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
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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.

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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.
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and the rains come [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:31am
my cousin turns to me and points out towards the street.

“look, rain.” he says with a half smile. i look outside and see the first few drops slap against the glass wall of the lounge we’re sitting in.

“it’s nothing, just a small drizzle.” i reply. my cousin shakes his head and repeats,

“no, it’s a big rain.”

on cue the tree leaves shake and the few sprinklings of raindrops becomes a thunderous roar, the waves upon waves of rain water slamming into the road outside. people on motorbikes bend their heads down, caught expected in the first serious afternoon rain. the scene becomes one of energy, water flowing from the ceiling onto the ground, bouncing off of ledges and umbrellas placed in anticipation of the coming rainy months, water everywhere.

“better go close the windows upstairs!” my cousin shouts as he bolts out. i also run up to close my windows, passing the janitor woman in the light blue uniform, uniform so bare it reminds me of the nurses at the orphanage.

“run, quickly!” she offers me encouragement, smiling from her chair at the bottom of the stairs. the commotion is palpable, a low excitement as people run around to secure open windows and find temporary shelter. as if they had been waiting for this moment, when the first major rains would officially bring in the rainy season, not quite at ease until nature fulfilled its cyclic expectations.

i am then on the road, hurriedly purchasing a flimsy raincoat that feels more like a cheap garbage bag than something that’s supposed to protect you from the elements. a group of people crowd to the side near a stand selling raincoats, engines idling as hands fly with cash. i speed down the road, brake, and my motorbike slips, almost throwing me to the ground. i adjust my coordination and make a note not to go too fast. on the road the falling rain is a rambling cry, shouting curses against the thin plastic layer covering me and forcing its way into my ears. the drops break across my face, streaming so much water throughout that i feel like i’m taking an extended shower. the drops hit hard upon my eyes, blinding me to the slippery road and to other Vietnamese who don’t seem to have a problem navigating through the wet streets. i find i have to brush the cool water out of my eyes with a wide sweeping motion every few seconds, because i can’t see clearly. the rain drops sting my face, tapping musical tunes upon the concrete below. and then out of nowhere, a tickling sensation forms at the bottom of my throat and erupts from my mouth, pouring out an audio feast, loud laughter for no one to hear.

i have often heard the saying that this place consists of only two seasons: the sunny season and the rainy season. welcome to the rainy season.
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retrospective youth [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:22am
on and off, on and off, that’s how it’s been with the sickness and me. it’s been a blur these past days. i’d lay down to rest and would think about how much of a blur the past week was and then, woah, how much of a blur the past few months were. keep going back and your life seems like an irrespective murmur on a symphony of equally unimportant sounds. i’m running around like i’ve got things to do and somehow end up on a 4th floor 5-starish restaurant looking down the center of Saigon, attending a power lunch as they call it. at the table are other hip foreigners planning out the fundraising soccer tournament, of which i’m sports coordinator, or something like that. despite being a charitable organization, the school is run so efficiently that it feels like any ‘ole corporate scheme set up in New York. two of the girls have a distinct London accent and one’s got a slight Canadian/upstate NY twing. as soon as i walked in the high-class building, a blast of icy air attacked me and my bones went cold. and then just as quickly, the body adjusts and it is normal. i know once i step back outside it’s going to be sweltering. i hate overexposing myself to the comforts of an artificial atmosphere regulator. besides going to the occasional nice restaurant, i rarely touch the foreign hotspots. the cost isn’t a big deal.. it’s the guilt that creeps up and rips a hole through my stomach that i can’t stand. maybe one day i’ll get to a point where i don’t feel like a complete shithead for spending on one meal what some take a week to make, but for now it’s a love-hate relationship. at least there’s little chance of getting sick. the white girl from London mentions that the cafe is owned by a Chinese-American from Seattle, hence the seattle cafe decor. i’m not sure what seattle decor looks like but i assume this is what it is. tactfully colorful tables and matching seating, large antique mirrors running along parts of the wall, brown painted on the concrete above to disguise the raw pureness of crude concrete. snappily dressed waiters and waitresses walk with a purpose from table to table, smiling wide at each request, hanging on every word, smiling like they mean it because their livelihoods depend on doing as the management says. i recall the sometimes surly take-it-as-it-is attitude of restaurant staff in the States and it all makes sense; over there it doesn’t matter much if you don’t smile like you mean it. here you can lose your job and be replaced by someone who would lick the shine off your shoes for the 50 cent an hour pay. i am quiet, as i always am among foreigners in this city. i’m not sure why it is. maybe it’s because i speak vietnamese and know a bit about the underside of things here. the last time we had a “power lunch” to discuss our progress with the planning of the event, i had commented on the price of the meals. $3 for a plate, “wow that’s pricey” i said offhandedly. the canadian girl replied that the place was actually pretty cheap. most vietnamese can’t afford $3 for one plate of food.

