Thang Nguyen 555

That year, George had his first solo. Top of the chart. We got Hit Parade, which was the equivalent of my Farmer’s Almanac. Luckily, next door to us also lived a guitarist. So in love with Rock and Roll that I asked to be shown a few chords ( e.g. the guitar solo part of My Sweet Lord). It still resonates today, despite the album’s title: All Things Must Pass.

Vietnam War was at the time the elephant in the room. But for a 15-year old who loved all things American: peanut butter, blue jeans and music, the war was a catalyst and accelerant for life on the fast lane. Everyone was wearing bell-bottom blues and had hair down to their shoulders, so it seemed. The police was strict in Saigon, making us boys sitting both legs onto one side (like a modest girl wearing her skirt), for security reason??

The year after saw “decent intervals” per Nixon’s “Peace With Honor”. I was with a middle school team – all-boys school- assigned to visit neighboring schools to sell our annual student publication. In pressed uniforms, we approached each classroom and took turn to pitch our home-grown. My heart was pounding faster than usual, not only because of public speaking, but much more because this was a co-ed audience. Vo Nguyen, I later found out her name, was sitting way in the back, in tailored white ao-dai (Vietnamese modest traditional dress) and black underpants.

To this day, I still couldn’t figure out how my first and only date with her (no cell phone, no facebook, no nothing) came about.

I remember asking her name, and somehow, I found out where her cousin lived. It must have been through this intermediary that we established contact that led to our date. I put on my best striped orange/yellow short sleeves, while Vo Nguyen, still in her school uniform. She let me drive her mini-Lambretta, and off we went to the cinema. Who would remember the title of that movie after all these years. All I remember was I developed a class-consciousness, that her family own a furniture store, while mine subsisted on a meager teacher salary.

To this day, I still linked up the music of that coming-of-age year, my first public speaking experience (sales) and my first date (at least I learned how to close a deal/date).

All things must pass. But if there were exceptions, Vo Nguyen, my first date, stays up there on the pantheon of memories along with the Fall of Saigon (4 years later). I wish her the best life, and by chance, we ever run into each other again, on or off line, it would be a very exciting conversation, comparing notes from that time at our very own “Cinema Paradiso”.

Every profile on Linkedin tells me there are great human out there, struggling and striving to do and become their best. I cherish our student’s publication, just as I now do Facebook, Linkedin or other platforms. All future-forwarding, at the tip of our fingers. While the past is never dead, it’s not even past like mine, in 1971, with My Sweet Lord sound track still reverberating and echoing in my mind.

As a kid, I looked up to my dad: tall, handsome, and well-groomed. I shined his shoes and fetched his coffee. From that vantage point (looking up from the floor), he was a towering figure. An Army discharged, he picked up a Sales/Collection job for various French business relics e.g. Grall Hospital or later Vietnam Airlines.

Hence, my young reptilian brain associated older with bigger (coupling).

Today, at the gym, this well-built guy (who looks like casted from Mad Max) came around to reclaim “his” spot. Oops! I thought there was no one using it.

Anyhow, it dawned on me: as time goes on, our early-life assumptions (coupling and connecting data) need de-coupling e.g. bigger is not older or more is not always better (more torture, anyone?).

Suggested “coupling” to be re-examined:

• beef, bell -> salivate (Pavlovian dog). Then, bell (no beef) -> salivate. Pair-association principle. Sell the dream (subscribe to credit card, then take the cover girl on vacation). Just up the road, you’ll, see? Like the Gold Rush, only those who sold tools and jeans were sure winners
• Stanford prison experiment (robe and ring, insignia and uniform showing ranks = authority figure, as in “Catch Me If You Can”) or gray hair gray beard, for those still in Confucius orbit: older = wiser = respectful (Madoff). Once in a gym, an older man exposed himself in the shower and motioned for me to join him for sex. At least he wasn’t in High-Church robe. Remember Penn State defensive coach? Or Baptist Pastor abuse scandal!
• Of late, the Pope denounced the Doctrine of Discovery (NPR piece April 1, 2023). Fake it until you make it – Santos Syndrome or Silicon Valley’s Out for Blood (black turtleneck as in Theranos = female Steve Jobs?).
• Billionaires give a lot back (coupling money and charity). Not all were Carnegie. If any, it’s their divorced wives and estranged kids (Johnson Johnson) who stood to gain. Bigger pocketbook does not equate with bigger heart. Conversely, the smaller the chips, the more the giving (Gordon Moore).
• Again, in “Confucius” system, teachers were always right (then why the chalkboard and eraser). You might as well inscribe lessons in stone, like Moses and the Ten Commandments: “Thou shall not lie” (to your students after pre-collecting their tuition which btw, direct deposited from student loan e.g. ITT).
• Turns out, it’s the teachers’ teacher who did not know left from right (back to de-coupling Number 2). Further reading: Hans Rosling’s Factfulness or Lies my teacher told me, by James W. Loewen. “All men are mortal” but when it came out of the mouth of Aristotle, it carries more weight. All in the branding. We’re taught to first learn good characters (unfortunately, it meant Never ever question the teachers. The results? rote learning.)
• High finance uses euphemisms e.g. institutional ‘investment portfolios like derivatives with hockey-stick graphs (bell rung with some bones tossed)…while de-emphasizing its hot-dog packed high-risk derivatives. Charts and data can lie when zooming in to lend bias for a period of time. Even Housing as of late, was not a sure thing (2008). So are some Valley banks (2023) or Cassava, the dementia drug company (kept NYT investigative reporter busy).
• So much emphasis on men being horny. Then why all the play tools made for women? Raped victims at times happened to be young boys or altar boys. With Hooters we ‘ve got Chippendales (Go Steinem). In Primary Color, Kathy Bate played a lesbian fixer who immediately picked a campaign volunteer staffer to be her playmate while “hush hush” our candidate past transgression
• Essential workers were hailed during the pandemic. For a while. Until inflation and interest rates did them in (a great scene in Margin Call when Demi Moore small-talked with her co-worker in an elevator, while a quiet janitor-lady caught riding in between at mid-night). Perhaps when more boomers need caregivers, we’ll see the return of Essential workers (Filipino nurses or robotic caregivers).
• Heroes and those who died in war were hailed. Then the opposition and revisionists called them dumb (for not letting others die in their places?) as in McCain vs Trump rivalry (as of this edit, still in print was his $99.00 coffee-table book). We need to assess context, intent, circumstance, and unintended consequences. No blanket rush-to-judgment! One of my heroes is still Lt Murphy from our PSU alumni pool
• Meanwhile, the Marines always charge – albeit Normandy or China Beach, leaving “just war” or “unjustifiable “one to civilian commanders and critics to debate. Hindsight always sees better i.e. more wars, more veterans, more homeless. Selective memories are always positive. It’s through those holes and cracks that light can sift through.
• No regrets? Daniel Pink came out with “the Power of Regrets”, moving forward by moving backward, or so. If so, to close out this “de-coupling”, perhaps my dad had done all he could, being a veteran, living still in war, yet managed to take care of everybody (three-generations under one roof). He was tall, slick and carried himself well.
• Now, they train us to trust a new authoritative figure, apart from family, school and religion. It’s the machine.

