Thang Nguyen 555

There is nothing for you here but headache and heartache.

It’s all dream, and even then, neither Xanadu nor X rated.

Just purgatory, hellish fire and people hurting people (to hit back is to hurt yourself).

Run Be Run.

One pharmacist student took notice. He said, “hop in” (so we rode to the ping pong hall for a quick sweat). That’s Cinema Paradiso and House of D mixing together. Coming of age, growing old without growing mature. Fine with me. It’s my story, my childhood and my grief to observe.

Robin Williams my neighbor was not. But stocky, handsome and compassionate, they both exhibited.

Without apprenticeship with more mature male outside of my family, I wouldn’t know how to reciprocate and return the favor to younger kids e.g. stepdaughter or that unaccompanied shirtless refugee boy in Jubilee camp.

In my neighborhood, our childhood was pre-ordained, sweaty – hunks, forming crowd and audience to the burning monk (for real) and burning torches (Autumn festival) one drama after the next.

Then at my first dance (which happened to be my turn to sing a slow song), my date chose to dance with her x boyfriend, in my rationalizing, perhaps out of politeness. Run Be run. There is nothing for you here, not even a date at a dance you yourselves were organizing committee chair.

There wasn’t supper (on time), there wasn’t picnic (only with food mixed with beach sand like a character in Hanoi Hilton). Fun? yes. But grief observed. Broken bike broken arm. Broken home and country. What else was there to stay on. Run Be run.

Then come back a man. Let the early music fade in to underline nostalgia. No longer do you see your mentor, your neighbor and friend.

The old tomb at my outdoor Cinema Purgatory – without the making out in drive-ins of the West, no longer exists. No burgers and fries for you, Be. Run, Be, Run.

In crises and pain, only insult on injury.

Until one day, you find the past so small and fear exaggerated. Of course you survive. That’s what life is, discovery by trial and error. Rebellion and conformity. Wrecking ball and course correction.

Your story is well hidden and contained in humanity story at large. You live in a world that is not set up or ready for perfection. That’s why they are busy with quantification and measurement. You yourself knew that all along. Don’t turn back or look back, like Lot’s wife (of Sodom who turned salt pillar.)

Regret not what you cannot keep. Free and empty those hands. Ready for anything.

The monk’s remains you saw in exhibition (they milked out the drama for whoever had missed the live matinee show. You yourself saw it firsthand as Malcom Browne took that photo then one more at Xa Loi pagoda, as if it’s a Moon rock at VUS a few years later when the US got deeper involved in the quagmire).

So, run Be run. Only come back a mature man, seeing things from both sides now. There ain’t no perfection here, or anywhere. Just time, geography and illusion. Wake up to a new reality, without mentor, without a ping pong workout or those saved up balled up pages of the boring Bible (in House of D.) or gag reel from discarded film (Cinema Paradiso).

Always an older guy that does the pedaling on three or two wheels, with kid in tow. Lonely unsupervised kid, in the neighborhood, with plenty of time in his hand where millions of ways could have gone wrong per vulnerability and gullibility.

On a dare, I would have done anything e.g. jump, kick and miss the board resulting in a summer of my quarantine nursing a broken Kungfu arm. Now you know. In alley of D., no one sat still to learn English or to write without a spell check. In hunger one appreciates food. In Hanoi Hilton, one longs for room service.

Keep the faith, and run Be run. There is nothing for you here until you come back, Bo (more mature laughing cow, like that famous Frenchy spread on crunchy toast).

P.S. in Vietnamese, “be” is for baby cow and “bo”, grown up one. Like “bonheur” and “boner”, it’s a double entendre, since “bebe” means baby, not young cow which runs away from birth to grow up elsewhere before its return to be served up as Wendys’ hamburgers.