Thang Nguyen 555

August 2000

Little did I know, my first trip back to Vietnam was a journey in self-discovery.

It began with a phone call from one of my middle-school classmates. He urged me to look for Hieu, who used to sit next to me. a B/W photo of Hieu wearing a Kitchen God’s hat and sunglasses (we 8 graders were raising money for soldiers absent from home during Tet) brought back memories. him scratching Hippie caligrahy, having 2 eggs for breakfast and first to buy James Taylor vinyl new release.

While on the Hong-Kong bound United Flight, I laughed: perhaps even Hieu’s family couldn’t tell by looking at a 28 years old photo. But I had 3 other pieces of data: his father used to practice acupuncture, his family owned a ceramic factory and they planted plums in Bien Hoa. That’s where I got off a bus, with passengers wishing me luck. They all knew I was looking for a needle in a haystack.

Then my scout/scooter driver told me there were more than a dozen ceramic factories in town. He needs a point B to navigate the town, near Long Binh, where the US Army once staged its ammunition supplies.

So we agreed on a reasonable fee for one hour of canvassing. We figured to plant plums, the factory would have to be located outside of town. We could easily eliminate a few .

With cascading help from fellow “xe-om”, we got to a very remote Temple, then a monk showed us our point B (Hieu’s mom was a very devout Buddhist).

By the time we got to his house, by the river, he had been out surveying a piece of land, his latest purchase. His wife, whom I never met, showed some doubt i.e. friend from abroad, unannounced visit on a quest to re-locate a classmate after 28 years. Reluctantly, she led the way – zig zag through red dirt roads and potholes (no cell phones signals there back in the summer of 2000) deep into the interior of Song Be.

Later, she admitted her fear that we might have been imposters who would snatch her scooter around those deserted bends.

Hieu and I finally met, that was, after I took off my dust mask, sunglasses and cap. He, in turn, took off his glasses and recognized me after what felt like an eternity.

The shock of seeing someone you know after more than 28 years, unannounced, in the middle of nowhere (hard to get to even for locals) weighed heavily in the air,

We embraced, shook hands, and then, picked up from where we had left off. I found him with two kids and him, a bowling enthusiast. In fact, he commuted to Saigon every afternoon for the league.

After some catching up, I found out about another classmate, a wounded vet, who at the time, was living in O.C., CA.

I then called back State, to fill my original contact in on my find. Next day, 2 simultaneous re-unions took place across the Pacific Ocean: one in OC and another in Saigon – where I met another classmate, who had jumped out of an over-stuffed flight, an act that cost him more than 4 decades to get to San Diego.

On my way back via Kai Tac Airport, I exchanged some currency and couldn’t help wondering if my changed self also needs some conversion (so I could re-adapt and function in the US).

Re-discovering my communal self via re-uniting with friends was like stumbling upon your own lost treasures. Those treasures will never be depreciated, with no need for custom declaration. Only that they reside inside of me, as I interact with time.

I feel much richer and less like an orphan of war, with friends – lost then found against all odds.

They always beat me to it. The Stairmaster’s regular. One step at a time. Always covered in a thin film of sweat. Pay the price. No pain no gain.

Unlike those 76-year-old power-clingers who speak in cryptic… urging 36 year-olds to do their bidding, while, with fast-food and clubfoot. His niece said that for the first time, perhaps her uncle feels the walls are closing in. Certainly for his long-time senior advisor, whose 11th-hour plea deals got turned down. Thin film of cold sweat.

Won’t get fooled again. The Who? Who?

Meanwhile, one by one, the die-hard- more than 800 of them – have been on trial and/or sentenced. Some came from adjacent states, like Ohio, whose Congressman already secured a blanket pardon (if you re-elect me, ballots from jail – by absentee – then pardons to Patriots – per his daughter’s praise- but now-erased tweet).

Want to look great? Be there, and be wild. On the Stairmaster, not the steps of the Capitol. Own your work out, not someone else’s bidding. There might be fast food (with associated ketchup dripping), but not fast fitness.

Every morning when I get there, they beat me to it. Like an invalid, 38 years and counting, I couldn’t be the first to jump into the healing pool. Push me. Heal me. See me. Feel me. Touch me….The Who went on to their next song in the set: “Won’t get fooled again”.