i give my input when needed and am the only person to really talk to the waiter in vietnamese. people address me in english on the rare occasions that i’m with foreigners. when they find out otherwise it’s like we’re old friends, the grovelling giving way to an impartial commonness. oldies ballad type music extends from discretely hidden speakers, the volume just right - loud enough to block out the uncomfortable silence that makes everyone realize reality is dull, but quiet enough so that you can hear the person you’re talking to. it’s a mix of classical and jazz, so happy in makeup that i feel like i’m in an old cartoon. the mix of pastel colors all around don’t help. i find myself feeling like an alcoholic, lost of all hope, sitting there mixing my cafe mocha that could’ve been three delicious meals on the streets below. i am ever more guilty by the way in which i find myself rolling the light taste of clean and processed coffee, American style, over my tongue. for $2, it’s some pretty good coffee. my eyes are drawn out the window and i see a traffic circle connecting 6 or so roads, motorbikes slowly edging through. a peasant woman in dark pajamas wearing a conical hat carries a pole across her shoulder, two large woven baskets on the ends of the pole. she makes her way across the bottom of the window i’m staring out of, quiet and graceful because i can’t hear her steps all the way up here and with this cartoonish music coming from the speakers, speakers which i can’t see. all i see from above is the glistening of the sun off the woman’s straw conical hat. it’s a movie, i’m thinking to myself, this entire thing must be staged because this can’t be real. as if i was staring at a character in a painting and it suddenly moves.

we finish and get the check. as we leave the waiter bows down and thanks us profusely, as if we just did him a service by ordering him around. four floors down we’re outside and drawing out the goodbyes, making sure we know what we’re supposed to do. i am a beaten businessman, a reluctant protagonist of some indie flick that satirizes the runaround of rat race work. except it’s not a corporate contract, it’s really a non-profit event. odd, how you have to follow certain procedures to ensure maximum efficiency, and despite the end cause you still feel the blows of the process. a slightly chubby man, leathery faced and in a dirty pink shirt, raises his fingers in the telltale call of the motorbike taxi driver. the two london girls continue to talk to each other, ignoring him out of habit. he points to his motorbike, makes a revving motion with his hands and sticks up his pointing finger in the air once again. knowing he won’t get anything until the girls finish their talking, he acquiesces and watches them with mild amusement, looking back and forth from one to the other. finally everything is finished and we all leave. the man watches his prospects split and walk away from him. he looks at me. again he raises his finger and points to the motorbike. i nod.

“where go?” he says in broken English. i reply to him in fluent Vietnamese, setting the pace. his selling face drops and he is at once a motorbike taxi driver as a local sees him. “ok, to that address it is”, he replies in Vietnamese.

while parking my motorbike at the charity school for disadvantaged children this morning, the back tire mysteriously goes out and leaves a pathetic deflated shell of a wheel. i suspect it is the work of a mischievous boy that earlier had hung to my arms, begging me to buy him an ice cream. it’s against rules to buy gifts or candy for individual kids because it becomes a controlling point for the child, as well as pissing off the other kids because of the displayed favoritism. so i refused. it could just be that the tire was at that age where it couldnt hold air anymore. who knows. so i ask the people there if there is mechanic nearby and an old woman gets one of the teenage kids to push the motorbike to a nearby mechanic. while waiting i stand around, watching the crowd of kids shoving and shouting and playing like all normal kids do. a tall white haired american, a short australian vietnamese girl, and a briton with indian roots from the power lunch stand around, soaking in the laughter and energy. i am reminded of my students in Phan Thiet and miss them so much. the children here are different - they don’t sing the songs as they play, and that rough sweet laughter that i was so used to when I was in Phan Thiet isn’t here. but it is still energy all the same. i sway in the heat, feeling like i can pass out any second, but the sound of bare feet on concrete and yelps of young voices keeps me awake. i stand besides a concrete bench and am startle by a loud THUMP, like a muffled gunshot. i turn around and see a woman holding a large wooden stick, poised before a drum turned sideways and stuck in the corner of a wall. the covering on the side of the drum looks like some sort of animal skin stretched about the rounded edge. i sit on the concrete bench and the woman slams the wooden stick into the drum again, increasing in frequency.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM BOOM. BOOOM BOOOM BOOMM BOOOMMMM

and then a barrage of rythmic thumping blasts, melding into a string of indistinguishable thundering that signals to everyone in the compound that it’s time for class. i walk to the opening in the concrete wall and stand there, looking out the school to watch the life unfolding before me. an old brick wall runs from the left to the right, discarded garbage metal and other rubbish lining the base, along with scraggly looking weeds. i look down and see a squatting woman in peasant garment, matching pajamas behind two large woven baskets connected by a long flat wooden pole. colorful objects are arranged hapharzardly and protrude from the edge. on my right three older women squat with wrinkled faces, squinting from the harsh afternoon sun, unsold goods lazily sitting in almost identical woven baskets. they look up at me expecting a foreigner from the business type clothes but turn disinterested as soon as they see my face. later the old woman from before leads me a few yards past the school. i am led down a small pathway surrounded by houses, the doorways opening up onto the pathway spilling children on bicycles. old woman squat against the wall, working at things with their hands, middle-aged woman stand by the doorways and talk with the clucking of their tongues and wagging of their fingers. we reach a large dirt field dotted with patches of grass, which is again surrounded by apartments and houses all around. a dark skinned man with grime on his hands and pants, shirtless, greets us with a nod. my motorbike is standing between us, a bit off to the side.

