Author: Thang Nguyen 555

Just as in Final Destination, the series, I had similar premonition: Tet 75 would be my last! (God knows I have tried: same time of the year, same place, but as Thomas Wolfe put it, “You can’t go home again”.)

Enrolling in pre-med, I was with a mission: to pass the entrance exam. Yet Tet got in the way. Per Oliver Todd’s Cruel April, diplomats and peace observers toasted to another stint in country, oblivious to its imminent collapse. Instead of cramming and burning the midnight oil, I celebrated Tet 75 in ambivalence and apprehension. After all, we had learned from Tet 68 i.e. things might not be as they seemed, sacred or not.

But being native and naive, I was torn: an uncertain future (Vietnamizing of the Vietnam War) vs a fleeting present (Vietnamizing Woodstock), pro vs anti-war (burning monk at my street intersection, and a burning Quaker – at the steps of the Pentagon).

Since I was not granted the luxury of an elite overseas slot (Colombo program to Australia or Exchange student program to the US, the only option left for me was the draft and death-by-attrition if I flunk the exam. Push/pull forces were at work overtime on my hormonal bursting body.

To ace the exam (which we all knew, not 100% meritocracy in war time), or to act on my premonition – that it would be my last Tet, a Tet I wished just like the ones I had previously experienced : extended families, deceased and alive, who surrounded and sheltered me from upheaval (GI’s deaths, VC’s deaths, neighbor’s death, Nightly news with body and ammo counts, classmate back but body part behind).

In short, it’s our turn to die without “mental reservation”, since the path of war was set.

Tet was the only occasion – more joyful – to see relatives from all over including the countryside, aside from Gio (ancestor’s memorial). Yet that nagging feeling was there while we ate our confiture.

Unable to cope with pressures, I punished myself! Shaving my head was to me, a form of self-mutilation and self-isolation. Then friends knocked. Then dances awaited. Pre-Tet, during Tet and Post- Tet celebration. Tango, Cha cha cha and yes, Rock before slow dance. So much for calling it a day.

My friends and I refused to admit, but we all sensed it. Might as well – self-inflicted (hair shred) and self- indulgent (nicotine inhaled) – our version of Sartre (I have seen a lot of tattoo and nose rings of late; modern youth reaction and rebellion – rage against the machine, “rage against one another”). Rumba on the floor, rumbles on the street. “Would you care to dance”. With each evening out, my dream slipped further away.

Outside, hustling and bustling. Inside, dizzying disco (be sure to wear white for better purple haze reflection): hair-down-to-the-knees (not mine, but my first friend at Penn State still had his) hence, the sexes indistinguishable in a Copernican merry-go-round. Seventeen, Dancing Queen.

How could I remember after all these years? I was resting between set, since Blue Danube, a Waltz number, was for the pros (a friend’s dad, a ballroom-dance instructor, showcased his advanced students).

In looking back, it’s our last Waltz, like the Band’s (RIP Garth Hudson).

Any jam session has its end.

President fled, Palace abandoned, Embassy looted, and home vacated. Even my dad was left behind, a whole decade long, like a ghost in our empty house. The only sadder sight was that of an exile Vietnamese lady practicing her partner-less steps in a dimly lit refugees-club on a weeknight.

Back to the week after Tet 75.

In a Science, Physics, Chemistry and Natural Sciences (SPCN) class, we got interrupted by a classmate who collected donation. She was with sincere heart, but short in public speaking. Even with shaved head and determination to tune out, I felt moved, and asked for the mike. We had a bucket full of cash that day for those less-fortunate seen camping out on campus.

Central-region refugees were pouring in, occupying our school yards, makeshift tents and blankets next to French-grown trees. Children were out, much like Gaza today. Eventually, we, givers joined in the same fate (stateless). I later ran into that same classmate in Indian town Gap camp where we both awaited outplacement, as in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

Seeing my “party all night, study all day”, my brother, a pharmacist medic, injected Vitamin B12 then slapped me – like sending off a “Texan horse” to the wild. If it were to be our last, might as well.

We were so ignorant of the Cold War, Hot war or lukewarm ones. Per LBJ:” Asian boys ought to do it for themselves…” while nations took side, much like now e.g. N Korean in Ukraine. Their predecessors even joined in on one side, South Korean the other – ignoring signed Armistice a decade earlier (Vietnam War? American War? Korean War? with 3 million US servicemen/women on rotation, and close to that many of all races died – Blacks slightly and unfairly disproportionate.)

Who said it was just a Cold War (where built-up arsenal just got piled up unused). Kissinger drank Orange Juice, while picking out targets for his “Operation Breakfast” (said targeting Vietnam but coordinate switch mid-air to neighboring Cambodia – lately more tariff slapped than Vietnam’s). Darker skin endures more, always!

Hence, I felt that constant chill in the back of my neck. I worried for my family, friends. Not the medical-school dream. That was to be expected. But the dread of an imminent collapse, crack and crumble of then reality; shellshock and culture – shock; statelessness and uprootedness. Like “a complete unknown … like a rolling stone” to borrow an expression from Dylan (in years previous, I grew up contained).

For assimilation, I took on American persona (We Are – in jeans and T’s), printed my own “card visit” – as icebreaker, to bait dates over coffee the way Hare Krishna offered free roses. To a life 2.0 with two set of clothes and copies of birth certificate. My draft-deferred card still certified my being actively enrolled in our Pre-med program (so warring society at best could replenish its medic reserve).

All was not quiet on our front, however. A month before our own evacuation, in sheer panic and hysteria, the Highland retreated (Convoy of Tears) triggered mob madness. M-16’s turning against each other, pushed and punched, shoved and kicked. So much shooting and looting that my classmate, in the Air Force, had secured a slot to fly out, jumped off his overloaded plane.

Chaos. Carnage. Collapse.

Those sweat-soaked shirts outside the US Embassy tell all. Inside, the lucky ones entertained their restless children with paper airplanes made out of soon-defunct currency. Those same people couldn’t wait to be on a real airplane – squatting and staging in batches anticipating their heli-lifts.

A thousand-yard stare. No selfies.

We were utterly betrayed and abandoned. No “just one more chance, another dance”: boulevard empty, bunker erected. Eerily silent, slowly dying.

No oxygen, no ventilation, no aspiration, no destination. No time. After hopping on a barge, we rolled over and played dead – radio silent – human cargo in battery-conserving mode. Freight unpaid, recipient address (RFID) unknown, future and welfare a mystery. We were afraid the towhead would change his mind, or worse, we ours (at times, left to float, we thought that’s what it was; luckily, he went for fuel.)

Years later, as soon as I obtained my US passport, I flew back to join and assist those same folks – Barge People looking out for Boat People. As latest addition to the American story, one was to swallow pride and forget our past social status and standing, credentials and currency, calling card and country of origin.

Just put on a new identity (individualistic vs clannish), apply deodorant and Just Do It i.e. wear Nike since branding and manufacturing were all done for (ironically, manufactural origin is now Vietnam itself).

Unlike subsequent camps in the Philippines and Malaysia, we were at the time pampered on Wake Island with PX surplus (expired?) like Benson & Hedges Menthol, Fruit-of-the-loom underwear (irregular?) and frozen fish sticks. Some folks in D.C. just wanted to spend up that year’s pre-appropriated dollar.

“Do you know, where you going to…Do you like the things that life is showing you” played over Armed Force Radio.

Then Paul McCartney “Band on the run” by DJ portrayed by Robin Williams’ GOOOOOOOD Morning Vietnam. See, I had that premonition that if I didn’t go to the dance (live for the moment), my last, I would regret the rest of my days.

Back then, seventeen, Dancing Queens were all out and eager. They too sensed something. Perhaps with more a premonition and intuition than mine.

American band, American bomb and American PX. In black market via the backway, beer run, beef run by dog soldiers (per Robert Stone). We wouldn’t say we never had fun. But boy oh boy, what a stiff price and opportunity cost. When in war, party as if there were not tomorrow. Another serving of whatever, please. Like in the opening chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front (cigarettes as currency).

For tomorrow we will die. If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. Two things one cannot do anything about: the past and death.

I last largely thanks to my mom, her guardrails, her prayer for peace, for the living or deceased.

As I remember and reflect on the events of those times, I want to be keeper of the flame. To pray that Peace might come, that many would have something to eat (fish sticks are OK). That all will be well. The body wastes away, animal instinct/premonition (to fight or to flight) exists, but our spirits God knows will remain – like He who always does. Marcus Aurelius knew this (that life is short). I know this, that Tet 75 was short.

Like A Quiet American, who I now am,” How I wished there had been someone to whom I could say I was sorry”.

Last Monday saw the anniversary of my dad’s passing. He somehow survived that dark decade, home alone. All those years, I was longing and looking for home, yet unable to return; BTW, that’s the legal definition of a refugee.

On my day off from relief work, I sat on the Hong Kong Victoria Peak in the summer of 81, looking in the direction home. Similar time zone, but miles apart. As if, had I stared hard enough, thousand yards out, no Google Earth, I could somehow hover past our roof, underneath sat my dad, in pajamas smoking half-cigarette.