There will never be a “next” time. House sold. Job lost. “certainly not for the better”.

I used to be this and that, until that day…when I heeded the call…”be there, girls gone wild”…Thin film of sweat. The dream of Utopia, of losing it to gain and keep it all (vessel of virgins).

Who wouldn’t want to show up for reward without risk, gain without pain. “I will be with you till the end time”. Believe me. It won’t be like what you thought…cryptically… Grow some spine, quickly, while I take a Fifth to use the facilities. Right back after commercials.

For those who travel the road, it’s called a mirage…water will be at the next mile marker. Then the next. Like a ban waiting for the depositors to get dementia or die before withdrawal. Meanwhile, keep sweating, steeling your spine and sending in donation (Jimmy Swaggart / Tammy Bakker recycled script)..it’s good for you (but I can’t tell you from experience, since I only run my mouth, and use the golf cart).

BTW, there isn’t a law like “Truth in Advertising” that is applied for political donations. So screwed!

Won’t get fooled again.

P,S. Facing Defamation, Sidney Powell Says ‘No Reasonable Person’ Thought Her Election Fraud Claims Were Fact

When a child, I came across this and did not get it

“one cannot bathe in the same river twice” .

To my ignorance, I dove into the waters, splashing with all the gusto of life. One cannon ball then another.

Later, when I came back to the same river. My city. Then I saw a different parade. Times had changed. No longer did I see my “Cinema Paradiso”.

Then it dawn on me: one can always go back to the same place, but not that same time. The fourth dimension cannot be re-captured or reproduced. The lenses of our mind eyes are wide-opened, but our body is wrapped in physical space, unable to move with time lapse.

Stranger and sojourner in my own town.

Simply because time has moved on.

“One cannot dip one’s toe into the same river twice”…It’s gone, that minute when I conceived this blog. And now, the revision.

Thoughts flown. Energy spent. The bills ticking. Come due at the end of the month. Reality.

The price paid for inaction, for being mis-informed (or dis-informed) or mis-fortuned.

To bear great responsibilities. To be authentic.

To be one’s real self. Not someone else’s life. Parent’s or sibling’s, teacher’s or preacher’s.

Yours. Best and unique gift to and from the world.

Wear your cap backward if you like (the Sun might be behind you).

Judge not.

Everyone is struggling to find him/herself. Research shows it’s those secondary connections who influence us more than the direct links (perhaps because we are prone to re-act, re-bel and re-direct from being told).

In the Orient one has no choice but to be part of a “tribe” or an extended families.

My brother often praised our cousins for having read a library full of French and English books (I must give it to them: inter-racial marriage, lecturer of Madison, WI’s high school, with specialty subject as English – albeit born a native Vietnamese).

Because of those seemingly casual remarks and unexpected hints, I ended up amassing foreign language myself, in my cousins’ footsteps. Meanwhile, my brother was inspired by another cousin who turned down a cabinet-level job offer, inter-racially married to a French woman, and gave half of his salary to poor students in Paris.

We don’t control all the levers. Individualism is a myth. It’s unseeming that those loosed connections somehow alter the course of our lives more than our direct links.

We find ourselves deeply entrenched (by rationalizing or succumbed to self-delusion) as creatures of habits (giving, for instance). Voila. In time, those not-too-free choices cemented themselves. Stuck. Railway route. Destiny unalterable.

Once, I didn’t quite get that quote.

I kept coming back to the same river, expect to find old times (A la reserche du temps perdu). Only to find something vaguely familiar. A sense of Deja vu. But that’s about it.

One can come back to the same place but never the same times. The past comes only in selective memory.

I squandered time to find it while the parade of change marches on, in different color and to a different tune. Same place, same town, different destiny.

No way to bathe in the same river twice. Now I get it.

It’s not a coincidence that inmates like Papillon were put in total isolation a punishment worse than death.

We’re social animals. Meta knows this. All socials, Truth Social included, know this. Keep pumping and putting unverified content out there. Even a small percentage of responses can cover platform payload. The extra? next round of rant and rave.

Ammos and guns are not cheap. War room at Willard isn’t either. Buying off politicians to sacrifice their cause and career isn’t either.

