Thang Nguyen 555

Now that I could see it via Google Earth: flat, insignificant and buried among millions of similar tin rooftops.

My home.

We left in a very hurry. 2 minutes max. No time for goodbyes. No time for tears.

Just leave. NOW.

Bang! never to return, to have what they call closure.

The body might have been relocated, but the brain remains locked in place, in time.

Frozen. As if the images of Earth stood still, at least in my brain.

In however many square meters my incubator was, it was enough for millions of cherish moments. Guitar d’amour….Quel Sera Sera….Ngoc Lan (the streamy stream)….

Every afternoon after school. Music started flowing past supper.

Violin, guitar, hoarse voices, and even mandolin. We were loud. We tried to break the confined walls. We wanted to be transported and out of the box. Tin roof, brick walls and iron gate. Out front, I remember having to water Mom’s evergreen pottery.

Neighbors tolerated us. Where else could we all go? At the end of the serpentine alley was a print shop where workers worked out of their own house. From one end to the other (two tombs that blocked alley entrance, forcing traffic to wind hence it is called serpentine alley) all smooth concrete. It made for a good water slide in the monsoon season.

We slid and slide through childhood. Our version of snow day. Kids play jump rope, hide and seek.

Then boom. The end of everything, at least to my knowledge. Hurry hurry. Evacuation.

The US is leaving, for good. This time, it’s real. It’s like Paris before Liberation. Only in reverse. Paris of the Orient, before Liberation (depends on whose POV). Families left behind. Momentos unbrought. Memories lingered.

Same rooftop, same rain on tin roof. With or without the view of Google Earth.

We have the technological benefits that are the envy of royalty of the past (Louis XIV with all this art collection couldn’t come near what I now see from my desktop). I see home. I see home from above.

Bird-eye view, satellite imagery. We moved, ant-like to find better pasture. The past is not even past.

It’s still here. Like the lay of the alley. With contour and detour. With connection and links. With dots and data.

I see it now. TIME. The flow and fluidity of history, of technology and disposable values. Love and loss. With each tangible gain, we experience ten intangible loss.

No wonder I feel hollowed out. The Old House. The music sheets, the guitar, the songs and the singing (pre-karaoke).

Echoes of the past. Like a ghost dream. We just exist, for a while. Sharing pain and frustration.

Occasionally, joy. Happiness eluded us. Not many instances, not during war time. We mourned more than we celebrated. We cried more than we laughed. In pain more than in pleasure. In the end (or the beginning, depends on whose view), we, I , had a viewable photo from above, with the help of Google Earth.

It never was a castle, nor was it in a slum. Just our home, where once, I experienced time past, surrounded with loved ones. My incubator, my alley with two huge tombs, there to constantly remind us time is short.

Louis XIV himself would have been envied. His view from above would be his castle, now laid hollow like an abandonned construction site of a glorious past. Even the past doesn’t seemt to past. At least for me. With a press of a button, I can revisit it. Can post it. Can write about it and share.

You hold on to what is near and dear to you. I mine. Tin roof and all. But when it rains, like, really hard, there is no music in this world could be more pleasant and endearing. It gave us amateurish musicians a break, from the brisk heat and inequity of living. When it rains, it democratizes. Just like in Les Parapluis du Cherbourg. Just like in Louisana or Philadelphia.

Just like the view from above just now. Every roof looks all the same, and my pain of the past seems insignificant. I wish for you what I always for myself: a roof over your head, and love in your heart. That’s why we, despite being nomadic, still linger and refuse to leave the site of our loved ones, albeit buried underground for days.

6 feet under, or 30,000 feet above ground. We traverse forward, experience TIME and hopefully love that lasts. Too bad Google Earth can only help expose the tin rooftop viewed from above, and not the depth of sentiment my home afforded me.

We left in a very hurry. But what we carried with us stay with us, for a life time. I saw my old house for as long as the screen is still on, but Home stays.

The Net is neutral. In theory and for now.

As long as the First Amendment is upheld.

While connection (high-speed) is democratized, content (high brow) is not.

Originally conceived to work around an ICBM strike, the Net’s distributed architecture unfortunately , to use up surplus after-hour capacity, opens up and is inundated with the grotesque and the offensive (obviously not to the one who posts). The hidden price of to scale or not to scale.

Section 230 and self-regulation can’t guarantee guardrails quickly enough e.g. cyber bullying and fake news. Hence, Gong Show decendants are on full display.

Long live ads revenue flow.

The business of America is business. Amazon Web Services are not for free.