From Tet 75 to Tet 25. For my siblings, dead or alive, my nieces and nephews, cousins and friends.

I remembered those document for the Red Cross to translate but in a hurry and panic, I forgot you. If there were “just one more chance, another dance” but we all know the race against time is one-way.

Boy oh boy; I can use another Vitamin B12 my brother boosted up this Icarus in his flight to a warmer Sun (on wings of wax). I remember because I needed to rest in between set to cool down.

In hindsight and my opinion, it’s my mom’s sincerest prayers that stirred us out of harm’s way, her protective instinct and spiritual deposit deflected our Final Destination. As she joined the very band of ancestors to whom she had often prayed, I, her reservist, step up to ensure the memory chain continue to churn, at least one more Copernican-like Waltz under yesterday disco ball.

Seventeen, Dancing Queen

https://www.yahoo.com/news/georgia-fire-chief-stopped-help-165440802.html

Fire Chief. Stopped to help. Shot to death. News like this don’t normally grab the headline.

Or currently, in California, Los Angeles to be more exact, firefighters are exhausting, overworked and hopefully, not under-appreciated.

I watched The Towering Inferno the other night and came away with a much deeper appreciation for those who “gave their lives so others may live”. It doesn’t hurt we’ve got a A+ class of actors e.g. Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway and William Holden among others.

It reminds me of the Titanic “I am the King of the World”….Roman Empire, Roman coins and grifter’s currency.

Of course, those who died by the way side, unsung heroes who “laid down their lives” are no longer around to display their Champion belts. All quiet on the Western front…I am sorry, I am sorry.

The measure of a man ranges anywhere from reflex to reflection, moments of triumph and loss, greed and grief.

We will not always take the elevator up to the Penthouse Suite. At times, it’s the lowly basement, with no ventilation and fresh air. Or on 9/11, played extremely well by Nicholas Cage, trapped under the rubble.

We will have to get use to it. Good Samaritan or seminarian, per a Hindu thought, we die our death, lonely, but authentic. Given current Social Media, the only fear we have is ourselves, its self-projection and self-illusion (ask “creators” what happened when Tik Tok go dark).

When people are stranded and needing help. A call to 9-11 might not be quick enough.

We’re called to living as good Samaritan and not as the ambitious seminarian on his way to an upgrade interview. Blessed are those who lose life …for they may find it. The paradox of life is what we wanted most (unseen) involves first losing everything (seen) as prerequisite.

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Inside CPU’s, clocks. They are instrumental to squeeze max performance out of those chip set. We want train, plane and automobile to arrive on time and on point at the speed of clock.

On the football field, except for Time-Out, the clock and the score board nudge the ball forward, most pressing and precious are those final few seconds. In life, off the field and off the computer, seasons mark time passing. Ground Hog Day.

Presidents take an oath every four years. Their administration clock starts right after the applause. A race against the National Debt clock (which by the way, rattles anyone who cares to look) and our internal biological clock, life expectancy and passages.

Well, except for Jimmy Carter, who seemed to have operated on a different time zone or time-out, if not eternity.

“Today, you will be with me in Paradise” says Jesus to the repentant thief.

By the time all blood drained out, eternity starts, for the lack of a better adverb, eternally (Infinity, like eternity, is a mental construct. No one has ever grasped it yet or come back to tell).

My high-school psychology teacher talked about “subjective time” vs “objective time” i.e. when we emotionally invest in waiting, let’s say, for a date to show, time seems to stretch. We want to speed up the clock (then out of ambivalence, we don’t).

Kairos is when we are lost in the zone, no longer lives under Chronos (clock) domain and spell. Artists ignore hunger or sleep to “complete” their pieces.

In a Clocking society, where time is money, we are subjected to and enslaved to Chronos e.g. waiting in line, first comes, first served, prologue, epilogue, Alpha, Omega, begin and end.

In the Orient, people entertain ghost e.g. burning paper money and josh stick or offering food to the deceased who are “home for the holidays”.

With AI, we are forced to operate at the speed of AI thought: If A then B, then C. Bill Gates will accordingly have to update his book: “At the speed of AI thought” as Ads compressed, lives measured by nano seconds.

“Today, you shall be with me in Paradise”, rewind, pause, lip-read (throat and tongue dry). Two unbelievers heard it, then a few days later, two followers confirmed it (via non-verbal table manner e.g. breaking the bread – motoring cues undiscernible yet by today’s AI…).

Greenwich Village of our Global Village is chosen as base line e.g. born at certain time EST, died PST with the hope of a re-incarnate life or eternal life, Paradise regained, Lunar New Year and garden variety of cults and sects. All compete for attention and supremacy. In Japan, there has been a call and sanction of Unification Church.

Globalization meant inevitable conflicts. The League of Nations (UN) and rules of law (international) barely hold. Notice: every time we see government in transition, people are treated as pawn (from Iranian hostages to Israeli hostages, from bombing of Cambodia to peace in Paris)

Let’s say, in Lost Angels city where Paradise can be regained (where “strategically, firefighters were pre-deployed for the worst of scenarios i.e. hillside burning”). Real-life version of Hollywood in Hollywood e.g. the Towering Inferno (from John Wayne to Steve McQueen).

Life imitating Arts. Artists donate to save lives. Live-Aid for Today. For America. Charity finally begins at home (World Kitchen in Rose Bowl arena). As it should. The West operates by the clock.

Alexis De Tocqueville says” In America no one bothers about what was done before his time i.e. with no concept of life (or lives) previous or follow. Robber Baron? What’s that. Ponzi? Who is that!

“Living for Today, yuh huh.” unlike people of other cultures, who live one life then the next, in circle, time and eternity intersected and converged from which the concept of territorial integrity which China and Russia are currently trumping could be used as pre-text for war. Paradise mind you is not geo-centric. It’s a promise albeit more real for the faithful and hopeful.

There exists a different dimension of time (since we seem to be made not just to convenient others) and that is most sacred of all: we are free to make choices, have more options and nuances than just simply binary. From the vantage of the future looking back we’re better each day, wiser each moment, and communicate more clearly and accurately as we accrue more data.

We don’t live or die by clock speed alone (even biological clock can be extended per exercise and nutrition). By wisdom of the word, repentance and remorse, we too shall be with Him (eternal Present) – like that cellmate thief.

President Carter seemed to “get” it, by his insistence to operate out of norm e.g. not “four more years”, but “a lifetime more” post-Presidency. With his passing, we all got a glimpse at exhibit A (Alt) to current convention e.g. walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.

What’s wrong with putting up a solar panel on the roof, or to barn-raise for poor people in the Deep South? We need to strategically pre-deploy an Army of builders to re-construct an alternate ending, a director’s cut for our on-going sad saga, an elegy for the city on the Hill.

In so doing, Today, we can experience partial Paradise. At the speed of AI clock. As long as we all “chip” in, squeeze out or ooze out more performance per person. It takes a village – with AI help, local and global, to educate young guys/girls, Afghan or Austrian. Or else, by default, we’ll see an anti-social Century, when individualism and ideology reign, without the need for neighbors and friends (who need them when we’ve got the phone and apps for every conceivable scenario 24/7 tic toc).

Like on the field, those last few seconds might decide the outcome of the game. Ours.

At times, due to the widening gap between Belief and Action, I tone down the Left side of the equation albeit still reaching.

Who wouldn’t want to live a fuller version of the ideal self?

Getting things done. Praised by the people. Projects completed, under promised and over delivered.

As it turns out, with so many balls in the air, we quickly find out we’re not magicians.

Balls get dropped and relationships neglected. Wild ride. I remember learning from a Chinese proverb e.g. ” a journey of a thousand miles begins…” Then today, laid to rest at his last, was our Nation’s leader, Nobel Prize winner and needless to mention, a carpenter at heart (Habitat for Humanity). Peter, Paul and Mary would be proud, with their folk songs, among which besides Puff the Magic Dragon, is “If I had a hammer”.

It’s been a while since we saw Amy Carter on Television. I remembered how close the family was, when issues of global importance was discussed at their dinner table (s/t about asking his daughter).

Then the crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran, with Terry Anderson blind fold. What a decade it was, just right after we celebrated our Bi-Centennial at 1976 ( I watched the fireworks from Philadelphia, courtesy of Bob, a camp counselor colleague, who let me stay with him in town, overnight from leave at Camp Akiba, Mt Poconos).

President Carter was truly a humanitarian. I could only volunteer for a few summers away from school, then contributed whatever little to Habitat. He meanwhile set quite a bar, in integrity, humility and love in action.

We’re forever in debt to his lived life, its transparency and truthfulness. I remember watching Charlie Rose, who asked ” what’s your regret?” question. Mr Carter’s answer:” I wished there had been more helicopters ” (for the rescue). Me too, on my way out of Saigon on its last day. We all have but not harbor regrets. We all have that Belief-Action gap. His was much narrower than mine. RIP.

1949 in Taiwan.

1963 in S. Vietnam.

1972 in the Philippines.

2024 in S. Korea.

US allies cling to power by declaring Martial Law.

All from Asia, where face-saving as King Midas phrased it:” all made of blood and illusion”.

