Thang Nguyen 555

In late Fall 1975, the Sycamore house-church, a composite of highly unlikely people got together to share meals, thoughts and good works. Special guest in attendance: me. They chipped in, some donated winter clothes, others a rim of song sheets (Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” …) or a book (Markings). After that potluck dinner, at the home of then leader, Professor Rusty Roy of Material Research Lab at Penn State, we sat around in circle to “share”. The book was Small is Beautiful. And it’s about ecology and economy, consumption and costs. By the time it’s my turn, after professor Gerhard’s turn, I asked for the guitar.

I chipped in (never skip a turn or a beat) by singing. It was a Carpenters’ number: “Sing”….and you should have seen the faces of people, surprised yet , joined in as if this sort of impromptu and unpredictable happened every month; secretary from the Lab, wife of Head of Research Lab (later heading the Lab herself, in her own rights), hubby that came along for the meeting, Weis’ Groceries store owner & wife (Kate) and Rusty’s hippie sons.

Everybody sang, “La la la la, la la la la la la”…”to last your whole life long”…. Contagious. Now in looking back, I know – I was quite “off”, Sabrina-like, (State-College cultural sub-text and nuance was calling for a high-level abstract discussion to groundswell and create next-level social-construct and academic cohesion within the “same app class”; not for low-brow ad-supported radio pop music which I happened to enjoy when first arrived – given my background which I had to skip siesta (in Saigon) for soft-rock Music program- whose anthem was Your Song, by Elton John.

Now looking back 46 years on, I can’t help but smiling.

Many in that circle perhaps have passed on. The book I still struggle to make sense of (Markings). And the song, long forgotten. But “Sing” I did. And they did. We existed at one point in the span of billions of light years.

I existed. My nation also did but did not survive. At least the regime that was.

Even America, first Christmas ever in 2 decades, is not involved in a war.

That Christmas was also a first, in a long drawn out stalemate, of then longest America’s war ended in a half-note, de-fizzled, leaving many lives in the balance.

Ours.

Can you imagine an Afghan refugee today, sitting among the intellectuals of the day, waiting to receive warm clothes, yet entertains the host with host-country top hit? Napalm girl comes home.

Country Road takes me home.

Sister Golden Hair. Born to run.

Get together “come on, people now, smile on your brother everybody get together”

Put your hand in the hand of the man who stills the waters….

Then, it’s “puff, the magic dragon, lives by the seas”….

Chord by chord, I plunged into my new American life, campus life and dangerous life. Confronting each challenge heads-on: remedial English class, driving class, typing class, conversant session, Sunday school, after school, physical education, work study, homework, assigned reading, lab at the only Computer lab on campus etc…

Never feel certain or safe. Around the corner, might lie a homeless guy who won’t leave me alone. Around the corner, might be someone who is contagious (asymptomatic). Around the corner, might be a guy who wears a red hat, although waving at passer-by, but at any given moment, might park his RV in front of my old company’s Phone Exchange (routing box) to suicide-bomb.

The war, mine, might have been over. But at the heart of man, warring is forever, as old as the Earth itself.

People can’t live in peace with other people. People might share a meal, but not a mind. Or else, we wouldn’t have weapon labs and war department AKA Department of Defence.

Human nature. Hard to cure. Hard to solve. But once, there were the times, when a refugee boy from a faraway land, sitting amidst a circle of intellectuals of the day, asking for a guitar, tuned it up and started singing “sing, sing a song….sing out loud sing out strong….to last our whole life long”….Glad the Saudi are joining us in the chorus of global harmony….Welcome to Soundstorms, in the desert, on the mountain top….I hear the Coca Cola commercial “I like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony.”

We are the children….We are the world. Born to run. Born to be wild. Born to sing, to soar, and to be free. Can’t erase that TIME photo of the year (2021), a Hispanic wife, on the other side of the ICU partitioned glass shrieked out “Fly high” to her dying husband. Fly high, be free at last….Bye to all the dignitaries of 2021: Desmond Tutu, Didion, Dole and Powell. May you R.I.P. Grateful for your exemplary lives and all the high bars and high notes.

AP piece today features Dubai, its “meter-long” brunch bills and night-long dancing clubs.

Newly minted millionaires, of bit coin and crypto currency, cashed out to buy condos.

A gem and a rare place on Earth.

We – here in the US – used to be the envy of the world: the NYC and Vegas countdowns, the parties and “He who died with the most -China-made-toys wins”.

Gordon Gekko of the 80’s and the Yuppie’s Beamers.

Now, we are nose-diving, with democracy threatened, public discourse challenged and an untrusted leadership (41% popularity).

I flipped through Robert Caro’s books yesterday. About Johnson of Johnson City. And how at one point, he thought his future was behind him.

The Great Society.

Can still rise again, like a phoenix from the ash.

Never know.

The rejected stone could still someday become the corner stone.

