, on the sandy path between. a small current flows over the sandy floor, washing our feet, a stream of cool and pure comfort. the path weaves through, children run around splashing, and the occasional Vietnamese tourist treads through with camera in hand. the scenery then changes to towering coconut trees, arching their trunks into the valley and up into the sky. my uncle points to the sky and tells me the moon is out, in the middle of the day. we climb up the sides of the valley, me almost falling to certain death (or massive injury) a few times as we bolt up more than 40 meters in some areas. a small waterfall, fallen coconut trunks as bridges, and we are on top of the valley. now my vision turns green, the coconut trees in full proliferation and in command of everything. a man tends to his field and we ask a girl by a stand to bring us some coconuts to drink.

we walk along fields barefoot and i lose myself in the coconut trees, long slender trunks curving up into the sky, ending in bursts of threadlike leaves. it grows dark and we walk back, finding ourselves back on the sandy middle ground with water flowing about our ankles. some of my uncles walk ahead and all i can see are their silhouettes, rolled up pant legs and steady gait pushing through the sand. more coconut trees loom above, cutting their black outlines against the dark blue sky. sounds of insects and a low howl of some animal release themselves into the night air and i suddenly realize that there isn’t a single sound of civilization here. no revving of motorbike engines, no drizzling murmur of television sets, no ringing of cell phones. the moon is our only light. my throat emits a small cry, a broken shout of resignation, a final acceptance of something i can never understand. i murmer to myself, over and over, god this is so beautiful. my uncle looks at me from the side and i can imagine him smirking.

“you don’t have this in America do you?”

i can see stars.

later i am on the back of my uncle’s motorbike, pulling out of a parking space, when a small dirty girl with a handful of tickets walks by. she raises her hands in a halfhearted attempt to make a sale. i pull out all the money in my shirt pocket, totalling no more than two or three dollars, and hold it out. without thinking her tiny hands grab the money, kung-fu grip making sure i have no chance to take back what she perceives as a mistake. i hold it for a second and then let it go, smiling. she turns back to the side and resumes her selling. not a word passes between the two of us. like all things good, my smile soon quickly fades and my thoughts disappear into the road running below us.

the dark brown sights around me, of old shuffling women, of small young children, of lottery tickets held tightly in hand, all grab at me and pull in all directions, silent stares stretching me from the inside out. i can’t do anything but let it happen, my soul falling into some deep sleep that holds no dreams.

the night raid [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:31pm
at 2 in the morning i’m sitting on the street with my three other relatives, eating Hu Tieu and watching a deep yellow light spread across the four storied buildings, a handful of people sitting on plastic stools on the sidewalk below. blackness is the story and the low yellow light are the words. the feeling of living in a dream is the contrast.

“that’s one amazing sight,” i comment to no one in particular.

at 3am i’m on a Mercedes-Benz minivan, a type of transport that is seen everywhere here. we drive around the nearly empty streets and i am hypnotized. the lights are so yellow, so melancholic… the air so warm. we stop outside a place where apparently they’re assembling newspapers for delivery, a load of people working. a prostitute stands on the side, waving at the back of a reversing taxi. the driver and another man gets out, grabs a sack of newspapers, and stuffs it next to my seat. the prostitute and another working girl get in the back. from place to place we go, picking up people, one consisting of a couple and their young son. around 4am i see people readying their stands on the side of the street. a chubby old woman power-walks to the side. amazing. it is so peaceful, the night here. i feel like i’m drifting….

despite the intense calm of the outside scenery i fall asleep and wake up around 5am. a sky alit with the rising sun greets me and i grab my camera, taking a shot within 5 seconds. the streetlights run alongside palm trees and a burning sky, twisting in graceful arcs to the side in some areas, straight down like a runway for an alien spaceship in others. people on motorbikes on the sides, cars, passing into incoming traffic to pass slower moving trucks, honking. every night in Saigon i fall asleep to the sounds of trucks and cars and motorbikes doing their deliveries and today i am in one.

then, we’re away from the city, among a small nowhere town with nowhere commodities sold in stores that haven’t quite opened for the day yet. out of thin air mountains rise out of the ground and i see large masses of farm fields, small tropical trees accentuating an already unbelievable sight. eden then disappears and we are in a town center. a man on two gigantic buffalos the size of small trucks crosses the street. he is standing, barefoot, upon a rusty cart being pulled by the massive beasts. i fall asleep and then am awoken by a light tapping on my shoulder.

