It took time to grow roots. To re-establish one’s self. It’s more true in big cities.
Like Saigon. Pearl of the Orient.
10 miilion strong. All crammed in.
Food vendors, office workers, service workers, factory workers….
Now gone. Home. In a spontaneous urban exodus.
Leaving behind a trail of broken dreams.
Fleeing is what I know.
Leaving behind a part of you…
Embark on a gypsy life…drifting…like a rolling stone.
No roots, no growth.
Meek and transactional existence… day-to-day survival.
I know it. Now they know it. Leaving Saigon that is.
The hotel Continental, Caravelle and Cathedral (Notre Dame).
At least, they are now home. No longer the need for postage at the Post Office, nor the need to send home money.
The money seekers send themselves home. To be couch surfers and Internet surfers.
Not for long.
Just temporary…..until the pandemic subsides (herd immunity).
In South Korean, the wait for a jab is 111 days.
Perhaps longer than that in Vietnam, in post-Saigon existence.
It’s reverse culture-shock. For young couples to return to the country side…to seek refuge.
The dead will bury the dead….You go on and build a life…only to return to bury yourselves.
What we lost while making our way home.
Co-workers’ promise to stay in touch, last pay checks, fun and fashion from the city.
Urban habits and urban pace.
Do we even have wi-fi everywhere..to stay in touch.. to run a scam and/or to raise some money.
Who would respond at the peak of panic? True friends?
We burned all our bridges…We have lived a lie.
Now what? No one will miss the crammed urban space…not until the stillness and silence of the green landscape hit you in the face. Self-imposed new economic zones…gardening and ad-hoc farming. Co-op and fish farming.
It’s time to heal ourselves and heal the Earth.
No one intends to pick second best, to not take advantage of the concentration of educational, financial,social and governmental resources. Not to mention talented and artistic hub. Of engineering and web developers.
Brain drain.
Emotionally draining.
Financially destitute.
Bottoming out.
Before the virus caught up with us, it’s us who died by self-inflicting panic and paranoid.
Death by herd instincts instead of survival by herd immunity.
Saigon and many SEA cities got thinned out, the Earth finally catches its breath. “You can’t always get what you want”…
But human…loss and losing out…such a zero-sum game we play, more than often with a lose-lose outcome.
Wish we could nail down our target, like we once hunted down OBL to the gate of Hell.
No closures. Only death by attrition and survivor’s guilt.
I know a thing or two about leaving Saigon. About one’s memory of its last scene, of the winding river, polluted and stoic. Of the intangibles called life, which only make themselves known more in their absence…in the stillness of the night, when away from it all.
You’ve got a friend in me. An empathic one. A fellow sojourner and sufferer who understands loss and brokenness.
Before you know it, night will bleed into day…and with day, there is hope. Always.
Thang Nguyen 555 