“It says here in the system, your scores are up this month” ….

Just as our political system is fragile, this new “authority” (AI) figure is rising, knowing us better than we ourselves (Predictive). Ménage a Trois = man + woman + machine (beds should be redesigned for machine to sandwich in between). Demi More in elevator, looking down to her phone.

That guy at the gym might have big muscles (I admire him for it). But he is much younger. My i coupling e.g. bigger = older was shot. I am back to digging, like a neuro archeologist. For my own sanity in a world that doesn’t seem to distinguish one from the other (keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result). No wonder, “you cannot be intelligent and be happy”, something of that nature, per Hemingway.

More is not always better. Faster does not equate with more accurate and better results (yet the engineers keep pushing the envelope), higher rating (herding) couldn’t be more wrong (Dominion voting machine settlement).

Forget Coupling for convenience. Stimulus – response. Ring the bell and “salivate”. Hail to the King! Wearing a crown (bell), he must be the Absolute (beef). The return of Royalty! (in the old days, in the Orient, foot soldiers like my dad would have to carry higher-ups sitting inside their “limousine”.

This reminds me of Le Chat Bote, a French bedtime story. about a good cat who set his master up to marry the King’s daughter (by fabricating a robbery, then by borrowing the King’s costume, to grift his master into royal court).

BTW, propaganda works best when we resist least per exhaustion, crowd surge, human waves, dehydration. conformity and contagion to herd hypnoses “I once was lost…wretched man that I was…”. De-individuation.

Typical “problem-solution”. Then “God the Father, Mother Mary”. The climax: we’re reduced to becoming mere orphans, thirsty, hungry and vulnerable to wooing and cocooning. Abandoned. In isolation (socially persecuted) then, the other shoe: a pre-meditated solution for a receptive audience (Moses in the desert, Christ in Heaven, Buddha in Nirvana, Allah in the Cloud, Jim Jones in Guyana)

No wonder Thoreau remarks: “all men live and die in quiet desperation” ….Unless they rise, resist and review those unexamined coupling. We decent “gradually then, per Hemmingway, suddenly.”.

It’s not entirely the emperor’s fault. It’s ours, for not:” Sir, you’re naked”. (The emperor has no clothes). Woe is man’s impulse to conform and compromise. For the sake of harmony and peace. Then, peace (the trigger) is just a dream. We mistook peace for predictability even when deep down, we know Change is the only Constant.

Keep moving and resisting. Then we may barely stay in place to enjoy our “norms”.

Time and chance got us all.

Wish I could fetch dad’s coffee and shine his shoes, just one more time. Looking up from my vantage point, he was quite tall, slick and into whose shoes I once wished I could grow.

With Nixon’s Vietnamizing the war, we all felt rumbles on the street.

What it is, ain’t exactly clear.

I could feel it: in the air and airwaves, at outdoor concerts (very few in war footing). Vibrations in Haight Street sent shockwaves to our streets: “If you’re going to San Francisco…be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”.

Flowers (stickers) on cars, notebooks, desks, and walls. “Cam Dai” (Do not pee) painted sign got peed over a zillion times – watering the plants (life expectancy? what’s that) just fleeting like rhythms of the rain

Our youth anthem goes: “wish we could live like flowers “. A sense of dread loomed large. The wage and weight of sin, destruction to no end with no reconstruction.

It was as if someone had pressed “fast forward”, a fast time lapse. An entire generation, born and grew up in war (the day of Peace, was the day I saw the 7th fleet up close, but it was ordered to stand down and was present for a show of force to assist with evac) stoically watching “as tears go by” e.g. napalm girl and burning monk.

My escape was to the cinema with Ten Years After, Jimmy Hendrix and Carlos Santana: “A whole new generation…with a new explanation” – Upstate “Eden” with nude in mud slide on silver screen. Naturally, mesmerized and transfixed, I reconciled and processed two opposing realities (guns vs guitars).

Confucianism, Colonialism, Catholicism, Communism, Capitalism and Consumerism. What’s all those isms had to do with my French conjugation and my dad’s concubines? “Imagine all the people…and the world will be One”. “I was feeling insecure…..I’m just a jealous guy”.

A few years earlier, a neighbor, my puppy – love, already joined a new group, the Apples Three, our Vietnamese Ronettes (Be My Baby). She could sing with sparks in her eyes: “…Said you’ll be back this way again oh baby.” like a superstar she was.

My last glimpse of her was when she got scootered off (our very own Natalie Wood, in This Property is Condemned, born on the wrong side of the track yet boarded a one-way train to the Big Easy). I assumed she was to respond to then surging go-go club demand (as our society morphed from ballroom to bar-hopping, dong to dollars, French Legionaries to US G.I.’s. Madame to Mommy (“you, G.I.’s, ‘beaucoup dien cai dau!’”)

Cultural transition takes time. French was still officially spoken. Even at an all-boys catholic high. Per witness accounts, for the first time since its founding, La San Taber’s Auditorium was at full capacity and that was just a pre-show. Girls in short skirts (down the block at an all-girls Gia Long High, with Ao Dai as required etiquette) and guys in unbuttoned waistcoats. The crowd kept surging and occupying the “colonial” prime real estate under the Principle/Priests’ watching eyes.