“it’s missing the inner tube. gonna cost about 20,000.”

i hand him the money and he’s off. he’s back within the minute and begins shoving the piece of shiny rubber into my wheel, expertly tugging a wire here, screwing a loose bolt there, his grease covered hands flicking from one area to the next. i crouch on the ground to make a phone call to the orphanage to let them know i’ll be late, trying as hard as i can to be inconspicuous. people sit in front of their houses, simple beds, subtle household items, and creaky looking wooden tables visible from the open doorways. a crew of toddlers and young children stroll up to an imaginery line and another boy with a whistle sets them up in a row. they’re smiling widely and kneeling, many with spaces in their mouths where baby teeth are growing in. the boy with the whistle stalls dramatically for a moment, and then shouts, “go!”, blowing hard into his whistle. it sounds like the whistle of the police here. the children shout with laughter and bolt down into the pathway with their little bare feet, away from where i can see them but not so far that i can’t hear their peals of innocent joy. a young boy rolls up to the man fixing my motorbike on an old bicycle and asks the man,

“his mister, can you fix the back part of my bike? it’s broken and i need it to ride the bike properly.”

the man grunts affirmatively and asks some question which i miss, not really paying attention to the answer. from the tone of his voice, he could have been easily asking how the kid’s dad was getting along. i am made aware, from everything going around me, that there is a quality of subtlety that is missing from the business district where i spend most of my time. it reminds me of the far-off Go Vap district, where i go to volunteer at the orphanage to make sure i remember why it was that i came to Vietnam in the first place. it would be so amazing, if i could stay in one of these small apartments for a year, instead of the antiseptic room of mine in the company. patience, the low breeze and singing voices seem to say, what will come will come. the man stands up and announces to me he is finished. he quotes the price equivalent to about 30 cents and i give him $3 US dollars, asking for a dollar back. he tells me he doesn’t have change and i tell him to keep the whole thing. he looks at me like an adult looks at an offending child. he is probably wondering why i am wearing a tie and what the hell i am doing in his neck of the woods. why he must accept the extra change just because he so desperately needs it. i feel like an ass, like i always do, and walk away. through the small pathway the spirits of those occupying the apartments beside me filter through the open doorways, mixing with the already lively chatter floating in the warm air. down the street i hear he singsong call,

“co ai mua de chai khooooong?” something like a request to buy or accept old things that have lost their value. slippers with broken straps. empty soda cans. shoelaces, toothbrush handles, old cardboard boxes, anything that can be salvaged and resold for pennies. she is most definately carrying two woven baskets strung on a flat pole, which is carried across her shoulders. dirt roads, dirt hands, unbroken youth.

an ideal is the most beautiful and perfect thing, unblemished and without fault. the ideals of the American dream lead people to bleed sweat, dying an ungrateful life to ungrateful cubicle monsters that eat them up slowly. the ideals of politics lead people to fight and die, killing even their own family members as they reach towards a goal that can never be realized. the ideal of a quaint country where the horrific cleansing effects of a modern society are not as visible bring foreigners to eat in high class restaurants and party their time away, remarking at how “nice” and exotic the local population are. it seems we all live towards an ideal, and somewhere down the line we get crushed under the bitter truth. but what if the ideal is reality, the all inclusiveness of truth itself. if you accept the ugly along with the amazing, does such an ideal hold up to the cynical forces of the world? like i once said to a friend, believing in nothing is the safest way to go. because no one knows shit. i sat tonight behind a concrete enforced bank, watching the ripples from the Saigon river fluctuate in massive pearly waves towards me. i couldn’t see the moon and the sky only had one bright star among other dimly forgettable ones. the water crashed against the concrete sides, went back out with much less energy, and eventually disappeared within the wavering black surface. some time ago i came to the understanding that i was going to die one day, that nothing i ever did mattered. people fear regrets, and rightfully so. regret is wasted time, wasted opportunity, a mistake that causes more harm than good (or so we think). i fear the greatest regret, the one which comes in full force as you’re rounding your years, as you’re on your death bed. wondering where all the years went and why you wasted it doing what others expected instead of what you wanted.

every night my cousin brings down his piece of shit guitar and strums on it, practicing his “Doe-Ray-Mees” because he wants to impress his new girlfriend. he’s innocent, honestly kind, bordering on the naive. it’s sweet the things he does and expects of the world. i am surprised to realize that a lot of the people here, particularly my relatives, end most of their sentences with a laugh. and they actually mean it. that’s the way life here in vietnam is. behind the thumping bass music and empty heroin needles you sometimes find lying in the streets, behind the thousands of prostitutes that look just like every other girl, there’s that laugh, that sparkling hope in a sea of filth and despair.