Look at South Korea, UAE and East Germany. Mid-century past.

Now rule. With young demographics and optimism in the face of omicron.

We are immune and invisible. We are the future. We rule. And per the AP piece, Dubai is on top of the world, “looking, down on creation..and the only explanation I can find….”

With wealth come privileges (and no responsibilities). Dance, dance Dubai dance.

Let the US take care of the influx of refugees. Let the US fight at the Ukrainian borders. Let the US pay for the oil it is addicted to. Meanwhile, we ride the waves. The only time in our life. Short lived, but a ride nonetheless. Shots from Sinopharm. Shots of Tequila. Shots that never been heard there: only peace.

Everybody who has a drink or two know how jovial it feels. Until the bills come due. Until the cows come home.

Is it sustainable? Ask China Evergrande.

Architectural arms race. Vaccine arms race. Nuclear arms race. Space-age arms race. Horse race and dog race. Batteries race, chip-manufacturing race.

The race and rage to win. To get there, Everest 2.0. Human endeavour to overcome its limits and insignificance. Extra life, extra unintended consequences.

Then the Climate Change Submit. Promises kept and unkept. Kicking the can further down the road.

The age of “strong men” once again. We shall build. We shall win. We will show “em”. Whoever “them” is. As long as we are united, against our common enemy. Let’s take back that which is ours: property and prestige. Our standing in the world. Our legacy, our legality and our limitless growth. The weak and meek shall die, not inherit the Earth.

We will build Cathedrals and Towers to the sky. We will rule, from above, looking down on Creation, all parasites and pussies. Weakest links and opioid addicts. Let them wither away. Sell them the dream, the fear and the imagined “others”. Let them sweat, and we will sell them tissues and deodorant. Classic demand generation. Build, and they will come. To dance the night (and their miserable life) away. Come, come to mama. What happened in Dubai stayed in Dubai. What Omicron!

Headlines from the Guardian: “VietCong promise a policy of peace”….

Right. But rewind a bit. To the beginning of that year. 1975. When I shaved my head. Determined. Do or Die.

Gotta to get in that Medical School, where space were limited ( this is how the world works: counterparts from upper class with fuller war chest, leverage their social pecking order to secure a seat. Not to mention, more disciplined , if not more determined country-side kids flanking from behind). Hence, focused. Let the war rage outside. Inside, all I did was to hit the book.

Then a gal- pre-med student – passed the collection bucket, for war refugees (the Convoy of Tears floated down to our city, now tent city. )

I couldn’t stay and sit still. I stepped up to the plate, “hey, hand me the mike”. Then I spilled, I spoke and I pitched. The bucket got fuller with each passing for then homeless in our city.

Mind you. I am not a saint. That New Year, T-e-t 1975, I felt the urge to go out, like kids my age, to meet girls, strangers on the dance floor.

My brother gave me vitamin booster shots. And I knew then as I know now, there wouldn’t be home, New Year or anything close to it again, ever.

“Policy of Peace”. Just look at abandoned boots on the ground. Kennedy promised no boots on the ground, just “advisors”.

Yet as you can see. All you can see, is to the contrary.

Back to my odyssey that year, the end game of a long war. A war where everything was put to a test: a policy of containment, unmanned flying weaponry (now called drones), and the very heart of man (loyalty).

We ended up splitting up. Dad stayed behind. The rest, fled. Without an escape plan.

Just drift. Let life take care of us. Nine.

No destination. Just determination.

Go where the sun is shining. Leave everything especially a peace “promise”

There went my dream for medical school. To wear that white coat, to heal and to “win”.

Our side lost that day. A terrible loss.

A defeat. Stripped us off our dignity, confidence and sense of self.

Willingly and totally abandoned everything we had held dear.

Now, everything is re-constructed, glued-back fragments of a distant past.

We failed once. All of us. All we have with us, top of my head, are some residual core values: respect for the elders (right?), love of literature (right? love of money to be more truthful, even though my last imprint of that journey was a guy tossing money to the wind), sense of irony/humor (this we do best) and finally, pride of a people (who fought and resisted centuries of invaders) – but us, not counted, since we are a band of run-aways. Stateless. Stoic. Yet playing both sides of the fence (a friend who fled that same year, who sat next to me and looked back in the direction of home from Subic Bay, said, “many among us now think we’re White).

To re-invent ourselves, we’ve taken on a more dominant social strain, the White folks (who would, after what we went through, side with and put on the x- and identify with historical slave’s struggles. Aren’t we broken enough in many places? No room for being further broken. To paraphrase Hemingway, where it’s broken, lights manage to get through…Our refurbished lives are made of patched-up holes. The patches are self-deception and aggrandisement, self-invented nobility ready for a game of one-upmanship. All the world’s a stage, might as well be Count of Monte Cristo.

Spare you all the transfer points and check points, all the modes of transportation and translation. I ended up at Penn State, late check-in.