Then Karma shows itself, to those with or without pardons: an empty room, empty visitor’s chair and empty bed. By definition, Karma doesn’t grant pardon except to exact a return on investment, without fees.

I don’t wish swift and sudden death on any one. In fact, I wish similar end for myself as for others: that we live longest lives possible, to reach full maturity through learning about life as it unfolds. It will recycle its lesson plans to those who tend to forget the first time. It’s called History (which often repeats itself).

From Holmes to Maxwell, Bernie Madoff to Bernie Ebbers. And that’s just within my short lifespan.

I am at the gym every morning. Faces I see get younger by the day. Older folks died off, or trying to make those last trips on our lonely planet.

When you’re stuck in a cell, with no one to bounce it off (or to disagree and get mad at), it drives you absolutely crazy. A punishment worse than death.

AI is perfecting itself, reflecting back on what interest us, with mirroring content. Voila! The Yes screen. You might also like this and that. Buy this and that. Bang, we are like Papillon, get put in a cell called cell phone.

All day till death due us part. That narcissistic feedback loop “you’re the most beautiful of all”. From Trump to Jong Un, from their Sr’s to Jr’s of the same cut, same pathetic self-delusional bloodline that runs through it, with eventual outlet? Sewage on 5th avenue, where ” I can shoot someone and get away with it.”

What a lonely planet when folks are not properly toilet-trained. As grown-ups, they ‘ve got “issues”, then in old age, find themselves in a pre-paid hospice room, with a view yet empty visitor’s chair, waiting for the sure and surprised visit from Karma.

The next day, our planet is lonelier, with signs of vacancy (no ketchup stain). It’s one thing to be in isolation like Papillon. It’s another to reap your eventual ROI from self-absorption.

Deposit before withdraw.

Long ago, I was one of the cameramen atop a riser covering a national event. When the red light in my viewfinder was on, I knew I was live. Steady, steady, steady shot.

Recently, we read about the documentary footage handed over to the J6 Commission. In them, of course, the Proud Boys were just “standing by”.

Violence unleashed. Terror unrestrained. Let’s go for blood.

“Or you wouldn’t have a country”… First against the British, then against each other, then against Hitler, and while at it, the Commies, and everyone in between. A country at war, at times, against a common enemy, most times, against one another.

Unleash it. What’s underneath. We’re Patriots and Crusaders. At the bidding and command of a Higher Authority.

Of course with cutouts and deniability. “What do you want me to say on air? Proud Boys, stand down and stand by?”.

For almost 5 decades, SVN abandoned army were jailed, released and resettled around the world. The itch and inclination to settle the scores have been brewing. Then, on J6, some got a call to respond in kind (Patriotic duty not jury duty)

Go, get back what’s once legitimately yours.

Don’t worry (about pardons) since you wouldn’t have a justice system anyways.

So off they went. Marching to a different drumbeat (disinformation). “I can’t tell you…you would just have to see it for yourself….” “Cass, it will be wild”….

Let’s speak in codes. Get back our “turfs” and territories. Our territory. Release the bulls. Wave anything red.

Fighting like Hell i.e. tooth and nail, spears and poles. Medieval hand-to-hand. Guerrilla warfare. F**k “the Art of War” (battles not fought = battles won).

We are out for blood. Vikings and horns. Bare chested and animal skins. What civilisation and rule of law?

Multiple wives and multiple slates of electors.

Play to win. Ponzi all the way to Florida (where a majority of schemes and scams originated around Boca Raton: board on boat and their sure-thing derivatives).

Cigar-totting and plotting from 30,000 feet above.

Dumb and dumber stashed weapons in and around Northern VA hotel rooms below. The call that never came. Instead, “Go home now, you’re so beautiful” (Joe Cocker’s Woodstock track please).

So was the letter from the North Korea guy. “beautiful beautiful…” I almost wanted to kiss him myself (except he already picked OC Dennis Rodman).

While at it, please wipe your prints and toss all things sharp like spears and flag poles, bear spray and pepper spray. We’re a party of Law and Order. You don’t want “them” win at mid-terms, holding that against you, do you?

Theocracy from below. Then, the two-prong approach: with the Nation’s High Priests Court (the other shoe dropped on Roe).