every night, with the piece of shit guitar in his hands, my cousin falls asleep in his chair, a peaceful calm over his dark brown face and a ready smile beneath his unmoving lips.
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memory is a funny thing. [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:12am
i wrote this rambling (yet again) b.s. about something i can’t even summarize in one line. after reading it over i realized it didn’t even make sense… must be the slight cold or whatever that’s got me all woozy headed. so i took out the articles and conjunctions and pronouns and whatnot, to make it slightly more interesting and completely unreadable. here’s to writing for yourself and only for yourself, even when you know other people are reading:

comes strangest times always leaves far worse before. offhand mention father dinner, things pick. past comes stumbling uncle’s mouth, used to, war officially ended, all while two aging tired looking prostitutes sit table men side, forced open smiles end world. between personal history lessons uncle owners eatery stand wait, walk back forth something, cook back. see kitchen, simple low-light rocky concrete walls green tint everything. corner sitting eyes graze worn outlet, standard streetside restaurants western eyes fire hazard. later office usual stumbles joking, messing instant messengers, picking guitar. family website, collection photographs pre-war, war, current. uncle cousin stare faded photographs Vietnam day life. Americanized cousins joke irony all. trip America sometime somehow, (relatively) filthy rich. little things.. friends commenting blog, old entries, thinking general everything comes. wish memories relevant everyone… university days phases, filled brutal calm poor upstate new york town, crazy stave boredom. website slideshow memorial grandpa died. music creeps speakers stuns. events day slowly.. hit hard, floor caving beneath. starving stricken grief, group friends unexpected bag food. gesture, swear remember faces debt owed being there needed most. drawn silences grandma’s house grandpa died, cat woke middle night meowing food, just grandma few nights. tongue-in-cheek London, quaintness everything sense detachment roamed city month. life odd. sense.. no plot, nothing connecting. nothing everyone. memorable moments, times hit hardest completely alone. alone most coherent, nothing affects thinking where gain sense truth. horrible, realize truths, finding running back familiar faces circumstances sane again. amazing world, plain worthless world. interpretations entire human race lays truth. love truth, wish never before.
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emptiness is lonliness, and lonliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness, and god is empty, just like me [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:40am
i lifted the title of this post off a song i lifted off the internet, which was lifted off the mind of an early 90’s singer i’ll leave for you to guess. i look back and reflect on the last five years of my life, where all i’ve done was search for the surreal through odd experiences and the painful ventures for truth we all know doesn’t exist. in my spare time i destroy the tips of my left hand playing the guitar i bought, download old music that hasn’t touched my ears in close to a decade just to get that jolt of familiarity, and continue on swimming towards the waterfall i know is so immently close.

at the orphanage i was playing with a baby when a small blur came running across my vision. i looked down and saw a giggling smiling baby, as normal as any creature, running around the room. i stuck my head up and with eyes wide, half shouted,

“what the…”

the amiable nurse in light blue laughed and said she let him out. for some reason i had always thought none of them could walk. it was only 2/3rds of them, roughly, that had legs twisted like horrible fleshy pretzels, crying out. one of them kept laughing when i grabbed him, but just as quickly burst into tears as i left. the solution to the problem was to move my fingers (which he kept staring at) to the pen next to him, where he ended up staring at the baby in the adjacent pen. which left me safe to slip to another pen.

at the room with the older kids the troublesome boy with the twisted legs and distorted arms is waiting by the window opening to the hallway and shouts when he sees me. i remember seeing the most mischief in this one boy, out of all of them, and could see a side which was capable of a little more than mean tricks. i walk in and greet them all, the troublesome boy laughing slyly. out of nowhere one of the nurses shouts at troublesome boy. i hear a baby crying and turn around. the baby next to troublesome boy’s pen is bawling, the milk bottle lying by her side. the nurse comes over and explains,

“see this boy here? he’s troublesome.. he just knocked it out of the baby’s mouth for no reason! we can’t put him in a pen next to some baby because we’re afraid of him breaking some poor baby’s arm.” she looks at him looking at the crying baby and exclaims, “one of these days you’re going to kill someone!”

she demonstrates to me by holding an imaginery baby arm with her two arms and breaking it like a twig. i look down at the boy and find myself taken back by a murderous look in his eyes. the tops of his eyelids are clamped midway, mouth furled in a menacing snarl. he is silent, unresponsive, intent on murder. it is the look of someone older, an adult, moments before he stabs another human being out of pure rage. it frightens me and the only thing i can think to do is to reach down and stroke his back. almost immediately the muscles in his face give way and he’s back to the smiling boy i know him to be.

