Thang Nguyen 555

Summer 71 found me quarantined at home to nurse a broken arm. The injury happened right in my first month of practicing Hapkido. A lot of songs to pass the time. Summer breeze was hard to come about, in my small and S-shaped alley.

Summer 75? needless to say, I was going nowhere, except to the pristine beach and the mess hall of Wake Island. On the bus or on foot. But going nowhere.

Summer 76, I worked as a camp counselor in Mt Poconos.

A co-worker, teacher, from Philadelphia took me home on break. We watched the Bi-Centennial fireworks at the cradle of Democracy. Everyone seemed to be jubilant. The nation finally regained its footing, after Vietnam. Born on the Fourth nor not, we’re ready to kick the Vietnam syndrome.

A little bit of romance here, and there. But first, I must hit the book…from Speech class to TV production class, from PE to micro-economics…. just to check the list toward graduation.

Summer 79 was my graduation right after the Three-Misle-Island coverage. I struggled: to take the job or not take the job. Mom was waiting in D.C. without any children living with her. Jobs I could always find, but not another Mom.

Summer 80 in the backyard of a co-worker in Northern VA. The Children’s TV International crew outing. Guitar and singing in the outdoors.

Summer 81, I was setting up the sound system, test the mike in Hong Kong Jubilee camp, and while at it, might as well spark the set for the thousands of refugees there. My trapped audience, with no admission and no applause. Just curiosity and a break from their miserable quarantine.

Summer 82 graduation at Wheaton Graduate School. Feature writing with Glenn Arnold. Write, write and write. Make sure to close the loop with the same anecdote.

Summer 83, once again, in Hongkong scattered islands, with doors slammed behind after my UNHCR visits to the many camps. Thousands were in semi-permanent detention. I knew for a fact, many would make it once they were out into to the four winds. All those trapped talent and raw humanity. No summer breeze there in those make-shift centers where violence was the norm, a reenactment of the Vietnam War.

Summer 86 I traveled to West Africa. On a goodwill free book tour. Seeing my grad-school classmate again. In Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Liberia. People living their normal lives e.g. long outdoor religious gatherings (with the exception of Liberia upheavals).

Summer 88 I made a pact to myself to have the best summer of my single life: on a bike, Martha Vineyard, Vietnam Memorial with an overnight stay on Mrs. Lodge’s property, widow of Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. She used “divine” a lot.

Then many summers since, including back and forth to Vietnam. To rediscover what’s been missing the first time around. The same alley, same round-about. But I have changed from the inside.

I have acquired a wider context, met many different types of people, rode the corporate elevator. These internal eyes helped me see what’s been missing, what’s been shortchanged and what could have been: rule of law, scale and sophistication.

People live with blind fold and blind spot. Just like here in the US of late. Gun laws and abortion laws. Incidentally, Seals and Crofts had an album called “Unborn child”…., an anti-abortion theme. which made radio stations even the ones with payola puzzled.

Seals died last week. Leaving Crofts all alone. Both were born in Texas.

One would think the song evoke memories of the sea like in California and written by Californian.

“Saw the curtains hanging in the window… in the evening on a Friday night, … a light shinning through the window, lets me know everything is all right”.

Summer breeze makes me feel fine….

All those traveling was just to get it out of the system. The restlessness of a permanent nomad. In search of love and the truth. To come home and know the place for the first time.

Settling for nothing less than significance and eternality. Blood sweat and tears. No respite and no rest for the weary. Baptism by fire and water. Till ash return to ash. Because one cannot go home again. “My soul was anchored in the heavenlies…hence my heart grows restless”.

What’s left is just a fragment of those summer breeze, on the Island or on the beach. Often times, just to play out a wish on a whim.

Turns out it’s not the hardware of the soul that matters. Infact, it’s just the opposite: the software like summer breeze and sudden love, without numbers crunching or calculation. The later belongs in domain of data, of certainty and predictability. Math more than matters of the heart.

“Feel the arms that reach out to hold me”. Someday we’ll see face to face and it will be then time to “seal” that deal.

When Bonjour Tristesse came out, I was too young to grapple with its significance. But French youth, and by way of colonial extension, made its way to my upper classmen as well (Buon oi! ta xin chao mi).

A lot of suicide after the publication of the book, as I was told.

“My heart has no address…and letters I wrote, addressing to Tristesse – ” existential loneliness. What do you do when you already had everything, except your selective memory.

Can’t repeat last summer, that summer, sad summer.

Students enjoy a summer and a sabbath away from the school. It’s safer that way.

