Thang Nguyen 555

The boy in a Black-and-White picture stared back at me, his future self. He was standing in a Saigon slum, wearing a pull-over shorts and a striped shirt. His flip-flop completed his tropical daily wear.

I tried to tell him Not to grow up, not to be in a hurry and that he was in a great spot i.e. with parents, siblings and cousins/neighbors who cared. Never mind the infrastructure, the concrete and the heat. All things must pass.

But your childhood only lasts for so long.

Look at me – your future self – who is approaching “maintenance stage”, brain cells stop growing, intelligence far reaching.

Best you can do is to connect those dots, to fill in the missing pieces of puzzle..to know who truly cares.

Even life-expectancy cannot be relied upon to continue its trajectory…due to illness, pandemic and other variants like drug overdoses, natural or man-made disasters.

Human are our worst enemies. We kill, maim, hurt, speak ill of others, “commenting” and dismissing. We fight for causes and non-causes. We struggle and sin, strive and suffer.

There is not an evil thing we spare and try not to do. War and conflict just draw out the extremes in human being. During WWII and its aftermath, if you had a PX card, you have enough currency to do whatever you want. A pack of Luck Strike? no problem.

Now, it’s vaccination. And ironically, more in the US believe vaccines pose more risks than the variant itself.

Among the risks, I am sure it does not make one more brain-dead.

Although listed among advanced countries, the US has seen its people being conned, tricked, and goaded into avoidable disasters and deceptions. Let’s say, there are still a segment of society who keep entertaining the return of a King., who will reign on Earth for a thousand years….

That God only reveals his latest secret to White Folks in Utah…presumably more so, if you sleep on “My Pillow”… than the dream will come into sharper focus, and reality more likely come true .My heart aches for Southeast Asia, for Vietnam…for regions of the world where the virus are now rampant. People are not set up for long-term sustainable social distancing. In fact, it has been a tourist attraction feature e.g. crowding, bustling with life and night life.

Now lays in ruin…empty streets (very much like NYC in April of 2020). Ghost town Asia. Silence. Stillness. Suffocating. City walls turn tomb stones..human turn animals in cage, with labels like in a zoo….Chimpanzees live here, lions over there…oh, and here, the crocodiles….vaccinated but isolated still.

We have had our freedom. And we turn it on its head, ourselves into inmates. I meant to tell my past self: “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun”…Go, skin your head and skin your knees, hurry not…it’s all troubles.

With adulthood and old age, come responsibilities and no respite. We came, we conquered and we left behind ruins and rubbles. Our “Lucky Strike”; don’t stop believing… in the goodness of people…especially when they are in trouble…Then, tomorrow, everyone gets up, and forgets…life is like a dream…especially when you sleep on one of those “Pillows”…Breakfast is over…childhood over….

I turned over the picture of myself at age 6 or 7. It’s on grainy Black-and-White paper. But inside my head, I know the alley and its contour, the shape of my past and how contorted its folding future has been. I am living its projected future ( unconceivable back then). I can’t say I like it, but have come to accept it. Its version, its portion and its allotment. After all, I am still here, vaccinated and eager to bellow:” Get your shots”.