John Lennon’s glasses, shaggy hair, long hair, and all hair with Geronimo’s head bands, our Halloween costumes. Relieved that the situation was under control, the stern priest’s self-congratulation was short-lived …” Imagine….and no religion too”. Uh Oh.

After Woodstock, I did not need further inducement: “Come on people now, smile on your brother everybody gets together “How could I not follow the track and trail of upperclassmen? “He ain’t heavy, he is my brother” …to finally ace the audition with our school band – all seniors. They made an exception for me who was trailing behind in middle-school.

Hit-Parade Chart listed California Dreaming and Don’t Let Me Down (stirring) while Dona Dona or Dream, Dream (settling) still lingered just like its predecessor Que Sera Sera earlier on. French gave ways to English while the francs the dollars, vinyl to Akai.

“I hope someday you’ll join us…” Indeed Filipino, Indonesian, and American bands (“We come to your town, We’re American Band” proudly sang the Filippino band having grasped English as a second language head on) were also scheduled at subsequent outdoor venues. Talking about the global impact of rock. I remember wowing at how free Woodstock was (a crowd shot, showing one black guy standing and dancing amidst a sea of shirtless white when zooming out). But while still at war, “you can’t always get what you want”.

Up State, Jimmy Hendrix trespassed the color line with his rendition of the national anthem. Army-surplus goods in flea markets, British-Invasion music over the air (“Reflections of my life” oh I don’t want to die.)

While humming “Who are you… tutu tutu” we still had to choose: books or breakfasts? Learning delays the draft (or end up in a flag-draped coffin like my next-door neighbor).

In each house hung a picture of our President – one assassinated, the other fled. Anthem played at 6 pm on TV Channel 9 before our B/W broadcast (the flag was normally seen waved by side-line crowd at a ticker-tape parade, flapping back and forth by a studio fan So much for illusion and magic of the new medium of persuasion (Kennedy vs Nixon debate).

We believed what we were told. One official version. Few opposing views e.g. “Song” (Life) dailies whose editor Chu Tu got blown up on a boat in front of our eyes. He did not make it out of Saigon.

“Nous irons au coeur du monde…” Mopping up after their WWII predecessors, boots were in knee-deep waters (China Beach). All showed up like at the Star Wars intergalactic bar: China, Soviet Union, France, Britain, Japan, US, US allies Korean, Australian, Netherlander, Filipino, Thailand, Polish/Iranian peace observers, Agence France Press, Le monde, UPI, API, Newsweek, TIME, NYT, Washington Post and of course, the Big Three whose anchors didn’t even put on long pants (stand up medium shots). All fought then faded – just like the French in Indochina. All spent: Billions in bombs (400X Hiroshima) and Millions in lives (neutral Cambodian too).

P.S. per classified documents, they diverted directions in-flight to bomb next door (Cambodia), then doctored same sit reports as bombing and billing for Vietnam targets. (Declassified Operation Breakfast.)

No flowers no stickers.

On marked or mass graves.

Cry, my beloved country.

Something happened.

What it is, ain’t exactly clear.

Confucianism, Colonialism, Catholicism, Communism, Capitalism, and Consumerism; without a “new explanation”.

Choppers and children behind.

Unlike 3 days of Tet the year before, those 3 days of Peace & Music – with Michael Lang (his Vietnamese equivalent, Truong Ky – our first Rock event organizer) saw crowd crashing his concert. “It’s beautiful,” he said.” Now that they are here, we have to feed them…we have to prioritize.” (direct quote).

Woodstock came alive as I revisit it from “both sides now”; for the living and the dead, I’d put on Joe Cocker’s: “You are so beautiful…, to me” to end on a high note (with director ‘s cut of Upstate nude in the rain / SVN naked napalm girl, on split screen).

From time to time, I still am “looking for a heart of gold, …and I’m getting old”.

…” Long ago, it seems so far away… said you’ll be coming back this way again baby”.

Just a jealous guy! Amidst rumbles of vietnamizing this, vietnamizing that.

Gone. Forgotten. Discarded as in Library withdrawn.

Attention span shrinking. Wallet size shrinking. Memories full. No bandwidth left.

Everything, all at once. Multi-media, multi-screens (everyone now looks like a Wall Street broker: vertical spreadsheets on multi-screens, multi-tasks\.

Somewhere in time, we have morphed: from telescopic living to miniaturizing of everything thanks to Big Tech mini-tasking for the mass, us, prosumers. Everything now involves ghost work, and shadow work (ground swelling). Proxy war, nuclear war, contracting war plus helping machines to learn ( before they can replace us all).

Except for dreams. Unrealized ones. Dreams early in life: career, material and marital success, and of course, occasional mesmerizing babes (Basic Instinct’s interrogating scene).

These days I am surrounded by dead people (as of yesterday, John Jakes whose Love and War I have yet read; Bobby Caldwell’s What you won’t Do for Love). Existential sadness and loneliness filled up the achievement gap.

In the absence of viable alternatives, we settled for day-by-day self-perpetuating e.g. breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then Airbnb, and Amazon scaled up and share economy.

Since when do our lives get played by these big entities, from banking to tech to oil? We are then rated and artificially measured by the number of thumbs up, like Narcissus, with his concentric rings of reflection on the water. That’s our force-fed dream. Our virtual 24/7 presence.

Always been a sucker for the intangible e.g. fame and fortune. For love and war. For notoriety and significance. Occasionally it dawns on us: this is it. That’s all the time given to us. To complete the task. Figure it out and finish it. If lion, then roars. If skunks then stinks. Don’t hesitate to be yourself in full force.

We are so far yet so near to our lost dreams. It’s almost as if we could reach out and grab them. There might be a financial collapse or there might be not (war and want). But it’s always been there. The trouble that is. To view life this way is quite pathetic. As in being cogs in the wheel. Data point in some spreadsheet. Automatons of ghost work for Meta, Linkedin, for WordPress (like Mechanical Turk).

Speaking of which, I am going to the store, where at the end of my purchase, I will play cashier (under the watchful eyes of that cashier-turned-supervisor). Fun the first time. But it has become a chore. All in the name of tampering down prices, in itself, is a myth ( groceries price never comes down, even eggs).