As we watch the fireworks tonight, remember: each generation has to think for themselves, fight for themselves and protect their rights. Be not asleep at the wheels. Always raise both hands high above your head, esp when you’re a person of colour (or else, you might end up with 60 bullets).

It’s been peace through strength i.e. DOD and DOS, on the one hand and on the other hand. Like the two-horns, the two-prong approach, Bible in one hand, sword in the other to balance and hedge, to win at all costs (to the point of destroying itself to reign over the ash). Just like those sure-thing derivatives.

In the morning after Independence Day, a few will have died of careless fireworks. Because it’s pure physics – what comes up must come down. It’s called gravity. And it is non-negotiable.

Aren’t you glad it’s the Conductor in White Tux, instead of that “horns guy” who is at tonight’s Celebration. Got class anyone? Cigars si vous plait? Let’s plot again. Let’s twist again. Stand down and stand by you’ll.

Stand by Camera 1, Ready 1, Take 1. Love the sight, sound and smell of Freedom, often, taken for granted.

P.S. as of later today, instead of waiting for Superman, we’ve got shooter(s) from Copenhagen to Chicago. This makes us cringe and pause, while spreading our tarp to watch the fireworks. All the more reasons to call out that which is out of place or has no place in our system.

I moved my lawn chair this morning to face the rising sun: shy, sneaky and seen slowly through and over our neighbor’s tree.

Nevertheless, it’s my greatest sun (to copy the US Olympic goal keeper’s memoir: My greatest save).

Until tomorrow and the next day.

Every time, every morning, we’re graced with this consistency, the warmth and brightness of it.

Solar universe.

Master of it.

We’re mere recipients, ungrateful ones.

Taking the sun for granted (unlike Ishiguro’s Klara, an AI toy – our equivalent of iPhone 12, who appreciated it for energy and recharge).

Here comes the Sun…it’s alright.

All things must pass. But one thing for certain: it will come out tomorrow, faithfully.

(or we just orbit around it on the dime to see it again in 24 hours).

Thanks.

On behalf of all those who are appreciative or ungrateful – taking you for granted.

Rest of the world relies on you to dry their hair, their clothes and even their fish.

In the desert, your arrival in the morning signals another day of bone-dry heat.

It’s OK. Creatures of the desert – cactus- will adapt. Like me of the tropics, now adapt to the loud tune of mockingbirds.

It wouldn’t be long before you go on, while I fade away. I wish I was composed of sturdier materials. But as it has been and always be, we’re mortal. You are not.

Hence, you will be around. To warm and recharge the likes of Klara.

It will be wild, a world without end, of e-mobile and solar energy. Of wireless and aimlessness.

My descendants of a lost tribe – will join in to thrive, to greet you every morning, like I do. That’s the only thing I am sure of, even after I have been long gone.

Here comes the Sun….it’s alright.

I too was mesmerized. Those hours of J6 Day 6 flew by so fast.

I will spare you the details. Just what struck me. Here was an aid to Meadows whose Verizon phone had been confiscated. Thousands of texts and tweets (aside from burner phones).

Yet she could recount almost verbatim, a year and a half later. “As an American, I was outraged”…

Who wouldn’t? My niece texted me immediately that same afternoon to apologize.

Under Oath. Everything is taped, replayed and stored for the record (even Watergate classified 18 missing minutes of tape).

The brave one. A younger version of Princeton’s Jodi Foster…”Are you talking to me?”

She was the only one there, in front of the microphone and tons of lenses. The “Taxi Driver” must have talked to her and only her.

Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Hollywood stuff.

Once only a whisper behind Mark’s closed door, now shouted from the rooftop.

It’s as if she were filling in today’s missing “18 minutes”. Our John Dean. Honest and forthrightly (unlike Jenna Ellis who was standing behind Giuliani, purportedly from the Evangelical world).

I have not been following political news up close until two years ago. When it’s the women, Vietnamese women, all 50 of them, signed on to denounce DJT. What did “napalm girls” have to do with he once bragged on Access Hollywood ” I just grabbed the p****”…. You can do anything (Even war-room Steve Bannon thought “there went our Presidential Dream”). But then, there are always two sides to a drama: what was the South VN flag doing there on top of the Capitol dome? Unthinkable.

