Thang Nguyen 555

Around this time of the year, we feel it (joy) in the air, hear the Salvation-Army bell, and see motorists stopping for panhandlers. Very much heart-warming, like in Joyeux Noel (1914 WWI film).

Enough for year round. Spin it again.

My first memorable Christmas in the alley where I grew up: tables were set out, blocking traffic (the only time not for funeral). I remember plenty of food/drink. Join us! (I was an under age. Yet, invited and included). That’s how I remembered.

Then the itch and the scratches through the night, perhaps from allergy to seafoods or drinks.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, our protagonist, almost survived till the end, recalled his first bombardment, and how his platoon had helped themselves to the whole pig that night.

Meals in the military. Memories of war. The dead in that context was more fortunate.

The ongoing joke of my times was “what! you’re gonna ship us to Nam?” Or ” When we get back to the world” (per Tobias Wolff) meant out of this war, to anywhere but there.

Let’s see: we’re gonna buy a whole case of Champagne. Cheap Champagne.

Costco Chicken. and of course, Chocolate. To celebrate. To spread the joy.

Sparkling drinks for Sparks of divinity. Even the Three wisemen came having followed the guiding star.

A Messiah is born.

Giving. What’s precious. What’s valuable. The Nativity with : manger mixed with myrrh, donkey in starry desert.

Just like a scene of contrast I saw this morning: a motorcyclist pulling out his wallet for a panhandler. It’s 2023 and not 1914 when opposing parties joined in the celebration. We do have hope still. That it only takes a spark. To get a fire going.

Just like that nuclear jolt in Berkeley, or the first locomotive that ignites the Industrial Revolution. Somewhere in time, we made that game-changing leap: to be where we are in the evolutionary chain. To have the ability to think, to remember and reflect.

I remember scratching like crazy that Christmas Eve. In that bent and out of shape alley. Yet the occasion was joy, not mourning as usual. And occasional pops of guns still could be heard. With fireworks in the background We created our own space for peace, inner peace, amidst war (outside). Our Joyeux Noel film set wasn’t as cold as in 1914, sitting with friends and not enemies. BTW, that same neighbor was the one who pulled away the barbed wires for us to back out to the street, and to never look back years later.

What are they gonna do? Ship me back to NAM?

That’s me. I am not writing about someone else. You see, the man who was about to move in across the street has died. I was told.

All the frantic buildout, renovating and refashioning.

If we were Amish, he and I and the whole village would have chipped in (barn-raise).

As it turns out, I have never (can’t now, at least not yet) met him. Mostly I saw contractors coming and going. One group after another; the roofing guys, the lawn guys seen through my window.

Now his porch lights are always on, 24/7. Like an eternal flame for his wake.

Was he privileged to the timing of his departure? Or his, a sudden death? From the prep work, I wouldn’t think he did. Perhaps it’s better that way.

I in fact feel for him. More than being curious. Fate of Fellow human: working and breathing, stressed out and burned out. To finally build a “fort”, surrounded with soil and shrubs to mark and protect One’s space. One’s privacy. One’s history.

Gone. In a puff.

We are our past (that bleeds to the present, claiming more and more territory and time each day).

Past as prologue. It’s as if sports fans had left the stadium, knowing with some certainty the final score and outcome of the game, despite last attempt at Hail-Mary pass by the losing team. Our past got momentum, critical mass and velocity. Train on its track.

It takes over. Can’t reverse it. It’s there in the Cloud. Facebook and Linkedin.

It begins with our birth certificate and ends with our death certificate.

Some folks travel and leave home with a prepared will. Others reside to the comfy chair, bitching at his son-in-law (Rob Reiner of the world). Meanwhile, Our “superhero” cashes out his brand equity with NFT cards.

I have never met my new neighbor. I am not nosy. Just regret we had never met. To exchange barbs, to rant about the weather, about inflation, interest rates.

It’s Christmas. And it looks awfully lonely to see the porch light on. With no one living in that house: newly minted, deck dusted , rail untouched and lamp ever -shone.

Meanwhile, in my household. kids chit-chat over TikTok, telling each other jokes e.g. “how do you fit an elephant into a fridge”….

