Thang Nguyen 555

We came from outside of Saigon, yet we are labeled: “Miss Saigon”. Agent Orange, B-52 carpet bombing, and of course, Strategic Hamlet campaign drove us there, a city of a little over 1 Million before the war.

Why not. A Shakespearean saga, Vietnamese version: “selling your body” for the greater good. A transaction; nothing more nothing less. Some of us got raped at an early age – even by close relatives. Eat your young (they treated us as if we were canned goods, to be “khui” – with cat food can opener). Auctioned up our virginity for good luck.

Hence, Miss Saigon, Miss Bangkok, Miss Okinawa ….wherever there is a war in the Pacific, wherever drugs and dollars are rampant ( MPs busy at work).

Sell, sell, sell.

The last chopper. Hang on tight to dear life.

Bar girls and bell hops.

Abandoned and aborted children.

Even the so-called orphan charity flight (with under-the-table corruption and black-market dealing) did not make it. It crashed.

Everything could have gone wrong had.

The Vietnam War.

Back to our Miss Saigon, with high heels and mini-skirts (the French 60’s style).

Come on in!

Check us out!

high stools, high counters, drinks and deals.

My tragicomedy character sees herself transported cross-culturally and cross-generationally: country-side to city, bar stool to Bar exam.

She typifies both what went wrong and right.

A twist of fate. The stone that was rejected turns corner stone.

The underdog with his sling shot.

Samson brings down the Temple.

Monte Cristo gets his last say.

Miss Saigon gets her steady pay checks. Lots of them. For revenge. For compensation. Justice and fairness for all.

Her children, of mixed races, United Races, go on and thrive, and contribute. Even fight for others. Vietnamese refugee child clerking for Afghanistan justice.

Miss Saigon, now grey and mature, been through and lived in both sides of the world.

She not only smells opportunities, she seizes them.

Lots of steady income. No fuss. Live well.

Come on in! Come see Mama. I am the owner. Of every saloon and spa in town. Good times, guaranteed.

War and Peace. Seen them all. Weathered them all. Come out of multiple crashes, unharmed and charming phoenix (of course, lots of cosmetic surgery behind).

I am an aged Miss Saigon. I hate men. But love their money. What can I say. It’s the flow and fluidity, embedded in our nation’s struggle and reflected in literature:” Thuy Kieu”, sells everything for the greater good, for filialism, for patriotism, for every “ism” out there, except for my individualism. Yet, out of my bosom, comes a whole new race, mixed races.

Every decade or so, we come across a new variation and version of the Ponzi scheme: old people – instead of being on cruise trips – end up being in court, to deliberate and persecute perpetrators, whether it’s a Christian radio host who promises of a new Kingdom or a Credit Suisse/Archegos guy (also a Christian who put all hustlers to shame – undeniably looking legit and at times, delivering high-yield (who wouldn’t want it).

Then came the collapse, and jail time. Only next time, it’s Ponzi 2.0. behind the veil of respectability again, with Evil lurking (see Steven King’s footnotes).

They will keep trying as long as there are still “sheep” out there.

So far, as I can recall, we have put the Worldcom guy (Bernie) away, then Madoff, the Penn State/Michigan defensive football and gymnastics, respectively. Then of course, the Boston, France and Baptist clergy.

Such is the nature of our collective denial. Like covid deaths (5 million – talking about denial). Or climate change disasters and deaths (someone else’s – not us). Swept under the rug, or down into the bottom of our consciousness.

The truth is: we are processing grief – whether it’s on campus or online (suicide on campus, shooting on campus etc..).

In my younger days, I proccessed grief too (my family torn apart, my nation torn to pieces. My slate got wiped clean like first New England snow). I was a walking dead – suppressed memory – on campus (working the night shift, trying to get to Communication classes during the day). Superman! (classmates from the football team slept through too).

I blocked out my immediate past, as if it hadn’t happened. What war? What country? I did not know nothing about nothing. In denial. In grief.

Then it creeps up. When the mask is down. In between “shows”. Friends did not know or did not care (all-white campus: are you from North Vietnam?). Just play the game, a role, like in a Shakespearean script.

We were “born to run” baby, Sister golden hair! “and I can’t live without you, can you see it in my eyes?”

Just write it off. No climate change (as I write this, there were thunders and lightening outside….that cut off the internet). Good riddle. No inflation, no covid?. Just a day-to-day existence, with lots of weight at the gym and illness in the head. Pain-killers please!