If listened, one’d hear Cancel click ( another show contestant eliminated) every second on the Wild Wide Web. Yet the herd keep coming and heading to the cliff – the altar of attrition. Our modern-day equivalent of virgin sacrifice.

As if, people have been persecuted, silenced and subdued from the beginning of time. Using primitive tools to carve out symbols in cave proves too cumbersome. Now, uploading is fast and almost free ( internet connection and Adsense as prereq).

With more cultures represented and participated, one would think the web be a place of open mind. In fact, this social-techno experiment has proved the opposite: more wars, more walls and more crises.

Something is going on. But not the way it is used to be. Not at the speed and scale it used to be.

Everyone is posting ” What’s for dinner” ( it used to be “Guess Who is coming to Dinner”) and everyone recounts “the White House years” (albeit ghost-writing gigs for a tenure eye-witness janitor: ” I saw the President (LBJ) with his pants down through an open-door toilet” or ‘G H W Bush tinkling with the then Mackintosh” – Woodward’s Shadows.

How long? Not long.

How loud? Too loud.

We shall overcome in that perpetual Ground-Hod-Day “someday”.

Meanwhile, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly are having the time of their lives with the digital frontier”s land grab and railroad barroning.

As if we all feel the urge to protest against an oppressed system, while at the same time, benefitting from and exploiting it i.e. working the system, extracting and Occupy WS, Occupy Columbia, knowing it’s sensationalism that explodes and goes viral.

It’s the Dictator’s Dilemma in reverse (if they cut off the Internet, they themselves can’t communicate internally on intranet with coworkers). If we protested with a social media sabath no one would notice our resignation, given billions online.

Meanwhile, IT folks try to teach the machine to recognize, to think, to act and to reason responsibly. In one talk, the speaker ventures to volunteer that A.I. can even empathize with us.

Try that on human.

From Aspirin to Astrology, we have.

Yet crimes are still here, fentanyl still kills; oppression is still present and corruption remains rampant ( the other day, a door-to-door vendor tried to sell me security cameras for the home).

Has it (the impetus for evil) been dormant and not destroyed?

Long time ago, in rural Kentucky (the Threat that Runs so True), the teacher/author had to repaint his tainted school walls (pupils spitted tobacco) from his own meager salary. Singapore is where it is today in part due to its iron-enforcement of no spitting, no cigarette butts nor loitering in public.

A single mile is all it takes. Since charging out of the gate (w/ Netscape), we have wasted a lot of energy i.e. trial-error over triviality (the sort that made the original Gong Show smell like flowers). Remember MySpace?

Some penned up poison finally found its outlet: let’s scroll, let’s outdo them, let’s podcast again: Sandy Hook, Pizzagate etc… Everything and anything all at once, a work in progress etc… like Pollock randomly (but in control) throws paint on the floor.

How long, not long. We shall overcome, on the Net as it is in real life, someday. We will fulfill our potential and destiny. ‘

The Gong show contestants (signed release and paid actors) had their 15 minutes.

Now it’s decent folks’ turn. Those who have stood by, helplessly watched the aggressive march and parade, torch and all, around digital City Hall.

We shall replace the “Gong show” with our Show i.e. context, history, nuances, art, truth, taste and beauty. It’s like a collapsible Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessible to all albeit in TED-like filter bubble.

That which elevates with empathy, elegance, expertise and eternality will flourish in gong-less awe, like a museum of all hours, as if grass could grow on the Internet. As if life would go on forever, since no one wants it to press SKIP ( or BONG).

When you see it, you’ll know it.

Shakespeare was right (life is like a stage or the Internet platform). It’s up to us – to play our assigned role well.

The connection might be democratized, but the content is not.

In the end, when all sorted out, there will be reward and recognition to validate those 16 mm reels which survived the cutting room, real-life grit not Gong-Show rejects.

On Wake Island en route to “Ellis Island”, we were given an A-number ( A for Alien) to start an authenticating process which involves a life-time worth of chain documents.

America, land of the free – often times, a mix bag of not-too-free (credit card shackles) and undocumented “alien”. Somehow, it rises from Wilderness Ash to World Power: lonely at the top, ” Lonely Crowd” at the bottom , while in the middle , a material-centric, then data-centric life.

With 9 hours online (for teens), there is not much time left. No real-life crowd (P T Barnum anyone), no outdoor break-time (vapor break while thumbing the screen), nor water-cooler gossip. A nursing home visit to the elderly of the “village” is chore in compare to field trip (how about a trip back in time, or forward in time). Old folks once often consulted e.g. to keep or not to keep the proverbial Coke bottle now are living in isolation if not abandoned.

