back the other way

Bid time return. Somewhere in time.

Wish we could. More so with our Superman (to avert that fateful horse-riding accident).

To make that left at the fork instead of a right. To come in full circle to live once again in centuries/decades past.

The older I get, the more I understand my Dad’s unspoken struggles. More than 4 decades apart, we’re not pals.

Just a father-son relationship, unlike many of my friends, who have dads to hang out and share activities with.

If I could go back in time. To 36 pho Back Kinh, Hai Duong. To the turn of 19th century. To live in a then-2-stories mansion, with two dozen people sharing lunch (as I was told). To experience aristocracy (small “a”). Just an extended family sharing blood line.

In Somewhere in Time, we’ve got Christopher Reeve and Christopher Plummer.

The multiple lives we could have again, only if.

More than often, we’ve been short-changed, partly due to self-sabotage.

In that movie, it’s the agent who intervened “for the good of the actress”.

In life, it’s always one actor or an incident that disrupts or deflects our trajectory (for a romance or a career).

Then by looking in the rear-view mirror, we wonder what became of some people we once endeared.

I wish them well.

People in and out of our lives. Some left great marks. Others, big holes.

We cherish those folks. Wish we could turn back the clock, to do it differently with different outcomes.

Somewhere in time. I wouldn’t want to come out of the womb.

I once peaked in my family album.

To the left, my Dad and brother. To the right, my Mom and sister.

No room for me, unless peeking out from the spine of the album.

Of course, I hadn’t been around then.

War, displacement and incongruence within and out. Why would they want me to join them. A desperate need for a sidekick? Like Joe Pesci in the back seat in Lethal Weapons?

To put me through torture and bombardment? Where the hell is Gulf of Tonkin, Laos, Guam/Wake/Bataan/and a bunch of SEA islands that were not in our Vietnamese lexicon (yet ended up housing us by the thousands).

Who would want to grow up in Uvlade just to be mowed down, unrecognisable.

I just want to rewind time in one swipe, back the other way, to land aboard the Ark, to hang out with my species-counterpart.

Let it flow (the flood). Thou shall not kill.

Shall not covet your neighbour’s Corvette.

Or the lawn that always looks greener on the other side.

Somewhere in time, how about just 50 years, so we would listen to Senator Sam Ervin at the Watergate hearing and not tonight, at the Jan 6 committee prime time Episode 1. What a carnage in our present time.

Let’s self-hypnotize. Go back in time. to cruise up and down Main Street.

No screens (except for outdoor movies). No twitter. Just chill. With Fonzie or Xanadu’s Magic.

The age of innocence. Before all the hate and vitriol out in the open, shamelessly.

Always in the name of a more noble cause and higher authority.

Give me the Black-and-White movies, the music of the time, and the spirits of the time.

People who touch the brim of their hats to greet neighbors. People who wear suits and shoes (not sweats after the lockdown).

When life is a box of chocolates.

They may walk the dog or they may not. But a smile is certain. And the sky, always blue, despite V8 engines (not too many choices, besides model T’s in Black).

My Dad used to comb his hair using “brilliantine”, put on his shoes that I had shined the night before. After putting on his belt he hit the noon sun for a route of collection and customer success. Paying his due. To bear any burden.

Somewhere in time. I might find myself smiling at those rejection, the toughness of a sales career and the demand at home. I might lash out when things did not come my way. Or I might not, with hindsight and vantage point of 2022 and 2021 the year of Mass Shooting and Mass Insurrection.

My Dad and I live in different times yet shared the same struggle and stimuli. Of lacking adequate resources for compound families’ demand.

I’ll take Watergate Summer any day over what I will be watching tonight. What a sad affair and commentary of our times. Legislature stops dead, while the will of the people and parents in Uvalde ignored. ????

If I could go back in time, I would destroy the artifacts that allow me to return to the present (that pocket watch and those antique clothes, in Reeve’s case).

Even if living back in time, with trade offs like giving up on longevity, a modern luxury afforded by science and vaccination.

It’s the ethos and ethics that I long for…Yesterday….for Today, those qualities come in short supply, as if the concept of “half-life” in science is also applied to social sciences i.e. people are less and less decent and kind as the years go by.

In short, the evolution to reclaim the better angel of our nature somehow regresses as time progresses.

Christopher Reeve and Christopher Plummer both are no longer with us. Somewhere in time, I can hear them lament about our current state of affairs. Still waiting for Superman, who as of now, is still lounging somewhere at the Grand Hotel.