Just shit. I will clean. My janitorial debut.

Towards the end of that year, I found myself celebrating the Holidays again. This time, with long hair (I don’t remember ever stepped in to a barbershop, 365 days of that year), not shaved-head Holidays – from Saigon to State College, PA. I gathered all the Vietnamese exile students to my basement, dimmed the light, and threw a cake-cookie party. Music from a small cassette player. Music recorded while I was in the refugee camp. We chatted, we got to know one another. We even danced. But there was an Elephant in the room. My room. The Elephant was that big Loss: identity loss, Home loss, relationships in their cultural context which made us who we were. I remember an upper classman. She said I had quoted Shakespeare “All the world is a stage”, when I mentioned all we were tasked with, was to play our part in a play: the play of life itself.

The play changed its script that year. Forever. Boots left behind. More than stepping out of uniforms, we just let ourselves drop: aspiration and ambition, Do-or-Die confidence to hit the ground running. In that vacuum and void, we refilled with externality, as we would a Costco cart.

I don’t know who I am anymore. Not after that year. It’s as if there were two me’s: one guy who speaks the native language, joking around in friendliness and camaraderie. And another guy – me, transformed and conformed to new norms and new hoops, of white lies without white privileges – as a “banana”, playing for time, eyes on the clock, which is ticking and ushering in my inevitable end. Hail Mary! Just like our politicians and professors, priests and privileged echelon of that fateful year. “They” always get a seat, in medical school or a cargo plane.

Fooled me once. But fate dealt us a good hand. I am here. Still. Still throwing parties. Still smiling and singing. But this time, I ain’t gonna shave my head. Knowing it’s not hair or lack of it, that makes a difference. Head-shaving was just a self-denouncing act, an outward manifestation of my inner determination: I am gonna get in. No matter how high the barriers to entry. Do or die.

First Law of Robotics: “A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”.

From within the animal kingdom, species are known to take care of their own e.g. Mother bear waits for her cubs to catch up along a snowy mountain trail.

Yet, recent news ( Meadow’s texts to be more exact ), we had an X-President who ignored his “cub”‘s plea, his trusted advisors’ pleas and Fox News anchors’. Even his daughter edited her tweet, to erase history, after cheering “zeroes” as heroes and patriots ( Keepers of “Oath” are now up to their ears in prison terms).

Looks to me we have evolved beyond what we were made out to be: decent human being with a human heart. We might be recalled for a re- calibrate to be at least en par with the First Law of Robotic.

All we’re saying….is give peace a chance… to be and to live with/like human again.

Yet we can’t seem to carry out our (human) duties (despite all the high priests, and high court), judiciary or fiduciary.

On the other hand, we are so jealous – in the lower court – when punishing low-life and marginalised “prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” In short, “an eye for an eye” (the Old Testament) when it comes to blue-collar crimes, and forgiveness (the New Testament) for white-collar crimes. Double-standard and double- interpretation.

I’d prefer North Korea, where laughter was forbidden during the anniversary of the Dictator’s dead Dad. At least, it’s clear cut.

We now know,: “Dad, you’ve got to stop this ….’shit’ before people (and indeed were) get killed.

Like those Watergate’s tapes, which got erased – at least 10 minutes of it – could have shed lights on the situation (at this edit, more revelations came out, w/ Mccarthy flip flop).

We live in an advanced society, with smart phone and dumb people, GPS doesn’t get lost where people do.

Chess players threw in the towel, and AI won the day (at the game of Go).

Very quickly. 24/7 continuous improvement. Software updates, machine learning (present progressive) and soon expired/retired human (who are constantly low-tech like myself).

Back to the recently revealed texts (Verizon, 9000 my last look).

We now know why Fox News host(s) were not professional news folks..

per Acosta: “What’s even more disgusting,” Acosta continued, “is that Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, they’ve been caught red-handed, acting like North Korean state television, lying to their viewers about what happened on that day, covering up the misdeeds of a wannabe dictator, blaming antifa sympathizers for Jan. 6 and downplaying the violence in the days that followed.”

Looks as if they were mere paid commercial announcers and pretty talking heads: “give me the script, I will read it – unedited and unadulterated – from the teleprompter, on air. flawlessly and faithfully, every time and all the time” (then get paid for it). Fox fearless faith.

In short, human announcers have taken on reliable robotic form and function, skipping Robotic First Law ( …by inaction, causing a human to come to harm).

How can these people go to sleep at night? Have they taken any journalism ethics classes, or have any ethics at all?

Still human? with a human heart?

A nation of fanatics, yet criticising North Korea for banning laughters.

We begin to look more like what we hate. In our antagonistic struggle, we have taken on the opposite like a John Woo’s Face Off that we have in time internalised.

I have become my worst enemy, and in looking into that Dark Mirror, I see him, and he me.

Black has become White and vice versa.

