“Life is cheap over there” said someone who were involved in My-Lai massacre, whose anniversary has just come up.
The only person who got a sentence, ended up serving it out of his house. Quite a bargain. Innocent until proven guilty.
All the young lives, and all the counsels (the Best and the Brightest), forever scarred.
We keep ending a broadcast interview on a high note (so as “the word from our sponsors” : soup, soap and cereal – don’t get mixed up with what preceded commercials. )
Or McDonald ads, right after a segment on Ukraine during the Russia invasion.
One man has eaten Big Mac for 50 years straight. That would be 1972 when he first had his first Mc Bite.
A lifetime of burger-eating. A lifetime of watching the news, of spending on groceries and books.
How could life be cheap, here or anywhere?
Kill those “gooks”, “Chinks”
Swamp-ified and dehumanized.
The Chinese Exclusion Act. Bring your strong back, not your spouse.
Build the tracks.
New York City subway. A push, a shot and a massacre.
Life is cheap here too.
One shove down the tracks – steel tracks – still vibrating and handed down since Yellow Peril days – to die by the oncoming train. Black hair, gone and forgotten (face unseen).
When you see someone’s face, look them in the eyes, one can’t do no other but acknowledge that they are fellow sojourners – and appreciate the handywork of God, not to play God.
We’re all survivors, of a confluence of factors.
From a fast-approaching helicopter rotter blade (like me) or hiding inside a Tops’ freezer (as in the case of a young Buffalo cashier).
Still it is a great country. Dreams are made. Fortunes survive.
And despite many bad apples, NYC is still The Big one.
If I can only keep one American character (in a forced choice), I would take, not Mc(Apple)Pie, but that of the uncanny ability to self-re-invent.
Salad bowl or melting pot, that American character of renewing and reinventing stays on.
Anniversary of this, a remembrance of that.
Our routines and rituals define us.
We might have burned many bridges, left behind many bodies…but not that capacity to re-set.
Self-love and pragmatic re-alignment.
Detroit, then overseas and back (Samsung chip factory).
Keep throwing stuff to see what sticks.
In Pennsylvania, in a primary, a hooded shirt and short-cargo pants got nominated.
No sweat. We can handle the truth.
Speak forcefully, forthrightly. Life is short, but not cheap.
Over there, or over here.
Since we re-invent often, to live means to live many lives in one sitting, a buffet of choices for self-development and self-advancement.
Perhaps you might serve others, or you serve God. You’ve got to serve somebody (Dylan). you may call yourself Bobby or call yourself Saul. But in the end, it’s Paul.
St Paul. Master of self-rebranding. Til we have and see faces. The many life times, at times superstitious , other time divine. Out of the Black hole, comes a species, defiant or undefeated.
For some people, their deaths help us live on. My Lai’s, Kent State’s or Kiev’s.
All you have to do is water the plants. Fertilizers, flowers then fading out.
Life is short. But not cheap.
Thang Nguyen 555 