Sum of Selves

If the Sun were warrior male, then Moon, nurturing female: soft, strong and enduring.

On this side of World War II, we celebrate women who stepped up to the plate (” You Can Do It”) only to take bandannas off, put aprons back on once victory was secured. Voila, the baby boomer generation.

In our highly competitive society, we need a resting place. A Sabbath, a cave even a womb.

Often times, it’s our mom. Mine said: “Who wouldn’t root for a face like that” when seeing me down.

I once took a nap (jet lag) while visiting her in Assisted Living. She saw through me, what I needed. Certainly not food. The result? Best reboot.

Life will offer mobility, speed, victory (at a price), penalty and reward, but nap? What’s that! Only the lazy! Joe versus the volcano (that neon light was too bright!).

To shelter from the beating Sun, people in SE Asia and S America often have siestas. The night is long, cool and things/work can wait. Western world had an early-mover advantage with cooling tech (compressor and capacitor) hence an 8-hour workday, like clockwork, before feeling like a train wreck.

The culture contrast might not be just in degrees (of hard working) but in kind (technology adoption rate and diffusion of innovation this side of the Industrial Revolution).

In Asia you are the sum of all selves i.e. someone’s cousin, grandpa’s grandchild, your friend’s friend and neighbor. All in a web of relationships (Everything All at Once). Tribes which held periodic power got the most followers (the Nguyen, the Tran etc..). Individualism, what’s that! Narcissism, hum!

There is no place for self-compassion, self-indulgence (my brother once felt guilty lunching out when my mom walked by on her way to the market for raw ingredients) – or in arranged marriage via a matchmaker – individual cold-calling for a date? what’s that. The nail that sticks up gets hammered or humbled down – vast data set that reach back centuries. One is named in the order in which he/she was born: “anh Ba, chi Tu” (brother 3 sister 4) in rigid structure: King-Monk-Teacher-Parent, with long loyal line way beyond the grave (shaming and shunning, more immediate when one doesn’t adhere to the code). One of our classmates, deceased, but still known as son of the Geography/History teacher. His son showed up at our 50th Reunion.

While DO NOT ENTER hung outside kid’s room in Western society, poorer Asian counterparts sleep on the floor in groups. (My cousin finally rebuilt her meager house, with separate rooms for her grown up kids. She expressed “post-partum” syndrome, as if century-old womb was finally vacant psychologically per spacious availability.) Kids in the US, when intervention is needed, get sent to “see someone” (school social worker/analyst) or else, like lately, a MN church kid, consulting a “gun show” sales specialist; again, in my cousin’s narrative, she is always with people around to listen to and/or to spread the blame – listening at an emotional level tends to de-escalate and diffuse tension.

To this day, we still can’t put the finger on who is responsible for the demise of Vietnam (just to make a point). Since everyone were responsible, hence no one (via declassified materials, one finds at best some plausible what-if scenarios – alternate history e.g. what if Kennedy had been alive (Promises to Keep) he would have withdrawn, or if Westmoreland just stayed put as a schoolmaster or Kissinger definitely etc..).

The war eclipsed and replaced previous convention (Command and Control). Most telling was from the front e.g. “shoot first, ask later” at Son Thang or My lai; or tormented by conflicting loyalties e.g. Convoy of Tears (3/75) – disobeying order (to stay and hold) or to take care of fleeing families (again, what do you expect to find in extended-family culture).

So syrupy was the sentiment:” This Tet, I won’t be coming home to you, mom” …Vietnam-war version of Take me Home, Country Roads. One might be a General but back home, with cap off, just a G.I. Joe who craves corn dogs or soul foods – after sweating and fixing up mom’s thatched roof (nursing home, what’s that?). Circling back to my best nap.

What is your last name, nick name and rank? Except for rank, the other two were branded from the start. When rank became irrelevant, one had to cope with post-war identity crisis amidst culture collision and compromise. Veterans-prisoners-immigrants were baffled when arriving at plum Orange County in the 90’s.

Back home and back then, in the North (of VN), people lived off coal mines while the South, rice fields and fisheries. At present, both are urbanized e.g. pollution, traffic and inflation – both honor their mothers – alive or deceased – with thoughts, prayers and flowers.