Given this uncompromising reality, we live on an imperfect world, at the fork of lesser of “the two evils”, as if Dante was writing not just about Hell.

I was a kid back in 1963, terrified at the prospect of upheaval. My world and its topsy and turvy surface above hot lava undercurrent.

Bombshells were seen in the air as I could see from the balcony and coup/counter-coup broadcast on the airwaves. “Vietnam Muon Nam, Vietnam Muon Nam.” (Poor Control Room who perhaps were under watch if not gun point each time a new counter-coup leader took over).

Names like Big Minh, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, Kennedy brothers, Diem’s brothers were constantly above the fold (then subsequent assassinations from the US for symmetry). Pierre and I, both at age 7, on our way to school – Ecole L’Aurore, yet we were discussing politics (November 23, 1963) instead of any other topics elementary school kids would engage in.

Back then, even delegates from Afghanistan joined the UN inspectors to verify and validate cease-fire compliance e.g. Paris Accord.

We all know now what happens to Afghan women compared to SVN’s half a century ago (albeit skewed in the person of our Dragon Lady, Madame Nhu = or Imelda Marcos shoes shopping spree, Exhibit A; or South Korean First Lady insider trading, Exhibit B). In those regions, not just husbands. Wives too, clung to derivative spousal power in and of itself, derivative (friends of this nation and that nation) to begin with.

What happened before happens again.

By course-correction (hint, screwing up and saying sorry) we move on to salvage public support and save face.

I was scared. My hair perked up, animal-like. A sense of foreboding and premonition permeated the air we breathed. At an impressionable age, I feared for my little world: mom and pop, New Year’s Eve with food offering and josh stick burning. What I feared was that the altar would soon run out of space, that I would be left alone, abandoned in a world full of military hardware e.g. Carbines, Colt 45, M-16’s, helicopters, Jeeps and garden variety of grenades.

As expected, it – my world – imminently and finally gave like a three-legged stool in tornado.

What had we done to deserve fire and brimstone? Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. 2 million dead from starvation had not been enough to appease the gods? (WWII Japanese atrocity) “Bomb SOB back to Stone Age”. So, the gods randomly chose Vietnam, instead of smaller islands e.g. Quemoy or Matsu, like Jackson Pollock tossing his paint or pigeon fly by poops at the far edge of L’Indochine, intent to make a point and an example of how imploding hubris could be.

“Wah? you’re gonna ship me to Nam?” “you’re talkin to me?” The draft and dodging. No more Summer Oak Tree (Yellow Ribbon on it).

I tasted the lime wedge someone handed to me. To soothe those eyes from unpleasant tear gas, whose shells littered the Buddhist Temple (where now a days, they sell trapped birds so buyers can then set them free like Red-White-Blue balloons at Presidential Nomination Convention).

For me, the only nightmarish free flight was by one of the chopper blades (one of ours) which broke loosed from its rotor to fast approach us, faced down on a USS warship where we barely set foot on.

For generations, we cherish a proud history, in which women played an occasional powerful role, Trung’s sisters for instance, or: “Let them barbecue themselves, I will provide the petroleum -” imported and stored at Long Binh and Da Nang base.

So for a brief shining moment, Madame Nhu basked at Press Conference, only to finish out her unplanned exile in France, fooling none but herself she had once been on State level with Jackie O. or Madame Chiang Kai-shek: First-Lady derivative snobbery (leading a SVN female cadre and none of the public services e.g. feeding the hungry or teaching the illiterate).

Martial Law. Last resort. To squelch the opposition. Or when the Shah of Iran was allowed in the US, it set up a firestorm in Tehran that lasted 444 days. Pushing automobiles by day, Ted Koppel by night. Once again, we all felt that nagging fear and familiar apprehension during the height of the Cold War.

I love freedom of worship and expression. To speak and write unhindered. Ain’t book-burning. Only book-buying (even at a garage-sale of Fahrenheit 451 station).

To wrap this dot-connecting spree, I remember the night at the Lodges, his widow’s guest house – invited but unannounced. Mrs. Lodge often used the word “divine” when describing her house-sitter, my friend.

History has a funny way to divine its comedy. Like Madame Nhu, a French pupil who married up (to her tutor, chain-smoker Mr. Nhu, President Diem’s brother – always seen with matches lying about) with her famous line “I will provide plenty of petrol and ready match sticks”.

Then chopper blade, on the loose on an US carrier. Then the former US Ambassador’s estate. Vengeance (and everything else, humor and nightmares) is mine.

Birds got to fly free in front of the Temple. Tear grenades shot and sprayed freely there as well. Smoke gets in my eyes. Cry, my beloved country. BTW Those birds often got recaptured – instinctive cagebirds – for another and another round of selling (reflexive voluntary servitude). Why do the birds go on singing? Don’t they know…it’s the end of the world. In all, per Appy in American Reckoning (pg 29), more than 5 million dislodged from their home, like Cedar fall.

Not too different later with Afghan women are to cover faces (burkas) while Asia strong men save faces. Martial Law or Ministry of Vice and Virtues. My early years seem to return all of a sudden, yesterday once more. lurking in my reptilian brain…as if darkness (my old friend) has never left, undesirable long lost friend, but friend, nevertheless.

Taiwan, South Vietnam, South Korea, Iran or the Philippines. Lesser of the 2 evils living, the only option for citizens of small nations. Nothing “divine”, only dualistic: keep quiet then being quiet.

Yet we live on, unhappily, pushing our shopping cart, vowing “never again”. Really? As if we were gods of mythmaking full of “blood and illusion” (Best and Brightest) to come up with random pigeon path on a world map, Quemoy or Matsu, Cambodia or Vietnam, as the best strategy in the Art of War.

We’ve been dreaming, sleepwalking to avoid our reality of war and strife. As in “Don’t dream it’s over”, we skip the front page and go right to the TV page.

Amuse ourselves to death. Why not. It’s “free” (paid for by programmatic advertisers).

In modern parlance, it means to click on YouTube page – our new TV page – to view virtual signaling which the machine remembers and reflects back to us. As a result, we keep crawling deeper into the tunnel of our own making. It’s 50th anniversary of Future Shock – Toffler’s version of hologram, tele-transportation, self-driving vehicle and prosumer-ism (ghost work).

Re-engineering of future life, non-stop. Next! next: un-filtered then personalized data – sold and resold to spam mailers, till death do us part. In the age of AI, “immortality” might be possible with photoshop and recurrence of content for future post. Andy Warhol was prescient:” In the future, everyone is famous for 15 minutes” (today’s podcast landscape, with unlimited data plan, folks can just yap and yap, in the hopes of being “Liked” 24/7 AI-assisted search – by mistake or on demand).

Exploitation in exchange for “platform”.

The price tag to play the game and play along (for FMO – fear of missing out). To participate in our virtual “community”: 8 hours sleep (off-grid) 8 hours off-line and 8 hours online.

The medium is the message. The medium becomes the Master. We’re not brainwashed unwillingly. We’re into it, slowly then suddenly. Before long, we’re deep into it. By its sheer volume and by default (digital opioid). I verified my observation yesterday: one guy on the treadmill, one guy walking outside and one guy stopping at the light (in car), all three were obsessed with their phones.

All re-imagined, re-invented, re-engineered and re-modified; resulting in attitude readjusted. It’s a digital version of succumbing to a machine-ruled world, carrying out machine-aided tasks (they make “casual” the process called corporatization of private and public space), at first, enlightening now enslaving.

The “sharing economy” with some cherries pay out. Now, it’s so democratically and globally “distributive” that miniature tasks e.g. multi-lingual spelling correction and translation, nuances and colloquial expressions, search and inquiry, medically and surgical second opinion, double-blind clinical trial outsourced and offshoring, all made possible. We barely scratch the surface of Metaverse. Freud would roll over. So would Jung. More so B.F. Skinner of the Behavior Modification school.

Not too farfetched is Bitcoin (at 10,000) = new diamond. Easier to change hands (in Marathon Man’s closing scene, our sadistic Nazi diamond-dentist had to swallow his full – throat dry and muscle-tearing measure of justice). Life in the balance.

Today, one can hardly pee or pump gas without voice or print advertisement in the face.

Our blood stream (EMR) our river stream (DWP) and our financial stream (FICO) flow through server not sewer.

What’s been important and of high value (face-to-face coffee to catch up, part of our quality of life and leisure-seeking) all passe (horse manure in Paris and London vs Tesla quiet ride; check out my other blog “carriage and candle”). Our reigning Antoinette is torn between on and offline, fighting COVID virus and malware virus.

A divided life, of two minds living two lives with two faces in two spheres simultaneously. What was called “absent minded” now common place. Even desirable, since those who “excuse me, I must take this call” now democratized to all 8 billion + folks.

We have become minimalist, while machine maximalist. 1984 “think different” ad needs to update: “Let them eat cake”.

All self-corrupted and consolidated under a new subsidiary, 21st-century version of Dr Evil, whose life span extends much longer (thanks to medical and methodical surgical procedure), but inferior in quality as compared to yesterday. Apple vs Orange?

Just say it, when I see it.