“hey, little brother… i need the fare.”

i am in Phan Thiet and recognize the sights immediate, the low-rise buildings, the countless disenfranchised on the sides of the street, kids and old people on bicycles. and glistening new cafes, signs that things are getting better along signs that things still haven’t changed.

i walk to the school and see my students and they seem tired. the younger kids have off for the week. i recognize the change in my older students, once young 2nd graders, the start of a hardening of the spirit. they are coming to grips with their future lives, impoverished things that lack the sweet scent of hopes and dreams. i had noticed it two years ago, a distinct separation between the younger and older class, the older class much more somber and tired than the younger. and now my students, once spilling with joy, are a fraction of their former selves. i saw it when i visited them a few months ago, i just didn’t want to admit it. two of the girls have broken stares, and i suspect abuse. when we leave a few don’t say goodbye. instead they go along on their creaky bicycles, floating away from me in surrounding brownness. i dont teach here anymore because i don’t have the time. i imagine i come here to show them how i’ve changed, how i’m still the same, and them with me. we are like two sides of a former family on the banks of a river, wondering at how the other is doing despite looking right at each other. i feel sad for them, for me, for this place, for the world that doesn’t speak for anyone. brownness, the color of Phan Thiet.

i’ve seen so much today… and i want to write it down, give it out, show you why this place is so beyond describable. i usually end my blogs after writing all i can, after the fire has left my stomach, but right now i can’t… something is out in me. i’m sorry. maybe some other time.
Comments (2)

awake at 7:30 in the morning [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 8:18am
it’s early and i’m sitting in front of my computer, doing the usual email checking and blog reading. it’s pretty damn early and outside are the sounds of a city waking up. i had put off the fact that i was returning to Phan Thiet for quite some time but I can’t anymore. late tonight, or should i say early tomorrow, 4am, a bus is going to pull up to the front gates of the company and i’m going to throw myself and a bag on it for the 4 hour trip back to the place that haunts me like bad decisions haunt a chronic indecisive. i’m not the same person i was when i came back from Phan Thiet those few months ago. funny how such a short time can mean so much.

tonight we’re celebrating short-stout’s birthday, a bit earlier than the actual date, but it’s cool because who really gives a shit what day you were born. it’s all symbolic anyway. we’re going to drink and waste ourselves, and i’m going to crash on a bus that’s going to take me back to my students. i hope they’ll be there. i hope they’re still laughing.

the things unwritten in this blog would make for one crazy read. maybe someday.

upon reflection, it appears that silence is not the absence of sound but the presence of nothing.
Comments (1)

question [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 11:59pm
we dehumanize ourselves.

if you’ve seen the things i’ve seen, you wouldnt drive so carefully. you’d hold onto the handle until it reached 100 km/hr, until the dull soundless pain ends with a magnificient crash of metal on flesh and flesh on concrete.

all around me are familiar faces
worn out places
worn out faces
bright and early for the daily races
going nowhere
going nowhere
Comments (0)
the speed of sound [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 2:55am
i drive so fast on my motorbike that i have this feeling it’s only a matter of time before this blog suddenly stops getting updated. i’m not sure what it is, i can’t put my finger on it, but my regard for safety and common sense has gone out the window. or it could be that i’m over-confident in my ability to pick up on my surroundings.. driving in Saigon is like trying to predict the course of colliding atoms. people move as one uncongealed mass, a school of humans, and you kinda have to predict 20 steps ahead as you drive. the dynamic changes, each motorbike is a scenario in its own and has its own variables. this is what happens when you endure four years of computer science in college. i drive so fast that even the hotheads are beginning to give me cursory glances, the new dumb idiot in town who doesn’t care about being splattered on the street by the smallest mistake. i gotta say though… it’s some exhilirating shit going 60 km/hr down a road that knows no rules, people coming at you from the opposite direction because they don’t feel like using the correct lane, all your troubles swept behind you in a fury of gasoline exhaust and rumbling engines.

he came into the office, stumbling and reeking of alcohol.