Until doors are re-enforced.

My kid and I talked about “living together and dying alone” (a 4th grader already contradicted me by saying ‘but sometimes people die at the same time’ – I then deflected by saying, it’s true, as in war – all the while, trying not to bring up Uvalde).

Sad summer days, high temperatures low morale.

If I had to keep one summer, it would be summer of 75 in Wake Island/Indiantown Gap, PA.

Half-and-half. Middle of nowhere and can’t wait to get somewhere.

Island and mainland.

Isolated and insulated but always inside an Army barracks.

All the way from “bombing halt” to 444 days of hostages, to holding out on Ukraine defense aid package. Somehow, America and its elections affected multiple countries throughout its short existence. I am thankful we’ve got a “Ford” and not a “Lincoln” during our “caravan” exodus.

Stagnation was rampant. Very much like this summer’s inflation.

Color kids went to Nam and came home in flag-draped caskets. White ivy-league students also died on campus and elsewhere (as human chain to stop the National Guard on May Day 71 “If the government doesn’t stop the war, we stop the government”, in banners and on buttons).

Summertime was supposed to be breezy with Seals and Crofts, not Bonjour Tristesse.

After many years of being apart, I now realize that summer was a blessing in disguise. When our families were together. Just sun, sand and some sadness. But together.

The only summer I can recall. First summer without my Dad (prelude again to next week’s Father’s Day).

We cherished what was lost, was behind and would never be put back: a sense of belonging to our origin, the contour of a city whose name got changed and the nuances of a culture of misery and mischievousness.

So mythical that years after the US came home, broken and defeated, it still studied and suffered “Vietnam syndrome” as President Bush put it.

We’re lucky to have our lives intersected with President Ford’s. Albeit clumsy, he was what we all needed during post-Watergate, post-Vietnam: good in character. Same way we love Chevy Chase who portrayed him. He controversially pardoned Nixon, then the hundred thousand defectors and draft dodgers (to Canada)

Today, if we were to do it again, we wouldn’t go beyond Subic Bay in the Philippines. Heck, the supply chain problems of world migration.

Every administration has to deal with its own legacy and leaves behind its unfinished agenda.

Our lives are intertwined, from the French re-colonization of Indochina (Chennault Affair) to the MIA and Agent Orange lingering issues.

Although there no longer is a sense of urgency with the Vietnam Memorial casts a long shadow on the Mall (where people are marching today en masse for our lives), we still feel that unspoken sadness of summer 75, for us on Wake Island and part of it, in Indiantown Gap, PA where those “deer hunters” of old Pittsburg, PA. were later portrayed (ducking past his welcome home party).

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

No, I don’t like it. Not one bit, when people are cruel and unkind. When kids have to take longer summers not because of the academic calendar, but because school is closed with “crime scene” tapes.

Long ago, we put the yellow ribbon on the oak tree (if you still want me to come home). Now it’s yellow cordoned tape so Federal Law Enforcement can examine to the teeth how damn door was locked and where the janitor was nowhere to be found.

Summer on Cote d’Azur, summer on the run, summer on lockdown. We’re always on the quest to be outside of the box, yet often times found ourselves in the box of our own making….”prisoners of our own devices”, like a line in Hotel California. No wonder, even at a young age, I was struck by the title of Francois Sagan’s book.

Just by touching deep on that subject, was enough to drag down a bunch of youth. Suicide. Die alone. Just don’t take people with you. Especially the younger ones, who like me at an impressionable age, were looking up and out onto the world, trying to figure out the shape of reality and whether people in general, were good or evil, kind or cruel, magnanimous or Monterious.

Glad we found in Ford, a president, a steady Ford, with character and forthrightness. Those qualities have been of late in short supply.

That summer, we had no address. Our hearts also had no address. Only letters written, addressing to sadness. And every morning, I now remember saying “Bonjour Tristesse” although not in French, but something very similar to it. Almost “buon oi, ta xin chao mi”.

Bid time return. Somewhere in time.

Wish we could. More so with our Superman (to avert that fateful horse-riding accident).

To make that left at the fork instead of a right. To come in full circle to live once again in centuries/decades past.

The older I get, the more I understand my Dad’s unspoken struggles. More than 4 decades apart, we’re not pals.

Just a father-son relationship, unlike many of my friends, who have dads to hang out and share activities with.

If I could go back in time. To 36 pho Back Kinh, Hai Duong. To the turn of 19th century. To live in a then-2-stories mansion, with two dozen people sharing lunch (as I was told). To experience aristocracy (small “a”). Just an extended family sharing blood line.