From the “war room” at Willard hotel back and forth i.e., just tell them it’s all checked out (legal precedents researched by Eastman in Chapman U library), he (POTUS inside the Beast) is going with them to “hang M.P.” who deserved it (lynching is back, this time on South Lawn, not Southern Mississippi), and of course, here is David Letterman’s top 10 ” We love you. But you have to go home now” i.e., check out of your Northern VA’s hotel room (of course, you did not bring/stash those weapons and keep your ‘Oath” to hurt me – I am not Reagan”. If anyone, just shoot Mark – modern-day Brady).

In the line of fire, even macho Clint Eastwood would have to refuse to run alongside the Beast. (He would have to call in sick – contracted covid) leaving Rene Russo to fend for herself: ” Sir, we’re going back. Sir, take your hand off me.”

Of course, he wouldn’t know who Cassidy was. She played an abused and dutiful “housewife” who helped wipe dripping ketchup off the dining room (BTW, I played that role a lot in my childhood, so I can empathize completely). That “fly on the wall” finally broke silence for history to judge and righting itself.

I too was mesmerized. And I stand corrected: I thought his bone spurs would prevent his walk to the Capitol to “fight like Hell”. unlike Congressman Lewis marching across the Selma bridge (Mr. Lewis too raised his right hand under Oath and kept his oath).

Go girl. Greta, 50 Vietnamese women against Trump, and now Ms. Hutchinson. All in my growing logbook of modern heroes.

Big rocks first.

weeds and sand will cram and creep in over time.

We are unable to face silence and serenity! or patience and perseverance. We have to exchange our inner for outer, what’s intrinsic and intangible for countable and measurable. Welcome to the age of monetizing and materializing everything: Costco carts or our garages, non-empty bookshelves and cupboards.

BTW, the iPhone is celebrating its 15th birthday. A lot of apps, one for each of our whim. No wonder time escapes us (onto the other side of Steve Job’s mirror). Even Steve Jobs himself once posed for a photo in a room scarcely furnished . He definitely brought us a gift out of those undistracted meditation (if not making a dent in the universe) e.g. calligraphy.

Of late, I don’t see a lot of “think different”. It seems as though we’re still in 1984, still with a need for a sledgehammer (Apple Olympic ad showed an Olympian woman running in slow motion, tore through the screen: Think Different).

Decades have gone by with “paradigm shift”, “out-of-the-box”, “next level” “radical” ” compassionate conservatism” “pushing the envelope” only to find: Donald Trump is still babbling (despite his unseen elongated nose), Amtrak still operates with “Hell-on-Earth” derailment and better-life seekers and kids still died of dehydration on a deserted San Antonio stretch if not in school nearby in Uvalde.

Where have all the brains gone? Big Rocks? Best and Brightest? Think tank did not go to war and back in flag-draped aluminum coffins (easier for cross-ocean transport). Big picture kind of folks, behind the partition glass, behind the cushion and bullet-proof “Beast”. Get the apps out there, have a door dash lady picks up a sandwich for another lady. Voila. Scale it up. Money in the bank.

Winners and losers in the digital age. iPhones and Instagram, Samsung and social media.

You’ve got it!

Next frontier? Rare earth in Kenya, chips manufacturing in Taiwan (very much like Roger Moore’s Gold, the movie – set in S Africa back in the 60’s).

Every age has its own Archilles’ heels and opportunity costs. Ours? face-to-face interaction and environmental degradation.

Every force brings about an opposite reaction.

Fill it up with sand, you’ve got no room for big rocks.

Fundamental habits. Best practices. Then again, the arc of Wall Street i.e. Other’s People Money, casts a long shadow on stretched risk-tolerance and spread-out porfolio.

Then Others’ People Time and Energy. Just disintermediate them by being paradoxically in the middle of electronic transactions. We will always have the credit card issuers, the Amazon contract drivers etc. besides the recommendation apps.

Scaling and surfing. Go with the flow and fluidity of money, technology and trend. Small is not beautiful. Whites are (as once shown in Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous).

If preferable, it’s “suburban women”.. all the way: to the suburbs in the South, the boondocks, the KKK. To protect and preserve.

Yesterday’s “box”. Yesterday’s power. And of course, yesterday’s coffer. Why do you think there have been war after war after war. All in the name of a higher abstract notion e.g. liberty and justice for few. Now, please raise your hand.

