I am almost done with ” In the Sanctuary of Outcasts” but I am in no hurry. It gives me pleasure to feel the pulse of America’s last “forbidden outpost”. As a society, we are just as good as our weakest link: veterans, homeless, shut-ins and bottom-feeders. Neil White, inmate-turned-undercover-journalist, tried to give leprosy a new PR spin: he failed at the attempt to call this dreaded disease by any other name.
This reminds me of a biblical story. A terminally-ill man by the healing pool. For 38 years, his repeated attempts failed miserably since other outcasts had always gotten in first.
The fact that we long for a more civil society, a more just regime and a better place is proof that we are coded for an After-Life. At least that’s how the Augustinian argument goes: ” our souls are anchored in the Heavenly….hence we are restless….”
I know restlessness well. I was born restless, with narrow shoulders (my mom was petite) – and big feet. By the time I finished French elementary in Saigon, the Vietnam war took a turn for the worst: the burning monk, the Diem brothers’ assassination, then Kennedys’ followed right after. Heck, the whole earth seemed to be scorching. Yet in the middle of self-immolation, Thich Quang Duc was still (I was standing across the intersection along with some eye-witnesses).
He were like a pebble dropped into the lake, causing ripple effects except for the center. Later, after a limbo in Wake Island, summer 75, I dove right into post-war America, where I felt what Neil White was describing of his incarceration in Carville: he doesn’t belong, just makes believe that he went undercover as an inmate-journalist.
From growing up with huge generational gap ( the other four adults were of WWI WWII generations respectively) to cultural gap in an almost all-white “cow college”, I too went through the motion, like a mail-order bride in foreign land, longing for my eventual home. Unfortunately, similar to the Healing Pool, every time I tried to jump in, others had already beaten me to it. So I ended up with tons of memories, lots of sorrows and this narrative has yet to find its proper ending. Because of my interrupted life, I can make inference to others’ with deferred dreams: those who were drafted, drained and dejected like spent cases. Veterans of a chain of wars who are struggling with PTSD, drug-abuse, homelessness and frequent successions of VA chiefs.
Later, as I compared notes with counter-parts of the counter-cultures, I realized many shared the “hobo” impulse (On the Road). It is an equivalent of pool-side chat among “the outcasts”, as Neil had observed “the out-of-tuned piano was once played by two lepers whose combined fingers could manage a composition written for players with full ten”. From the underside looking out, I realize we are all different, yet have one thing in common: the rich avoided us for fear of contamination. We are the weakest links.
Yet, America can only be as strong as its last outpost and outcasts.
Thang Nguyen 555 