In the vein of ever shining I would put on “Evergreen” by Streisand.

In the hope that, if the past is prologue, then the present is prologue to love, a love that transcends space and time. Hollywood makes money by hyping up violence and sex. If forced choice, I’d take Woodstock over War, And I do hope my neighbor had some of it (love) for the journey of his going. I sure can use extra serving just as I have basked in the light of his porch lamp.

For years, I have seen above picture. Lately, it’s on my home-office desk.

Sister’s family left side. Ours, right side. With my Mom, situated in the middle. Always the matriarch of the extended family. My brother, far right, was a Medic Captain (divorced and ran into his wife and kid on Wake Island, where this was taken).

But only now that it dawns to me why I had that thousand-yards stare: my Dad was left behind in a hurry. He stayed behind for a good 10 years from that turbulent time we found ourselves vetted in the middle of the biggest ocean on Earth.

“Do you know, where you’re going to, do you like the things that life is showing you.”

It’s hard to predict and project your life 10 years into the future. Let’s just say, recent announcement out of Berkeley’s Lab. It might be another 2-4 decades before we see commercial and consumer applications as we now begin to see with Tesla.

I can predict though the entrenchment, resistance and lobbying of the incumbents. After all, there are so much capital invested in other renewables (esp. the fossil fuel industrial complex).

So, the front row have been doing well: adjusted, fed and clothed. Warm clothes. Their kids to, interracially marriages. The back row. Not too good. Just passable.

I am left stranded. Off sync. Always seem to miss a few beats, generationally and culturally. Can’t interracially marry (barely codified yesterday here in the US). Can’t go back to date among our own race (heck, if I could, I would have visited with my Dad, the missing person in the picture).

There was some happy endings: he signed the house over to the government, then joined us with just a shirt on his back. Later, Dad passed away in a Winchester, VA home. There aren’t many tales to tell, except for some legendary incidents e.g. swam after a rescue boat for our family to evacuate to dry land during a Northern Vietnam flood, shooed away a thief in the night by a throw of a kitchen knife, and of course, stood up for me against my alley bully.

We need fathers. Good ones. To serve and protect. a 911 kind, a sensitive kind and a juggler of many balls in the air. Tall order. No wonder in today’s toxic environment, we find many single moms on welfare, on WIC’s etc…Where have all the good men gone? Back in my days, my Dad, a discharged Army man, came home every single night. Supper waiting. Songs waiting. And at times, visitors waiting.

We had something of a home life. Sunday outings and graduation parties. It’s the Confucian culture that held us together, more in death than in life. We commemorated the dead. Remembering the day they passed away and got together every year on that same date. To retell tales and to encourage each other to live on.

Now that I realize who is missing in that picture, I can comprehend the anxiety and restlessness present: if I did not know his whereabout, I would never know if he lived or died. And most of all, on what day of the calendar should I remember him. That’s what got me antsy and apprehended, shown in a thousand-yards stare beyond the glistening sea for a glimpse of the person missing in the pic.

We’re privy, each of us, to 15 min of fame ( Irene Cara herself). Andy Warhol, Woody Allen etc.. all famous, with memorable quotes. Life compressed. A short sentence. One word. Name.

People , who taught me about life, have all passed away. They showed me the opposite of the ideal they instilled in me. In short, failed expectations.

Then that falling short keeps passing down, from one generation to the next: “Don’t speak ill of the dead”. Hence, the lie keeps perpetuating. Tugged under the couch, hidden under the rug.

When old people speak the truth, they are shut down and labeled as “Grumpy” (Walter Matthau, and now Rob Reiner). Our image of a hero is thwarted: male, WASP, tall, larger than life, womanizer and drinker. Justified violence and always wins in the end, in the Name of the Father.

Hollywood version. Roaring like the MGM lion at the beginning. A few twists and turns of the plot thrown in, for realism. But most times, every time, it’s for good reviews, mass consumption and ticket sale.

Feel good. Forget. What is history? that’s for librarian and Dewey decimal.

We’ve got Google for spelling and remembering. No one, no one should misspell (auto-correct). Life is from here on out, perfect. Slick. No errors and no missteps.

