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.
Comments (2)

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.

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.
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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?
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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.
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