The very hand that counts pennies, small change and Peter pence. No big rocks. No gold bars and no chunk of change at Chase bank. No wonder our time, energy and money all spent, like sand, filled up then swept away at first storm. Poofs! Ghost work. Ghost compensation.

I am back to checking my iPhone now. The app symbol is “f” (after the weather). No matter how anti-social I have tried to be. What big rocks! Steve said to stay hungry and curious. Well,..Out of curiosity, let’s check back in when the iPhone turns 30.

Let me guess. Faster internet, lonelier planet.

From Kushner to Kamala, “Bake” to Bush, they all did: emphasizing the positives and erasing the negatives. Hire a ghost writer, parade the best edited bio in alphabetical display at a library near you. Voila, the 4 th L ( legacy).

Once I worked in the International Telecom field. Oh my! Customer data dump, on an Excel spreadsheet, showed long and winding last names: from Croatian to Pakistan, from Chinese to Vietnamese. Had it not been for Customer ID, we would have gotten all the LD phone charges mix up.

Yet these folks got along fine with their children’s education first themselves last.

My Mom and Dad did. For us, three children. Then grandchildren. Hardly can you find less than a Bachelor degree in our “funny” last names (even taking on Ecuadorian one for a change. Talking about self-reinvention).

America’s last names in Exhibit A at the 9/11 Memorial, in contrast to the Vietnam Wall rosters. That’s how fast-changing our demographics are. (Just look at world population numbers in hockey-stick graph).

Our neighbours and co-workers are called P.J. or J.B. Faster that way at the Starbucks line.

Or Lady Ruby, at J6 commission testimony. Go girl!

May your brand endure and your only daughter go on to bigger and better things.After all she survived threat and harassment thrown at her in Fulton County.

America always bought in one version of dream (mostly Ponzi if not cultic) or another to reinvent itself: J.P. Morgan and other “too big to fail” names.

Those small and beautiful folks who came (of course from somewhere else) later?

https://apnews.com/article/texas-san-antonio-0b5215a9500f65a6b7439d1474dbbf3a?user_email=130b4df878c33be353d264353b24cb0a4bf4678b659efcdfa1a86b98edbf84d3&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=June28_MorningWire&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers

“Too small to count!” (until it’s time for them to think “white” like Clarence Thomas and cohorts).

Bottom of the totem pole, opioid and vape addicts, with sign-up bonus for an “essential” worker shift while exempted “knowledge workers” clear out the last coffee cup, banter around the water cooler to be in office gossips (talk shop). It’s time to pour out and put back big rocks back in first.

That is, if the machine doesn’t take work away from both.

Bezos, Musk and Gates anticipated all that. What do you think? They don’t sit around vaping. Bezos bought the Post (stopped short of a name change to Bezos Graham), Musk wanted to tweet like Trump and Gates refused to pick up a lucky penny (I still do) time otherwise to read stacks of futuristic books (so as not to miss another “internet” next time around).

Divorce costs more when you are a Tech Titan. Be careful with self-reinvention and associated price-tag. You might get what you wished for.

Meanwhile, not only personal history but History itself got rewritten e.g. Roe put on a new robe last week. Poor young black LA women. Where are they gonna go? New Orleans back alleys?

History’s detour intertwined with our personal contour. All amounts to graveyards and grave markers, a lot more unknown than known.

Let’s make the best of our set of alterable and unalterable givens (I wished they had gene sequencing and editing to preempt biographical revisionism). Do no harm (or like Google’s Do No Evil). Earn that marker’s byline: “Here lays a good and grateful man.” (I once walked around a park, on a bench inscribed ” so and so, lover of Guinness).

My parents, my mom in particular, weren’t much into alcohol. Neither did they know much about self-rebranding (like DJT, an x-Democrat, now calling others RINOs to be hunted down – BTW, it’s a misspell) and narcissism. All they did was trying to survive hand-to-mouth in an upside-down world, itself in the process of re-drawing – reinventing its Colonial map.

R.I.P. dear Mom and Dad. Just wait. Don’t roll over just yet in your marked graves. Given my “unalterable” i.e. potential 90+ living, I do have some time learning from all those masters of self-reinvention at local library’s Biography aisle, from “Bake” to Bush, Kushner to Kamala.