Back in mid-40’s, in North Vietnam, servants and hired-hands turned on their land Owners, twisting every nook and cranny, building a “blue-collar” class-struggle case. Toward the end, many were unjustly executed, property completely confiscated. In short, the law can be broken, tweaked and twisted, pre-judged and pre-read-into in worst hermeneutical case scenario: God told me this, God told me that…

I prefer the First Law of Robotics. Or Google’s original founding “Do no evil”. I feel safer with animal and machine than with human. 2021 human. (at this edit, Don Winslow said on PBS weekend that “human has the capacity for both good and evil”.

God, please do not let me wake up in North Korea, or any place resembles it. I want to laugh (the flip side of cry), I want to sing (the flip side of mourn) and I want to stay free (the flip side of thinking we had been freedom fighters, while in fact played…like a fiddle).

Do you want to be heroes or zeroes??????????? Machine or human? Lower species (built to protect their young), or bleeding into the worst kind of human being? I’ve lived long enough. Please put me in a freezer, and wake me up when this is all over…. the Big Lie, and subsequent subversion. Love to see its conclusion though. If 2020 was the year of the virus, 2021 should go down as the year of Human Virus. Transmissible and transmitting fast. Now is the time for a vaccine. And now is the time for redemption. The hour has come…I repent.

P.S. I saw a heart-warming scene today. when I pulled (wrong-way) into a car wash. Turned out, the hand-wash workers took a Christmas break to celebrate the Holidays: chairs, foods, Santa beanies, children, everybody….as low-tech as possible, but it warmed my heart. I ended up buying car-wash supplies at Auto Parts, and DIY.

Congratulations y’ all, for making it through 2021, the year that started out -unlike any other: “Unthinkable”. (And I am not referring to robots without a human heart).

In Mayfield, KY, more than 100 workers worked the night shift, were making, of all things, candles. Then darkness and destruction strike.

Power outage. Where are the candles when we needed them.

Where is God when we needed Him.

Where is everybody, EMTs, firefighters, police when we needed them.

Everywhere, all we can see is rubles. 9/11 again (one veteran even said it looks more horrific than all the bombing he saw in war). Except we can’t pin the blame on anyone…climate change (winter cold should temper down tornado penchant).

On top of covid, we now see this.

A jailer who accompanied inmates on a work program at Mayfield candles factory was killed. A lady, interviewed by PBS, said she resettled to KY after Katrina, only to see her whole house turn to rubles.

Tragedy does come in two’s: Delta and Omicron, Iraq and Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam, WW I and WW II, Cold War and Cyber War.

What absent has been an election-hack, from those young BMW owners in high-unemployment Estonia . Where are they now. Out splurging after sabotaging and sending robocalls to Fox channel viewers?

Some may say God send fury. Others see calamity of epic proportion. Proponents of Climate change pin this on human exploit, which for years, has disregarded ecological balance. (That’s why in Mayfield, people at least, produce something useful: candles, just in case).

One of those rare manufacturing facilities left in the heartland. Then up North, it’s all distribution centre, by Amazon (America, the beautiful, showroom for all things made elsewhere).

Warehouse workers said they were “rocked” from one side to the other before the roof caved in.

Death on a third shift.

Going to work, carrying your lunch box, to never see the light of day again.

R.I.P. by last count, getting close to 100.

I feel undeserving. I was sleeping, just like you all who are reading this.

We’re alive. Celebrating Christmas. Celebrating our extra weight, extra lighting outside , always on with batteries and generators.

Meanwhile, people died in the cold and damn, while trying to make something glowing and warm.

Something romantic and energy-conserving.

I hope they “build back better” in Mayfield. With manufacturing capacity that can compete.

We live in an age where everything and everyone is disposable.

Like diapers. Like cups and candles. Like offline and online friendships.

Take it and run. Nordstrom luxury purses. Just snatch them. Driver! drive. Bonnie and Clyde.

Ain’t no Superman to catch the flash-mob thieves (80 cars in all). Everything is coordinated, good and bad guys, using the same tool – machine aided and ad-sponsored social media, at our disposal.

Some are motivated with the desire to revenge: against a society of winners take all.

Losers? well, sell all you have, pay the coyotes and get in the trailer. Only to die in a tragic traffic accident never reaching the border (southern of the US).

And that just on the bulletin of news: people snatching purses, people died from trying to cross the border for a better life, and people died by just showing up to work, on the night shift which promised additional pay..to make something that burns bright in the dark. The dark which we all live in (or sleep away) almost half a day everyday, utterly ungrateful and unacknowledged of all the public benefits we took for granted.

Switch on the light, turn on the heat and start the car: let’s go shopping for luxury purses…of all places, Nordstrom….if there were any at this time of logistic challenges.

I want you to join me in saying a prayer for the ones who were asleep, thinking their bread-earners were coming home after a night working at the factory or the warehouse. Who is left to bury them when they themselves get buried by nature (I did not say Mother Nature).