With billions online (Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law) our Crocodile Dundee will be “friending” in his digital backwaters via recommendation software: “G’ day mate!” as opposed to climbing a NYC’s light pole exhausted from social fatigue.

Once password-authenticated, we are cleared to sit back and relax; let the “I-core” chips take over. Voila!

No wonder criminals have migrated online! high-tech and high-yield (FTX and Theranos). ” Oh, I did click ‘Agreed’ but did not read the whole disclaimer”…

Back to when things were, no pun here, alien to us – new arrivals – even a STOP sign observed on an empty street, or a line formed at a cash register was something of a marvel ( lots of movies in the 80’s make fun of Russian new arrivals – with bread lines behind them – awestruck in an American supermarket where there were tons of cereal choices).

Slowly then suddenly, we evolve – albeit snail’s pace – while the machine ( hare’s pace): even Chinese restaurants are now with toothpick machine, next to payment machines. High tech high cholesterol with AI-generated customized fortune (cookies).

Our Agricultural practice reaches near full-automation. With 9 hours spare time for kids (no need for child labor) we can “amuse ourselves to death” (to use Mr. Postman’s title). NYC, Hollywood, Route 128 and Silicon Valley corridors will be glad to fill that content vacuum.

On the silver screen, our protagonist often smokes, punches and makes love, with a view of the bridge. We can’t blame them. Films with outdoor settings (Ishtar) or in the city (Istanbul) present a logistical nightmare, not to mention financial risks. We the audience by default are immerse in urban problems and pain ( then to escape the escape, we numb our pain with pills).

Collaboration and team work in an agrarian community is now lost. Industrial smokestacks with “Danger” signs also belong in “Rust belt” era (see Our Modern Times). As of late, it’s Nippon Steel? (once Pittsburg). Samsung and Tesla in Austin.

From Xerox to Zoom, Industrial to Information Age, work itself morphs from 9-5 to anytime gig, from office to outdoor – during and because of Covid. Face to face and “press the flesh” encounters are as rare as seeing Santa on Christmas.

Thieving and stealing has always been a lonely act. Now, together with us (victims) they and we together form a Lonely Crowd. One shouldn’t be surprised why younger folks prefer to text and multi-task (lack of empathy and engagement).

Japan experienced this shift first with their Generation without the Sun, before the trend finally made its way across the Pacific, accompanied by fellow traveler: AI doll (again, frustrated husbands can relate to this need of validation).

Meanwhile, our village elders are still toying with their 1.0 flip phones (proverbial coke bottle). No wonder we see people get sent away on cruises, where face-to-face bantering and venting are expected ( retirees’ vineyard).

See me. Feel me. Touch me. Hear me. Who are you? A nick behind it a string of zeros and ones? In real life, when dead, it takes at least 8 weeks for the grave marker to arrive. What a lag between offline and online world, as far as turn-around.

Survey indicated people would rather lose their wallets then their phones.

Fantasy (escaping time by losing ourselves in the moment) and reality itself have irreversibly traded places.

The self has also evolved, from Outer-directed to Inner-directed (courtesy of Mr. Reisman) then to a third-dimension (bits) as it learns to work with machine (no sudden drama and flare as frustrated husbands often experience).

We are lonely. Ever more so when the cursor stops blinking, device off. It’s then that we face the emptiness (while battery recharged) and we end up looking inward, into our many selves ( courtesy of Elizabeth O’Connor of the Church of the Savior, Washington D.C.). A SEAL urges us to “self-talk”, like an used-car salesman. “I like myself”….

That virtual society – A.I. doll as byproduct – always is learning and getting smarter (I am not advocating a Luddite U-turn). All this perpetuate our fear and reinforce a false notion that we have become inadequate and irrelevant ( for missing out on that “latest and greatest?” ). Alone together, we Occupy the Net.

Before long, we accept and adopt this UNREALITY as our new reality. We are just Being There – Peter Sellers without Shirley MacLaine.

Blame it on divorce court (James Dobson), Hollywood (Tipper Gore), drug (Nancy Reagan), booze (Betty Ford), climate (Jane Fonda). The “sinners” and the poor shall always be with you. The ominous others.

The Church with roots in agricultural past (parish and priest) is having a hard times coping with technology. In a hurry and by overcompensated reaction, religion piggy back on political hype, banking on candidates who symbiotically need to raise their campaign money hence, more versed in technology – online crowd, and real life flocks . Quite a marriage of convenience.

Fareed Zakaria agrees with me on this point (politics fills the void once occupied by religion).