Future shock 2.0 trumps Walden 2.0. The return of shock. To the system and to the individual. Faster and more encompassing (TikTok and Tesla, Alphabet and Amazon, X and Meta) dominate; while we deplete, deprived if not deleted, with less capacity and willingness to resist i.e. frog legs in slow boil (low-interest rate creditors = new feudalism). We possess neither pitchforks nor torches.

It is by no accident that the regime of Assad manufactured laboratory drugs for the mass (medicine of mass destruction) or that McKinsey paid out 650 million dollars for a lawsuit regarding their complicity in opioid push. Hook’m.

FTX? what’s that. Theranos? We don’t remember. No cure yet for dementia.

Bernie? Bernie who? Ponzi or Pips, Madoff and Ebbers, both reeled in gullible people. The multi-level marketing, a penny (bitcoin) from each and every one (8 billion and counting). Confidence man has neither boundaries nor borders. Grifters sans Frontières

Life goes on and people turn older and grumpier. All “night hawk” at nearby 24-hour diner. “Black coffee, please”.

In my younger days. I wouldn’t listen either. I preferred to become my own man and own my mistakes. I want to travel the rough road, as Dreamers and Doers, adjusting the gap between the ideal and the real.

In Frost lines, picking my apples ” cherish in hand, lift down and not let fall”.

With re-engineering, all of our senses are in play. Once, they were joking about “Smell vision”. Today, it’s text-to-voice, video to audio. Scrolling up (touch) to see (visual) and hear (audio) while munching (taste) and smell the food.

As if sight and sound were not enough. CNN Ted Turner was not content with just billboards in Atlanta. It had to be cable TV, then cable-news (first Gulf War), delay broadcast and re-post podcast. Today, with Instagram, everyone knows about Syria, Sudan and Sydney.

Drone-like life. All of a sudden, those you love are gone. Poof! Shock. Yet singularity is nowhere near. Just nearer. Like a mirage and/or a forward-looking disclaimer (Oh, you didn’t read our multi-pages legalese in fine print before clicking “I agree”). Always “only time can tell”.

AI will rise and fall, then rise again. Twist and shout with trajectory very much like Y2K or Challenger crash (or deep-sea submersible). Only brands (reputation) endure even in our Age of “move fast, break things”. Everyone wants to personify Phoenix that rises from the ashes.

No one wants to be Icarus, who flies with wings of wax, with face melted and deformed (bad visual for podcast). We no longer talk much about women and their qualities. It’s a visually oriented society, with Tik-Tok our chief cosmetic medi-tourist agent from developing countries, nip and tuck, two for the price of one.

Mask. Only if we had a mother – played by Cher, who loves us unconditionally.

Talking of masks. There will be a lot of “unmasking the machine” since machine tries to impersonate human, with real-life recording, real-life look and real-life print (again, Marathon Man, …” hey, open the door — I am from across the street – voice and facial recognition). How would they know what we think and like? We told them and forgot about it. Meanwhile, spam mail remembers and reflects back to our surprises, just for a click-bait.

If back to school, I would study re-engineering not Engineering. I would major in biometrics to help verify (Linked-in verified, wow, a new badge) and authenticate (digital safe box, like Paze). Google has been doing that, the robot is not me and I am not a robot (traffic signals, motorcycle, an upside-down dog and a staircase).

The future won’t look like today. Population growth, mixing on and offline (the illusion of a larger crowd). We might not be able to distinguish real extras on the NYC sidewalk from a manufactured one; real boobs from fake boobs, real from fake news. P.S. hats off to Ruth Marcus of WP.

It’s hard nowadays just to pee or pump gas in peace. It’s harder to live a full 8-hours without the encroachment of a collateralized and synthetic life.

Even B.F. Skinner refuses to reincarnate in this heavily behavior-mod environment, or Andy Warhol ‘s sipping his Campbell soup art creation. Meanwhile, old Wendy grows older and grumpier: “Where is the beef?”

No more (blood) diamond digging. During the Gold Rush, or prune picking in Northern CA it’s those heavily capitalized middlemen – tool salesmen – or today’s programmatic advertisers that win. So conducive to buying:” Just swipe”, not “swallow!’ as in Marathon Man, without water, throat-tearing. Our hunted-turns-hunter applies a measure of justice, in his amateurish steady stance, gun and gaze. An eye for an eye (Old Testament), oral for oral, w/out anesthetic or water.

Re-engineering has its unintended consequences. Always a trade-off when messing with the natural order of things. Best scenario: machine becomes more like human. And as far as that goes, we know how things often turned out. Don’t believe me, just turn on 24/7 news and History channel (from B-52 to atomic bomb). But then, you’d rather “go right to the TV page”.

Hey now, hey now.

You’d rather not waking up to the reality of war and strife. (American Dream, China Dream). “Don’t dream it’s over” …” just skip the Post and go right to your post”.

Anthropologists recently discovered in ancient Kenya two sets of footprints – both placed in the same time span.

Conclusion: people of differences co-existed.

Yes, they were different. Yes, homo sapiens survived violent upheavals (man-made) and evolutionary challenges (nature causes).

It doesn’t always have to be homogeneity (in group) since each group contains intra-DNA differences (in solidarity confinement, who are you going to argue with besides blaming your mistakes and missteps).

Many in the gay community emerge more creative and artistically valuable to humanity (In Cold Blood Capote, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Turing of Turing test). In Fame (or even in B/W 42nd Street, the movie) or “I miss Daniel so much”…young people couldn’t be someone else except flowing through the Academy of Performing Arts. The show must go on, cast and crew. Dim the light. Silence please. No phones. And……the Greatest Show on Earth….

You caught the drift… life viewed from different angles, seen via various lens and viewpoints: Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet…Frost, Kafka, Maugham. No wonder after seeing Raphaels in the Vatican, one author says he then can die.

Starting with ourselves, a product of gene variants, Mom’s and Pop’s, their parents’ and on up the chain.

You might be inbred or thoroughbred, with foreign-sounding accent or last name ( nickname acquired or anglicized), in wealth and health, Ladies of society or at the margins of it, you might even inherit traction and tradition e.g. Church of England or New College of Oxford whose Oak beams stood ready for planned replacement at the time it was first built. Your velocity and trajectory are set, or you might be homeless on Thanksgiving.

Differences exist, except when, per Michael Harrington (and the school of non-zero sum), you belong in “the Other America”. That’s why we have war and strife. Through the centuries onto 1967 in Newark, Detroit, Watts etc… The haves and have-not-s (the underlying ideologue that makes war and atrocities more excusable but no less brutal).

My land. Your land. My account>your account, my post commands more Likes …. our innate competitive nature, well-oiled machine of capitalism, then abundance and excess, revisionism and reckoning, classified before de-classified.

During an earthquake or wildfire, we – generic we- are vulnerable, floating on the same planet Earth, needing essential workers (the Other). Reagan zoomed out and negotiated nuclear-arms reduction based on a line in “the day the Earth stood still” i.e. unless it’s an alien invasion… In short, he fictionalized our non-fiction existential threat and in so doing, sealed the deal.

Man-made festivals, faiths and films (or Facebook) are just that: to occupy the time, a self-distracting self-inflicting drama and vain attempt to forget pain-filled reality e.g. opium for the mass, since years from now, we won’t be around even when/if the Earth stood still.

What’s left from us besides footprints and footnotes, fingerprints and digital prints, in Kenya or Kentucky.

Knowing that, each moment, each encounter and engagement, each step leaves ecological and emotional imprints (quite an exercise in imagination to be future anthropologist, in looking back and studying our machine-aided self-inflicted commiserated mutual mass destruction assurance).

Decades ago, we relied on experts and editors, artists and historians to curate or opine. Today, like an upside-down hourglass, the bottom billion go full throttle without guardrails, posting pent-up personal grievance in the vein of “revenge of the nerds” 2.0 courtesy of YouTube (before the membership wall went up).

Attention is now rarest of all commodities. Face to face time? Extinction.

Those footprints left long-ago in Kenya tell tales. That once upon a time, there were differences in sizes, directions and readings of reality.

Bi-pedalist we were and are, to move fast and break things, to argue among ourselves and to be self-contradictory, then to self-correct for group self-preservation against bigger forces e.g. dinosaurs (heck, we’re semi-irrational creatures – or else, why else would we need an education and guard rails).

Yes, at times, we are on a collision course (huge blind spot vs hindsight, play long or play short, sell the sizzle not the steak, selfless or selfish, the ruler vs the ruled). For the most part, we wobble along, whitewashing our meager history throughout the hot war, Cold war, nuclear war and post-post-Cold War. Not everyone was an Andrew Carnegie who donated to libraries, and not everyone nowadays a reader (of print).

Differences? Yes. Challenging. Most times.

The alternative? Stay in the cave. Dustin Hoffman stayed to plant tomatoes on the island, while our Papillon (Steve McQueen) observed then jumped the waves.

Professional and personal maturity exact a toll, both painful and uncomfortable (I never knew ballerinas dip their toes into grease before each practice) …. “When a child, I spoke like a child: ‘…will I be pretty…. Que sera sera’….”

” I am sorry” shows civility, humility and grace. So far, we hear that today in Kenya or Kentucky. Let’s stay that way.

