myPace

I am slow to catch on. Always have been… trailing behind much older sibling and parent.

When I barely attended school, they had already hummed: “Tout les garcons et les filles de mon age se promene dans la rue…et les yeux dand les yeux”. I stayed home, alone, with just a ball for company. Later, French lycee and French literature handed their reign to stale bread from the US (Mom, a teacher, took home from her class left-over), Limited supplies of a Limited War.

Slowly, I comprehend. Oui, je comprendre, more so when all Hell breaks loosed, with exploded and un-exploded ordinances. Very much like what we see in Beirut where war was hot again, this time, with the added participation of drones. Back then, it’s napalm burning. Native dying. Monk self-immolating.

Life was cheap ( “…if 10 have to be sacrificed for 1…” vs Pentagon kill ratio of 7 or 8 to 1 ). Why should I then be in a hurry – to die? before everything barely got started for me (Newsweek used to have “My Turn” page).

Give me bread and powder milk, butter and not guns.

Vua Danh vua Dam (fight and negotiate), military and diplomatic solutions, at the DMZ and in Paris.

Ironically, it’s the capital of once-Colonial power (for 100 years in Indochina) but re-cast as a city of peace under International watching eyes.

It’s hard to comprehend the absurdity of cowboy hats vs cone hats, cowboy vs buffalo boy.

Yet it happened: B-52 from the sky and the VC’s underneath ( Cu Chi tunnel).

Vietnamization of the Vietnam War : ” …Asian boys ought to do it for themselves” quoted LBJ. Yet he himself couldn’t help mulling over war-zone maps and watching the TV networks in agony – and exhaustion, over-burdened by the Great Society on the one hand, and the destruction of Hai Phong Harbor on the other. (” if we lost Cronkite, we’ve lost the war). At the time, there was more than half a million troops on the ground.

As a “reluctant” compromise and creativity, Nixon followed his predecessor’s footsteps: just bomb the hell out of Cambodia only ended up killing college students (at Kent State) instead of gaining leverage at the Peace Accord table.

What a cluster f***up ! So messy that it was ranked up there as “unknown unknown”, in the parlance of Rumsfeld, then Chief of Staff during the Ford Administration (one out of two Baby lift Op flights did not make it above ground, two last choppers missed the administration announcement deadline etc…).

When young, I thought someday, I would grow up and grow old to be a Senior Citizen going to Matinee Movies (with rightfully earned discount). Then slowly, je comprendre.

There is no “dreams”, not American nor California (today, they came out with a remix of my then youthful days ” I walked into a church… on a Winter day….pretend to pray”).

Those war-time baguette Mom brought home from work got me going. Flour from Army surplus, and flowers (from the anti-war sixties). The monk by then had long been dead (Madam Nhu offered more fuel for the “BBQ” fire). Castro brothers, Kennedy brothers, and the Diem brothers.

All bros. Almost mafia-like. All big talks , from both sides (“no prices are too high” for a political campaign slogan …). All of a sudden, je comprendre (credibility gap). Half a man I used to be, now “I long for yesterday”.

For the time when I was alone with just a single toy, at home and at peace. Ignorance is bliss. While my siblings were out and about, doing what grown-ups were supposed to do: working, dating and occasionally, out of politeness, asking each other about their parents or an out-of-sync sibling like myself (generational gap).

I miss the action, that’s for sure. Un-exploded ordinances. Un-lived life, at least the one I was supposed to (Tous les garcons et les filles…). And under-shared version of an unwanted war, from my vantage point and perhaps of many others’ (BTW, LBJ has an assisted memoir of the same name “Vantage Point”).

Hell No vs How long. Attrition war vs Voting rights. Cowboy hats vs cone hats. Cultures on course of collision. Somehow, somewhere, my uncut hair, unplanned yet helpful to me as I blended in with remnant and relics of the long sixties, on cow-college campus (to hear Udall campaign speech) or “Here comes the Sun”…after a long lonely Winter.

We are. More butter, no guns. Dancing, not shooting. Travolta not Jane Fonda. Le Freak and not the kind of “freaking out” I had been used to. If I had ever thrown up then, it was from an overdose of Rolling Rock, and not because of burnt-flesh smell.

Somewhere, between Heaven and Hell, there is Earth and the Sun at the center of our Solar system, with various stars and different interpretations of what life is. Some say He was a Messiah. Others a criminal. All agreed He was dead per Roman criminal code for a good cause. Justice and Mercy, crisscrossing.

The point is, what shall we do with what we think we know? More thermonuclear bombs? More assassinations? More guns, less butter? Faster, cheaper and smarter? Drones for delivery of both exploded ordinances and un-exploded ones? AI dreaming. Perhaps machine can teach us a thing or two ( after learning from us as in machine-learning) about living efficiently, decently and consistently. After all, it hasn’t evolved far and wide enough to lie, cheat and steal, then cover up as we have, ironically and more than often, in the name of love and compassion, civil society and civic lessons.

I have always been slow. From the get go. Catching up with much older sibling and parent. They painted a grayish picture of the world (rightfully). Mine has always been on the rosy side , a tad on the lighter shade of pale. Thinking that one day, when I grow old, I would enjoy a discounted Matinee Movie, watching John Wayne remakes and hearing California Dreaming remix. That I would “wear some flowers” in my hair while touring Palo Alto in Northern California.

Long sixties, long nightmare. Long road trip, from the tunnel of Cu Chi to the trail of tears. That’s when the two Native cultures finally meet up to compare notes and to close the loop: the Vietnamese on the one side, and the Native American on the other. Both agreed. More so after watching a based-on-a-true-story Alamo Bay film, ironically about a racial collision between Viet-vet and Viet fishermen – directed by who else but a Frenchman! My dinner with Andre, my dessert with Louis Malle.

I am slow to catch on. But I often and eventually did. Especially on the growing old part.