People always offer themselves as “solutions” to the ill of society ( hence a de facto self-appointed platform and profiteer), without examining the underlying root “cause”. Perhaps it’s the times and system we found ourselves in (the new BOX). If only we could see all the wireless signals crisscrossing the continents, or the lit fiber strands underground, let’s say Ashburn, VA.

McLuhan was prescient in saying: ” the medium – Internet – is the message”. In other words, it’s the system stupid. With it, payload and self-adapting survival learning. Like anything else in the evolution process. Vincent Cerf , co-inventor of “distributed architecture” says “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. It sounds like we are living in a perpetual Beta as virtual “subjects – llab rats ” of the information age.

Name it “Mechanical Turk”, AI or whatever else.

Last Century, with clear eyes (after some hesitation and delay): the English, the Russian and the American, could at least agree on one blame: Hitler. If only it had been that simple and easy.

After Potsdam, arrived de-Colonization, Capitalism, Consumerism and Corporatism (CEO salary graph – a hockey-stick – says it all).

Now, it’s atomization and alienation (Alien Nation). The girl and guy with a Dragon tattoo, put on headsets, earplugs, glasses, masks, gloves, nose and ear rings… any wearables, to stay invisible as an essential class, only to be recognized during Covid. Like a line in the Quiet American, ” As a journalist, I don’t get involved. Reality is separated from me by my typewriter”.

Later deeper into the story, our anti-hero found himself inconspicuously entangled in a love triangle, he then says – with a blush face: ” How I wished there existed someone to whom I can say I am sorry”.

The movie ends with its anecdotal line: “When first arrived, everyone thinks he can understand the country (Vietnam) in just a few days, only to find out much later that one can barely scratch its surface” (I para-phased).

The same thing can be said about our current predicament. No single person is to take the credits ( Al Gore’s Information Superhighway) or the blame (Josh Hawley howling and belling out at Zuckerberg: “Have you offered an apology!”). Blame it on FTX, TikTok, Instagram, those “Senior lawyers” in the case of Jenna Ellis’ ill-vetted and irresponsible filings or Cambridge.Analytica

It just happened. Something happened. Even when we couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Lonely, vulnerable (Tesla lay-off) and insecure (not just the job’s) we feel, even when we sit inside our protected fence (real life) and firewalls ( inbox still filled with spam emails)

Awash in all types of communication, yet we found ourselves more paranoid and isolated with “nothing to watch” (the Happiness bell-shaped curve). Sitting in a food court? One might get shot or stabbed (Australia).

Our only wish (after saying a prayer) is for business to be as usual…not to have hackers break the codes (and hold us ransom) or chips malfunction even at 99.999 self-healing reliable packets transmission.

We all need American Express (our new digital A’s number). ” Don’t leave home without it.”

Or to leave that number on the cloud, with stored pre-paid arrangement for everyday access.

“Welcome to HAL ” says a digitally pre-recorded voice, with bio-metric entry.

” How I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry”. One has to live ( in immersion) long enough to understand it. Don’t blame just any one actor in particular.

It’s an Alien Nation, foreign to both native and naturalized, from Wake Island or Ellis Island.

Not good enough!

There were a 19 and 17 years gap between my siblings and I.

At times, I wanted to scream: ” So you just want me to measure up and end up in the grave with you?”

Not a death wish or ill will, but the logic held. I could never “win”. Not with that wide a gap, different circumstances and rules of engagement..

Then arrived the spouses, who immediately and intuitively leverage their differences/strengths e.g. cooking or closer-knit family (as oppose to mine) to always have the final say. Happy wife, happy life. Never win an argument, so far.

All men live in quiet desperation. Or like Blake :” A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, Marks of woe”.

At the Amusement Park, I noticed the “rejects” per lack of height or age – accident at birth- or had failed at inflating their age with a straight face.

Remarque, in Shadows in Paradise, had one of his German-Jew characters using forged papers (like Jason Bourne) first in France, then in NYC and finally out West (Hollywood), with anglicized names, like Theodore, Henry etc…

Most notably and ironically was when one of his friends (Jewish) ended up with a role of a Nazis. It’s just a movie. Viet Thanh Nguyen also mentioned similar irony in his “the Sympathizer” ( the likes of Apocalypse Now, using extras hired from the refugee camp, to play the other side).

Actors cannot irreversibly hide their eyes shadows and bags. First, everyone wanted to be older to get on rides, then younger to get the part ( Mr. Saturday Night).

I have lived with older family members most of my life. Hence, I associate strength with charming and charismatic role-models with a tat of machismo to beat back the bullies, or to drive a tank in war.