“don’t… bother the other kids like that,” i quietly tell him.

all around the room the kids who can talk are shouting at me, “teacher! teacher! come play with me!” as soon as i leave one child, he shouts out, “no, come back and play with me!” and another in front of me would beckon as equally fervent, “no, come over here!”. ‘playing’ consists of them grabbing my hand and shaking it, reaching over the top of the pen to grab my tie with the other hand. there is not a normal face among the din of shouting voices. troublesome boy’s legs are crippled beyond belief, a permanent sense of potential meanness simmering under the skin, another boy with a huge head and gaping eyes, drooling babies with blue medication staining large patches of their skin, and the last group so crippled they cannot even talk or sit up. the last group are those who are so crippled all they can do is lay in their beds and roll their eyes, letting drool slip from the corners of their mouths onto their already heavily stained mattresses. their heads are enlarged, contorted legs and arms sticking out between pale yellow bars. they look like grown children shoved into pens, an outgrowth not figured for and even if it was, the money needed to house them wasn’t there. and today i notice them sharply, let my hands fall on their stomachs, scratch their sides. the moment i stand over them their eyes lift themselves up and their arms waver, light grunts drifting from the back of their throats. some of them have just enough strength to grip my fingers and they don’t let go. their eyes roll to the bottom, staring up at me from an angle, as if to see my true self, one which can’t be seen simply by looking straight on. their glee is palpable, infectious, warmly spreading from their mangled hands through mine, deep into the back of my skull. outside the life goes on as usual, another world with other lies, other truths. a chubby jovial kid tells me about each of their sicknesses, even though my knowledge of medical vietnamese terminology is too lacking to really understand.

“and that’s Thuy. she’s got […]…”

one girl is so skinny you would think she was anorexic, if only she was old enough to choose whether or not to eat. a hole looks out from her mouth, a cleft lip, and she smiles with what’s left of her lips when i come near and pat her back. the grey skinned girl is also there, body peeling diseased skin and face puffed up. she smiles, her jolly face srunching up, slow movements telling a life story i can’t even begin to comprehend. her back feels hard, like a muscle that never learned how to let go. they all shout at me in intermittent pulses, grabbing, pulling, smiling and crying. troublesome boy is moved to another pen, crying and shouting. the nurse explains further,

“some of these kids.. they don’t know what they’re doing. you leave them in a pen and they’ll break the fingers or toes or arms of babies next to them. they don’t know what they’re doing… some of the kids in this room aren’t like that, and others are. this here boy is one of the troublesome ones.” he is crying, shouts of incomprehensible blurbs in between tears swallowed. i kneel down and do the only thing i can think of. i reach over and pat his back. and his cries subside, melts into the pen and slips beneath the concrete floor. i fear him because of the look in his eyes and what he may become when society continues to flay him with its injustices. one day he will move beyond his childlish lack of strength. but he is human, and humanity is capable. of what, i’m not so sure.

the voices alternate from pen to pen, all the same, all asking me to come and play with them. in one corner two babies stand and hold hands, blue stains dully prominent in splothes of skull and arms and legs. i can’t take it anymore. the voices demand something of me i cannot give and the misery infuses every cell in my body. i stand up and announce as usual,

“goodbye everyone. i’ll see you another day ok?”

they all shout “bye teacher” and i can hear a few cries for me to return the next day. i bow slightly, repeating my goodbyes like an apology, because i really am sorry. i am sorry i cant stay longer, i am sorry you have to live this life, i’m sorry you are left so lonely you refuse to let go when you are told to. i’m sorry i can’t face your misery for more than 10 minute blocks at a time. i walk out past the other rooms, a wooden row of seats with holes cut in to allow the children to defecate, a wandering baby on the far end. dark and dirtied multi-colored floor tiles bring blurry memories of my past to the front, when i had been in a kitchen with similar colors as a child. i walk out to a brooding sky and am empty of all thoughts. in my mind there are just images and sounds battling for significance. i get on my motorbike and leave the orphanage, gripping the handle so hard there is nowhere for the needle on the odometer to go but forward. i go so fast that i even pass the usual hotheads who keep it at 60 km/hr. i speed on the outside of the lane, right where the incoming traffic lane connects with mine. i miss getting hit head-on by a small truck, literally within 2 inches or so, and it honks incredulously as i whiz by it. it is a full 2 minutes before i regain my senses and slow down. 2 minutes of driving above 60 km/hr in saigon traffic where the average is 20-30 is suicide. slowly my breaths come back and my thoughts return, the images and sounds sinking back to the deep end of where memories are locked. i almost die because, for one single moment, i had understood the world of those children in the orphanage. if only for a minute.

