Thang Nguyen 555

Saw the headlines about Michael Lang today.

It’s like the kid in Cinema Paradiso, back in town, to find the old movie theatre demolished, making way for a parking lot, while his old mentor/projectionist had died and left him with just a gag reel.

I was that cinema kid: glued to the silver screen (our version of large I-pad) at a theatre near me. It was own by my cousin who waved me through the turnstile. Then I settled in for a double-features matinee. First time I saw Michael Lang, was with a split screen (twice the pleasure) of Woodstock, the movie (I did not have to hit the rewind button. Just stay put and wait for the projectionist to start the show again.)

There I watched Michel Lang answer the documentary interviewer “It’s beautiful”, as he sourced , convinced and transformed backward Woodstock – cow country – to a city of one million, with only one high-rise: the stage.

Just chill.

Richie Havens opened it, stretching his jam after stretching those new guitar strings (he knew he would need their whole life cycle) for “Freedom”…

I heard that catch phrase a lot in my youth. People killed, died and fought for it.

Never a day of Peace, much less Love (oh well, Woodstock had its dark and down side too, with drug and unruly mud slide). But music, yes! I watched Ten Years After (i am going home), White Rabbit, CCR and of course, the Who ?

All the “colored” performers on stage, from Richie to Sly, from Jimmy to Carlos Santana. Even at a young age, I couldn’t help notice that Arts elevated people above the politics of divide. That is to say, today’s tribalism doesn’t come near, not when a 19-year-old arrested development from Pennsylvania, pleading for a more lenient J6 sentence, or 17-year-old Kyle of Illinois, who was hailed as a hero ( with a borrowed gun not guitar).

Back to Michael Lang and his iconic scooter (my best friend took me on a ride to School for years on similar vehicle). “Something is happenin here…what it is, ain’t exactly clear.. Marcuse? Timothy Leary? 68 spill-over?

The reality is this: youth think and speak out too (whether the mandatory draft lottery hit them or not) from walking Ashbury St in San Francisco, to sit-in at Berkeley, from NYU to KSU. They grew their hair in protest against the war machine (a Quaker burned himself at the steps of the Pentagon), against “Tricky Dick” or any other “Dicks” of the day. High-school kids got drafted, while college kids protested.

View and opposing view should be heard and taken into account e.g. “goddam shit hole! The fuckers in Washington D.C. need to let us bomb this shit hole back to the Stone Age,” “Kill every one of these mother fucking gooks and piss on their rotting carcasses” (said an Army Chaplain, as recounted by an MP in “Policing Saigon” page 207).

There had to be a viable alternative to killing (anything that moves). Perhaps not everyone thought so.

“You’re so beautiful, to….me” “I get by with help from my friends” esp from Joe Cocker.

Then, “please move away from the towers” (storms passing).

From Joan Didion to Joan Baez, Michael Hayden to Michael Lang. Lots of artists and a whole generation of “youth matters”. For three straight days. With no major incidents. A today’s impossible (this side of J6 White grievances).

Last night I had the strangest dream. …

That people co-opted youthful energy…nudging it and turning it into the Ralph Reeds of the day, Franklin Grahams of the day (who has no rights to co-opt the image of rebel rousers on a Michael Lang’s ride) and Steve Bannon’s local precincts and local school boards to push the agenda of Christian nationalism, a doctrinal betrayal (the Romans crucified him, then built an Empire out of it, whitening a darker image of a Jew, who during the culture war, grown into a all-hair JC Superstar, a 60’s musical. Whatever made them money in the short term). From The Silent Majority to the Moral Majority, then 2.0 version.

Woodstock chipped and bargained away – for a few pieces of silver (using Graham’s quotes).

The idea is spontaneity, but also planned (then un-planned – Free concerts!). Lots of risks but “Screw it, let’s do it”.

The town folks were beyond nice. A testimony to a long time past, when people were given that generation of young people the benefit of the doubt.

Today, we have St Louis husband and wife holding their automatic rifle and short gun ( pretty in pink polo ) pointing at peaceful protesters (it’s our lawn), then leverage those publicity and press – albeit shameful- to run for office. an anti-thesis of Woodstock, of back to the land, back to nature against climate abuse (Mother Earth they have no respects for, do you think they would for her children of a different race?).

Rest my case. So wave the South Vietnam flags , the Confederate Battle flags, on the lawn and near the top of the Capitol , on January 6th or any other day (outside of my cousin’s theatre). Before everything was disintegrated and dismantled pretty quick as I personally experienced.

Meanwhile, inside, I watched Woodstock, (Director’s cut), anticipating and reciting each scene and song. all the while, wishing to be somewhere else , be someone else, anyone, whose flag – wasn’t waved for lost cause only (on Subic Bay and Steps of the Capitol .)