“shit, you drank again?” someone exclaims. he’s been downing a beer a day, maybe more, and i fear him alcoholic. i try to say something to the other kids but it’s the way things are. they say, “what can you do? if he wants to drink are you going to hold him back?” they leave a man to his own desctruction if he desires it, because it’s his damned right. right?

i’m a walking contradiction. crippled hands grope me from behind pale yellow bars and on the other side i’m handed forms and asked about business. the smell of feces and the icy blast of an air conditioner which costs more than what most people here can hope to make in a month. a child with an enlarged head and poisonous looking boil on his back hip eating chips of paint as i try to slap it away from him, and a communal conversation about what-ifs and the future and making it big in Vietnam’s new market. the nurse yells at him to sing, SING goddamit and he sits back, his gigantic head holding gaping eyes, and he sings, sugary voice puncturing upwards with melodic stabs. short raspy breaths. i hate business, because it dehumanizes, and yet i am immersed in it, find myself fighting both a battle in the dust fields of starry eyed cripples and a flood of paperwork, for money, for money. within a year’s time i may have taken part in bringing a company to multi-million dollar status, or i may still be just another washed up dreamer back in the states to continue doing what it is fate wants me to do.

yesterday seems so far away, and the months before i arrived on Vietnam’s bittersweet soil seems like lifetimes past. my days are spent shouting, laughing, brooding, and wondering at what’s to come in these crazy, crazy times.

damn, i know this song.
Comments (2)

knockin’ on heaven’s door [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 6:05pm
these past few days have been spent in the prison of thoughts and the odd. people i’ve met in my life, they’ve become relegated to passing memories and bring about a twitch of recognition at the most random of moments. how did we come to get to this place, how did 21 years of my life go by so fast? i remember sitting in a classroom, staring out a window at unmoving trees and a lawn greeting concrete roads, 21 years of an average American upbringing with the average little adventures that make up every life.

last night my uncle and i end up in an expat bar, foreigners crowded down the long thin hallway that emptied out into a cramped dark dancing space, and then upstairs which held a walkway looking down. jeers and sneers, shouting and smiles, a beer in every hand and half the partiers actual local vietnamese that have the money or motivation to be hip. my uncle stands against the wall, near the people dancing, smoking a cigarette in one hand and a water bottle in the other. i ask him if he wants to move to the front, where it’s cooler, and he shakes his head. he wants to be near the dancing foreigners. he wants to be them, like everyone else in this confused version of a modern Asian city. he stares into the crowd, i stare at the crowd, and the crowd pulsates to the beat of music orignating somewhere half a world a way. i know this song…

the other night i sit in the same place i eat dinner with my uncle and cousins every day, staring at a towering no name hotel. neon lights ring the top of the square building, touching off the reality that there is nothing in the space surrounding it but darkness. nearby on the building wall above us is more neon, a neon light for every person, spilling its light onto the power cables nearby. the cables look like they’re glowing red, fiery redness on power cables that sway just enough so that you know what you’re looking at is real. i suppose.

the lottery ticket sellers come in spurts, going table to table and sticking out their hands, offering their souls on their sleeves for another sale, for another day. they’re mostly children or older folk, the children dirty like they havent taken a bath in a while, the old folk with leathery skin behind cool clear eyes. they shuffle in and stand, looking around, pushing themselves to each table. they never come when you eat - i once heard that the Vietnamese value food and the act of eating as something almost sacred. the Vietnamese have so many different dishes and particular ways of furnishing each, and spend their holidays showered in food, that i don’t doubt what i hear. the beggars and lottery ticket sellers, at leaving people to eat, obey some higher order, ingrained rules, that i have long forsaken. for me to even be here in the first place, to contemplate living here or moving elsewhere that isn’t home, i’m outside of it all.

an old woman lottery ticket seller slowly ambles in, heading towards a recently vacated metal table. she picks up a plastic colored cup and raises it to her mouth. nothing. she walks past the table and up the step to another table, asking if the occupants are using a cup to the side. they say no and she picks it up, her other hand reaching for the big red plastic container holding tea. small wiry hands pour the tea into the cup, and with the utmost grace she raises the cup to her mouth, empties it in one long draw, and puts it down. her eyes search the area and sees me looking her way. she shuffles over and smiles.