The problem with Ponzi scheme is – those who don’t participate fear of missing out, those “in the know” think they have it made, until… Mind you, when zooming out in an infinite long shot, we’re all in this together: a cosmic Ponzi, where time is our invention and each minute, albeit precious, fools us into believing we have it made (someone have just stolen my kid’s bike – humanity have it made? a few months back, it was her scooter. )

I am OK, you are OK.? So let’s get on with it. Chinese cheap goods. 2 degrees Celsius warmer? It’s for someone else (our offspring) to worry about.

After all, we’re not the Special Envoy to deal with huge issues in Europe. We’re day-to-day hand-to-mouth folks, in perpetual denial (oh, John John did not show up here, perhaps later tonight at the Stones concert). No wonder, from the get-go, we already put our blinders on, refusing to see Ponzi (even Pope or President) for who he is. Can’t beat him, might as well join him, preferably the sooner the better – for fear of missing out – scarcity is also relative – or before the bottom fell off.

In denial, we live only a half-dose of reality. In facing reality squarely in the eyes, we live in full, the whole enchilada – spicy, ugly and dangerously. Some like it hot!

Booster 1, booster 2 etc…

EcoPeace for the Middle East.

Water thieves, catalytic-convertor thieves…

I.D. theft, Honda Civic theft…

Evangelical fired, evangelical re-hired…

Greta giving up on politicians, politicians giving up on Trump, Trump giving up on Twitter, Twitter giving up on Trump…

Just a tip of the iceberg today. And it’s only Wednesday, our new Friday.

No Time to Die….living on borrowed time, on borrowed money, and certainly, on borrowed bed (Airbnb).

Maybe better days are behind us. Maybe we should start smoking (don’t inhale) and start “a la recherche du temps perdus” (the auto complete can’t even “speak” French). It tries to fix it up as “a la research du temp Perdue”. Heck! I don’t go for Perdue Farm today. No Opioid or chicken.

I have blogged on this topic of humanity vs machine, and how hard we have to fight to stay in place.

Yet, it is taking over. Not all at once. Just one at a time. And of course, time is not on our side.

Now we can blame the algorithm for all the ills: amplifying our divide, inundating us with misinformation about voting and vaccines, and of course, recommending ill-suited friends on facebook.

Yes. Finally. Never been my fault. It’s all facebook’s fault (at least, the whistleblower says so).

No one is responsible for societal ills, except for society itself.

Science, technology and society. BTW, hologram was introduced more than 40 years ago. Now it might take off. That way, we can tele transport some images of me to you. Blame it. Not me. I might be a glitch. My parents’ faults. My schools’ faults. My spouses’ faults.

Leave me to take in my kids’ blame. Now that’s mine entirely. No way out. No avoidance. How our kids turn out, 100% our fault. Face the future. Face the fact. Face the re-Flection on the mirror. Who do you see? Case closed.

Then, I see Greta giving up on politicians. Brazilian politicians giving up on their president, politician of course. Republican politicians giving up (and receiving funds, supposedly to Trump’s new social media site) on each other, Dems almost giving up on one another during the Build Back de-Bacle.

The “giving up” movement almost over-shadowed the “giving-back” movement. The wealthiest American saw their wealth 70% richer. They could never ever give up, and never ever – to a certain extent – give back. Don’t know where/how to start. In Katie Couric’s phrase “willful misinterpretation”, billionaires perhaps honestly can face the studio camera and claim “willful ignorance” about current dilemma. Once the world goes to hell, where the hell can they spend their money? In hell – since where there is crisis, there is opportunity – the Chinese are way ahead of the curve: they got you covered on that too (currency in Hell). For us, the living, water, vaccines (booster no 2 after another six months) and clean air are our currency.

I resent those who tell me how to live, who to become and what path to take.

After all, I grew up in a household with 4 adults – in shifts – just for that: do’s and don’t’s.

Further up, all those “institutions” (tuition and instructors) from French lycée to Mandarin-oriented HS, from “secular” campus to secluded seminary, supposedly churned out graduates for the betterment of society. Yet, I learned from them conflicting accounts of what life is, meant to be and not could be.

Mind you. I tried. You can tell from age 4 on up, I have (and now, everyday first-day of school of life e.g. existential threats which, when I was back in school, hadn’t even existed: climate change, covid and A.I./misinformation.