What kind of “mother” that would lash mercilessly out at the innocent: old (86), young, children (5 months old) and nursing home residents? You tell me, by just looking at the picture. When in calamity and grief, we would hold vigils, light a candle. This time, for the candle makers themselves and praying to the candle-makers’ Maker! I would love to believe very much, esp during this time of the year.

Candles in calamity.

The Dallas-based RE agent said she was going into detox, into yoga and much more. When she is released from 60-day jail.

60 days should be a good start. I’d rather 66 days, so I don’t break the chain of habit (per numerous studies).

Many J6 folks are now in jail. Many others think they can still get away with gravity, that the rule of Law doesn’t apply to them, that they are exempted from community work (oh yeah) and death itself (He who believes in me shall never die).

What’s fair is fair.

Personally I think (my opinion alone) God got a wrong address (or this is just a Rest Area) when He took on human form, with no hotel (inn) reservations, hence the manger and Magis – on the road, humming along (Silent Night….Oh Holy Night, two of my favorites).

Of course, I worship Him. Who wouldn’t. But perhaps it wasn’t meant to be, for people whose law (written and spelled out) doesn’t apply to them (Give back to Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar – the Maker submits to the (Ro)Man’s Law, a carpenter yet nailed to a wooden cross).

The point that flashed through my mind is: the people who think they fly above 30,000 feet (physics) always think they can get away with the Rule of Law until they landed, and found out they should have flown off into space (like George Clooney , cutting off his oxygen for Sandra Bullocks – giving her a chance to get sucked back in by gravity).

Detox and detour to elsewhere, where there might be life.

Here, what’s fair is still fair last time I check.

The Golden Rule. Reciprocity. Mutual Aids Society. I scratch your back…

The AP piece on Bob Dole was contributed by three writers/journalists, one of them deceased. When the Obituary writer died before his subject.

The life we are living (or pre-lived): fragile and full of uncertainties, except for one thing: that which has a beginning will have an end. Hence, I worship Him, Maker and Sustainter of this entire consciousness and vast domain, thanking Him for Common Grace (which explains the Realtors of the world).

Of course I am fearful and hopeful at the same time.

Fearful that I will face my judgment day. Hopeful that the sentence be lenient, like picking up trash (if there were any this next round) which in utter relief, I will also promise to go into detox and yoga ( I am not blonde, not white, and not as pretty and rich).

This Season of Celebration, I remember people who passed. People who perhaps have made it : like that little boy, floated on a basket, our little Moses, onto the Hong Kong shores, with just a pair of dirty shorts, stuttering – and not fluent even in our own native language. Yet he got his adoption papers to resettle in the UK. Hearing that, I emptied out my cash inadvertently did more harm than good. He got taken to the warden office, “Where did you STEAL these US dollars?” I bailed him out after hearing the rumble – it’s a tiny prison-turned-refugee-camp – still remember reading- Irving Stone’s Lust of Life. Forty years on. Yet like yesterday. I hope that stuttering boy do well in the UK: articulate in speech and with a British accent. Hope he pay forward, as many who did for me and I in turn, become just one node in the chain. Of distributed love, like the data packet that gets passed along inside the Internet.

God couldn’t have come up with something as elegant and secure as today’s mode of communication. Well, the only way to top that is to come in person Himself, to go through what we are going through and seeing our human end to get a feel for us. In short, to acquire empathy, the God head must become human head. For now, it’s the Season of birth, not burial, of manger not monument.

So Merry Christmas everyone. You are wonderful, since I know deep down, by faith, not by sight, that you and I carry that little spark of divinity, Imago Dei. (though from the East, I was born in the year of the Monkey – before Darwin came around; they had already cast us in a box, in a circular twelve like the Year of the Cat).

I wonder what year (animal symbol) that Dallas-based Realtor was born in. She has flown high and now finds herself incarcerated – not on the top floor of Betty’s clinic. If I were she, I would ask for an extended stay of 66 days to habituate myself with new and unbroken routine, which involves a new sense of self-deflation away from whatever upbringing that made her think she had arrived at a different landing gate than the rest of us. Perhaps in recent past, she even thought of herself as Goddess, like the Maker himself, whose time on Earth was just for a refueling stop. His destiny I am sure is much further and coverage area much wider. After all, He is the Boss, and all I can say is “Yes, Sir. What’s fair is fair.”

A lot of data are stored up in our little head. A fragment over here, over there, at times, co-join to form a tapestry, a patched up dream-like continuum.

Proust knows. We are our memories. So he tapped onto the undercurrent – his museum of memories – to re-surface and re-shape them in some fashion or form.

Voila. People spending their leisure time, the Swann’s way. Unlike the way we now live, mostly digitally.

I saw on the news today: people died more of covid in counties where mis-information used to prevail (npr news).