i am full of anger, of rage, of sadness, of an emotion so dark i can’t seem to even begin to describe it in words. i imagine that if i was one of the children in that orphanage, living that immobile and desperate life, i would have driven my motorbike as fast as it would have gone, far beyond 60 km/hr. i would’ve held on until something happened. until my life was crushed by a screaming truck, a meaningless end for a meaningless existence, the causes of such suffering unexplainable to anyone who is witness to either horror.
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every other week [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 2:18pm
the world about me spins and the people around me become blurry phantoms of walking feet and moving lips. i lie to myself and tell myself i’m not sick, it’s just a moment of hotness that’s all. maybe it’s the smoke coming from the pork being cooked. but soon my stomach begins doing flips and my head feels light. at home my stomach rumbles and i hope with all might that i don’t throw up. the last time it happened i couldn’t even stand up for 24 hours. and then a troubled sleep. i awake to sounds of laughing, my two uncles passing the lonely night with their usual free spirits. everyone else has gone home, even the two cousins had left for Phan Thiet. in the corner of my room a low blue blankets the wall, something from the outside. maybe a street light, perhaps the moon? it’s quiet save for the occasional shouts of my uncles. just a bit of rest among hectic running around and the ventures into the self as memories of crumpled bodies whisper in the back of memory. for some reason i remember an incident at the orphanage a few days ago, when a baby had retched in his pen. i told the nurse that a baby had thrown up and she walked over to find the baby lying in a large pile of his own puke. it kept coming out of his mouth, watery yellow liquid suffusing the thin mattress and my thoughts at the same time.

after i awake i read a bit and then head downstairs to join my uncles and play a little guitar. when you play music, however simple it may be, the notes connect at moments, where they’re supposed to, and it resounds in your ears. it then makes its way down to your heart and presses outwards. the heart not in the one that pumps blood and ensures that all your cells get the oxygen they need (and all else), but the heart that exists somewhere between the workings of the mind and your living self. the heart that laughs and cries, sometimes both at the same time. my uncle boils some water for the ramen noodles, a cheap and quick food for nighttime hunger when nothing else is available. his eyes light up and he laughs, exposing uneven teeth and innocence despite his age and the fact that he’s [edited to protect privacy]. it’s ugly what goes on here, but you can’t rationalize a human being. a human being is a human being with all faults and beauties, some exposed to outside eyes and others hidden. when you discover the ugly and understand the reasons beneath it, the only thing left to see is raw beauty.

i feel better now.
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you run from what binds you [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:46am
some days i wake up with a heaviness in my chest. i blame it on the copious amounts of second-hand smoke i get from my uncles and i blame it on the blasts of sour air from the exhaust of the motorbike crowds i swim in every day, but i think maybe it’s just the atmosphere in general. my body is getting used to a tropical climate full of ethereal wonders, where it had once only known the saftey and security of the mundane.

every other day i ride my motorbike from street to street, watching the lane get smaller and smaller with every turn. pretty soon i am on purely dirt roads with just enough space for one motorbike at a time. this morning it had rained and i missed it. little pools of water sit calmly in spotted depressions in the earth, a piece of sidewalk here, a patch of dirt there. there is mud, a sight i haven’t seen in a long time, and i feel a tinge of regret. if i had known i would’ve woken up at 6am just to watch the rain. but the rains will come whether or not i want them to, and they’ll come soon. in a few weeks the rain gods will send down their fury, flooding this place in 15-minute downpours that make all those ’singing in the rain’ movie scenes look like mere drizzles. the shiny store signs are replaced by sqeaky metal stands in front of pale 2-3 story houses, the view congested with beaten down motorbikes and matching pajamas. on the way there, there is always a clog in the road on the right, where some middle school lets out. children in white and blue uniforms crowd the area, groupings peering down from the balcony above where they’re separated by open space. the building is filthy concrete, the dirt stains ingrained into the place and parents wait patiently on their motorbikes below. ahead is the orphanage, faded blue sign displaying faded white vietnamese words. “The Cultural and Social Center for Orphaned Children” or something like that. students sit on low red plastic tables and stools to the sides, blue pants and white shirts. and every two days when I am here I am another level separated from where I work, which is where the businesses are situated. like the level of separation from New York to Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City. after a while, you lose track of the levels of separation and just keep moving away from where you started off in the first place. i usually ride my motorbike through the small open gate and park it inside with the other motorbikes. the ceiling sporadically opens up to the sky above in large square portions. downtown where I work and live the noise is of motorbikes and trucks, human voices only heard when you walk to find food. here there is an undercurrent of human voices, a mass of chirping and intonated sounds that surrounds your ears and calms you like a singing voice calms a child. I stroll through the courtyard and women in pajamas smile and bow slightly. they call me “teacher”. to my right is a room with long rectangular windows, the panes of glass so dirty that you can’t make much from the outside except for little black heads sitting at round tables. i had entered the room once on an invitation, and the kids asked me a thousand questions. they shouted half-correct English phrases and looked at me like I was an alien. and of course, smiles all around. and sometimes I would sit on the stone bench and listen to the river of voices somewhere deep off, somewhere near, and someimes I would walk into the classroom to prepare. because I’m a volunteer I don’t get paid, but there is always a small bottle of spring water on the table, a gift for my time. sometimes, if I’m lucky, the bottle is chilled straight from the fridge. other times it’s just as it is, room temperature. Water is water but you can’t believe how much better it tastes when it’s much colder than the surrounding air temperature, especially in a humid tropical climate such as Vietnam’s. i can tell whether or not it’s chilled by the way the bottle looks - glistening with fresh condensation if it’s cold, smoothly lacking of any sparkle if it’s not. they always stick a straw through the label, even though I never use it. for some reason it feels authentic, what i’m doing, when i’m awarded a bottle of water for my teaching as opposed to being just plain out paid.