I don’t know how we will be schooled in our next life (or the life after that). I just know this time around, we learn the ABC’s and respect (for grammar and grandma) then, lather, rinse, repeat in pursuit of life-long learning. Just like machine learning (which relies on us, fallible teachers we are, for its own misspelling).

Here and now, time and geography limit our freedom (the majority of shoppers go around in circle, a radius of 10 miles even in our jet age. Parlez Vous Francais, Monsieur Kushner, the father from Jersey).

Have you noticed Zelensky’s English get better as more aids flow through Ukraine (hint, Speech Communication everybody). Differences make for the better whole e.g. North Korea, South Korea, Left and Right – in between, the tired lite purple silent majority.

Even with the same 24 hours, each day unfolds differently for different folks. There goes the principle of Homogeneity Unit (for maximum efficiency, Taylorism, father of modern machine movement.)

How much more with millions of thoughts and DNA combinations each of us possesses.

Even among twins, from the same mother’s womb, we see different endings.

Differences make life interesting and engaging. The worst can be done to a human being is to cookie-cut him/her (I never forget Ewan McGregor in “the Island”, while in line at the cafeteria making conversation:” Perhaps some bacon and egg”) instead of the usual pathogen-free diet for organ-harvesting. Well, even when you’re raised for organ-harvesting, you still wish for something different (that makes life interesting). p.s. Telegram founder donated sperms to father more than 100 children, whose inheritance is more than 130 million per sperm.

If so, then there is no further need for Amazon-recommending and launching new product or introducing a new spoke person for a new generation. The day the Earth stood still: no intrigue nor another “Ah ha” moment. Chuck Chink! I don’t need no education… Everyone is OK (inside the box).

Our Steven King’s The Shining writer got writer’s block and cabin-fever, inside a full-vacancy hotel, monotonously moving from room to room in dimly lit hallway:” I am so bored, I am so bored, I am so bored” “The night is….swell? near?….or it’s been always like this…dark and dusty ” No illumination. No painted sky. Just saline and sterilized this side of covid. (BTW, typewriters are back, so is vinyl; I sure hope and look forward to the 60’s and 70’s retro).

Insanity is when one hopes for a different result yet doing the same thing day in and out (in the name of routine, rituals or atomic habits). Climb rigorously, even to the top, but on the wrong mountain e.g. programmatic targeting software CEO, who sold his business to ATT, so ads can follow us relentlessly.

We are with various features, facial expressions and artistic impulses. Techno-autocratic government will need much more powerful quantum power and mini-cameras for facial recognition as it once did with voice prints in “the Conversation”.

Differences exist (even among the billions of Chinese, or Indian).

Differences are good (or else, it’s inbred – just Jews, no Gentiles).

Yes, it’s challenging to manage diversity (or else, why would CEO get paid multiple times than line).

Let’s see, what tie am I wearing today? IBM clones? or Island white? Obama wanted to take this mundane decision out each morning to lessen his presidential burden of everyday decision making.

Wait, see what Alexa prefers? A whiter shade of pale? What else do you expect from a closet full of grey. Homogeneity cuts out the fat, resulting in blandness. DOGE, DOGE, DOGE.

The flip side finds a wall full of Renoir or Van Gogh, Monet and yes, Raphaels… unlike Reagan’s “oatmeal meat” in his humble early years (Yesteryear Metropolitan Museum displays Black/White Hollywood vanishing stars, with frizzy hair and dark lipstick, “Play it again, Sam”). It’s time for color TV, for a new version of Fame,” I goanna live forever” …singularity is nearer,

In ancient Kenya, they discovered different sets of footprints. Yet for us, living in our jet age, we still shop within only 10 miles per habit. In Machine-gun preacher, our protagonist spoke to his wife from Sudan, where live chicken was running around- meanwhile, his PA wife shopping (at Weis supermarket? where I once was a packer) surrounded by cage-free eggs, organics eggs etc… Eggs, come to think of it, are better than people, for being “cage-free”, while many among us, are not. Dustin Hoffman we are, preferably pre-set, Prime-delivered.

Solutions in a box. Efficient and maximizing in containerizing. Uniformity and Uberizing. That’s when technocrats converge with Theo-crats, to bring Heaven to Earth, Eternity to the Here and Now.

How I wish today’s menu got something like bacon and eggs, on the “Island” as it is in Heaven.

Unlike Pyle (played by Brendan Fraser, previously in George the Jungle and the Scout), his Vietnamese quiet counterpart – let’s call him Phuc – is truly quiet. He wouldn’t venture out to dance or to make waves. Not until and unless he ends up looking anti-social in a socially mediated society.

Unlike Pyle, he wouldn’t dare proposing to Phuong, Fowler’s live-in girlfriend – to him, it’s too short a dating runway. Not without first bouncing off a trusted matchmaker (Pyle later cleared with Phuong’s older sister, a go-between). Like AI, he needs to gather enough data (Fisher Temperament Index) ” xem xet tinh hinh” before letting the process/fate run its course (just like cooking rice: not too soon, not too late).

After all, our quiet Vietnamese has already lived a dozen lives: inoculated against “mal jaune” (Bernard Fall’s term via Ron Nessen, Ford’s Press Secretary) commonly occurred among Euro expats who traded individualism for a sense of belonging (in the Deer Hunter, it’s an extreme case of endorphin addiction to stay on in Cho Lon for a game of Russian roulette).

By nature, he treks and talks with caution (“uon luoi hai lan”). Walls can hear. In Hamburger Hills, G.I. draftees were warned that the enemy might lay quietly, face down in the mud, to fake dead, but hear everything. In the fog of war, even Mc Namara couldn’t “empathize” with what’s in the head of “dead” people. Clan conformity scores higher than compliance to Western abstract notion e.g. Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

To no one’s surprises, his roots reach back thousands of years with millions of edit i.e. whitewashed mythological heroines and heroes, defenders and offenders, swords and elephants, ships and even tanks. Our quiet Vietnamese was taught not so much in school nor at home, but by a life-long learning process of course-correction enforced by a host of tradition (ancestral altar, with hologram eyes lurking and ever judging) and by wise sayings, repeated by the living. It’s a permanent village life – a village within city walls. In Houston (top 5 largest city in America), there is a restaurant called “Hem” (alley) to reinforce the concept of geographical and cultural scarcity.

In short, everyone is a quiet “law man” without a shield or being deputized. Good luck with abortion, contraception etc.…in a pre-dominantly Catholic agricultural village (in this case, a double safety guard).

So ingrained he is more at home with peasantry (que qua!) e.g. dining on the floor from an oval tray (Canh Dong Bat Tan), as opposed to sit at an outdoor cafe in District 1 (as our TIME magazine perfect stringer/spy – always seen with his German shepherd). In the case of class and caste, even Alain Delon, as the talented Mr. Ripley, acted awkward with fork, out of place in a rich-man’s yacht (as opposed to a quick bite of the “banh mi” – le pain).

Phuc is content with voluntary servitude, having lived “downstairs” for so long: Oui oui Monsieur. Excuse Moi, Mademoiselle (Ong Tay, Ba Dam, thang tai-xe). Not just race but revenge in the wait that eats him up. It’s suffocating and self-imploding (in “Fog of War”, when war was behind, McNamara learned that Vietnam wanted independence – Colonial context, while him, former Sec of Defense thought it was in the context of the Cold War.)

High and long in context, Phuc is reluctant to assert himself in an egalitarian debate (again, caution is virtue – besides, being assertive needs constant practice and free speech 1st Amendment). The mike is on “mute” comes his turn in group setting. It keeps people guessing. Silence is golden. If it were perceived as wisdom all the better. The more unscripted, the more vulnerable. Only in tight circles would one shoot the breeze. Unedited speech and unchecked rants only in unguarded moments or over drinks: “Look, my scars are bigger than yours” (fake left go right, one step back two steps forward.)

Most times, he just observes and stands ready fully loaded with stock reply – to deflect and discourage further probing (Xoay tua). Dale Carnegie would be proud.

He wouldn’t want to give away proprietary wisdom e.g. the second mouse always gets the cheese etc.…” An co di truoc, loi nuoc theo sau”, “Nhat phao cau, nhi dau canh” (chicken ass tastes best, then come wings and heads).

Always humble and unstated (in major religious instruction, humility ironically ranks on top) he would wait to be situated i.e. never out front in those empty seats. This reverse psychology is all too familiar to local event organizers who had anticipated and proactively prepared flex seating e.g. folded chairs. Wedding invitations print precise venues but not prompt start-time (punctuality is understood as when everyone in the village gets there, gift in cash to transactionally pay for the banquet).

Status and face-saving are more guarded than gold at Fort Knox. Showing up too early might be misconstrued as not having enough to eat at home.

Answered Yes to a negative question, by reflex (supposedly “No” in English) to avoid disagreement. Being uncertain and wavering on issues like Western journalists: “only time can tell”.

Since any version of truth is time-tested, he would lash out if forced (down the funnel of binary choices e.g. AI voice prompt). Always he lives and breathes synthesis and harmony i.e. someone’s brother, Phuong’s sister, a Ba, chi Tu …Brother 3 Sister 4 …numerically branded in the order one is born. In fact, salesmen always cut through the chase to close by naming prospects as if they belong in the same birth bag (100 eggs).