“buy a ticket sonny, for me?”

i take out 10,000, 60 cents worth of Vietnamese money, and place it against the book of numbers she holds. you check your old tickets with the numbers to see if you win. i never win. i’ve had the experience of having money given back to me, the seller too prideful to accept what they probably consider pity money. it’s not pity money to me. it’s money that i don’t deserve, that could do good in someone else’s hands. i ask her,

“mam.. i don’t want to buy any tickets. but is it ok if i give you this?”

there is a second of confusion on her wrinkled face, and then a smile stretches across her tired face. her eyes are shining, were shining all the while, and she replies,

“oh, why thank you, thank you.” she bows, and i bow, repeating her words, “thank you.”

behind her stands ready another old man, white tickets in his hands, looking off into the wall across the compound. we finish and leave. outside a small girl with dark skin and a short haircut prances back and forth on the browned concrete, two other children beside her pulling a tiny dog on a rope. they laugh and the dog runs with them, back and forth, lightly stepping off the ground to land in another patch of concrete, happiness on the faces of all present. stacks of colorful food and amenities are stacked pyramid fashion outside someone’s house, a concrete square inset on top of a concrete world, dirt intertwining where the money has not yet reached. the colors are sharp and match well with the florescent light bulbs strung about, long tubey looking things that seem more to cry light than shine it. the children laugh, an older woman smiles at them, and i cross the street staring at everything around me, trying to make sense of things. if you could see this, and everything else that went on here, you would understand. you would understand this goes beyond every single one of us, you would understand there is nothing to understand but the experience itself.

come take this badge off of me
i wont wear it anymore
its getting too dark
to see
i feel like i’m knocking on
heaven’s door

knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
knock knock knocking on heaven’s door

come take these guns off of me
i wont shoot a thing anymore
someone save them for me
i feel like i’m knocking
on heaven’s door

knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
knock knock knocking on heaven’s door
Comments (0)

emotional proliferation [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 7:01pm
in one week, the things i’ve seen and heard have changed me so much that i can’t even recognize myself. i sit here staring blankly at this screen, wondering what else i can write. my steps are surer because i’ve finally seen it, i’ve finally found the beat residing beneath all the superficial store signs and marketable human advertisement. i came to Vietnam to learn about Vietnam, to push my understanding to a higher level. but no one ever told me that once you understood, you could never give it back. it’s amazing and startling to realize that what you realize in one part of the world, you’ll carry with you for the rest of your life.

i stared down a long open space above a corrugated metal roof, the dirt tucked in choice crevices. i loomed above a low Saigon city skyline, a dirty browned man in a doorway, a dirty browned woman pushing a cart of dirty brown things. a woman in ragged clothes and rounded hat and her little kid pushing lottery ticket sales. the child laughing, his round face exposing open teeth and whiteless eyes, puffed up face spilling out human noise behind a raised wall with prison-like bars. a stare right through me, incinerating my whole being, leaving me with nothing but the most crude of humanity.

it’s not about the poverty.. it’s not about anything anymore. it’s about me and the world, the world and me, you as a faceless individual reading my shit words and trudging along like everyone else. it’s so brilliant, knowing none of us can ever truly understand each other, the things unsaid melting into the earth like our bodies will one day, when we stop breathing.

Comments (0)

the difference in the encounter [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:33pm
on a ferry across a large expanse of water a man sits on a motorbike with two younger men behind him. the ferry is a simple rectangular boat, the 40 or so motorbikes crammed in a U-shaped line, engines off. the man peels bits of rusted paint from the edge of the railing, noting,

“fuck, this thing could kill you if you fell on it.”

black plumes of smoke release themselves into the sky from somewhere near the cabin. waves, rolling, rolling, rolling…

on the pass of a stretch of land that is used just for farming i see burnt ground (improves fertility), shallow fields of water (for little rice shoots) and the most surreal thing i have seen in a really long time- gigantic looming electricity towers lining the view. a woman in peasant pajamas and conical hat bends down, working on the rice fields, and next to her is a relic of modern proportions, a dinosaur of steel shooting straight up to the sky. the electricity tower dwarfs the woman, and a feeling of amazement wrecks my senses. maybe it’s because this is Dong Nai, fairly close to Saigon, maybe it’s because this isn’t technically “the countryside”, but it’s jarring all the more. the towers hold strong looking lines of power through the skyline, tower after tower in immaculately straight lines. besides the woman working in the fields, the people who occasionally pass by on the dirt road, and the colossus towers, there is barely anyone in sight. i can see the sky for miles around, held in place by plain green fields and metal skeletons raised into forever.

someone who reads this blog from time to time said i believed in something. i thought i did… but at this point i believe in nothing. i’m not saying it just to say it.. i’ve thought about a lot and all that’s left is a dark shell of ideals that never made it through. coming here, i’ve realized a lot. too much to write down. too much to try and explain. i can’t even explain it to myself.

beads of sweat are rolling down my face, the result of an action that is rooted somewhere in the notion that what we do comes back to us, what we don’t know is not meant to be known, and that life is precious.
Comments (3)