In Somewhere in Time, we’ve got Christopher Reeve and Christopher Plummer.

The multiple lives we could have again, only if.

More than often, we’ve been short-changed, partly due to self-sabotage.

In that movie, it’s the agent who intervened “for the good of the actress”.

In life, it’s always one actor or an incident that disrupts or deflects our trajectory (for a romance or a career).

Then by looking in the rear-view mirror, we wonder what became of some people we once endeared.

I wish them well.

People in and out of our lives. Some left great marks. Others, big holes.

We cherish those folks. Wish we could turn back the clock, to do it differently with different outcomes.

Somewhere in time. I wouldn’t want to come out of the womb.

I once peaked in my family album.

To the left, my Dad and brother. To the right, my Mom and sister.

No room for me, unless peeking out from the spine of the album.

Of course, I hadn’t been around then.

War, displacement and incongruence within and out. Why would they want me to join them. A desperate need for a sidekick? Like Joe Pesci in the back seat in Lethal Weapons?

To put me through torture and bombardment? Where the hell is Gulf of Tonkin, Laos, Guam/Wake/Bataan/and a bunch of SEA islands that were not in our Vietnamese lexicon (yet ended up housing us by the thousands).

Who would want to grow up in Uvlade just to be mowed down, unrecognisable.

I just want to rewind time in one swipe, back the other way, to land aboard the Ark, to hang out with my species-counterpart.

Let it flow (the flood). Thou shall not kill.

Shall not covet your neighbour’s Corvette.

Or the lawn that always looks greener on the other side.

Somewhere in time, how about just 50 years, so we would listen to Senator Sam Ervin at the Watergate hearing and not tonight, at the Jan 6 committee prime time Episode 1. What a carnage in our present time.

Let’s self-hypnotize. Go back in time. to cruise up and down Main Street.

No screens (except for outdoor movies). No twitter. Just chill. With Fonzie or Xanadu’s Magic.

The age of innocence. Before all the hate and vitriol out in the open, shamelessly.

Always in the name of a more noble cause and higher authority.

Give me the Black-and-White movies, the music of the time, and the spirits of the time.

People who touch the brim of their hats to greet neighbors. People who wear suits and shoes (not sweats after the lockdown).

When life is a box of chocolates.

They may walk the dog or they may not. But a smile is certain. And the sky, always blue, despite V8 engines (not too many choices, besides model T’s in Black).

My Dad used to comb his hair using “brilliantine”, put on his shoes that I had shined the night before. After putting on his belt he hit the noon sun for a route of collection and customer success. Paying his due. To bear any burden.

Somewhere in time. I might find myself smiling at those rejection, the toughness of a sales career and the demand at home. I might lash out when things did not come my way. Or I might not, with hindsight and vantage point of 2022 and 2021 the year of Mass Shooting and Mass Insurrection.

My Dad and I live in different times yet shared the same struggle and stimuli. Of lacking adequate resources for compound families’ demand.

I’ll take Watergate Summer any day over what I will be watching tonight. What a sad affair and commentary of our times. Legislature stops dead, while the will of the people and parents in Uvalde ignored. ????

If I could go back in time, I would destroy the artifacts that allow me to return to the present (that pocket watch and those antique clothes, in Reeve’s case).

Even if living back in time, with trade offs like giving up on longevity, a modern luxury afforded by science and vaccination.

It’s the ethos and ethics that I long for…Yesterday….for Today, those qualities come in short supply, as if the concept of “half-life” in science is also applied to social sciences i.e. people are less and less decent and kind as the years go by.

In short, the evolution to reclaim the better angel of our nature somehow regresses as time progresses.

Christopher Reeve and Christopher Plummer both are no longer with us. Somewhere in time, I can hear them lament about our current state of affairs. Still waiting for Superman, who as of now, is still lounging somewhere at the Grand Hotel.

I often wonder how publishers manage those tedious spell checking and painstaking editing tasks before automation. To know who were involved in the process of birthing, you just need to flip to the Acknowledgement page.

At times, it’s in the beginning pages. Other times, near the end.

What if our lives were books? How long would our Acknowledgement section be? Where do we put it?

My father was tall and handsome by his countrymen standard. Son of a regional Senator (so privy that his oldest brother got into opium, while his younger brother, died a martyr – he was into anti-colonial Revolution after studying in France), he however just drifted as an outside sales after a stint in the Army. Post-army life found him lashed out when frustration boiled up. His hybrid nature of a warrior-poet – physical strength and emotional vulnerability – never measured up to our grandfather and his cousins’ standard. (plus “torn between two lovers” did not help).