More lineage-centric than future-centric, Old Testament than New. It’s as if once he switched to his native language, lineage and seniority/status is accorded, damn thousand-years weight just sits on you, without wiggling room. “Kinh lao dac tho”. Older = wiser. Don’t argue or disagree.

In early 80’s, World Relief organization built a model of an American house at Bataan, Philippines for Cultural Orientation. Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees might need to adapt to future environment, where language and acculturation were taught (their kids later out of reaction swung far the other way…” hey, bro” in Stockton or Long Beach to display their “Born-to-run West-Coast Americanism) forcing” fences make good neighbors” (R. Frost).

The organization might as well hang NO LOITERING and “NO TRESPASSING”. “This land is for you and me?” What kind of a C.O. lesson!

Once under Colonial power always under colonial power (1000 years then 100 years) i.e. habitual servitude “luon cui”, positioning at a low posture to prevent hard fall. After all, foreigners e.g. Chinese, French, Japanese, American always bear bad news (except for Fowler, a brief brush with the British). After centuries of hard-wired occupation by “the 0thers” i.e. foreign “devil” or invaders – pushing opium and opioid, leaving behind half-breed babies, best option is to stay quiet, to be flex, to assess and reassess the situation (danger brings hidden opportunity). Xenophobia hampers full integration into current tech-enabled global family.

Foreigners! the best one can hope for were “Ma-Roc” (Ma = ghost from N Africa) French Legionnaires: brown half-breed, despised and unwanted. Amerasian, in the 80’s saw a reversal of fortune with “Homecoming” status, once rejected stone now corner stone. On Earth we are briefly gorgeous, yeah!

He himself knew racism in and out. His people did the same to the Chams (Cochin China). Westerners often misread non-verbal cues (Gooood Morning Vietnam, where a date is not a date, unless accompanied by an entourage of chaperons. On film set, they call this “sex coordinator” in case the scene gets too hot. Courtesy of Michael Douglas on Politically Incorrect.)

Only after repeated invite and insistence, (khach sao) that No yields to Yes, as if eating free foods were doing the host a favor. Unlike Western counterparts who, without hesitation, jump right in” Oh fish sauce!” (Anthony Bourdain). Second serving, please. One errs on the side of caution, the other fast reaction.

Sociologists noted third-generation immigrants would eventually study Urbanization and Migration (Roots?). Meanwhile, having survived the Killing Fields and bombing fields, these extended families evolve by shredding old-world ideologue. Crossing over means transitioning from ancestral worship to Thanksgiving, from duck to turkey, chopsticks to forks, straight to gay, politics to economics.

With high-context/circular existence vs Western low context/linear thinking – he – deer facing headlight – found himself speaking out of turn and living out of place (Woody Allen once said” nobody is walking in LA”. Otherwise, it would be out of place to see pajamas and cone hats on city streets). Unlike in colonial days, with Sunday stroll, everyone now drives in Little Saigon, then “parked” himself and his Lexus – much like Pham X An – our perfect spy’s German Shepherd – at outdoor smokers’ cafe.

He is not apt or up for a panel discussion (ready 2, take 2 – on camera we see him only in reaction shot – self-conscious and nonverbal nod in agreement). Due to fear of missing out he would self-designate a “tension relief” role in group dynamics. Sarcasm greases social. So are gums that water the mouth e.g. Fowler’s Vietnamese contact in Cho Lon warehouse – or our Indian friend in One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. One didn’t speak much English, the other, pretended to be “quiet” until the very end:” Want some Juicy Fruits?”. The 60’s Ken Kesey and our quiet Phuc would get along fine, as both are anti-social, anti-war and establishment.

To him, disagreement and resolution are settled via a third party and never in direct confrontation. Passive aggressive disorder he was. Offline rant to sympathetic ears or online to no one in particular. What worked always works, as he saw his ancestors got by being Stoic since even Karma seems to show up late. Why now, why here, why him. The nail that sticks up always gets hammered down e.g. 1963 seven successive coups.

Meanwhile, low context individualist couldn’t control his/her urge to over-talk (let’s not get sidetrack at the mentioning of the American electorate, who nowadays are nothing but quiet:” Hang Mike Pence!”). Here in the West, one must toot one’s horn and chant the chants (often in 3 words e.g. “Push them back, push them back, way back” at Game Day). Greene notes in sarcasm: “the only quiet American is a dead one”.

By contrast, the only quiet Vietnamese was Phuong, given in to all stakeholders e.g. sister, lover and future suitor, as they fought over her future as if she weren’t there. It’s pre-ordained, like “beo troi song” – raft that floats, wherever the river leads, until and unless intervened: “If you don’t ask, I (older sister) will”.

“How are you” = “hi”. It’s an acknowledgment of your existence. Not to be milked out and followed by a series of “how is your buffalo doing “(ke kho – sympathy-seeking). Time = money (In and Out burger). In the West, we found plenty of psychiatrists. The East, not too many, since all already are (Phuong’s sister and neighbor).

To no one’s surprises it’s Kissinger who caught the drift ” Vietnam would find more ways of breaking one’s heart than anyone could ever have conceived” (pg. 11 Making the News Taking the News). As it turned out, he and Le Duc Tho split a” Peace with Honor” Nobel Prize for crossing the chasm, with the later declined.

The West and the Rest, time vs eternity, the Past and the Future, being stoic vs move-fast-break-things. On Russia’s centuries-old ambition, Undersecretary for Defense Colin Kahl ” It’s always weird to read things like that – Russia Imperial Ambition- as an American, because our history doesn’t go back very far. So the notion that countries would give a shit about what happened 9,000 years ago or whatever or, you know, 2,000 years ago or 1,000 years . Americans don’t think like that.” (Woodward’s War pg. 45).

That explains Pyle’s messianic complex (per Graham Greene). After a brief brush with death – hiding in the tower with Fowler, he offered Fowler’s “birdy” a way out: a more stable American Dream (a Green Card = more future). Legally she was not married, just a live-in girlfriend. The fact that drove her sister to protectively and proactively (lo xa) arrange security-marriage for her sibling – Quyen Huynh The Phu – in the absence of parent, older siblings stand in as double” What would become of my Phuong, my young sister, once that old geese repatriates!” (almost recalled to England HQ).

Feeling humiliated, our old reporter played by Michael Caine, failed to divorce his ambivalent wife (London). Even among “white folks”, there exists razor-thin nuance i.e. for Pyle “I have all the advantages of a strong and sustained commitment, Hell, we won at D-Day; hence, I can provide more for her, with your permission, of course”.

For Fowler:” we have been going steady and sufficiently i.e. already a win-win arrangement, why rock the boat?” His face-saving and being in denial (of the Law of Diminishing return)– between black-market exchange rate and a live-in housemate, he could get by spartanly on just a typewriter and books. What’s is this all about! in Caine’s “Alfie days” there was always someone younger (Pyle?) and more qualified” to “take over the account” (played by Susan Sarandon).

For context, it turns out to be Dien Bien Phu 2.0 = Da Nang – China beach, where the French handed off hot potato to the American (Eisenhower’s footing 75% of the war bills).

{You are here, per Thich Nhat Hanh. Existence and presence. There is no need for self-justification. Walk the ground and feel the grass. Smell the sea. Savor your uninfected hemoglobin (Measel or Covid). Let it (illusion) go. What happened in far shores e.g. repeated rape and robbing (in the case of our quiet boatpeople) stayed in far shores. Even when labeled by sheer and shanty mode of transport, you are to keep the faith. Count the beads. Focus on your breathing.

Nothing to fight for. Nothing to prove. Each moment links up to the next. Endless. Raft or boat. Just a journey. One of many. Unlike the Mayflower which BTW got fireworks treatment, you are to remain incognito. Just be quiet. All blood and illusion.}

Stealth mode is Phuc’s modus operandi. He just listens e.g. News, from the BBC in Vietnamese etc. without volunteering his opinion (years of focus listening to the radio as in “Yesterday Once More”.) He exhaustively bounces off others, soliciting their opinion and comment (group think) to solidify and reinforce prejudice.

The Orient mystique is non-absolute non-binary; a yin/yang relativism. Our own Viet Thanh Nguyen calls out” the man with two faces”. One is always right and only is wrong because of circumstances, bad luck or hasn’t yet found someone or something to assign blame. No individualism, no individual accountability. Only harmony and centuries of past. Today’s news is tomorrow’s history in endless cycle.

That situation ethic accommodates and entertains various interpretations i.e. the more power, the more correct – per Balzac, “a man might be wrong, but not his money”. Or else, how could you explain the multitude of Nguyens and Trans. He who paid bribe finds a seat on a crowded sampan. Out at sea, it’s 50-50 toss-up. It’s best not to draw any attention.

Let the other 50% discover Nirvana first. Get in the longest beheading line. No eye contact (but once in America, get behind the shortest cashier line). Andrew Lam once mentioned it’s unadvisable to stare at someone in that culture. (Daughter from Danang).