Life in the East alternates between creation and creative destruction (Faulkner’s” the past is not dead, it’s not even past”). We repeat the same mistakes slowly then suddenly, only with new actors.

My recently deceased sister told tales of sleeping at the bottom of an US Navy ship next to someone with an open wound (her words). Up on the deck, a Navy man wrote home to his wife:” wow, they dropped babies like basketballs” (from hovering out of fuel chopper). Yet, my sister’s four children are getting on well, adapted and adjusted to capitalist United States of “wild” America. Those were the days when dollars got burned by the bushel and Vietnam currency (piasters) tossed by the handful to the four winds.

We are the sum of all selves.

No wonder the Old Testament often refers to so and so, son of so and so who came from so and so. Each was mentioned as part of a long genealogical chain.

Thanks to Big Data, social media afford us “customized” recommendation based on our profile (which was prerequisite verification for using the site). This is not to celebrate our uniqueness, but more for programmatic segmentation and targeted billing (before that, it’s often a tossup to spend ads dollar).

For years, we lived among groups (for survival in an agricultural society), seeing ourselves as seen. All of a sudden, with broadband and apps, we experience “freedom” to “tweet” (140 characters limit) and shout, anonymously, to take and post selected/then-deleted selfies across the pond.

Of course, we are aware of the nature/nurture debate (80/20). But how many of us were taken at an early age to be raised by a different set of parents (as in Trading Places) i.e. what’s the percentage of gene (75 or 85) that significantly affect and alter future outcome. How about interracial marriages (Obama via way of Kenya and Kansas).

I flipped through an Oakland Museum coffee-table book (What’s going on). On one page, it shows G.I.’s sleeping on cots in a hangar waiting to be shipped out (67 to Nam). Later, it’s a punch line in-country “so? they are going to ship me to Nam!”. Our own Kieu Chinh (actress in Hamburger Hill) scolded her brothel clientele: “You! GIs! Beaucoup dien cai dau” crazy!).

The next page shows supposedly interracial war-orphans in buckled-up bassinets (upper deck bunch survived the crash) during Operation Babylift, April 4, 1975.

We are not the Know-Nothing. We know Something, though not Everything. However incomplete, we know enough: honor Thy mothers – a rare treat of a nap and needed unconditional love.

This past Mother’s Day, that siesta resurfaced, at long-loss. It’s as if the umbilical cord were reattached for my sanity. Positive reinforcement.

Individualism of the West vs communal connections of the East. Son of Sam vs Sum of Selves. Individual vs communal self.

At odds and falling through the cracks are those test-tube babies – origin and destiny unknown – belonging to neither world, surviving orphans of one of the last flights out (or Telegram founder’s sperm babies) while awaiting a genetically-modified upgrade (e.g. White Christian nationalism – it’s not enough to live on the promise of going somewhere – in the hereafter- it has to appease immediate self-gratification – in the here and now via legislation – an ambitious Civil Religious plan hatched by Mitch and the Majority which, per “Sleepwalking through history” gives us our first in a series of divorced Presidents.)

Those who know where they are from (source) will more likely know who they are (identity) and where they are going (destiny). Besides, it’s still unknowable and debatable whether there was a definite endpoint (Omega).

Each Millenium historically bleeds to another in endless flow of history (albeit people in years past had longer attention span and shorter lifespan). If anything, it’s quality of life that counts e.g. comfort made possible by technology like jet plane, air-conditioning and computer (hard and software).

We are nearing an AI age with robots (Klara in the Sun) that/who keep us company, boasting a 24/7 productivity (never take naps, always well-alert and willing to serve), remember and recall better (search and autofill), and reply in Yes and No answer only. We will all be “the English patient” with Klara, our 24/7 nurse (always-learning with if-then readiness).

Even so, it will evolve superficially (artificial tears) however speedily and efficiently (Nvidia and chips manufacturers like Intel). “Ok, you’re not hungry, I see”. “How about a nap?”).

You can trade your phone in, but real- life mom will never let go of her children. In my sister’s case – at sea for days without foods (except for an orange), she somehow managed to take care of herself, while served as a human “buckle”, ensuring safety for her kids against “undesirable” neighbors in topsy turvy sea. Then decades later, sleeping alone, postpartum, as a widow in a western-standard empty house, near West Virginia (Take me home, Country Roads).

We’re the Sum of all Selves, admit it or not.