Through him, I heard about Maugham, pre-war moonlight serenade and “Golden Music” (including some French).

That is my first person to be acknowledged.

Watching him ready for work, or taking siestas, and interacting with war-time larger society gave me a sense of proper conduct.

Always courteous, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and be strong if need be (neighborhood thieves and bullies all stayed away after a few shots).

My Mom, on the other hand, was quiet, graceful and “endured all things” (including sharing my Dad with another woman, who courted him while my Mom was seeking a teaching job in Hanoi, away from home).

Long time passing. Before my time.

But I want to acknowledge their guidance and guardrails. My well being depended on the sweats of their eyebrows. How they wiped the slate clean after domestic perfect storm.

Both taught me to put others first. Polite and kind. Considerate and compassionate.

And how could I not mention my two siblings, two decades my senior. They showed me what hustle was all about: college, P/T jobs, career, family and raising kids.

It’s hard enough to survive during the Great Starvation (45) then the Partition/migration (54), then evacuation (75) and of late, as widow and widower. Must be superman and woman for them to hit the ground running (despite stagflation and resignation of Nixon and Ford’s lost election 76).

So I acknowledge their direct and indirect contribution.

Even the ones who were cruel to me e.g. accusing me of stealing her bible or trying to steal my girl i.e. inadvertently turning me into a pimp; for through these worse-nature of our angels, I am reminded of life’s mixed blessings. And that not everyone loves you as your Mom would (ask George Floyd).

I also acknowledge neighborhood food vendors, who day in and day out, showed up with a smile on their faces (despite a war that was raging on).

From co-workers at Child Welfare in Indiantown Gap, to the Sycamore Community at Penn State, from my janitorial first job to the ABC news photographer internship.

I remember the school of journalism. How young and eager faces picked a tough field as their major in college. Must be because “All the President’s Men”….All seek after “the best obtainable version of the truth” as Carl Bernstein put it.

I thank Doug Mc Bee who showed me how to cold call (selling the whole PBX and voicemail system). Brian Fisher at MCI who saw my leadership potential. I could have joined the Episcopal Priest in Orange County to service our fellow countrymen. But then, I know deep down, I could not be confined into just a sub-group, living out my parochial life: back and forth in same ethnic cluster on short leash (and collar).

I thank those who showed me an alternative way of living, like that blind man in my Survival in the Wilderness class. Heck, he was not afraid of the dark ( even took part in going solo, fasting and meditation on top of then snowy White Mountain of NH). He was living in it his whole life. Or my Ghanaian classmate Joe who took me home to show me around. “Just call everyone ‘Chief’”.

I acknowledge the contribution women before and after ERA e.g. shared a bike ride, in restless summer. or brief romance which often ended up in disaster. Or short-lived matrimonies (it’s funny, that after we matriculated in school, we sought out its continuance in matrimony, another form of short-term matriculation).

The tie that binds. Unspoken agreement, through thick and thin; that we stay on and fight for our survival and happiness. My Dad doesn’t seem to understand compromises, not as much as my Mom, who was the one with stronger maternal instincts. Both lived on until their early 90’s, on separate nursing home arrangement.

And last of all, I acknowledge the loyalty of friendship. People who I can just say “hey, I am broke” ( often having lived out that streak of creative destruction on trips overseas, first as a volunteer, then an expat- as if, when summer comes around, the road is calling; stimulus – response ; repeat the pattern of that fateful and restless summer 75 on the run).

Good friends are hard to come about. We live many lives and carry many burdens. The journey is long, and often times, we barely scrape life’s surface. I if not for those good company would never have experienced fulfillment. They know me, and I them.

Despite decades apart, still we fit like a glove. Hard to see ahead and around the bend. But they are there. Always rooting for me, and I them. They know I was into the spectacular not mundane. Go for broke. In short, I am my own problem. And I myself am the solution. Good friends stay to the side, give you the space to be and grow to become your best self in your timetable.

This acknowledgment is for non-judgmental friends over the years who understood that one size doesn’t fit all. For them, I am forever grateful. One time, we’re just playing over and over Steely Dan’s “Do it again” on an Akai tape recorder to pass the time.

Hope to do it again one day soon. I acknowledge those whom I shared the road and to those who paved the road.