Such was the nature of the beast. You can’t have enough of good information.

And it’s up to us to curate and filter out bad actors. To let what’s in, and eventually, significant to us enough to take space in our museum of memories.

How do we build our filters? to remember or not to remember!.

To be or not to be.

What made us remember something, someone and some event more than others?

We don’t have to will ourselves to forget unwanted information and unpleasant conversation. It comes natural as survival mechanism.

Can’t be a doormat for people to walk right over. Or worse, can’t stand in the middle of Manhattan holding a sign “the end is near” for instance.

So we pick and choose. How we spend our time. What good book to read and good people to see (people are like books anyway). (as of this edit, daddy and daughter spent another 100 bucks at Book People. Who said Boat People remain forever on the boat or fresh of it! We read too, but first need to dry ourselves off).

My book, me, is in bold and large print. Easy to see. Easy to read. Easy to understand. With title and bylines.

With people saying a few words in the back cover, for you to overcome initial resistance, to flip through he pages.

It will have designer’s calligraphic fonts. It might even have pre-underlined passages to catch and keep your attention.

And most of all, it will differentiate itself (need to stand out since people – the ones I have come across – do judge the book by its cover).

My stories, my points don’t show great discoveries (not a scientific publication). Just a life illustrated by love and illuminated by loss, marinated by betrayal and matured by hardships. Most people chew on the pain of the past. I thrive on the pain of the present (soon become the past). Hence, the book subject has yet been reaching the end chapter. Still it is in its nth revision, perhaps online, machine-aided and printed.

So I move beyond today. To tomorrow yet looking over my shoulders: still fear of the advancing army, the approaching variant and the calling of debtors (social more than financial).

Life is funny. When you stop searching, it finds you.

I only remember certain flash-bulb moments, aided by black/white photos. Then I remember the songs and sound from my youth e.g. Band on the Run or Superstar. Finally, the taste of home cooking, of kindness and laughter. Those relatives are now ghosts. But they still exist in my heart, full of warmth and assurance from an extended family. Of one-level-away connection. Not online, but off. No pretension and randomness. Shared meals and memories.

I was privileged to some of those occasions when relatives gathered to remember our grandpa: the burning of incenses, the breaking of bread and of course, playing of a now-extinct card game. Like Proust, often, I am in search of time past. Each relative always said goodbye, but not left on empty stomach or empty-handed (just a little of something for the road.)

That road is still traveled by me. All the way to greener pastures. Don’t ever look back. Keep going. You need to cover for us all the miles we couldn’t ourselves imagine. So I keep going. looking forward, all the while, wanting so bad to turn around. To take one last look at that which has no rewind button. And while traveling the road, I make sure those memories are stored up in a locked compartment with coded password: I love you so much. Might be long a pw, but it’s so easy to remember and so close to my heart.

See my book is simple: it has a chapter on how I come about, people I grow up with, circumstances that drove me out of my home and how much I can salvage after the crash. Others might have a more elaborate and winding outline. But if you were to take a look, all you’ll remember is that boy had a lot going in such a short life. And you might feel more fortunate, or you might feel sorry for me. It might stir up and trigger some of your past blessings and your better choices. But one thing it won’t do: it will not bore you to tears and waste your time. I certainly wouldn’t want that on myself.

A la reserche du temps perdu. In the way she moves, something,…that attracts me like no other lovers. That madeleine and the table corner. Elegant and eternal. Yes, I remember now. She is a Gypsie woman, or perhaps a Boat People…I can’t recall, but certainly she moves around a lot, in search of a better life, like you and like I.

I was told to write from the heart (or just use Google speech, then have it translated into Vietnamese).

If I were to follow this advice, then how could I send those cultural nuances across the softwares, at least, not yet.

For now, we can’t just yet paint a picture of “blush”, “shame” and other emotional hues (crying in tears rules as 2021 most used emoji).

I was on a campus date, and it happened to be with an ardent Catholic-raised Christian gal, friend of mine. We happened to see “Last Tango in Paris”. Of course, half-way through the flick, mind you, it’s Marlon Brando of the Godfather and Apocalypse Now, she asked us to walk out.

I to this day only remember the scene where she posed with one leg on his as they were sitting in a Parisian cafe. Now, it’s schools and girls, not necessary in that order, two topics closest to my heart (then why not blog about it).

While waiting for the SAT-equivalent test scores, I had my first real dating experience. In fact, she (B) was the only girl present at our celebration party.

Schools then girls. A pairing like two train tracks.

Going no where at times, but going.

Fear of the future (what if we were to have a baby before a college degree – translated into career and job security).

Fear of losing her forever (what if things don’t turn out as we thought – the war and all, then permanent separation: turned out to be so true).

Fear of never again “swimming in the same current” ( let’s dance….many nights, many clubs, many partners….last Tango that takes Two).

And that’s the way it was. Stalemate my butts.