Christopher Plummer, Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones came to mind. (The Package or The French Connection, where that bearded cunning antagonist with an umbrella in one hand, and the other, waving to his pursuers from inside a moving subway train.)

We’re living at a time when “Not good enough” has also aged ( along with its faithful subscribers). Netflix is expanding overseas, Cinema focuses on specialty, and Spotify is raising its rates. Decades of “planned obsolescence” has come due ( over-production of goods and services e.g. cosmetic surgery and Nike’s sportswear.)

Florida used to be known for sandy beaches and a slightly older population but genteel (snowbirds from CANADA?).

Sun-bathed second-home owners now push for monolithic and homogenous community. Why not consider Amish country to go all the way? or year-round cruise-ship?

Not good enough. Never good enough. 300,000 dollars for beach sand to protect property. Then, puff! half gone.

Nature has its last say by sifting ( no pun), and extracting pearls.

Yet we live on, practicing variations of the game: I am better than you: with less cholesterol, and more cotton. The power players themselves , once on the receiving end, got a lifetime worth of abuse. Then the DNA, the script, the code and the embedded information seek formation and new expression.

You connect the dots. It could be anywhere: from spelling bee contest to Senior Beauty Contest. From clothes to car, zip code to zip loc (preferably Trader Joe’s tote bags).

This morning, appeared on the View was Stormy, who no longer associated with her former lawyer ( the only one who stepped up and charged a nominal $100 fee for a high-profile case).

We are living in a different time, when “not good enough” now applied to lawyering and higher courts. In short, the pissing contest in school yards has morphed with “gentrified” grievances. ( I suffer more than you, albeit a higher income level).

In this zero-sum contest, one might as well throw in the towel ( as oppose to stay and hope someday, the pie will expand so everyone will get a bigger piece). Ask your Uber driver, or the Airbnb homeowner.

That kind of game ( zero sum) only ends in one way: a duel in High Noon, and not everyone is a Gary Cooper.

Next life, I wish, dog plays with dog, lion lies beside the lamb, and music is in the air spotifying-ly, like another Woodstock, with Walt Disney grown-ups and measured ups (you’re in, no cover charge). Where every night is New Year’s Eve, when people are anticipating and accepting. Like a human family, with no need for a psychologist. Just musicologists and gynecologists (since it’s too positive not to have more children).

And the only game that is absent is “Not good enough” (no need for greed to grease the wheel). That’s when we wake up and shred the role of an apologist (for all the wrong done to one another). Spell check? the machine now does that. That left nuances, empathy and compassion, say, for the most recent wounded in Moscow, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti (where Barbecue’s gun is bigger than yours)

Not having good credits? don’t worry. Some high-interests agency will lend you (btw, that’s how future pie is shrinking). There is no need to validate yourself with FICO scores, Facebook likes, or football scores. Or pay DMV for a name change, since there will be no shadows in Paradise.

You are good enough, just because you are intrinsically and inherently valuable, with eyes, ears, hands, feet, nose and mouth. Recent Massachusetts General operation ( pig’s kidney transplant) was cheered, and rightly so.

But back to us, human being, we are an occasion for cheering as well, if not just for our extractable kidneys (tell this to the families of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, held captive for ransom, and just now released).

Game people play. To cut the line, to zigzag through traffic, to win (at football) per Vincent Lombardo. Yew! How did we buy so easily into that spirit of warring, only to kick ourselves waking up lonelier than when first started.

He/she who dies with the most stuff and spent cases wins.

Sounds like a showroom logo. Not what you need, but always what (somebody else wants) you to want to belong. The Culture Industry and its worn-out propaganda (a season ahead of current trend) with Social Media on steroid (ironically, there were competing lessons on mediation and zen, almost out loud saying ‘the other guys lesson is not good enough”).

Hang on to your purse, your dignity and time here on Earth, before embarking with me (not to sell you the dream) someday, to where people are people, always measured up, and accepted/accepting. I know, I know. It only happens in dreams, and not in life (not since Western society attached a number to everything, like force ranking and marketing data set acquired through a series of incongruent questions.

And I am not the only one. I hope someday, you’ll join us.

I will leave you to “measuring up” to whatever has been nagging at you and demanding your devotion: spell-check, smell check, security check. No wonder how you cut it, it’s always a bit short, no slacks (btw an author, on Amanpour and Company, mentioned in his book entitled “Fluke”, that at some point in time, (the tipping point), we are to say what’s enough is enough).

That’s his book. Meanwhile, you are good enough, in my book. No games.