This acknowledgement is to be placed where it’s hard to miss even when the book has yet been finished. It’s my life. It’s also yours. From cradle to the grave, sandwiches and coffee in between. Those kind “might I refill your cup?” from the Corner Room of Penn State.

My book would not pretend to tell the whole truth (I am taking the fifth). But I promise the “best obtainable version of the truth” about my life as it unfolds.

Life as book. Evolved. Edited. Page per page, day after day, ever continuous.

At least for now the Acknowledgement section is out of the way.

We’ll have to take a commercial break.

Be right back after this. Please don’t “Skip Ads”.

Your choice. Make it early.

Beyond the binary options, we still have Missing In Action, a designation by the War Department (DoD now) when soldiers, dead or alive, were unaccounted for.

Last week, my cousin was laid to rest. Her husband, a Ranger Major, had been a MIA for 47 years. My cousin was accounted for i.e. I can someday day make a pilgrim to South VN to pay my respects. Her husband? A big question mark.

In What Remains, the author lists stats and data to show there has been no closures for the thousands from both sides of the conflict (Vietnam or American War, depends).

Last week, in Uvalde, TX ; parents were to give their DNA’s for a match with their missing children’s (by the time the shooter was done with them, they were unrecognizable….even with School Photos on records).

What remains.

Then and now.

Buried or burned.

We’re worth more than what’s left of us. Not just in the memory of our loved ones.

All children are worth fighting for. From Gerber icon on up. Then they reach 18, or become an adult, we separate the wheat from the chaff: you, Syrian refugee, over there, you, productive Jews, over here…you, Corinthian College enrollees over here (…debt forgiveness) you white supremacist “not guilty” plead…etc.

The binary forced choice.

I once visited a town near the Cambodia border. Mass execution took place there by the Khmer Rouge. Out in the open-air museum one finds Empty eye sockets. Cheek bones protruded and of course, unidentifiable.

What remains.

The saddest thing was people stoically waiting for their turn, as if the longer in line, the longer they got to live. Then decades later, we, visitors, rinse and repeat: lining up for our turn to look at both theirs and our future fate.

What morbid existence! What else to say! (the Khemer I knew in Bataan phase II back in 83 were quite kind and soft-mannered, always with the sarong and bow).

Back to our options: buried or burned, missing or memorialized, DNA match or un-match.

We’re to make Heaven or Hell out of our short stint, all is up to us.

Be happy. Don’t forget to breathe. Don’t be like those who are peddling their snake oil in the aftermath of Uvalde (sideshow): free flashlights, easy guns or photoshops (vs what AR-15s can do by the time they are finished with your child).

What a tragedy we make of our lives. From Alamos on down to Antonio. From South St Philadelphia to South Vietnam. Beautiful country….GOOOOOOOOOOD Morning Vietnam. ” what a wonderful world…..oh yes….what a wonderful world”….

Please put on Armstrong’s cut on, to once again appreciate the lush-green beauty, all grew back after all the bombs (from all the wars put together) to “defoliate” and deprive the enemies of their sanctuary…. the secret bombing of Cambodia, the killing field of Cambodia, and everything in between (like MIA’s).

What they call Hell I call Home (Rambo). Still MIA and Maya Lin’s Vietnam Wall list is still growing. She herself has moved on: from the V-memorial to the museum of Chinese American history.

Meanwhile the unaccounted-for tilts heavily on just one side McNamara’s ledger. No closures. No burial nor burned. The weight of war.

47 years since the beginning of the Fall of South Vietnam, since at least 155,000 rushed out on a 168 km to the seas from high ground. Herded, frustrated, trampled and shot upon, by friendly or unfriendly fires. well-meaning or not.

Major Hy of the fine Rangers was well-meaning. Last sighted standing tall in his Jeep, to get a commander’s view of the situation. Never been heard since. Not a trace. No remains. Rumors have it that he was shot, left to dead along the way during the ensuing chaos.

Central VN evacuees (60,000 never made it) then poured into and through then-Saigon, whose residents themselves (like our family) acted as new blood stream on steroid – which flowed out to the South China Sea, to be enfolded in our unending refugee’s drama.

Present continuous.

No one should wish that on even his/her own worst enemy.

Least was my cousin D, wife of aforementioned Major.

Up until last weekend, she was sill living in hope: that one day they would be re-united. If not in life, then in death. Death came. The major did not.

On my niece’s home now lay two photos, one presumed dead father, and the other, a freshly framed photo of my 88-year-old cousin D.

No closure, no happy ending to “un film de Coppola”, a line in Vietnam, the song.