Lost dreams. Childhood dreams intersect with adult reality. Don’t dream it’s over….except in that interrogating room, seeing it flashed up close (get played), speechless with beads of sweat streaming down (like a close-up of our SF Assistant DA). “What? You are going to charge me for smoking?”.

I did not know Quan (Ke Huy) drifted from Cho Lon via Hong Kong and then on to the US/USC film school.

But I did know a boy on a basket, stuttering even in his own language, with only a pair of tattered shorts on him in Jubilee Camp, Hong Kong the time I was serving there.

That boy was sponsored out to the UK, perhaps via another transit camp (Shipley, maybe) where its Child Welfare Bureau would eventually outplace him to foster care. Mainstreaming. Beyond the sea.

Survival of the fittest (50:50). For the more fortunate, it was never easy to confront the language barrier, the racial barrier, and the Healthcare barrier (covid).

Been 3 years since Karma tapped on our shoulders, to get our attention. Which side (of Karma) are you on?

Shoving them Asian under the bus,? Handing them an Oscar? ( in 1982, Vincent Chan and the Yellow Peril, out on his Bachelor Night in Detroit, were beaten to death by a baseball bat in a mistaken identity case – for a Jap – the Others, who had taken away ‘our ‘good paying “jobs”). Another Vietnamese child actor, Myca Dinh Le, was killed along with Vic Morrow during an accident on the set of Twilight Zone.

There are both good AND bad underneath the skin, of any color. But I also believe that life afforded us enough time to reset and realign our faith. Faith that goodness will overcome even when Evil might look strong and scary.

Beyond the sea and beneath the skin.

Many did not make it, sunk or scattered into the four winds. Survivors lived with haunted memories of rape, robbery, and starvation. It’s a miracle that that boy survived at all on a basket. To drift with the undercurrent to strange shores (Last weekend, many did not make it to San Diego). The Jubilee camp received him as they would a message in the bottle.

Years after I could still remember that boy and two ladies in the upstairs infirmary at the time recovering from pirates’ looting and raping (and cannibalism).

But then, there were Chase, our team leader, and the Fitzstevens (from Canada) who represented hope. Who indulged me to put together makeshift outdoor entertainment events to lift up the spirits of five thousand survivors in the camps. I worked off their strength and courage as I myself was drained and soaked wet by compassion fatigue.

Both the good and the bad find themselves at the feet of Karma whose big wheel never stops churning. Its final say: “which side of mine are you on”. Behind the applause and tears at last night’s Oscar, I heard Karma beckon:” Don’t give up”.

Look beyond the sea. You’ll see.

P.S. I am sure that boy in the basket is currently living in Britain. who, not unlike Quan, oftentimes feels faint-hearted. May life toss him another raft before the undercurrent once again carries him as it had done the first time around. How we feel may fluctuate e.g. from shoving them under the bus to giving them an Oscar; but our multi-verse of One is Unchanged. All along.

If 2.0 were the American me amidst the melting pot, 3.0 its machine-verified version of what’s left un-meltable, ever evolving and data-rich, bleeding into fourth and final phase. Life throws a curve ball: peak experience intersects energy decline. For now, don’t expect a director-cut i.e. “one more” ride into the Sunset. Not me who grew up in war-warped world with unsettled ledger.

In our agricultural society, unlike cities on the hill, country folks were herded in and out of villages in “forced draft urbanization” process. Nothing but upheavals: monk burning, currency tossing and babies dropping, survivors on the upper deck of Operations Babylift.

Finally, when things died down i.e. troops withdrawn and Watergate settled, those same country folks were herded once again, this time, in the opposite direction to clear the DMZ – with energy and muscles strong enough to breach the Embassy (4/75) or the Capitol (on Jan 6) for catharsis if not Constitution.

When crisis struck, one’s knee-jerk reaction is to deny or assign blame.

“Let’s confront it” I said.

Like an eager airline agent, my Penn State academic advisor tout-suite slid me in Speech with unmatched eagerness and enthusiasm of a bored airline agent (I see here, a window slot, still opens). As it turned out, that class was a favorite for football after- practice nap (student’s residual message is idea not worth sharing as in TED talks).

Neither a tourist nor an exchange student, I dove straight into the cold and damp current. Already late to Winter quarter (one of the coldest in 76, with Buffalo residents entered their houses via the chimneys like Santa), I had no reservation nor hesitation to surgically sever and culturally self-amputate. After all meltable me melted, it left me with no choice except to become sort of a Mid-West “white”. “Where?” down in my heart…I’ve got a joy joy joy down in my heart to stay…”: wearing Shaft long-coat with occasional Rolling-Rock buzz like Long Duc Luong’s “What automobile!” in Sixteen Candles (actually I only tossed a handful of rice during Rocky Horror Picture Show).

The 70’s last half saw a mix of fun and sadness (“Sorry” seems to be the hardest word).

I risked deformity for conformity. Survival of the most fit-in e.g. speech, mannerism, dress – even a photo bomb by one of the summer-camp kids under my bunk charge. Camp Akiba in Mt Poconos housed rich rebellious teens who, on Parent Day, received a trunk-full of candies, unloaded and “Prime” delivered from choppers.

Yet at a turn of event, 25 years out, as tourist/intruder, brought me back. Torna a Surriento – Tro ve Mai Nha Xua. Home coming. The old alley – with face shielded behind a moped “xe-om” driver. Perhaps Maggie Q, the Protege, or Daughter of Danang could do better visually. That was after Clinton’s Embargo lift: phone calls, phone cards, phone bills to Vietnam all skyrocketed high as massive outflux of Boat People, ODP and HO underwent cultural assimilation (their 1.0) this side of the pond. We’ve got “Unwanted”, “On Earth we’re briefly gorgeous”, “The Sympathizer”, “The book of Salt”, “When heaven and earth change places”, “Birds of Paradise” …lit on leave, loss worth sharing, diaspora at a cost.

The rest of the population, after two more regional wars (Cambodia and China), settled down with New Economy (Doi Moi). Currently, folks are experiencing migration 3.0 to urban centers and industrial parks, made possible by FDI from Singapore, India, China, S Korea and Taiwan (Google phone, anyone?) to escape Middle-Income trap.