And thanks to machine-aided technique, we now upload, comment, and always a step ahead of events and happening (the 6PM-news broadcast seems outdated).

It’s a world full of facts, untruths and myths. The more we know, the less we know.

The paradox of modern age. Wisdom is dying off. People I trust, who taught me about life, have died off. Leaving me and handing me the torch. To play the Old Man and the keyboards. What to say besides: let’s move on. Let’s preserve the good things. On giants’ shoulders we stand, tall. Spread your wings and dance while you still can. On Broadway and Highway. Like Irene. Like Woody. Like Andy.

Before it’s too late. Before we are forgetful. Before we become species of yesterday. You may say these are old-man’s rant. Yes they are, and hopefully landing on receptive ears. Most times, people are turned off. It’s called selective perception: we only seek out and confirm what we already held as true.

So let it be. A lonely planet. A world divided. Mind’s interior and the Moon’s exterior. Keep exploring. In here and out there. Until you get old, like me, with fingers on the keyboards. Making some noise.

Old man and the keys.

We can stay still. Close our eyes. We can think. Talk and discuss. Or we can move ahead regardless.

Gretchen Rubin, author and expert on Happiness, says habits take self-control and decision-making out of the equation: showered and shaved, coffee and toast etc…

Long time ago, event took me out of my habitat . Disrupted my habit. Deer facing oncoming headlights.

Froze. Not sure how to proceed. Millions of little calculations in my CPU. Not enough RAM and ROM. I read Toffler. I consulted Tillich.

Future shock. Culture shock. I was at my inflection point. Like Chevy Chase on his National Lampoon’s vacation, driving around a Parisienne Round-About with time lapse.

Maybe this is how the game is supposed to be played: we don’t know, period.

TIl we have faces.

On the other side of the coin. Fake it til you make it. Two front eyes can only see forward, not back, not over the curve (of the Earth). We all live in a submarine, painted Yellow. Help! Submerged and suffocated.

Things will sort themselves out, so they say. All quiet on the front (but not here).

More EV charging stations, please. More Emotional Charging stations, while at it.

One life to live. So many roads to choose.

Some says “Look within”. Others, outward. For centuries, science and religion never cease to butt-head. We explored the Moon many times over, and turned around to look within, at a nano level. Man’s life vs Moon’s.

How about just close your eyes. Think. Rewind and pause. Take stock. Follow not the herd. The crammed posts from the Democratic Party, from the Republican Party…and now from the Independent Party.

Back to my standing at the crossroads. Which way to turn. One Must move forward (in time). It so happened that topography and time seem to go together. At times, they are de-coupled (as when I returned to the same place, and got to know it for the first time – as a stranger and visitor). Places you can return to. Time, you cannot.

Someone requests a payment from my Paypal. Do I know you? I am broke. Should be the other way around. Scammers and grifters. Go away. Make my day.

Hence, the road ahead is unknown but knowable even when it’s a wrong turn. You and I will only waste time (and energy). But geography can always be redrawn. Empires do this all the time, most times, shrinked. Yet man’s ambition always enlarges, in disproportionate to the size of their penises. Fear not those outward appearances (of silver hair and rim glasses). I am becoming one of them, those supposedly authoritarian figures, who hid their frailties and faults.

Unlearn your reflexes (fear is one of them). Acquire new ones. As Gretchen put it, once we’ve acquired new habits, we don’t need decision-making and self-control. We are on auto-pilot. Go for those frequent bathroom stops. Then immediately refill with caffein and endorphin. Tillich with his analysis on reality and idealism. Toffler, on how efficient can we get what we want in the time we’re given.

Happy is a man who decides, despite all the shocks and doubts. Make making decision (risk taking) part of your new habits. Don’t just stand there and get run over. The road ahead is where we are now standing. I know this. I still remember the speech I heard at graduation: “….with all the privileges and responsibilities this degree entails…”. Been more of the later than the former. All quiet on the front. But not in here…with millions of little calculations given the DNA…to survive Future Shock ( in a pro-sumer society).

I wish. That life out of an alley would shoot forward to target, like an arrow.