I was so young when they met and married, had a bunch of fine children, living out a soldier’s wage life, but always with an army-issued Jeep parked out front, his final ride down from Pleiku.

Today, his wife is joining him. Joint lives, yet buried alone. From funeral Service to final resting place. I imagine her saying: “Do I have to do everything” i.e. find out he was really missing or dead.

I once attended a funeral therein Bien Hoa, an hour and a half drive from city centre. I remember the early service (5:30 AM), the oppressive heat and humidity which rises by the hour, the distracting sight and haunting sound of an all-white burial. Draining all the tears and taxing on all those present.

Today, I got a quick facetime to digitally show up . Cousin D, when a young, semi-orphan twin girl, used to hang out with my Dad, her uncle. (My Dad an army vet was flanked by two deceased brothers). In their outing often concluded with last stop at the street game of chance (tai xiu). One night they were left with just enough for two meatless noodle bowls.

Via cousin’s recount, I get to know my father from another angle.

They, My DNAs, and my memory now buried deep six. I hope she is now folded into the loving arms of the Father (her branch of the family all went Catholics).

To run into my father once again. To re-unite with her Ranger MIA husband. To join her twin sister . To be with our larger clan. A clan who was splintered, separated and scattered since the partition of Vietnam.

I remember seeing postcards or photos from the North. With censored caption: So and so just had a baby. A new bride joining us. The post card that had never arrived for my cousin was: “Honey, I am home”.

Nixon managed to have some prisoners’ exchange, the sticky point of the Paris Accord (hence, we’ve got McCain back). I hope my cousin gets a free reunion, without further delay. He is presume- dead. She on the other hand closed out her 47-year long agony, not a minute longer.

What else there is to talk about. War and peace, both at the same time?

Win or lose – irrelevant for the dead.

She is finally laid to rest. This morning. Memorial Day as it happens. Flag half-staff for major’s wife? Perhaps not. How about for him? Who dares to declare the missing dead! On what documentation and whose authority? Hence, in limbo (among 1600 US service men, and 300,000 Vietnamese per 2019 Wagner’s What Remains).

This time and in this case, only a dead widow can unravel the mystery for herself.

The tragedy of a lingering post-war story, the end of that convoy of tears, 47 years on with long tail and still free flow of tears, fresh ones, from many eyes mine included. Well-meaning or not. From Nixon on down (perhaps 99-year-old Kissinger is next up) to Thieu, who had something to do with that convoy. Who will wipe away the tears!

Certainly a convoy could be as long as the road it travels on. And that road is still traveled today by many, minus one: my cousin D whom I love very much.

It was around 1963, since I still remember discussing Kennedy’s assassination with Pierre, my Elementary schoolmate. The alley we moved (up) to saw less flooding and afforded me some playmates, many of whom half-breed (French, not yet American until later years).

I could tag around with an Indian kid (Ali) three doors opposite or play ping-pong with an older Pharmacy student – youngest of his family, hence understood what it’s like to be out of steps like me, also the youngest ( with decades apart from my siblings).

Instant big-brother across the generational gap.

Everyone knew us as a Northern family, bounced around since the partition of Vietnam, until we re-settled, where we could afford (and being closer to our once-ultra rich second grandma; at least, that emotional geography made us feel rooted, now we were only a stone throw from them).

Lover’s quarrels, bully fights, and every imaginable past-times games we could invent: flying self-made kites, talking on telephone made of empty milk cans, and of course, DIY lanterns during the Autumn Festival for Children.

While the war raged on, we kids played on.

It did not occur to me until that next year, when one of our single male neighbors was carried out on a stretcher, that people could just die alone, by suicide, or stroke, not surrounded by loved ones in old age (my grandma) or in war (next door ranger neighbor). Dead-end alley residents were brought together every once in a while, in our shared grief.

For a dozen years living there, I learned one thing: it’s hard to see around the bend. Take your time, slow down. I learned that summer 71 when nursing a broken arm (every kid in my section advanced to Black or Brown belts).

With that setback, I settled for re-learning the guitar. Safer and more fun.

The British Invasion was featured on every issue of Hit Parade, from Love Song to Love is Blue, from The House of Rising Sun, to California Dreaming. Wow! All the leaves are brown? my alley, only cement and rainy season. You’re lucky water did not pour into you living room.

As soon as I opened my eyes after a few rock numbers, kids my age were already suited up in Air Forces and Paratroopers uniforms. 1973-75 the Vietnamization of the Vietnam War. “We want a ride”. Shamelessly.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Death by the seas, in the jungle (when trying to escape re-education camps) and in one occasion (my older blog) a John Doe, homeless Vietnamese in Tustin, California, killed by a random crash onto a Donut shop where he was recharging his phone.

