When I visited the neighborhood gym, and heard “I will survive” over the speaker, I knew I was back in full swing.
Scooters weaved in and out, backpackers with signature sandals (footwear was an important identifier here) and fake Heineken bootlegged in from our neighbor in the North.
I will survive (recycled cook oil, recycled land mine, and recycled text books).
Over lunch with some classmates whom I hadn’t met in 40 years, I learned that two of them got sent to war in Cambodia.
My recollection and collection of old friends included veterans of two wars, yet “I will survive.”
At the gym, they wanted me to take off my sneakers (I thought they only did that at the temple).
My bare feet will have to survive all the added weights in a crammed but carpeted space. I will survive.
The guy at the barber shop sharpened his blade and I hesitated to let him shave me (an act which I hadn’t braved in years).
I will survive.
Then friends told me about people they knew who couldn’t wait to emigrate to America.
I thought only the nouveau riches in China are doing this.
How can I tell them about Occupy?
About Penn State?
About fiscal cliff?
About entitlement at home (US) and enforcement at the borders?
America, land of the free, but people there have stopped listening to Gloria Gaynor.
Only here that I found Gloria the priestess whose chant was still on everyone’s lips (although not everyone understood what “petrified” meant).
But survival is prerequisite to glory.
Two wars (the American War and Cambodian), just like the US with Iraq and Afghanistan.
But war fatigue in the US is quite different from Vietnam‘s.
In Vietnam, bouncing back from war has been national sport (Chinese and French).
The US will have to dig deep into its memory (WW II) to find ways to reintegrate its veterans.
I am giving it a try as I sit listen how those combat moments had never left my friends.
Understand and to be understood.
That’s how I will survive.
Thang Nguyen 555 