Back to my 2000 trip. I found my grandfather’s home, my roots. Supposedly former “enemy country” (falling far from the proverbial tree, I was an uprooted frenemy). Even my father and his younger martyred brother had once been on the opposite end of the war spectrum.

A quarter century behind yet war-torn landscape still felt eerie, Hanoi-Jane style. Left to rot, grandpa’s mandarin compound needed a new coat of paint, badly. Au Parleur was still blasting at street corners, London Black-out style. The siren was built to last, since it meant to alert more bombing than WWII Europe. By visiting distant geography, I betrayed ideology. The West was moving forward at breakneck speed per Moore’s Law (chip doubling its speed every 18 months) and here, I was, sailing slowly back somewhere in time, dissolving from color scenes to Black/White static; as if a hundred years did not matter. I practically could hear happy noises from my parent’s wedding, the flash bulbs and vinyl music from a bygone era like Chopin in Vietnamese.

Hidden memories, Colonial and Cochin China resurfaced e.g. cone hats and “bo doi” hats (non coi). Throughout my childhood, all I knew of North were censored postcards sent South.

The ties that bind. Love. Unconditional. Bloodline, grandson, one of us albeit firewalls separated Military Regions like East and West Germany.

Since 1954 only family photos and open post cards were allowed back and forth. No wonder! I remember seeing someone’s kid’s photo, then for reciprocity, my own copy, the other way, a trophy baby i.e. Northern root, Southern born, French educated with table d’honeur for brag. Handwritings for humanity. See, we’ve born fruits here in the South! Propaganda mules we all are, posts or post cards by “women on the verge of nervous breakdown” i.e. self-inflicted and socially diffused. omg!

Machine is better at behavior modification (“Driver alert” to Amber alert). Over the Cold War firewall, we sent and received post cards sparingly. Over digital firewalls, per Metcalfe’s Law we share unlimitedly, exponentially and virally. Every man, woman and child is a podcaster. At least, a data-rich social media mule.

Outwardly, I could pass for a local on that trip. Yet I ducked like the Deer Hunter when reentering the old neighborhood. Something wasn’t quite settled (emotional ledger not settled up.) My stay-behind half-sister took sibling rivalry to the next level: accusing me of neglect (she was born much later like Princess Bride). As if war and displacement were not enough a sentence to torment my soul. Hey, I did not leave under a better circumstance like those exchange students or on tourist visa.

People think we’re machine to be culled and extracted, with efficient computing performance, tweaking and testing to perfection (God knows they did that to animals to quicken farm to fork cycle). When all else failed, we bang our heads against the wall. There go hard-earned relationship. Just kick the soda machine when it did not yield your proverbial coke can. The fault, per Shakespeare, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. Nvidia got it right: we’re our worst enemy.

Promised leisure time (machine washes, dries and cleans etc..) has never quite arrived (at this edit, my A/C buzzes loud noise). Technologists live and work under stress and constraint as academics: publish or perish. In Texas, huge trucks just sit humming, burning fuel for cool air, like mobile A/C units. I am sure, it’s extremely consuming at data centers.

Since the early 60’s then late 70’s, it’s always been future-forwarding, future shock and future dreams. We are busy upgrading our hard and software (the Code). From mainframe to mainstream of “personal” computers (I-phones). Billboards once reminded us “Don’t drink and drive”. Today, “don’t text and drive”. No longer do we say “Operator, yes, I will accept that ‘collect’ call”. We want to monetize “followers”, turning attention to intention of purchase.

Progress flows one-way. A “Moore” future (of AI) and a less well-being (of mankind). Where do you put e.g. remote controlled and drone-dropped bombs, spamming and phishing. 20,000 dollars drones took down 2 million-dollars bombers, to quote Friedman on Washington Week.

More electronics devices = less human contact. Everyone charges up their digital devices, but neglect connecting with people. What happens to putting connectivity in the hands of the people? Where is the Whole Earth Catalog, or once promised counter-cultural soul of the spiritual machine? HTML?

From Media Lab (Steward Brand) to social media (TikTok), from Defense Industrial complex to Communication Industrial complex. From limited choices of 6 o’ clock news (Huntley and Brinkley) with LOP (Least Offensive Programing) to billions of Gong podcasters, our personal bandwidth and attention span suffer. Our spectrum and psyche get multiplexed to the point of breakdown from being terrorized. Centuries of curating have equipped and enforced tolerance level. Beyond that, we experience shellshock. The triumph return and reign of the low brow.

That’s what “technology wants”: fluidity. It’s Un-American – not to capitalize and monetize, from tech to ties (multi-level marketing), from legal front (public funding) to private sphere. It’s the Uberizing and motorizing of everything. If legalized, they would bring back professional mourners (wedding planners, funeral planners…got it?). Anything for a buck, even tears on cue or male revue for wake parties.

I visited my grandma’s grave in Hai Duong. Her ashes (from the South) had been hand-carried then reburied to join my paternal grandpa. I felt a tug in my stomach. War and displacement. The end of history and the end of the line. Yet it’s a highlight of my life, seeing grandma at rest, second and last time, in peace.

After all, she told me tales, among which, Jesus was betrayed by Judas, to ease my toss-and-turn mandatory siestas, like a roommate she practically was – first of many, later campus-assigned: Penn State, Wheaton and Gordon, white folk from New Hampshire, black folk from Nigeria. Like technology, I was on a proverbial white-water rafting, from Northeast to Mid-West then out West and beyond. Technology and me and the dog named Boo.

Me 2.0, follows the money like earlier versions of the microchip i.e. faster, nimbler and generate less heat. To anglicize, Americanize, assimilate; it’s part and parcel of one’s colonial legacy e.g. British accent (Hong Kong) or French (Indochina) or in Vietnam with Nguyens and Trans (just to prove, in crisis, there are opportunities for self-reinvention and advancement). Chameleon we all are to survive (IBM sales clones). Kumbaya bayo… Jumping from hot oil to the melting pot, I need to shred the meltable, traveling light.

Not unlike the spy who came in from the cold, with new currency and passport. Mostly for machine (and man) to facial-recognize and let me pass the turn stilt or: “Oh, you’re not in the computer, it says here”. (to this day, I still can’t see what they saw on their CRT’s).