Versions of “Truth”, not The Truth, are distilled from multi data points, by multi generations. Like an old IBM mainframe with garbage in/garbage out “facts” filtered, refined and sanitized via a huge propaganda machinery that tranquilizes. What Harari would coin a “Nexus” of inter-subjective reality. Business decision or marital decision, public or private, expert or amateur, all consensus/compromise. If that doesn’t work, blame it on fat Buddha (“cuoi tru”) who smiles away and smooths out all troubles.

“Truth” is subjected to endless wash/dry cycles, like those faded torn-off jeans. There will always be plenty (Eves and eons) to spread the blame around e.g. not a boy? No problem. Let me connect you to your next mistress (“di hang hai”: man of two minds). One-child policy, then, reversing. War then peace. It’s pragmatic, not principled. Harmony, not revenge. The age of delayed karma.

{I saw you (generic) lie there in the infirmary, upstairs of a make-shift camp (Jubilee prison in Hong Kong). Eyes closed, bodies still. Passive and stoic. Your boat behind, but nightmares were not. Perhaps you were still shaken and paranoid. Strangers (male) reminded you of foreign (Thai) aggressors who attacked in waves. What do they want this time? Shouting in undecipherable voices. Another pound and pleasure of the flesh? Wow! Rape = power. Gratification via self-elevation (gifting their compatriots with geo-location pinpointing).

At sea, you either get beaten or eaten. You must have felt convulsive and consumed by survivor’s guilt after helping yourself to dead passenger’s stale flesh, while offering your own unwashed for survival. Against all odds. If it were today, they could have used Facebook to post and brag about their “coonskin” to fellow “bros” after having their fill.

Far out in blue ocean, pirates could easily spot Boat people. Human traffic to them were just a flow of fresh “meat”. It’s easy a harvest, both profitable and pleasurable (BTW, they would never wish for their mothers to be on the receiving end).

Having absorbed all the punches (oppression, persecution, deprivation and desperation), you passively and reflexively make concessions beforehand. Self-recrimination mode beginning to end. It fits the bill. Consistent with Phuc’s upbringing.

Syncretistic Cao Dai-ism appealed to Pyle as a possible Third Force for a nation of bamboo branches which sway spinelessly. Bent but unbroken, just like that quiet, slim dancer at Continental Dance Hall. All the reason to use the analogy of chopsticks i.e. stayed in group, strength in numbers not to mention anonymity – minimum accountability.}

So far, it seems to work, wolf-like. To buy time, until the last “domino”: Pentagon Papers, Santa Monica and Watergate break in (“Game over” as Ford said)

Our foreign-affairs expert x-president thought his voice alone could “trickily” have won him the Kennedy debate, if only American voters had listened to him over the radio e.g. “World News from the BBC” – a hot medium – and not watching him sweat on television – at the time a new and exciting cool medium which required powdered nose. As it turned out, it’s his VOICE on two WH “missing” tapes that did him in.

{After repeated and failed attempt at bribe, suddenly you were told to leave without a hush-hush goodbye. Equipped with just a faint hope and an ill-defined notion of Social Contract i.e. La Liberte, egalite and fraternite – you ignored the absurdity and futility of it all (if vanished at sea, at least you would float and be joined up with previously deceased loved ones.)

Like Ukraine and Palestine displaced today, you spilled out to sea. Out in the middle of nowhere, and in the absence of coast guards, even the USA-flagged Mayaguez was vulnerable (76)

So, you remain quiet, scrolling self-distractedly through trivial posts without “going postal”. You block out drama of the past and fill the void with other’s self-induced click-bait drama. In today’s TikTok space, the only quiet Vietnamese are the ones who stand at the crossroad of assimilation, not sure which way to turn. All the while, his countrymen already leverage YouTube incentives to stay nothing but quiet. In compliance, you fill out forms (INS) and stop at STOP signs (who wants citation). Human-to-documents chain, as mentioned in Nexus.

So, Peter, Paul, and Mary, whatever you are called nowadays. May I call you by your new name, since it’s still better than John/Jane Doe. After all you’re naturalized American, a quiet individualist who stops at traffic lights (lots of and with increasingly longer wait). You have shredded your ID, burned your document, erased your identity and ideologue to blend in (during the Pol Pot regime, wearing glasses was asking for trouble). You face not just “fear of missing out” but fear of being found out (that you do still owe a moral debt to both old and new society – BTW, per Christopher Lasch, in the Revolt of the Elites, globalists with subtlety double-dip at the top, but evade responsibility toward the bottom billion).

When it comes to human acting inhuman, it’s best to keep quiet, in denial (of the guilt of complicity). It’s bad enough that your mere presence already serves as a walking reminder of CREEP (Committee to re-elect Nixon) and CRAP (Constructive Republican Alternative Proposals). From Pol Pot to Post-Cold War. End of History. Then post-post-Cold War World (per Friedman). Why do the birds, go on singing…All quiet on the Cambodian front.

{That night, that first night out to sea was the longest. Sunrise couldn’t come sooner. Your old self sunk to the bottom of the sea, next to tons of chopper steel. To live on is to exist, between self-loathing (survivor’s guilt) and self-acceptance.}

Yet, it’s been decades since. Today’s people found it easier to air dirty laundry, their prejudice and rant – sponsor-paid and powered by AI programmatic ads Tiktok. High context living low context asserting e.g.” Where’s the beef” (as opposed to “Anh xoi com chua?” have you eaten yet? Yes, but actually No).

Not on Hamburger Hill nor Capitol Hill. Not without future-forwarding statement in fine-print disclaimer. Digital preying and virtual pirating, maximizing our eyes balls, and monetizing our attention; turning grievances into gold, tragedy into treasury. Get to the point before they “SKIP AD”. We need more “Likes”. Chuck Chink! More revenue to pay for those not so hefty fines (anti-trust or Cambridge Analytics).

You left things unsaid. By default, your no-contest = voluntary servitude. Even with selective past, it was not all that romantic e.g. Camelot via Colby and Lodge, a few degrees of separation = plausible deniability e.g. Diem and Nhu – then found himself (JFK) and his brother with the same fate (1963/68). Our guy is in deep thoughts and with heavy burden. The weight of war sat invisibly on his stooped shoulders

But for those brief moments, between red and green light, you want to scream: “I don’t just exist”. Yes, they can rob, rape or draw blood. But per Victor Frankl “they cannot harm or hurt you, who resides inside your body”. Hey, you can’t just press a button and expect:” How high?” Like Born-Again Chuck Colson, “Hell I even run over my grandma!” Talking of politicians and D.C., where 58,220 names are on black marble, deep dark sorrow of war. echoing “voices never share…the Sound of Silence”. You can be done with the killing, but not the healing.

Ironically, you participate in the long Silicon tradition, turning calculation into communication, defense weaponry into peace-time consumption of excess goods, goods (hand-finished by fellow native) sold by algorithms, yet you stay incommunicado and in cognito.

Unlike Pyle, Phuc doesn’t succumb to love at first sight (in the opening scene, we find Pyle face down in the gutter while Fowler, for alibi, ordering drinks and nervously looking at his watch, torn by guilt from having “ordered” the assassination. All quiet on 1952 Colonial China Town (Cho Lon). Really!

Country folks often equated white American with French counterparts, since European migrated and made up early American (France, British and US Embassies even located on Thong Nhat boulevard – much like Chinese ghetto). European view Asian as monolithic. The reverse is just as true. Graham Greene foresaw the implosion and erosion of the colonial way (total war vs limited intervention, thousands of years vs every four years, kill ratio of 10:1 or 16:1 casualties).

What can you do, given your short life against a long war (of attrition) nightly on Network News beamed straight into America’s living room: My Lai and Killing Fields, look, look (more TV dinners, please) all the shooting in “shit-ass countries” (BTW, during the Nixon’s era, “going downtown” meant “carpet bombing” with more bombs than WWI and II combined, 400X Hiroshima. Operation Breakfast meant switching bombing targets once airborne. Army surplus or freshly manufactured, exploded or un-exploded ordinance, not the hit song “Downtown” which Madison Avenue uses to sell Tiffany jewelry). All contributed to defoliated and deformed land and people (ecocide) with visible and invisible scars e.g. PTSD as in the Deer Hunter.

By estimate, it would take another 350 years to rebuild Gaza. Often times, as Greene’s novel last line,” How I wished there had existed someone to whom I could say I was sorry”. Xin Loi Vietnam. Xin Loi 58,220 American families. Xin Loi the conscientious objectors – who can’t or no longer want to come home (no yellow ribbons on summer oak tree).

The quiet Vietnamese. God knows the things he carried: millions of mini calculations? Inarticulate thoughts and immature impulses? Survivor’s slow-burn guilt? Pain hidden in plain sight. In the absence of war, you create your own mini-Trinh-Nguyen Civil wars and US Civil Wars against neighboring countries.

Instead of roaring like Tiger in triumph over Elephant, you can’t handle victory. Uncertainty within or without is never good for business and the flow of FDI. Synthesis is the new thesis to be challenged by anti-thesis.