Cronkite my behind. Kissinger kisses my asses. The other day, I saw a bunch of guys standing and waiting in front of the Social Security office. Wonder if they were Afghanese, applying for their first papers.

Quite a repeat, a deja vu (one of the girls was among them, very much like our high-school bunch). Yes, they were smoking outside. Young with a lot of life ahead.

We too were pouring beers —but then we had just turned 18, partying under supervision. Unfolding before us was a world full of possibilities. No time to die. By then, my parents had already churned out tuition for Martial Arts school, English schools, French school, private middle school, private High School and music school.

I owe them a chunk of change.

Yet that New Year, I had a premonition. That life would never be the same. Fewer MP’s policing Saigon streets – to catch the ammunition-supplies thieves, the PX’s thieves, the black-marketeers of US dollars and US goods.

Rich kids and influential kids, straight A+’s kids and orphanage kids got on their seatless cargo planes, all dressed up, with planes to catch and English words to look up, idioms and slangs to learn by heart (rote learning: like the French taught us in conjugation. which takes us back to Je t’aime, to Last Tango in Paris).

So I danced those ten nights away, last chance. Last dance that I could feel: the fear, anticipation and anxiety. Nothing makes you feel more alive than knowing there is only a little left to live.

I felt the vibration from various female bodies. Girls of Saigon, not Miss Saigon, were apprehensive too. Everybody felt the rumble, except the US Ambassador who told his wife NOT to move the furniture like our x-President Thieu, who did (his stuff on previous flight to Taiwan – wonder who would continue to move his furniture onto London and Boston, where he eventually passed away).

Later, when schooling in North of Boston, yours truly was staying overnight, of course at the invitation of another date, at the home of former Ambassador Lodge. It was my highlight. At both the movie, starring Marlon Brando, and the sleep-over, at the Lodges’; clean like a whistle.

Healthy dating. Three-dimensional friending. There was never s/t called the internet back then. Schooling and learning about ourselves through the eyes of others. Students of life, of loss and learning to manage parental expectations.

My freshman year saw the war unraveled.

To tango, one must first sprinkle the floor with powder, preferably hard-wood floor . Tous les garçons et les filles de mon age…ballroom danced (pre-Le Freak Disco).

Now I have these episodic memories. Post Vietnam War saw many memoirs, most of them revisionists: “honour”, “honourable”, “decent” …you name it.

Owing it to paranoia and premonition, I made my last Tango last (already had a taste of disaster in 1968, the year I started high school). That year, there was mass grave in Hue, and an extended lockdown that haunted our 68-75 school years. Like the date that walked out of the movie, we walked out on our own 16-mm film torn apart from the sprocket holes. (We knew all along we were living on borrowed time and US tax payers’ money, soon out of bodies and bullets.)

Took a while to splice the frames back. Now it’s Last Tango 2.0, a misnomer (like the Last Emperor, part II on world stage, as people keep forgetting lessons of the past – while dancing as if there were no tomorrow).

San Francisco.

“Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”…You sure will find some gentle people there.

That was more than 50 years ago.

Today, this past week, be sure to hold on to your purse.

Warren Buffett once said, I paraphrase, “I’d rather keep the money than buying a wallet with that money”.

A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.

In last week’s case, $25,000 worth of snatched purses, organised flash mob.

They must have pre-planned, the way J6 was: you drive, I snatch, we run.

Chuck Finney, our SF patron saint, must be chuckling: with all the money I raised and donated, they still learn nothing.

And so it goes.

The story of a city. With Big Money and homeless population. Inequity further skewed.

Quite a Pier and a prison if you boarded the scheduled ferry. Creative destruction.

The Golden Gate bridge.

Without a heart of gold.

“Streets paved with gold,..” Gold rush.

Chinatown. Sold them the pix and pixel.

The golden dream. IPO’s and Metaverse.

Zuckerberg and his pyjamas.

Google and founders’ first check spent at Burger King.

Apple and Jobs’ last words “stay hungry, stay curious”.

The orchards, the org charts and a dream. Of making it big in America.

Come, techies and technologists.

Teach your children well, teach the machine well…

Alice Restaurant, now hiring.

“Take the load off me….” Change change change.

It’s a different city from what I once sang Scott McKenzie’s “If you’re going to San Francisco…”

But then, it’s always been “selling a dream” from Steve McQueen and Jaqueline Bisset to Sinatra to Gaga.

From Hollywood to Redwood….looking for a heart of gold….and I’m getting old. If you’re going to San Francisco…..be sure to bring your luxury purse….

Chuck Finney says ” the casket cover has no pocket – or purse -…i.e. to hold and keep your money when you’re gone.”

Warren Buffett himself, once said he would never waste money on buying a purse/wallet, has been quite impressed with Mr Finney, our SF saint.

Every city has a few of those. And that’s all we need to counter the (bad) weight of let’s say a flash robbery.