today I made a gaffe, a sort of social blunder that reached into the regretful. near the end of class i decided to throw in an ad hoc exercise, one that asked the class to write a few sentences about their homes and bedrooms. i started off by giving a few sentences about my house in New York, trying hard to make them funny by mentioning my dog and his love for cooked human dinner. they all loved it. and then i told them to write 10 sentences about their houses and bedrooms. the nurses went straight to it but the three boys in the front kept looking at me as if they didn’t understand. i walked over and asked if they understood. they just continued looking at me, not saying much. and then i stopped. they’re orphans. they don’t have a house. i backtracked and erased “house” from the whiteboard, telling them to write about their bedrooms. they didn’t move until i drew a picture of a bed on the board. and then they began writing, joining the rest of the class. i walked back to my chair and sat down, watching the boys’ feet. torn plastic slippers, rough cracked brown feet, and a lost gaze into a notebook. for their entire lives the orphans here have lived in this large building, seen its walls a thousand times over. there is an emotion between sad and melancholy which i can’t seem to label. but it’s there and at this school it blazes through my entire body, leaving me weak and as conscious as i can ever be.

today the babies laughed when i tickled them, saccharine gurgles and toothless grins that blanked out my mind and left me laughing at the pureness of the spontaneous.

and from the older children there is laughter when i fool around with a fan, making funny faces. the girl with the bloated face and horrid grey skin smiles again. i notice her movements are very slow, the brightness first appearing in her eyes then slowly spreading down through her face, then a smile reflecting from wide grinning lips back to her eyes, where they squeeze the blackness of perfectly round pupils thin. the entire process takes twice as long as a normal person’s smile. i see it in the gradual emotion of gladness, elation among days of complacent nothingness. and then from a pen behind me,

“teacher. you’ll leave soon, right? why don’t you stay longer? can you come back tomorrow?”

i leave on the trail of murmers and uncertain promises, waves to end the day.

after the gripping of tiny hands i am back on the street, shirtless men in black pants and women in matching pajamas and motorbikes and bicycles and the unrelenting crowds. people packed in every square foot as far as i can see. when will i understand this place, when will this cease to be amazing beyond the point of insanity?
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compact whirring laundry machine [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 1:26am
me and short-stout are on the motorbike, humming down a small pathway just large enough for us and the motorbike. even more cramped than the sub-streets of last night, we are in the middle of another concrete urban jungle full of semi-high rise apartments. the bright lights are left at the edge of the large street behind us. here, there is ample black space and blue-green somethings oozing from the living spaces on our sides. concrete surfaces give way to open doors. on the right a family sitting at a dinner table, stuff crammed everywhere. on the left another family watching tv, what looks to be fifteen or so backs facing us, matching pajamas and modest tshirts over modest shorts. we turn left and right, right and left, left and left… all crazy sorts of turns that make me wonder if i could eveb find my way out if my cousin suddenly jumps off the motorbike and runs away. my left foot grazes the ground, pushing off with light shoves because there’s really no way to go fast down the path. i mutter to short-stout cousin, “man, this is so crazy” and he doesn’t respond. he probably doesn’t hear me. the people here are used to this sort of life but they still watch it with a calm ease. drinking coffee and watching the scene. eating a meal and watching the scene. taking a walk down the road and watching the scene. things are slow and drawn out here, which sometimes causes problems in business. the vietnamese don’t always show up on time, they dont always work with the utmost of efficiency, and sometimes this annoys their western counterparts. we turn right at a corner holding a whole family sitting on small red plastic furniture, plastic stool rising no more than a foot off the ground. they are sitting outside their house, from grandmother to toddler they sit, a solid extended family shooting the breeze on a calm thursday night. they glance at me as i ride by. other people standing or sitting outside their houses also take notice. i ask short-stout, “hey, do you know these people? like, do they recognize your face?” short-stout responds,

“yea of course. i lived here for quiet some time. they all know me. it’s really peaceful living here.”