Hence, your anger turns inward while others Rambo. What’s unprocessed occasionally and eventually flares-up. Most times it’s self-mutilating (armed to the teeth per Second Amendment, not unlike Japanese in the jungle without war-end breaking news – out of catharsis (in 1975 Congress refused funding request for ammo resupply… so “…Asian boys ought to do it for themselves…”)

War-torn world with intangible and tangible damage e.g. enemy ears for trophies (S Korean joint forces at the urge and nudge of LBJ to replenish his Hill Country coonskin collection). His successor resigned, while he himself refused to be nominated for a second term. Remember Kissinger’s comment about Vietnam ‘s more ways than one…(from Eisenhower to Ford).

In reality, DOD in the time of DOGE, needs to account for everything e.g. Army PX or ammunition inventory, kill ratio as KPI since “winning is the only thing” (from Vincent Lombardi football field to McNamara’s “Vietnam Muon Nam” – Vietnam wants to lie down – mispronouncing “Forever” for “wanting to lie down” in his 1964 field visit). Later, he went from crunching numbers for DOD to World Bank. Per Mac Bundy” the price to keep up appearance is still cheap” (3 million men war).

At LBJ urging: ” …Asian boys ought to do it for themselves.” during Tet 68, it took Col. Loan only a fast High-noon draw to execute a terrorist where Graham Greene had his Continental Hotel terrorist scene (with Pyle helping like a Red Cross nun). Meanwhile, it took the Longest War for the West to get OBL. (Col Loan later went from pistol to pizza, fast draw to fast food, from barking out arrest orders to taking down phone orders, one of our new quiet American).

Yet, even when everything is lost or looted, when your gun (VP Ky’s gun, a gift from John Wayne) or radio confiscated, you still can hear “News from the BBC”. Ear-deafening explosion might muff out Bolero beats but not heart beats.

For Boat People, the journey was a tossup, with destiny in the hand of whichever vessel happened to sail by (Statue of Liberty both in France and NYC welcome the huddle mass, not Jerry Brown who at first did not want Pendleton to be repurposed from a boot camp to a refugee camp. The irony that did not escape neighboring Orange County’s beach bum.)

In today’s environment, they would be grouped to “sanctuary city”, to reoccupy vacancy left by Hippies and War deserters. Back then, those Pennsylvania Quakers did not want to “barn-raise” for Vietnamese state boys either (even when one non-violent conscientious-objector Quaker burned himself at the steps of the Pentagon to protest; later, his fellow congregant, sitting in the Oval office, cursed in baritone – now available on DVD – de-classified WH tape: ” Bomb the s.o.b. back to Stone Age” per Curtis LeMay). So much for the Quaker declaration of “sanctity of human life” per Yoder’s conscientious objection.

Having found safe harbor, you remain shamefully and sinfully quiet. As a survivor, you tell no tales, not even to your American-born (Mom! I want to go to prom). By now your Anglicized name and naturalized status (FICO score helps) upgrade you to a low-middle class life. You AKA Peter, Paul or Mary, with divorce and remarriage, child support and alimony afforded by law.

You’re poised to climb up the Immigration and Naturalization chain (the bottom rung now occupied by Haitian and Puerto Rican – the receiving end of “Uncle Sam – doesn’t – want you” mad-max 2025 campaign). You glide through with Model Minority insignia and convention-hall badge (for entry and exit – a legit appearance of false equality per paid color-coded convention hall pass).

That arduous journey stripped you bare. It’s stressful enough to turn stoic into shopper (of goods made in China – ironically, your old arch enemy), as if one could resupply what’s been lost. Life exterior to refill and substitute for life interior (President Carter saw and spoke of this “malaise”). Instead of the call to serve, it’s the call of the mall.

On rare occasion, while soul searching, like Jacob in the well, our quiet Vietnamese asks himself: “What’s it all about, all this and this (suspenders and shoulder pads, yew!);” at what cost “to spend the money he didn’t have, to buy the things he didn’t need just to impress neighbors he didn’t like – or will never meet”.

Oh, how I wish there had been someone to whom I could say I was sorry.

Then as if on cue, off he goes, to the store, Black Friday or any Friday. Amazon-recommended and Prime delivered.

Congratulations! Now let’s yelp and help us do better on Cyber Monday. When it comes to self-service, our quiet Vietnamese calculates quietly (tinh nham) much faster than others. From Phuc “Muon Nam” to “F**k” “wants to lie down”, from pajamas to tuxedo, from all-white funeral to all-black funeral. In group picture, he is timid standing a bit sub-due toward the middle for “safety”. But, unwatched, in Armani with subtle Art of not giving a F**k, all bets are off (this is universal).

What happens online, stays online. Offline? Our quiet Vietnamese always washes his hands, as if history could be scrubbed away with hand soap or sanitizer. Heck, the past is not even past.

He gets it (those SNL punchlines). After all, he’s trained in the art of “noi lay” (the punch line is in reverse order, much like Japanese books that flip from the back). He reflexively curses in English (what the ….) just as his kids. A badge of honor. Acquisition of an US passport always comes with acquisition of speech – colloquially, F**k this, F**k that to prove complete assimilation.

No longer quiet you are. Per Greene, it’s to show you are not dead yet. Not in the time of TikTok. Liberated and unshackled, sterilized and sanitized, vetted and tested, fully inoculated against mal jaune or measled: picture perfect! Our entire extended Model-Minority family! Well to be truthful, except some unfortunate deaths by attrition, or suicide – hush hush – deleted or edited for the sake of saving face to put PTSD behind, only pension ahead.

All set (who would want to “vach ao cho nguoi xem lung” – shame to show off your scar).

Just click “I agree” (to the terms of agreement). Advertiser-paid, after all. Unlike Thai pirates that took, took and took (then passed on geo-location as social deposit tips to fellow pirates).

Our modern society is an advertiser-supported funnel with database replenishing and resorting. Data = 21st-century gold, rare Earth new diamond.

No one knows where the line is from being a Quiet Vietnamese to being an Ugly American. Up to you, the last line of defense, having paid dear price while evolving and assimilating.

Remember, don’t be first to the floor, Pyle. The journey of a thousand miles starts with that single step. Of all people, you should know and foresee that undesirable end (face down in the Cho Lon gutter).

Since time = money, we now resume “our sponsored podcast schedule” i.e. day-time soap TV, “Brought to you by”. As long as someone out there can capitalize on eyeballs 24/7. On the Net, nobody knows you’re a dog, a robot or a man, anti-social or quiet one. American or Vietnamese. Just dumb and dumber data, flowing through an agnostic firehose. Our vast waste land. “Hello! Is anyone out there!”

Everyone by default becomes quiet, low or high context, in the end.

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.

Ron Nessen, Press Secretary during the Ford Administration, mentioned in “Making the News Taking the News” that a Vietnamese lady holding her battered child in front of the camera, begging public opinion to do something. A sense of helplessness stayed with him for years to come,

Other images from the last days of Saigon showing young men in rifles riding on the hood of Jeeps, very Kabul-like. Victor and vanquished e.g. announcing American involvement in 65, only to pull out in 75 (Ford was playing golf in Palm Springs, while SVN troops were pulling out in China Beach, in opposite direction from a decade earlier).

We, survivors of calamity, natural or man-made. rebuild lives after hurricanes and typhoon, long Covid or war aftermath.

But I can’t forget images of India ran out of materials for burnt burials.

Or those refrigerated containers in the backyard of a San Antonio morgue.

Memories favor the visual: man on the Moon, Million-Man March or the Last Chopper out.

Mine is more auditory: the chilling whoops whoops of a fast approaching blade (came loosed from a miss-landing chopper).

Haunting sound.

Ron Nessen recounted a joke, Kissinger’s, that if he had had a third title – besides NSA Chief and Sec of State, he would have lost a third country in one month ( Cambodia and Vietnam +).

Haunting images of pushing and shoving, dropping of babies and displaying of babies for the camera, supposedly for network TV viewership and world opinion. Meanwhile, leaders still play golf, people from afar are still dying, 24/7 via YouTube.

At least Ford exercised some moral leadership: flying from Palm Springs to San Francisco to greet the Baby Lift flight (the surviving Amerasian) and helped volunteers to dislodge orphans after their seat-less/restless trans-Pacific flight from Saigon.

Holding a half-breed baby as if it were a prized football, Wolverine number 48 (38th President) unconsciously rehashed his Michigan football days. That is compassion, decency and humanity – not playing golf and holding a copy of the Bible as prop.

I am not a survivor of Jewish camps during WWII. But I know hundreds of heart-wrenching as well as heart-warming images. Are we better off than 80 years ago? 50 years ago? Or the world keeps rotating its poor leadership, changing of the guards without changing the script? (Business as usual for the news cycle and public consumption).

Being a person or being a professional journalist?

Haunting imagery are still with us, at times, triggered sudden crying for no reason (Ron Nessen did) just like I on my first day of school. It’s contagious when the whole room cry, knowing the road is long, and either we must carry others, or ourselves be carried.

Each day we are closer to the end than the beginning. Life in and of itself is haunting – visual and auditory, baptism or burial. The antidote? Balance it with feelers e.g. heart-warming imagery and keepsake memory. I will leave that to Chevy Chase and comedians whose materials often are more engaging and enlightening than politician’s.