Bourne. Jason Bourne. Bond. James Bond. Could you imagine Bond chasing the bad guy, riding a pedicab and putting on a cone hat (practical, lightweight and face-shielding). Yet somehow, seeing cone hats in hawkish OC felt more like spotting the “enemy” on patrol. That’s how Hamburger Hill and Hollywood Hill pre-conditioned us. Search, destroy then burn to save. Deny the enemy his sanctuary. Platoon and battalion, chopper evac and last-day evac.

“Horror horror!” (BTW, both Heart of Darkness and the Deer Hunter, were adapted to the silver screen for a post- Vietnam audience). Slowly my 2.0 Americanized version, evolved from hawkish to centrist/dovish, Tom Dooley to Tom Hayden, as propaganda “tranquilized” effects worn off. War disrupts, destroys and dehumanizes. Not just while it’s hot, but also during its prolong post-event.

I do appreciate decades of containment, of pushing the conflict further up North of the MZ’s which bought me some time. When World Airways last flew out of Danang, we saw the blood orgy all spent (65-75).

Me 2.0 shared the grief and pain of war aftermath ( War, Watergate and Woodstock behind). “How I wish there had been someone to whom I could say I was sorry” say I, one of the quiet American.

Meanwhile, loud Vietnamese victors, with 50-years’ worth of remittance behind, still live and die daily in 2-wheel traffic, never reached the Promised Land (the lucky ones in the US also die in four-wheel traffic, never quite seen their American Dream realized).

Instead, we found defoliate patch of land due to all the bombs from WWI and II combined, 400X Hiroshima – those eco-cide and ethno-cide expenditures could easily translate into, per LBJ predicament, many Tennessee Valleys. Torn between two lovers. Between the rock and the hard place.

Grief’s final stage: acceptance: inter-continental inter-generational marriages, international joint ventures and travel, foreign students and Fullbright scholarships (I used to envy international students who could repatriate). Everything declassified and re-normalized from Vina Capital to Vina Milk, 136 billion in export goods. Yeah! 5000 USD per year per person.

Me 3.0 emerged amidst accusations of “Cai do mat goc” (uprooted traitor!) who was craving a Taco in the middle of Vietnam (Viet-Kieu, Vietnamese American, acquired Mexican taste or felt longing for a newly acquired US holiday e.g. Black Friday, Thanksgiving or Halloween).

Me 3.0 = set me freer from gaslighted 1.0 (Phoenix program) and media saturated 2.0: “brought to you by” (The way we never were) described by Schopenhauer:

“He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits sometime in the conjurer’s booth at the fair and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and then they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. (On the Sufferings of the World).

For example: upscale Viet-American 2.0 then promoted to shift supervisor in the US to “train” Afghan 1.0-night shift workers how to adapt and work better with China-imported machine who will soon replace both.

Me 3.0 with its self-battling and self-recrimination, self-loathing and self-adulation: cursing in native tongue at congesting traffic or feeling nostalgic when watching Alain Delon flick, with English subtitles as opposed to Vietnamese as previous. A turn of a phrase, a lullaby and a face in the crowd “Ngay tro ve, anh buoc le…tiec rang ta doi mat da nhoa vi qua doi cho” (the way back, luckily there was the friendly and helpful buffalo to aid vet field chores).

I once took my dad to breakfast. He was still working on his- missing teeth and all- long after I had finished mine. Yet, that’s what happened to a senior survivor of that dark Cold-War 75-85 decade. Forgive Thyself! my P.S. to the Lord’s prayer.

Meanwhile our post-Cold-War world produces more casualties. From covid’s 7 million dead to the death of Skype – and decline of traditional society e.g. Confucian to Church hierarchy, Conclave smokestack to Rust-Belt smokestack.

My mom used to be a teacher with 57-1 class ratio. She graded papers late into the night. No tugging in, trophy child or not. Hence, my sister stepped up e.g. first day of school. Both female adults were way ahead of the curve, at least half a century compared to Afghan counterparts. Mom’s career spanned at least 1500 pupils who went on to raise good families with second-generation students came by accompanied by their moms to show respect.

Today, my kid’s school in Austin fortunately is run by a more diverse staff. Back in wartime Vietnam, we were taught by mostly male teachers (draft-deferred) at our all-boys school. The war was raging hot for my adolescent decade which saw more female widows than female teachers.

Traditional society relies on women to shield and shelter children: “Don’t talk ills of the death.” “Wipe your noses”. “Not with a mouthful, you hear”. (My cousin passed away without a scrap of news about her missing MIA ranger Colonel husband).

While in Me 1.0.” ignorance is bliss”. Happiness = a stroll in the park: unpretentious smile, handholding in all-girls or even all-boys school (no, we weren’t gay). Wartime (in Back Fire pg. 22, Loren Baritz mentioned how US Marines detested the hand-holding effeminate scene).

If leaving everything in under 2 minutes again, I’d prefer keeping my phone and passport, credit cards and Medicare. Like a spy who came in from the cold, I’d need new identity. hair color and contact lens, wearing a double-sided coat like Bourne and Bond to evade surveillance.

Why not hide in Schopenhauer’s “conjurer booth” to watch recurring Cinema Paradiso.

My depressurized de-acculturalization has been a blessing in disguise: technology progresses at break-neck speed, while the inner man like deer facing a headlight, holds on to meager core values. In Mr. Klein (played by Alain Delon), he was forced to flee in under two minutes, grabbing his fire-sale painting by fellow Jew, only to be herded into the death-chamber train himself for camp tattoos in place of artist’s signatures.

My American life was more like a chip set under Moore’s Law, home for 18 years, then forced to double in yield every 18 months. Use it (pain, crisis, danger, uncertainty and mishaps). Fake it till you make it. Like a failed start-up (zero to 1) that promises the moon, one was to generate viable alternatives to appease investor’s ROI pressures (screw it, les do it), in utter disregard for unintended consequences and unforeseen costs e.g. Bad Blood, EFT and Alzheimer’s Cassava as written in “Doctored”. Instead of flying cars, we end up with TikTok.

While machine is trying to become more like us (nuanced) we are to emulate machine (more speed and less complexity), white Waymo vs yellow cab.