Unfortunately, its trajectory has been more like a beeline . A shock absorber with DNA strands and scars. Perhaps it’s better that way (an arrow might miss its target). Like little Red Robin, we can afford to make an unplanned stop here and there, to get in trouble.

The Good Lord knows all this (Omniscient). Been there and done that Himself (Omnipresent and Omnipotent). The truth will set me free, despite path I have taken . Every step (you take, every move you make, I will be watching) even missteps.

Out of the alley, I have passed the analog phase : 8-track music, VHS and Betamax.

Then digital phase with easier surveillance. So prevalent that I afraid am being watched, heard and recorded, anywhere, anytime (certainly at the gym this morning). Citizens of China: rise up! (You’d rather be watched but not lying down).

How could countries keep their citizens under watch is beyond me. Someday, they all escape to not just another country, but another universe: Metaverse.

From Marilyn Chamber to digital chamber (playground, sandbox, etc..).

Control, control, control. Hemmed in. Like randomized-test mice with placebo. Awaiting death inevitable.

Meanwhile, control groups urge us to experience other death precautions (spiritual, social and psychological) like baptismal or other wise for insurance.

Out of the alley, I shot forward in time. Neither straight, nor curve. Just one rung at a time, along the narrow trail. Then it struck me. It’s not the road, but the seasons, not topology but time: Summer and Fall, Winter and Spring. Each with its own charm and allure.

Then exhausted, I just prefer to come home. To rest. To take stock. And to depressurize. The Industrial Revolution (scale) and the Information Revolution (access) push us relentlessly from 24/7 time to virtual time (neither Sun nor Moon regularity).

Just the hum of florescent lights, the tap on the keyboards and the final signature on death certificate. Hands left un-held and memory unrecalled. Life as an arrow? Not so fast. You’ve got to let the morning last.

Milk it out. Make it last . With spare moments as reservoir to reflect. Before coming back in full circle. To an alley where it all started. Analog obviously.

Outer and inner life. The later is more important.

It makes a total person, from cradle to the grave, both context and contour.

At the present, cancer, stroke and dementia remain our top challenges.

Slow decline and certain death. Faded memory. No recall. No joie de vivre.

A long goodbye.

I spoke to my sister, 19 years my senior. She couldn’t recall who I was. I might as well talk to an alien from Mars.

I wanted to remind her of the times she went looking for me who was swept alongside a marching mob, tiki torches and repetitive chants “tung tung tung dzo dzo” for no reasons except for the season of celebrated Children’s Festival on the Lunar Calendar.

Or when she played proxy mom to drop me off on my first day of school (joining a group of hysterical children of similar abandoning fate).

She couldn’t recall our most recent trip to New Orleans, after we had passed vast land of the South.

My sister virtually drift from one nap to another.

Months ago, she fought hard, wanting to pack up and move out to her own place. Self-alluding, she thought she could still manage independent living.

Not now. From the tone of it, friends no longer call. Visitors less frequent.

The candle is dimming out. Only amber and echo of her former life.

When we are no more.

Footprints and fingerprints. Residuals and retirement.

Just mopping up the last vegetated part on borrowed time. As if life were a bowl of soup, sooner or later, we would reach bottom. Scraping what’s left before handing back the empty vessel to nature. Stardust, carbon nano dust. A few dollars’ worth of not-so rare earth.

To me, she still is my sister. The only one I have and look up to. Four adults, busy working and moving about. Often one assumed the others would be watching me. Then it’s she who noticed I had been missing.

In that refugee enclave where Cronkite once visited and concluded “the best scenario is a stalemate”.

Where would an active child, her youngest brother be, if not with the noticeably loud and increasing in number mob which at the time, circulated the neighborhood (other times, it might be home movies projected on the side wall, our version of Cinema Paradiso albeit low-tech and high-risk war times).

She always noticed things. Like on the day before Saigon fell. How desolate she must have looked standing there on the street corner, waiting for her husband. She saw people moving about, violating curfew. How their survival instinct was much stronger than hers. The eerie absence of the American (at the end of the “American War”) pushed her button:” They have abandoned us.”