No stranger to push back.

To divisiveness. First, it’s French Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam).

Then within Vietnam, North, Central and South (except for Cape St Jacques and Dalat for the Madames to escape scorching heat while hubbies slept with mistresses). Then 1954 partition of North and South at the 17th parallel (even today, North and South Korea are starring at each other through those “binos”).

All of that before my time. Then, the oligarchs and autocrats, bringing the whole entourage (all in white suits – as opposed to N Korea’s all-Mao look) including Madame Nhu (unelected, yet yielded a lot of power). Then the brothers- elder one who donned his Signor robe to reign in Central region while her husband, our RfK, was in charge of security.

What Buddhist? Suppress them.

“Can we just shoot ‘m?”. “Let’s take a walk across the street to St John” – for a photo op, to show some strength.

Don Jr was pale in comparison to Asian cronysm like Clarence Thomas vs Thurgood Marshall (per Maureen Dowd), zeroes vs heroes…

I am no stranger to clashes and conflicts: splintered extended families, parental overblown crisis (makes me a border-line schizoid), civil demonstrations that brought out women and children – even monks and nuns (who were supposed to denounce all things worldliness). I can still recall the smokes and smells of tear gas, in ample supplies to suppress marchers (for religious freedom). We used nylon bags and lemon wedges for countermeasures.

Please view my other blog on the burning monk.

For now, it’s hot again here in the middle of America (the red line, where to exercise woman’s rights, assumed for the past 5 decades, one has to travel at least 400 miles out of state). It was hot back in 1963 near my neighborhood. Then topped it all with flick of the zippo. No hair smell. Just the smell of burned monk robe and flesh.

My first eyewitness of conscientious objection (on the other side of the pond, a Quaker guy from PA with young daughter nearby also lit a match , a self immolated protest at the steps of the Pentagon against another member of his sect: Nixon/Mc Namara. (Nixon was orginally a Quaker).

Not all Republican believe in the same thing. Not all Evangelical follow the same path. But of late, they have been subverted and re-directed by the likes of Proud Boys and PAC’s. More than 50 years of brewing. Sore losers and liars.

Plotting and planning a return of the King, of Theocratic reign of a thousand years (pre-mil).

Everyone forgets Love. Everyone forgets that for a life to be happy, we need relationships, healthy and hopefully friction-free.

Yet we are called to be all-out, take no prisoners…text in coded warring words… “stacking” “lynching”, “hanging” (stop short of “crucifying”).

The “kill” mentality. Death, destruction and reigning over the ashes.

Rome. Constantinople and Christ (to counter Romanov and Russian Orthodox). Cold war and Hot war. Back to selling arms and using arms. Carrying and concealing.

All the ammo and ammunition that characterize our current climate.

Rewinding the clock. Undoing the 60’s. Law and order (except this time, the Law i.e. Judges, is on our side). In the heat of the night once again w/out Sidney Poitier.

I am just passing through. Waiting for my connection. Just like that burning monk. This world is not for me, for him, for you. I long for yesterday, with only half left in my body and memory (“I am half a man I used to be”).

Memory of a burning monk, of protest by women (in Ao Dai) and children in blue/white uniform. Like a song “can’t get it out of my head”…. Do I have to do everything myself now….

Where are the Gretas of this world? if any left for them after all these showdowns. Spent cases and casualties of war.

Now, that’s another reason for Roe. Why bother to bring the likes of me to this hot world and its wars which I-others- did not ask for, and have no say to begin with.

F**k the French and their post-Colonial face-saving. Their beige suits and left-behind half-breeds. Alain Delon and La Rousse waning influence in Indochine. Yet today you can still find some remnants that stoke in-fighting among fellow Vietnamese American on facebook about artists and our equivalents of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose generations started all this, only to see it flips right back in J.D. Vance, and Matt Gaetz. Hilly Billies pissing on Kent State graves.

In 83 we didn’t smell hair burning. Only had I jumped out into the middle of that fateful intersection and sat down next to the burning monk.

Forgive me. I was only 7 at the time, with burning eyes courtesy of Monsieur Nhu, who married then student he tutored, who was unelected yet yielded a lot of power (enough to call out our National Guards to suppress our J6 equivalent).

Push them back, push them back, way back…