No wonder UVA mass shooter was son of a Korean high-pressure upbringing, or an Austin Vietnamese man committed suicide in his yuppie prime (in wartime, our lyrics were” wish to be born like flowers, fleeting but beautiful”; now, that impermanent beauty has been replaced with a more permanent chipset.

When Nixon first coined “Vietnamization of the Vietnam War”, he wanted to pass the buck (to get himself re-elected “Bomb the S.O.B. back to Stone Age”. Inadvertently that set in motion my own self-exfiltration: skipping 10th grade then skipping town. Permanently.

America and dreams are synonymous. You are what you have. At times, it’s Woodstock nude in Upstate NY or burning man in Death Valley, Apple in the orchard or Apple soon in Kentucky. Xanadu dreamy and circuitous that promise an alt+ctrl+del. Then back to the business of America, which is business. Smart Carter (nuclear engineer) lost to Reagan, the GE product pitch man.

Give me your tired and poor (say not, the KKKs in Mississippi). Early adopters among us already special-ordered shirts with monogram as if that would go far to cover our “tattoos” shame. City on the hill, Disney down the land, charter cruise from sea to shining sea.

If 2.0 were the Americanized me, 3.0 its data-rich upgrade: like AI, ever-learning, ever green. Any pilgrim on path of soul search deserves my empathy and respect. We’re sojourners, and the road is long. The opportunity cost was quite inflated, paid far away from home and more often than not, involved losing oneself in order to gain it.

Get set! Spring forward.

Have faith in the future. We’ll get it back in the Fall. If.

Plant a tree. Raise a kid.

All faith. All future. That is if fossil fuel fumes don’t get us first. Before the Fall.

Before the time we get back that hour. I have seen people who left us, just in time. Like a Dell lean production line. Like Toyota kaizen. Like Hollywood and Detroit.

Assembly line. Pipeline. Production and forecast. AI-assisted. Assisted living arrangement. Then Bang. Never live to see the clock turned back, to get back that one hour we all faithfully executed this weekend.

Oscar time. Tux time. Bow ties and cuff links. Hankies and Tenu de Soiree.

Everyone wants to be on the front page of the next Variety.

Of getting out in front of “personal branding” (like a Tomato Campell soup can).

Down the red carpet, juice oozing, breast is shown, wardrobe purposely “malfunctioning”. Click, click, click for the paparazzi, for papas, and for papers the next day.

Dream on. Death on the horizon. Living on borrowed time. Our children’s time. With weather misbehaving, social unrest, and bad actors plotting their next moves (as if we all were made of wood on the chess board).

In Gravity, Clooney decided to unplug himself, to drift literally into oblivion, into Infinity of Space and Time, so Sandra Bullock (with misty eyes seen through Space Glass wears) could get pulled back to shores via gravity, the weight of her own survivor’s guilt.

I sure hope we all have a great time watching this year’s Red Carpet. After all, it’s the post-Covid era and we’re still here (minus a few oldsters). Dream on. Live on. On borrowed time (with faith that in the near future, two seasons from now, we’ll get it back).

If not. Then so long. Farewell. Make it count. When desperate, just unplug. No sense of burdening others, younger folks who continue the chant, le chanson “Un-stoppable, I am unstoppable today…” If anything, the moral arc of the Universe always grinds, slowly, justly and just in time. Infinity in our hand (to let go) and Eternity in one hour.

Tolstoy once said a man’s life were like a fraction. The larger the denominator (delusion) the smaller the sum of his total (self)….or something like that. The point is: concentrate on expanding one’s numerator, not denominator.

I went back to old movies and watched them with new eyes: old B/W ones (Paths of Glory, High Noon) or color ones but not too recent (Color of Money, BareFoot in the Park).

From this “sociological” research, I conclude that;

• the poor (recession) are always with us
• self-projection plays a huge role in isolating us from each other (we identify with ideas and folks of same feathers)
• a failed idea today might be a winner tomorrow
• lucky event doesn’t repeat itself
• it’s easier said than done when you have PTSD
• actors are the most adaptable creatures
• America leads the world not just in weaponry and education, but also in image
• crooks always get ahead of the crowd
• we’re cogs in the wheel, suckers for the taking

There might be more, but God knows I am working on it (to reduce my personal denominator, and increase my numerator).

Besides three meals a day and a bed to sleep on, we rectify and rationalize our ways to “greatness”. In the sixties and seventies, we’ve got Sidney Poitier, Sidney Sheldon and Sidney Pollack. Then Alain Delon, Marilyn Monroe and Farrah Fawcett: all well-dressed, well-groomed and well-applauded. We’ve got network anchors, cover girls and models. All well-groomed, well-paid and well-liked.

The public, we, used them for self-projection, to expand our “denominator” (someone we aspire to, root for and wish someday, become them, even just a fraction).

Then we’ve got Presidents: crooked one, clumsy one and cheater-type (Nixon, Ford and Clinton).

Most recent, we’ve got “A Very Stable Genius” (after a book title) and a Baptist with dangling tool-belts.

People are born and died, every day. It seems as if it were yesterday that Earth had 4 billion. Today, double that (give it some time). The sheer amount of population that need to be bathed, fed and funded should humble us. Think of the war in Ukraine, the earthquake in Syria etc…

So we shut our door, close our eyes and dream. Get passed the Copyright warning, get to the intro and establishing shot (for context) and sit back to self-project. On the screen, to be heroes again, (like Kirk Douglas) barking at the corrupt generals (Paths of Glory) and in the final moment of pure empathy “Sergeant, give the men a few more minutes” (before getting shipped out again to their certain deaths). Sh*t, it was nothing but “All quiet on the Western front”. You must be kidding! It’s Hollywood, all dreams, whether in B/W or color.

The longer I have lived, the larger my shadow/denominator. After a while, I learn to accept and live with my fractured self. Maybe Tolstoy was right after all: our lives are like fractions. Growing the denominator could only make it worse.

What happened before will happen again (comes back in a full circle). Maybe not. Something that has never happened before might occur someday e.g. singularity. The speed of change, our ability to cope with it (speaking in shorter sentences, if not binary: Yes or No).

I grew up waiting for frequent trips to visit our grandpa. Mom and me. We went, up the Y bridge, then made a right, toward Chanh Hung. You can always smell it from afar: the pig pen.