Who do we want to call on our last phone call? the governor for clemency?

Old lovers as Gatsby would? Or your closest sibling, in my case, decades and miles apart.

I still am on the search for that pharmacist neighbor, my ping-pong playmate. He had empathy. He acted on it. He saw death visiting our alley, saw my reaction (baffled and bewildered) e,g, our next-door neighbor came home in a flag-draped casket. They say you often circle back, to where you begin. Perhaps to lay down for a minute.

Life is fleeting. In Uvalde or in the alley.

We need time out for having fun and for human touch. Those values stood the test of time. I started out writing about a death by suicide in the alley. Then I recalled human kindness across the way.

I’d rather spend time, playing ping-pong, volleying it until I drop (while the ball suspends in mid-air), memorializing the intersect of eternity and gravity. Death ends.

Around the bend, it’s hard to see. Yet in my end, my beginning. Some people are glad to have lived at all. Others settled for the 7 notes. I am the one with luck and have lived beyond that dead-end alley still with some lasting memories.

Last week, under doc’s order, I stayed put at home. Self-treatment from a severe case of poison ivy infection.

I watched La Piscine, True Confessions and The Great Gatsby: Alain Delon, Robert DeNiro/Duvall, and Robert Redford. All the leading men.

Handsome and iconic men.

Must be a case of desperate self-projection, since I could hardly bear looking at myself (after a night of toss and turn, itching and scratching).

I imagined myself being loved by Cher (as in Mask) or courted by William Hurt (as in Children of a lesser god).

In short, I turn obstacle into an opportunity for empathy training.

BTW, of late, there have been 100 million folks leaving their homes to seek refuge and safety elsewhere, while 30,000 Ukrainians are returning each day to their wrecked villages after three months away.

Poison ivy perhaps is the least of their concerns.

Baking soda baths, oatmeal baths. Cortisone to Claritin.

Self-treating and sensitive skin. How about a hardened heart? How can one self-treat a heart of winter?.

Out of the three flicks, only True Confessions offered us a realistic ending: a burial plot reserved for its parish priest, albeit disgraced and recycled through the system. Justice and mercy. Meanwhile, Alain Delon got away with his crime of passion (or humiliation), while our war hero, the Great Gatsby, shot and sank to the bottom of the pool (by God, they broke his glasses – at all those parties- and didn’t even send flowers to his funeral).

Life. In all of its ugliness.

Poison Ivy for birds, not human.

Yet it’s human who both blesses and curses his fellow men. Putin survived an assassination attempt. Biden promises off-the-cuff to defend Taiwan and its semi-conductor fabs.

And on and on. Today’s politics grieves me beyond what I currently suffer; it makes my skin crawl. “Poison” Biden said, and now I understood what he meant by calling Theory of Replacement by that.

Summer is arriving. And let me leave you with Gatsby’s last line: ” summer is almost over, makes you feel like grabbing it and pulling it back”. I don’t know about yours but my summer at the beach or by the pool will be fabulous, with baby-lotion and cortisone, sun-tan and sunscreen lotion, just in case.

Once burned twice shy. Just ask residents and shoppers of Buffalo’s Tops’ market. (or as of this edit, another 19 school children did not even live to grab hold of this summer).

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Or how your face looks. For this week, I continue to self-project, dreamily onto the silver screen, I step into their roles, live their lives, often times, loneliness while battling their own potion of love (#9), tormented by their own poison and terminated by their own pistol.

Those many faces I mentioned? They are for keeps.

“Life is cheap over there” said someone who were involved in My-Lai massacre, whose anniversary has just come up.

The only person who got a sentence, ended up serving it out of his house. Quite a bargain. Innocent until proven guilty.

All the young lives, and all the counsels (the Best and the Brightest), forever scarred.

We keep ending a broadcast interview on a high note (so as “the word from our sponsors” : soup, soap and cereal – don’t get mixed up with what preceded commercials. )

Or McDonald ads, right after a segment on Ukraine during the Russia invasion.

One man has eaten Big Mac for 50 years straight. That would be 1972 when he first had his first Mc Bite.

A lifetime of burger-eating. A lifetime of watching the news, of spending on groceries and books.

How could life be cheap, here or anywhere?

Kill those “gooks”, “Chinks”

Swamp-ified and dehumanized.

The Chinese Exclusion Act. Bring your strong back, not your spouse.