And you are not ” Mr. Saturday Night”, dying to get in front of an audience to rehash for the nth tie those rehearsed lines ” Oh, that man looks like New Jersey in pants?”

That man, c’est moi. C’es tu. All of us, at some point. Can’t hide our age, not with those Tommy Lee Jones’ eyes bags.

Per David Hume Kennerly, TIME White House Photographer, the high-fived high-power Cabinet were heading toward the ” Old Executive Office Building where Kissinger will give a press conference announcing the successful conclusion of the helicopter evacuation of the last Americans from Saigon. Unfortunately he was a bit hasty in his proclamation, because after his press conference it was discovered that 11Marines were left stranded on the roof of the U.S. Embassy. They were ultimately rescued less than three hours later, but the war ended as untidily as it started. Washington, D.C., April 29, 1975.”

Apparently there was a black-tie event at the Kennedy Center that evening, Washington EST, hence our “James Bond” Dr. “Strangelove” was hastily called in the situation room ( much like the take down of Bin Laden). At first he was credited to have said, in context, that if we (Nixon and staff) were to take out Thieu, just like Diem was before, then the world would say “to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its Ally proves fatal”. Hence covention wisdom in Washington “ if you want a friend might as well get a dog “. before the Watergate story broke , Nixon was to bomb Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and turning “Hondaville” into Nukeville.

Asked if any regrets, our Doctor in Philosophy formerly named Heinz ( who dated Barbara Walters) ” we thought we could turn South Vietnam into another South Korea”. H-Mart to V-Mart.

But, Mark Felt of the FBI “deep-throated” and derailed this “ mission “ (of going dark behind the Paris Accord back directly) to deal directly with Moscow, Hanoi and Zhou Enlai.

Even Kurt Russel , in a fictional Ph. D. Consultant in Executive Decision , couldn’t keep up. Not without Halle Berry’s aid ( brave air stewardess).

In “When Allies cut and run”, our own Doctor of Philosophy Hung Tien Nguyen , a close confidant to President Thieu, pleads “one day, when future Viet-American get to position of power (again, per Kissinger – “ power is the ultimate aphrodisiac -“) remember NOT to put allies and high-risk entourage in similar position”. The book came out in 2005, before Kabul. Oh well.

At least, to be fair and lenient, we know that President Ford inherited a situation, a bad one, not of his own making. When Operation Baby lift crashed one of its only two planes out of Saigon, President Ford flew to San Francisco to greet and hold one of the babies (photo courtesy again of David Hume Kennerly), babies that per one Navy man’s account written home to his wife, “tossed from the air, like basketballs”. President Ford used to play ball in Michigan, then in the Navy ( the tip-off).

He tumbled often (SNL Chevy Chase) but caught one this time (been busy with Operation Eagle Pull, Talon Vise, Frequent Wind etc..).

Time to heal.

Write this when I am gone.

Been almost 49 years to be exact. As Kissinger’s extolled : “as historian, we need to acknowledge the inevitability of tragedy”.

That tragedy was also mine. It cut off oxygen of my youth, choked my aspiration and derailed my dreams.

Time to heal. But don’t hastily celebrate Mission Accomplished. It could back-bite. Whoops! There are more on the roof.

It could haunt you (Ford had two assassination attempts on him while Carter aborted his hostage rescue.)

Saigon lost its name, and downtown soldiers statue . The gate to the Independence Palace however got fixed and Dr Hung’s Palace Files printed (way after the Pentagon Papers, but nevertheless, made public those Nixon promises but never honored). To his credit, he had to borrow money for a Press Conference room rental that same fateful day.

Both Ambassador Martin, and President Ford were known to be pet lovers. The former wouldn’t leave on Saigon Last Day without his daughter’s dog, the latter took his to work (in the Oval Office photos).

I sure hope if not honor, then compassion for one species will lead to the other; Not un-eloquent as “I wish they just gone to hell, that which we want to put behind, always lingers on”.

Words wounded, and hard to heal even when it’s time to heal.

We too should get some. As the one-liner uttered by Rob Reiner’s mom (in When Harry met Sally) goes: ” I’ll have what she has”.

As a gentle people, we were “herded” out then migrated to pre-approved (supposedly safe urban, like the Phoenix program) regions per Geneva Convention, and eventually scattered in statelessness.

Our carry on: Black/White photos, a violin and some sobbing tales: ” Uncle Ban took 18 bullets for the team, cousin Khe split his salary for fellow students.”