Curse the day I was born – always unwanted –

in a controversial birth (parents didn’t quite seem to want me – since there was another side marriage and half-sister),

a controversial war ( debate and protest) a controversial religion – Buddhism by culture – (regime persecution that drove a monk into suicide by self-immolation)

a controversial re-settlement in America (“Are you from the North?” asked my PSU roommate Jay) while today’s Afghan counterparts got a quiet break – no protest – despite similar inflationary rates in today’s economy.

How I wished I could have taken my shirt off (young and tan) and enjoyed those Summer Breezes of Upstate hills.

Meanwhile, across the pond, back to the future, fast -forward to today, another Pennsylvania kid, at age 19, pleading via paid lawyer :” your Honour, please…be lenient in your sentencing.” “ he was just having fun – waving the flag, breaking into The office of No 2 in line for the Presidency, “ (just like John Lennon once waving Mao’s Red Book in protest, or Trump, with up-side-down Bible in front of St John.) Arrested development while exercising 1st Amendment.

We’re all arrested in our cerebral development.. Do you….feel like I do. “It’s beautiful”, R.I.P. my friend Lang ( who said: ”the people are showing up, so we have to feed them…we have to prioritize:” a gut call between finish the fence to charge them money, or Screw it, Free Woodstock “.

in motion or sitting still

by the window or by the seas.

Lost in time.

In space, anchor-less – ly

Free time, free from chores

of burden and of obligation.

Free to choose- or not to

Don’t let others sway, persuade or influence

via social media or mass media

push or pull, soft or hard sell.

You and I are free: in thoughts and action

We live. Leaving behind footprints and fingerprints

posts and profiles , smiles and sadness.

We are.

Born, survive and die.

On our own. All alone. Period.

Unencumbered and unaffiliated. Unfriended and unfamiliar.

Don’t let others sway, persuade or influence.

To tell you otherwise e.g. what J6? or Tianamen Square.

Or Tutu, a priest , who once fought for a freedom.

What’s with freedom that everyone is longing for, looking for and dying for?

Isn’t it a right, a guarantee once we belong to a certain political entity?

Like a Democracy whose citizens have the rights to vote, to free assembly.

I know your right to bear arms. Good for you. It’a not a pick and choose Democracy. Lots of guns and lots of fence around you.

Frost said fence made for good neighbours. NRA said guns made for good pa(y)triots.

So be proud Dad, gun owner and diploma holder (or to borrow it, as if one just shows a library card to borrow a book) to defend an out-of-state car lot, claiming self-defence and hailed as hero.

Education is out. Opioid is in. Cannabis in. Cabinet and Congress out.

Court in. Let’s lawyered up. Armed up. Going to war. To fight.

Always fight, for “freedom”. Die for freedom. Never live for anything. Like waiting for a sunrise.

For a hot meal (slow-cooked.) Or a kid to graduate.

Women in the field, planting and harvesting. Men in the field too, but battle field.

Machine-aided wars. Nuke ‘ m. Or make a deal, a pact, a peace with Putin.

Orphans without (parental) guidance. Orphans without directions home. Orphans bargained and bartered away in deep Afghanistan.

And so it went. You can’t go home again.

Aimlessness. Purposelessness. Weightlessness. Repurposing one’s life (refugees’), one’s ambition and aspiration. Starting point: the toilet. Ending point: the urn/ grave. What’s the point? of – extract and subtract – of pruning and trimming, living while dying? Helping others less fortunate? (those people? holding a sign, that begins with PLEASE… living a more tragic life than yours)…When we were orphans……

Go fund me. Go help me. Go see me. Go figure.

We’re sinners called to be saints. Saints schools we did not attend. Sainthood we did not attain. Cannot.

Not with current undercurrents, underneath the tide that shifts. Earth shifts. Its atmosphere and stratosphere.

Climate Change and Attitude Change. The former mitigatable. The latter? God help them. We, relics of the Hippies and the Yuppies, just want to win.

Always First to the Field and first in line (to the grave), finger in the hole. Lord, help my disbelief.

Moments of waste and of want. In motion or sitting still. By the window or by the seas. Feel like All are nil. All vanished – like the 2021 Star-studded Obituary list, and not the Olympics roster.

Lives lived in full or half-way. All disintegrated and turned into recycled nano particles (used to be called “bones and marrows”, MIA’s with previous impetus and impulses. Brain and gain. DNA and RNA. NRA and NRB (the former kill, the latter last rites).

Vanishing vanity. In their place? Wild flowers, more beautiful than all the treasures of Solomon. Dust come to dust. Ashes to the seas. Wind-swept and scattered in constant flux and flow, filled with Oxygen (albeit a bit late) in the ozone.

We’re fortunate: to have existed at all, full of foolishness and fearfulness. In awe and awestruck. Amazement and amusement. Trembling in fear and foreboding, at times, doubling down on some thesis and antithesis, then regrets and rewrites, without reluctance.

Meanwhile, out there, in weightless space, those Moments all-spent

(before you know it or even aware of the futility of it all).

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.”