I watched and learned. How relatives related. Relationships.

In the end, my mom, on her meager salary, always handed over some cash ( a little something).

Love = rhetoric + reality

Words and action. Real meaningful and tangible means to lift someone’s life up. In this case, it was my Mom’s stepmom and step-siblings.

That’s how society transmits its “genes”. Loyalty, commitment, and compassion.

I have barely drawn up our family genealogy. It took a few phones calls back and forth, to my much older brother (oldest sis already in dementia stage). Every child dreamed of a glorious past. One which dwarfs all fairy tales. Legends that got blown out of proportion and passed on (we bought into it because we were hoping for “what happened before will certainly happen again, maybe skipping a generation).

Aristocracy was and still is. The elites. The “chosen”. Sun gods, Moon gods, and High-noon gods. N Korean leader was seen with his heir apparent on his side. 4th generation. In Britain, King Charles.

In the US, segregationists and secessionists, found their mouthpieces and reincarnation. Divided States. Circular in thinking. In motion. And in place.

Meanwhile, the atomic clock is clicking. People are born and dying.

Even worse, people are getting much older (I am looking at a LIFE magazine from 45 years back: the High Court was packed with White, Male, and Caucasian w/ the exception of Thurgood Marshall – the same time as ROOTS popularity, not to mention Star Wars).

What happened will likely happen again? Winning the lottery twice?

Good luck. With Fox news and fake news. With acronyms like AOC and MTG.

Since when are we afraid of pronouncing someone’s name? Or do they all have to be brands and acronyms for the sake of Twitter’s 140 characters.

The algorithm rules. Our life and society are heading more towards singularity, at which time, machines and man are indistinguishable in speech, thought, and perhaps action. Yes or No? Not maybe. Not wishy-washy. Not hesitating, of two minds. Or changed minds.

It was the Y bridge all right. Where we made a right turn, then headed towards the pig pen and factory. The neighborhood thrived on raising them, selling them and subsisting on them.

The smell stayed with me years later. So was the kindness of relatives, relationships, and bloodlines. I know I can draw up on a board who is who. Perhaps one or two ended up millionaires. The majority were successful and accomplished. Early deaths and longevity. Forgetful and resourceful.

But those were human beings who carry with them a certain amount of dignity, besides dollars.

There is always a trade-off as I see it from the chart. And how politics and migration affected multi-generations (my brother left his home twice, the first on a French ship, the second on USS Navy 7th fleet).

What happened before seems to happen again. At least from my own experience: I too left home on a foreign ship, to arrive on foreign soil and now, write in a foreign language. Did I choose to make that right turn on the Y bridge? Or fate intervenes?

When on that Y bridge, even Robert Frost has to ponder before making his turn, towards whichever road with less traffic, and less traveled. To him, it made all the differences. To me too. Can’t be of two minds too long. Or get run over.

I wasn’t stupid. Something was going on. Something happened. Didn’t know what it was. “What’s going on!” “Something is happening here,….what it is ain’t exactly clear”.

In the dark. Kept there. Even to the last minute. People were climbing, pushing and shoving. Babies crying. Adults in tears (separation, fear of the unknown, fear of danger, of forever be changed).

From one geography to another, with different climate, culture and currency. In the dark, even day time. Hence, the Dictionary. The guide and words that mattered.

Words of encouragement, of admonition and of resignation “what can you do!”.

The crisis and the cause – bigger than any of us. For context, everything happened that year: class of 1974-1975 . From HS graduation to Pre-Med admission, then boarding a barge, a boat and a bus to new life. At the camp (transitory) I looked at the bulletin board, to find lost friends and relatives (to see who made it out), then I caught site of an ad for a voluntary interpreter, Bureau of Child Welfare.

Lost children, lost cause (those not in a plane crash the previous week).

So I showed. Then showed up for work. Every day, like clockwork. No commute since the makeshift office was set-up in another barrack within walking distance. Hi, I am Thang. And you are?…Mary Ann, John, Greg, Steve, Jean ….Pardon me? etc… The tempo went on. First day at work. The routine. Showing up. Hi and bye.

Then comes lunch hour. A toss of football (so, you’re sponsored to go to Penn State? Gotta to get used to football). You might want to change your name into Thomas, Tommy etc..

Boom! Toss, run and catch. Your birthday is coming up? The office chipped in. A sheet cake, perhaps brought in from nearby Lancaster or Lebanon, PA. A Webster’s dictionary, perhaps from a Harrisburg bookstore, with a brief well wishes by the office manger.

Appreciate you guys. Then the trip (with day pass) to court “All rise!”…Yes, your Honor. So and so is willing and is in the affirmative to accept said foster homes. Yes, your Honor.

The court cut me a check. Wished I had framed it for souvenir. My first pay ever.

I asked for a stop at the nearest Montgomery Ward to buy a cassette player and some Sony tapes. That night, I put it against my bunkmate’s player to tape all the songs I thought would be lost forever except in memory. Faded one. Until today. Ben cau bien gioi. By the bridge too far, I listen to the flow of time.

Feeling melancholy. Feeling sad. Friends and father left behind. Objects of desire too. Poof! Gone. Never to be regained. All lost. In one felt swoop.

That jump over the sandbag onto the barge. To “listen” to the flow of time. The Y bridge of fate. At Penn State, it’s another world in itself. Lillie white. No mass shooting. Snow and foliage. Friends and (new) families. Lost in translation. Every day was like Groundhog day.

Now, cassettes gone. Music is still in my head. And the memory is securely locked in the recess of my mind. Pardon me! Appreciate it. Thanks. Where words failed, I rose to the occasion: giving context and nuances to the endless search for those dynamic equivalents. Yet No language can depict the contrast between Dark and Dawn.

That’s why we failed. At a war of deception and descending intervals. That’s why we were scattered into the four winds: from Norway to Norfolk. Foster homes and nursing homes. Here we find ourselves still wanting. Still searching. Still listening to the flow of time. Toss and run. Never catch. In the beginning was the Word, then from A we proceed to Z. Dark slowly gives to Dawn. Yet, it’s always a work in progress. A constant revision of our life as a draft. God our Editor. And Judge. Your Honor, I rest my case.