Last month, on President Day, my sister passed away. She was buried along with her story and struggle. Our earliest memory keeper. She grew during Vietnam turbulent times. My sister was (not used to past tense) a bursting high-schooler in a country where many foreign actors wanted to have a say: from ” the Ugly American” to “the Quiet American”, from Sino to Soviet Empire.

After our family re-settled South , she had a (Filipino) driver and a government-issued car ( flapping flag and all) for us (she took me, her youngest brother) to attend front-row view of the National Celebration parade.

She got her job training in the Philippines, her first trip alone out of the country. Upon return, she brought home good material for my tailored pants.

Something about her penchant for travel: train, bus, automobile, plane, cruise ships and finally hearse.

Between her husband and she, they brought home tons of pictures: slides, prints, original 36 shots, Polaroids, postcards and travelogs. None the more cherished than Hanoi’s. Something about home that never left them.

That city makes and breaks their hearts, a bond between them. Its scenery and smell, music and memories.

Once, I spent a month there, taking in the ambience and atmosphere (before Obama and Bourdain) to understand the adults of my family. It tore to them having to head South, an agonizing 300-days decision. Worse off, they did not have the support of Northern Vietnamese Catholics who were among the one million intra-national refugees at that time.

Collective and communal always, they kept up with tradition: “gio chap” (annual ancestral commemoration with extended families etc..). until culture shock did them in as they witnessed how “individualism reigns” in America.

In the South (of Vietnam) I arrived. As a trophy child, I tailed four working adults (parents and 2 siblings) in their life 2.0 . They took turn to box me in: here are the guardrails, respect elders, relatives, and elected authorities. No matter how screwed up they might be (or how many Bibles they swore on).

A coup d’etat here, a failed attempt there, then a ceased-fire violation here and a lost honor there. My brother often recounted how horror the bombing in a club during a matinee show that took his talented friend’s life.

It’s us who survive in self-respect and be of values to others. Old timers’ values, I was told and taught!

Giay rach phai giu lay le (self-respect, last to be lost).

So we lived on, breathed in and out, peppered with music (nostalgia) and meals (humble).

Just as we thought we had been out of the wood when another round of uprooting was due. To our collective shame, we picked up whatever carry-on and hopped on to life 3.0 (my 2.0).

Car keys tossed. Empty handed (even with a dramatic show of hands, like a Vegas card dealer at shift-change).

Re-start and rebuild, our new life was like an automobile engine with parts scattered all over. Tons of steel (helicopter’s) and later, tons of skeleton (Boat People) sunk to the bottom of South China Sea.

To re-assemble multiple lives without tools and an INS manual was quite challenging. We couldn’t have done it, if not for the confidence of muscle memory i.e. once survived North-South, one could do it again East-West.

Education is and must be the way out and up. The brains and the hands. Work and chew (something like sweet potato) always to save time. Then, more potatoes and less beef. Soupy stuff and watered-down OJ;

“Good Will from one end to the other !” ( the opposite of Colonial England whose Sun never sets on its Empire).

I wish I had kept those tailored pants my sister had brought home from the Philippines. My first “foreign” exposure, which magically, predicted my first stop en route to America: the Subic Bay (Philippines) – only to return years later to “do some good, paying back and forward).

Of late, to see the adult pass was painful. At her funeral, some cried, others prayed. People tossed flowers, or gently laid them down, depends on one’s personal perception of that which is on the surface, intangible, but more real than anything. The End. Like Mandela says, “I am because of you”. The adult’s trek laid my trajectory.

With my own eyes, I saw death through a thin veil.

Why should other emigrants (Jews from Germany, for instance) get all the good memories (Hollywood and the Holocaust). Ours are also worth-noting, if not spicier (unless we prefer “let sleeping dog lie” since like Capt Kurt’s line: “Horror Horror”).

Homo sapiens stories (of late, Hamas’) are lessons in disasters and determination. Stories of struggling women in a warring world, who claim their rightful front-row seat in a military parade or even a back-row seat on an Intercontinental flight.

All the while, for a few brief moments in between, shined.

Since 80 % of communication are non-verbal, we are better off “listen” with our eyes (Ailes’ “it’s a visual medium. Turn around”).

In film, Close-ups reveal more than conceal ( when the couple gets intimate, we know they are going to kiss, just like when they introduce a gun, someone will use it).

In the court of law, prosecutors put people on the stand to get at the “truth”.

In life, we also need to “put people on the stand”, get a feel for what’s unsaid.

Filmmakers show fidgeting hands, clammed up knees…to move the plot along (heightening the suspense with mock-up assumptions, conflicting argument vs contradictory clues …). Fake left.