Build the tracks.

New York City subway. A push, a shot and a massacre.

Life is cheap here too.

One shove down the tracks – steel tracks – still vibrating and handed down since Yellow Peril days – to die by the oncoming train. Black hair, gone and forgotten (face unseen).

When you see someone’s face, look them in the eyes, one can’t do no other but acknowledge that they are fellow sojourners – and appreciate the handywork of God, not to play God.

We’re all survivors, of a confluence of factors.

From a fast-approaching helicopter rotter blade (like me) or hiding inside a Tops’ freezer (as in the case of a young Buffalo cashier).

Still it is a great country. Dreams are made. Fortunes survive.

And despite many bad apples, NYC is still The Big one.

If I can only keep one American character (in a forced choice), I would take, not Mc(Apple)Pie, but that of the uncanny ability to self-re-invent.

Salad bowl or melting pot, that American character of renewing and reinventing stays on.

Anniversary of this, a remembrance of that.

Our routines and rituals define us.

We might have burned many bridges, left behind many bodies…but not that capacity to re-set.

Self-love and pragmatic re-alignment.

Detroit, then overseas and back (Samsung chip factory).

Keep throwing stuff to see what sticks.

In Pennsylvania, in a primary, a hooded shirt and short-cargo pants got nominated.

No sweat. We can handle the truth.

Speak forcefully, forthrightly. Life is short, but not cheap.

Over there, or over here.

Since we re-invent often, to live means to live many lives in one sitting, a buffet of choices for self-development and self-advancement.

Perhaps you might serve others, or you serve God. You’ve got to serve somebody (Dylan). you may call yourself Bobby or call yourself Saul. But in the end, it’s Paul.

St Paul. Master of self-rebranding. Til we have and see faces. The many life times, at times superstitious , other time divine. Out of the Black hole, comes a species, defiant or undefeated.

For some people, their deaths help us live on. My Lai’s, Kent State’s or Kiev’s.

All you have to do is water the plants. Fertilizers, flowers then fading out.

Life is short. But not cheap.

Pollutants kill.

Pandemics kill.

But curtailing Climate Change can save some (not to mention Billions of dollars in GDP).

Curtailing dis and mis-information on vaccines could have averted many deaths (out of the 1 million we have seen so far).

Allow and afford people a back-yard, a hat and a shade as in a Coppola-set to meet their natural-cause death.

Not too much to ask. Human rights? Or Elephant rights (The Bronx zoo).

Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya with food price rising, and causally, death-toll rising.

Preventable deaths of hunger as well, you hear, Putin!

And last but not least, at least 10 preventable Supermarket deaths in Buffalo, NY.

Had young folks gotten the right and not wrong message. Long ago, in Hoosiers, Gene Hackham faked himself into being expelled to give his alcoholic Assistant Coach, Dennis Hopper, a chance at regaining his dignity (and to play his father-role as well).

How about we time-out. Expel the “supremacist” so the “replacement” has their turn at the wheel. It must be tiring and hot inside those “hoods”. Of course, I am referring to the KKK’s, the South and subsequent humid heat.

Oppressive. Misled and uncalled for. Try the Trilogy by Greg Iles to see how frozen in time some regions of the US are still.

Swamp and bubbles, conspiracy and confederacy.

Politicians and priests, farmers and folks. I have always wondered about the ATF (Tobacco and Firearms, or Opioids and AR-15s).

Good people, ill-led. (Without vison, people perish).

Preventable prison-terms and pre-mature deaths.

So much life ahead. To grow, to learn, to give and to serve. Marketers call this customer-life-time values.

Even old folks can serve as advisors and mentors.

To dispense wisdom not folly. To be “replaced” but in the grander scheme, they’re a part of the universe succession plan (David Gergen’s latest book).

To hand the baton, to see this country, the US of A evolves into USA 2.0

We have a tendency to make mountains out of mole hills.

To self-sabotage. But the flip side of the coin, is that there is also greatness, inherent and hidden. A gem awaits to be on display.

Heck, when the streets of San Francisco were not even paved with gold at all, folks were still willing to go West, to dig and to build. The gold is inside, not out.

Perhaps there resides some likeness of the Divine in each of us after all.

“Why are you persecuting me?”. Feel me, see me. Same aggressor then turned poet “Love endures all things”. When I was a kid, I walked and talked like one. Now that the I -the US – am/is older, kinder and gentler, let’s hope we live up to our calling and commitment. No more pre-mature and preventable deaths, for a start. Doable, quite!