Thang Nguyen 555

I grew up in transition of everything: Vespa to Honda, Toi/moi to you/I.

Everything: francs-dollars, colonialism to a country with different flag color on each side of the partition. Music and magazine once in French (Voulez vous parler Francais – Do you speak English, English?), un deux trois – you’re number ten, I number one”)

French, then Vietnamese, and finally English. Heck, “Troi mua” (the sky is raining? Nope. It’s raining). The hell with “it”.

It sucks, it stings, it’s gone. IT (Stephen King).

Competing cultures, languages, technology and music all meshed up from my indoor music room to outdoor concert.

At times, I thought in Vietnamese, dreamed in French and spoke English.

Of course, with lag and delay. What do you expect? The Chinese in Cho Lon, decades of living in South Vietnam, still “Ngo this, Ni that”.

Toi, moi. You and me and the dog named Boo.

We students smoked no more Gauloises or Melia. Just Salem and Pall Mall. Even Malborro (without knowing it had once catered to female smokers, not cowboys).

For music, we integrated French then alternate with American: side one Akai played Lobo, the other Christophe (Lobo barely made the chart in the US).

For some strange reason, our own Bob Dylanesque Trinh Cong Son, whose smoke gets in our eyes, slipped right through the cracks and noise with Tinh Xa, Cat Bui…soft against hard e.g. the Enterprises, Peanut Butter Company, CBC and the Crazy Dogs.

Software eating your lunch. “Buoi sang nao, da qua di cho ta con ban be…”

Outside claymore, inside hormone. Outside dollarized inflation, inside sparing meals (where is the beef?). We were without the weight scale – never near obese, but all hair.

Always rote learning, with conjugation and conversation, un mot juste and pronunciation (pronounced as if it’s still French – pro-nom-sang song).

English for Today, English for Tomorrow…Thich Quang Duc (monk char moon rock) and Ngo Dinh Diem, both dead but different mode.

Despite of it all. When hot, so hot, we had rain on the roof. Happy Together, chewing gum commercial. Smiles return on faces… Vietnamizing the music, interpreting it, from French to Vietnamese, English-Vietnamese, and original content creation with Phuong Hoang (Eagle).

Grief observed, pain endured, loss normalized.

None of us fat man. Maybe in Hong Kong movies, or Jap movies “Hiep Si mu” (blind sword man).

Adieu sois heureuse…”avec ce luis, quis ton coeur a choisir”.

Love and loss, “Biet den thuo nao” that we could be “Happy Together”… Good luck with justice and equality, dream realized and perfection reached.

We paid dear price for our own survival in upheaval. Which way is out? bribe or private lessons?

Which lessons? French or English? Philo or rock and roll? “Sao ta van co don” existentially, there was no way out. No exit. Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir. Black and white flicks. Bonjour Tristesse.

Both the shaven and the all-hair.

Fighting over there (now over here) too, clashes at Kent State even Penn State (where I finally sat on the grass, letting inner turmoil subside to finally look around, feeling safe enough that no one was watching, to catch those “smiles that return to the faces”).

Here comes the Sun….same one that heated us up back then in dual languages that dominated and commanded our attention, admiration and treasure.

Many have laid down their lives…for those isms, languages and influences.

On “reflections of my life”… I am back at the beginning, that “it” all began with sunrises, then sunset…but we need to sit and watch the children play, as they need to be fed, bathed, educated and finally married off (to suitable young men who are still around after all the killing and healing).

War and associated costs e.g. claymore and clutches, agent orange and CIA agent. In our hearts, we are forever green…never fade away…

I once thought Lobo and Christophe would stay on, from cafe to cafe as if we were on the streets of Paris.

I admit I was wrong. Nothing stays the same, or as in Neil Young’s line: “from Redwood to Hollywood, …looking for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old”.