everyone knows each other when everyone lives within meters of each other. out on the large roads, saigon is a huge anonymous city, where every face is mostly like every other. but in the concentrated suburban sprawl released before me in all its concrete wonder, i am an outsider. we come up to a group of kids playing in the path, yelling at each other, laughing, running. they are slightly alit beneath a high lamp post with blackness everywhere else, and they move aside for us when we pass. we are finally at my cousin’s old apartment. the entrance is an opening among a confused smattering of concrete shapes, worn out fencing, and rusty barbed wire hanging from the top. it’s dark but the occasional high rising lamp post casts the minimum light needed to get through. dark wires lay snug against the purple sky, running from one lamp post to another in clumps of tied neatness. i look inside shourt-stout’s apartment through the chain-link fence used as a barrier against the outside world and see him rummaging through a pile of stuff. on the outside of the apartment behind the fence hang clothes, left to dry. they’re most likely hand washed, as very few can afford a washing machine. even in the company where short-stout lives, 2 floors above me, he washes clothes in a red plastic bin with his hands. beside the entrance are a group of young men. most are without shirts and half of them sit in the shadow of the opposing wall. they had yelled and joked with short-stout when we arrived, obviously former roommates. they asked him why he came back, what he was getting, the news and various other things you ask people you used to know but now don’t see as much anymore. the children are to my right, calmer now, walking back and forth, sitting, talking. above them hovers a lamp post, sleek white light extending from the florescent bulb to the stale concrete ground below. the guys are all quietly talking to themselves, doing pretty much nothing. a few had taken cursory glances at me when we arrived, but they seem to not really care who i am or where i came from. i look beyond them and see a two or three-story apartment building rising into the sky, all lights extinguished. the construction of the houses and the irrational angles of the path confuse my brain, excite it to a waking point i can rarely achieve. it seems most days we can glide through with our daily motions and forget what it’s like to feel fully concious, as in being completely aware. we get used to the predictably straight roads, the expected white lines separating the lanes, the exact and reproducable taste of generic hamburgers. machine made coffee ensuring the same consistency and taste every time. single serving packs of what-have-you so you don’t get surprised at what you’re getting. people are afraid of change, of difference, of variety. and here before me are houses that are almost exactly the same size as each other yet look completely different. there is no logic and no pattern to the organization. the colors and shapes flow from one to the next, light hitting some abstract surfaces but ignoring others. it is a photographer’s dream, intense contrast in all the wrong places. short-stout comes out with a beaten guitar and nods to me. the guys all shout out,

“hey! play us a song before you go! come on! just one song!” short-stout laughs and brushes off the demands.

“i have to learn first, i can’t play you anything right now.” the guys don’t let up and tell him,

“ok you go and learn some songs. then you come back and play for us to hear.” every gets a laugh and we turn on the motorbike engine, shoving off back into the narrow path, dodging children and curious stares. i ask short-stout who those guys were. he tells me,

“those were my roommates. before i got the job at the company i lived there with all of them. it’s complicated, living with so many people. sometimes i wanted to just get away from them all so i went to the roof and played with this guitar.”

later i would look at the guitar and see the most broken down guitar i have ever seen in my life. there is a crack along the base, to the side, and dust sits in all the crevices. the strings are worn tight and one of the tightening handles of the guitar head is missing.

“it looks like crap, i know,” short-stout says to me, “but its still got a beautiful sound.”

we stop by what he calls a “student diner”, another run-of-the-mill commoner’s eatery that’s nothing more than a long room opened out to the street. the businesses and street-side restaurants don’t have doors. when you come to vietnam the first thing you do is destroy your previous notions of inside and outside. the places here have metal gates which are pulled from the sides and locked in the middle. during opening hours the gate is opened wide, exposing the inside of the house completetly to the outside world. very similar to stores in the ghetto and poorer areas of america, except here it is everywhere. we walk in and sit at a table, the floor beneath my feet littered with used tissues and discarded food matter. bones, bits of fat, specks of grease. around us sit the working class, students, businessmen, and under the embrace of the dark blue-green reflections all around, everyone looks the same. a man with deeply brown skin across from me eats his meal slowly, excruciating slow, pushing bits of rice one clump at a time onto a spoon. then into his mouth goes the spoon, paced chewing, and then another go at preparing another bite. i take a spoon and a fork from the plastic bin on the plastic table and feel the cheap metal in my hands. if you push too hard the metal bends, leaving you with a very funny looking utensil. i ask short-stout where he went to college, what he studied.

“i studied computer hardware. kinda like you.”

i ask him where he worked after he graduated. he tells me,

“district 10……… and district 3, and district 6, and..” and he names off a list of places, laughing at his small joke. “i worked at a lot of places.”

i ask if he made enough to live.

“no,” he says, shaking his head and smirking at the same time, look straight at me, “i didn’t make enough to live.”

short-stout fingers the dark brown guitar in his hands, pushing down where there’s a crack at the base. i tell him that it looks really old.

“yea, but it was expensive when we got it. it’s my brother’s. see this crack here? my roommates.. damn them, they messed with it when they were drunk, banging on it.” he demonstrates, slapping the sides and pretending to strum in wide mocking strokes. he laughs.

“but even though it’s old, it’s got a good sound.”

he puts it back to the side. to my right, at another table, a young man starts talking to short-stout. they’re former classmates. i look out of the opening of the place, seemingly far away into the distance, blurs of people on motorbikes passing through my small window of vision. the metal food stand blocks part of the entrance, the food on plates behind a glass window with the type of food served painted on the window. a tube of florescence washes the surrounding area in glowing white light. it is an amazing contrast against the rest of the street outside.

a worn down guitar missing a string and cracked at the base, a tired looking man scooping rice and meat into his mouth one spoon at a time, and a faraway smile of a glowing white light. buzzing, light talking, and the sounds of cheap metal utensils scraping against cheap plastic plates. the sounds of life.