On the surface, the city remained calm. But inside the walls of the Embassy, of the Airport, things were frantic: dollars burned, babies left behind. Only purses and passports, people staged in batches for chopper lift, often time with maximum occupation.

In a hurry, her brain cells came alive. Connecting the dots, she summoned her mate, rnaternal instincts (four kids) and rounded up us from routine siesta.

It’s my sister, born in the year of the Buffalo, that pulled forward by the seat of the pants. Even the plot next to her husband’s was reserved – under her name, spelled correctly (I am sure she double checked like a CPA she was). She anticipated failure of memory. Just in case. Like now.

When one secured a permanent resting place (in the Serenity section of the Memorial Park), one welcomes dementia. Go ahead, hit me. Got nothing to lose. Fearless leader that put men of war to shame.

Moss and memory. Slow build-up to Appendix section of a narrative with beginning, middle and – blank – ending.

May I have the soundtrack of Torna a Surriento please. That piece helps me circle back to our house in an alley where my siblings and I – with much anticipation, upgraded it a new coat of paint in the days leading to Tet. We covered the moss and put a fresh layer on memory. Although filling out only the missing spots at the bottom, I was glad to be part of a team, who together, made a humble life for ourselves in that tight and noisy alley. Saigon District 3 my home.

In the scheme of things, we shouldn’t be bothered with big problems e.g. climate change, gun control, homelessness, immigration etc… Yet the fall-outs from these issues are in our faces daily.

Outside the gym, early AM, I saw a person looking for breakfast in waste bins. 21st-century scavenger. We want to survive, to see another day. To progress up the Maslow Scale, “be all we can be” (self-actualizing).

Only to see our fellowman lingered on at the bottom. Not everyone can turn down a million dollars like Rod Stewart ( I can see in your eyes, that you’ve been crying for-ever).

Why bother to look, to think, to ponder and reflect. Just do it. Buy a pair of Nike.. Hit the gym. Then fast-food joints, then winery. Call it a day, any day, to get to final day.

The measures of a man. His identity, status, and of course money. A man in full. Lots of “stuff” crowding his mansion. His mates, his mats and his mobiles.

Being visible is all that matters. Being invisible is very undesirable.

Why bother?

We progress and regress. Keep jumping the curves, riding the waves. On top of the conversation and being on people’s top mind.

Tell all. Show all. Reveal all. As long as it pays. But looking into garbage for breakfast? uncool. No sparks of divinity there. No Imago Dei there. That’s a different order of magnitude. We can’t comprehend nor can we solve big problems. Like Climate Change, Immigration, gun control, homelessness and Alzheimer.

To live is to be bothered. Why bother? because we want to live forever, at least, to wring out of Life, all of its gusto, grace and grandeur. Not everyone is a Bill Gates or Rod Stewart. But it has been done once, via a slim and slandered hands of a Belgium nun in Calcutta. You know who I am talking about. Why did she even bother! Of course, we can always offer a lot of “thoughts and prayers”, or even use hand-sanitizer while the gun man took down children in Uvalde.

Why bother!

Once 18 years living inside the Terminal, he has died as of yesterday.

My daughter and I never forget the scene where he (played by Tom Hanks) prepared his cracker (singular) as if ready for holy communion ( only to be bumped by a hurried passer-by.). Cracker meal, on the floor.

Our transient life viewed via another person’s, a passenger passing through. Earth our terminal.

Iranian revolution in 1979. Iranian revolution this past month. Theocracy or Autocracy. All cried out: set me free. Feed me. See me. Feel me ( The Who ).

I was looking at the chart, how much each performer at Woodstock got paid e.g. Jimmy Hendrix got top dollars (not bad for left-handed soloist. Near the bottom, we saw Santana. Yet the latter has staying power, even after a heat stroke last year.)

Time and terminal. Eternity in the present. Our communion outside of Church in pure unadulterated Ec·cle·si·as·ti·cal sense. Every generation or so, people forget. Then con men, con artists, fixers, false prophets, predictors and profiters would recycle old scripts. Keep blasting it. SEO. Ad sense and Ad words. The age of machine learning and preaching. Us? the choir. Repetition, brain-washing, herd then conformity.