I’d rather they wear some flowers in their hair, as opposed to selling those purses at swap meet.

Somehow, we’re built to hold two opposing ideas/concepts simultaneously. People died ; not me.

Climate change happens somewhere else. Not here (what if someday you want to travel or live there).

Bad guys take from me (how about me you, at times, live a mix bag non binary life – conveniently acting like a jerk – e.g. when starved or deprived of Black-Friday sales due to “supply chain” challenges).

We made millions of mili-and-mis calculations in our heads for survival.

Our conscious life is a selective continuum of memories (or else, I can’t live with myself, if every morning, I get up, that damn bad past keeps replaying while I brush my teeth).

So we unconsciously forget. Sometimes we forgive but mostly we forgive ourselves first (Sales pros were taught to stand and say to the mirror thousands of times “I like myself” since Sales is a numbers game, facing hundreds of rejection a day).

No one can swim in the same river twice ( esp. those bad and stinky stuff I’d rather forget).

We pick and choose: a moment in time, somewhere in time, someone in time ( my first daughter used to fall to sleep on my chest, once, both of us wore the same T shirts – on sale – hers oversize).

Still Alice.

Still remember.

Only if we can move back and forth, even just as an observer (of that film, which we all starred in).

I once blogged about my unmade bed as recounted by my nephew who came by after the 9 of us fled Vietnam in a hurry.

More than just a pillow and a blanket (I used to hold on to it, my security blanket).

Beyond material things were unresolved relationships, unsettled debt of honour, or a father/son unfinished lesson (ironically, I was listening to Cat Stevens’ Father and Son, the year the album came out – and thought to myself, when would I ever have this kind of back-and-forth duet with my Dad).

He indirectly continues to teach me, via my older brother to this very day. Both served a stint in the Army: my Dad before the rise of Communism, and my brother, on the side of the US against it.

The decade that my Dad and I were apart was painful. I scrambled to make a living, to re-build and refurbish myself.

A decade later, after having re-established himself, my brother sponsored my Dad over to live under one roof. Now he – my brother – is officially “promoted” to take over my Dad’s lazy chair: belling out advices and reprimands at me.

I appreciate the concerns. Didn’t have it for quite a while – someone without family’s tough love could very well form decade-old sticky habits. Now, it’s like remedial learning. Make-up sessions. Albeit indirectly but distilled guidance via my brother. Polygamist family, dressing up in sheep clothing on the other side of the Pacific ( but in compliance, here , per US Civil law).

But we always pay and pay out dearly. To the last dime. With Army’s proper comes temper. PTSD if you will.

Good luck to those who think they can just cross us (from Dad on down). My Dad threw a knife (that stuck to the door frame) at an intruder who with long pole tried to fish out my mom’s purse (laid open on the table, middle of the house, whose windows designed for ventilation, quite common in tropic living).

So, two simultaneous wives for my Dad. Two simultaneous kids, with two simultarneous opposing households to be visited in one single day (snacks and entree).

Somehow my Dad made it through. Somehow the four adults I grew up with made it through: 1945 (Japanese occupation and famine), 1954 (partition of North and South Vietnam, after Korea’s blue prints, without the forever aid of the US to S Korea), 1963 revolution/assassination of the Diem’s brothers, 1968 Tet, 1975 End of “Vietnam” (or the American War – then thought of as the longest until Afghanistan came on to the global stage).

My Dad faded away on a Winchester Winter. No fuss no fanfares funeral with snow-padded six-feet under. C’est fini (Capri).

All that love and longing. Of pre-war songs (our cousin came by the house and asked for those song sheets the day my Dad left Vietnam).

She knew. It’s the last time. Wish I knew moments like that. To ask for things ….NO. To cherish those near “Fini” moments. To look into those eyes that once insisted “No it’s not me who will someday die – or fade away”.

We live in continued denial of that: I , you, we all men are mortal. We might win today, lose tomorrow. Or get even like Count Monte Cristo. But we will never ever get our loved ones back. They ( younger ones who live on) will never someday get us back. Only those songs and song sheets. (Now they have Spotify, paid or free.) All the copyrighted pastimes now made available in public domain. But we need to face the mirror and the music: our own “bell-bottom blues” ..”..Give me one more day….I don’t want to fade away…”. Built that way, fashioned after bell-bottom, all the while, thinking: “I never will or don’t want to fade away” (until the day, everyone wears sweats and pajamas out on the street)….

OKay, so the arrows will cover the Sun, then we will fight in the shade…(still in denial and refusal to face the inevitable….as you led the 300 with two opposing ideas). Write a memoir, wear some sweats and get on with reality, Bell-Bottom Blues. Enjoy the moment.

If I had known….I would have slept in the morning of April 29, 1975. Just held on one more second to that security blanket. Haven’t found one that fits the bill since. And that’s just one little material thing, quite doable, yet unaccomplished still this side of that major loss.