Ad Age used BOLD typefaces and unconventional paper size. With more gadgets to bypass, every ad is now a mini-billboard (assuming fast exposure and SKIP AD.)

The internet favors hyper extraverts and loudmouth hecklers. It’s “citizen communication” age. The age of unhinged amateur, as if every Spring is an Arab Spring. Messaging that flashed, and fast-read like an ad disclaimer, required by the FCC, fast forward toward our future (data deluge).

Like anything in life, after scratching the surface of the Internet, the elite ( like Liquid Death does to water) will cordon and colonize, to monetize and expand their digital brand. So far, it’s just a foreplay i.e. lost leaders to beta test then to bait/switch; up the food chain to high-brow exclusivity: membership fees, pre-paid firewalls, advanced booking, and selective Ivy-League clubs e.g. Linkedin, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram (not controversial TikTok).

Netflix now goes overseas for markets.

An Internet that divides, not democratized; publicly exposed and not privacy-guarded. We keep seeing more “fines” which did not do a dent to Big Tech.

Imagine the Internet as a high school where students form cliques, clubs, even “gangs” (Barbeque).

Can’t handle the truth.

Can’t get the whole world in his hand!.

Stop the spin, the TED. I want to get off.

Facebook-aholism follows the law of diminishing return (one selfie, two selfies, naked selfie … all dulled out and numb). This happened to TV, cable TV, DVD’s etc..

My name is…. and I am a facebaholic.

(the FBa group held “church” in a digital cathedral, reinforce and reassure a new member that he/she is on the way to recovery i.e. rediscovering nature (Walden 2.0) one’s right to be absent, non-verbal empathy, stoicism and sabbath, back to the land and organics living (Bob Dylan in Woodstock), engaging with people who invest time in mutual caring and issues that matter).

We are nearing the end of Web 2.0, where “free” sharing = free ranting (lowest common denominator). Enough “selfies” and millions of “impressions”. Anthropologists would have a treasure trove of data to extrapolate about human behavior, and how not much has changed since the days of old.

The hard part for marketers is how to deal with skip-ad. Permission ads. Messaging must grab one’s throat and get to the point. When Biden “gets it” we’ll all get it. (Turn around, it’s a visual medium). Even a robust State of the Union ( a relic from Wesleyan Tent Evangelism) could not bump his ratings.

In your face BOLD headlines, sprinkled with intermittent and recurring machine-like encoding. Communication is repetition (Chinese water-dripping torture). The crowd and the chant, the color and the caricature, herding and de-individualizing. In short, blood sweat and tears.

Our current age of very very short attention span “hey”, It’s Joe.!

See me. Feel me. ( Roger Daltrey w/ his swinging microphone like a rodeo reeling in the Woodstock chanting crowd).

We’re back to where we started, with Morse codes and Maritime SOS. Listen with our eyes, using binoculars to scan the horizon. The revenge of analog (the return of vinyl and lighthouses). Flash! Flash! Sending out an SOS, sending out an SOS.

80% of communication are non-verbal.

Whenever possible, zoom in for the close-up. The body and all its parts, fake or real, tend to give themselves away e.g. fidgeting and unintended wiggling ( unintended message sent).

Lighting sets the mood, music the tone and the stage context. The unseen are more impactful, the unsaid speaks louder.

Life, the internet and our own existence hover in drone-like speed, over the surface; hopping from one tip of the iceberg to the next, to form patterns and eventually to make sense of reality unfortunately ever changing, and alluding, so we have to make it up as we go along, as if we alone can “fix” the narrative.

The best we can do is secretly and silently put people in a “box”, zoom in for the close-ups , a snapshot so authentic that even the best actors among us can’t hide.

No one ever cries with their ears. Hence, the eyes serve as two-way windows to the soul.

At some point, we will cut through the noise (ignoring signals which occupie our ears) to solely trust our eyes, piercing through all the attention-diversion smokes and mirrors. We’ve been had and grifted so many times. Isn’t it time to learn?

Since the invention of light, then the internet: we adapt. Down to nano secs.

Writing today has to make allowances for SKIP AD and skimming.

Too bad you can’t read my mind. I only have good intention and just want good company, being old, straight, Asian and all. What an insulting caricature as once portrayed in Breakfast at Tiffany, the photographer guy from upstairs, who can’t sleep through all the decadent parties which caused blood-shot eyes behind the sunglasses Audrey Hepburn wore while munching her croissant and window-shopping?

Can’t turn around in my kimono for your close-ups even with my Roger-Ailes’ insight (that’s it’s a visual medium).

Sorry.