So our Terminal man keeps looking at the Departure board, wishful thinking it into reality. That his eventual turn would be up.

All aboard. Carry-on and Crackers only. Dreams packed in a suitcase. Destination pre-set. You’re the chosen. For this journey.

Be careful who you talk to. Don’t befriend strangers or offer to help with their luggage. No kindness of strangers when traveling.

Born to be man, not mule.

Please allow ample time for unexpected delays or changes in schedule.

The travelers and the terminal. Converged at one moment in time. At times, it makes for history. Any place that allows for loading and unloading of passengers. A train station. An airport, or a cruise-ship yard. Leave your heart and loved ones behind. Only in memory they live on. Memories that creep up without warning. To realign our priorities and prefill our lives with context and continuity.

We are the sum of our memories. Of trips taken. And by extension, of terminals where we stop, just to have a snack, a cracker even.

Occasionally, we bump into someone we recognize. And in that instance, the spatial and contextual history became alive and we feel young (going back in time) and hopefully be whole again by unedited past. What should have been transient at an airport in France, has become dead permanent for a real-life Iranian played by Tom Hanks, whose action and empathy made such an impression and imprint that when I saw the news about his final “departure”, I just want to say: “Have a nice trip.”

The things they carried….to Matterhorn…to the last chopper. While bridge left undefended per Big Minh order (Stand down, drop your weapons, go home). Boots off on retreat to town.

My friend, whom I said Goodbye just the day before, mustered up all the flip flops he could find (as you walk down the main bridge, turn first left after the roundabout you’ll pass his house) for those barefooted soldiers-turned-veterans who walked on by. No one knows who took off uniforms and just let them drop in front of VAA (Vietnamese-American Association language school). But scattered herd followed suit. Rough road ahead. Re-education camps, ration, escape attempts and eventual deaths.

From 1965 to 1975, “boots” landed in Da Nang to boots littered the streets of Saigon, shoe-shine boys were hard at work, often invisibly under the coffee tables. Aviation glasses, zippo and Lucky Strike . Dog tags, handguns and bayonets. The things they carried. Easy to ID. Just in case. In most cases.

Always with fatigue rolled-up. Always scanning immediate surrounding (situation awareness). Be vigilant To survive. To go home in one piece. Shame or honor, to be sorted out. Per Robert Stone in Dog Soldiers 74 “ we didn’t know who we were until we got here. We thought we were something else”.

For now, it’s an order. The world was watching. From the White House (where Kissinger still in tux and tie – his night out to Kennedy Center like Bond in Casino Royale) to the whore house in Vietnam.

Everybody was watching. The Associate Press, the United Press International and the Agence France Presse. Even far-flung press and places like New Zealand (who had some skin in the game), the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Australia and of course, the American.

Everybody was watching, waiting. Especially Big Minh, eager to get back to his games of back-and-forth tennis. An All-white Elite, called to “serve” his country. A country in dire need of keys and gate keepers “I have been waiting for you since early this morning”.

My friend , with his brother to the side, was also watching through the steel gates. Here, it’s all we’ve got, flip flops for your feet. It would be a long winding road. He is my brother. He ain’t heavy.

The things they carried. Things they left behind: shattered dreams Of fighting for the right cause yet evidently landing on the wrong side of History.

Choppers, once a symbol of rescue of last resort, themselves, got pushed to the side to make rooms for yet another . “Premier Ky, may we have your John-Wayne gifted gun”. It’s a rule on war ships. No guns on board. God rest everyone’s soul on this Veteran Day of 11/11/22.

My heart goes out to my medic brother, my ex-Army Dad, my brother in law, cousins, and friends/neighbors. Never forget ăn Air Force neighbor who, to blend in, asked me for civilian clothes in chance encounter on board an USS war ship. If I ever had a chance now to offer him my closet full. Back then, as in my friend’s situation, we didn’t carry much fleeing in a hurry.

Those flip flops however say a lot about my friend and his brother. They weren’t mere watchers of unfolding history. They made someone else’s life a bit easier. We once thought we were something else. Then. Those abandoned boots littered the ground. In front of that English school: put on, take off; get on, get off. Start-finish. Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.