This propaganda, that propaganda (during the Vietnam War, one supposedly dead man, Nguyen Van Be, held up a pamphlet whose picture showed him died for the North. In the South, I walked downstairs still in pajamas, straight into my own wake – with classmates held up a local newspaper showing I had committed suicide due to an IBM (grading) machine malfunction – today’s equivalent of those Dominion lawsuits.

How could it possibly fail me- a straight A’s in 1974 while others, B’s and C’s candidates been out celebrating.!

Then no one seemed to be responsible when shit hit the fan.

They closed the door (of the Embassy). They started the engine (of the tug boat). They ran away (honourable exit).

Blame it on Kissinger. Blame it on the Plumbers (Watergate). Blame it on Thieu, or Ky.

Blame it on anyone, except ourselves, the collective selves, byproducts of centuries of push/pull & wishes and whims forces (in Good Morning, Vietnam: our Armed Forces D.J. found himself “dating” the whole village – buying movies tickets for a long line of chaperons). We own the mistakes all right, but diffused .

Since we’re not quite “us”, it’s easier to shift and spread the blames around: from “I” to “We”: we ‘re the victims. War victims. Pirate victims. Consumerism victims (opioid?), of ill-suited match-making and match.com, of evangelism and baptism, of Ponzi scheme and facebook algorithm.

Blame it on China. Blame it on cheap goods, high-price of oil, but never on our addiction to anything and everything (for a kick).

Meanwhile, the commons are in ruin: roads and railways, bridges and airports, supply chain shut down and slow down. One never misses the well until it is dried up ( just wait up until Chinese goods’ slow-boiled pricing pulls a bait-and-switch on us – now that we’re all hooked on cheap products – we, the global community, pay either way, if not already- as we observe the climate change trajectory.)

I resent others for telling me how to live my life. After a few pokes, these self-appointed life coaches walked away in frustration “be that way then”, leaving me with lost ground and lost momentum i.e. my opportunity cost . Talking about a double self-sabotage: not being assertive up front (to set boundaries) only to pay out at the back end (of those dysfunctional and toxic relationships).

Some of us (prodigal son) learn by trial and error (the hard way). Others, by deductive or inductive reasoning. Most by osmosis or hand-me-down (my Dad is a high-ranking official – how about yours?). Each has different learning style and arrives at various points in the path (or stages of grief). Educators know not all students respond well to audio/visual stimuli. Some are leaning more toward kinetic or tactile (esp. autistic ones). Not youtube but youtouch. We are un-classifiable and un-boxable, with different dot-connecting and tech adoption rate. Backward nations still implement rote-learning, not internalizing (like our driving second-nature, stop at stop signs, no matter what).

Each possesses a percentage of those 19,599 genes that set us apart. Spindle cells shared with apes and whales. The gift of gag.

Find that sweet spot. Share it: our source code. Our fingerprints and footprints. Our originality and creativity. I like what Tina Turner says each time she performs “Proud Mary”, it’s different: she evolves on stage with audience feedback loop.

Or else, fans would not want to buy concert tickets. And what’s the point of dressing up differently, if we all ordered from algorithm-driven Amazon-prime (with current logistical problems, Santa might not arrive in time for Christmas). Imagine a Halloween with cookie-cutter “aliens” trick-or-treating.

Lesson 1: be (not the Paul Anka’s Papa type of “each day he lives through me” crap – own yourself)

Lesson 2: die each day (prerequisite to be born anew)

Lesson 3: rinse and repeat

Unlike the Beatles’ Yesterday (I am half a man I used to be), we’re not living a half-life effect of chemistry. Our bodies process less than our calories intake (twice the size I used to have). We exploit less than what we were initially given (brain cells and DNA genes) i.e.regressing, from dumb to dumber (as the internet and our understanding of the universe expand more and more). Life has to be more than just the maintenance of it.

Albert Schweitzer once lamented the worst thing in life is wasted talent ; unused or under-exploited.

Given the existential challenges of covid and climate change, our collective self needs to rise to the occasion (e.g. vaccines for children).

United (in diversity) we can face any storm. But first, realising who we are (uniquely) that brings values to the table. The gay and the straight, the darker skin and the lighter skin, the tall and the short. We need the brain power for network effect and to scale. We don’t need a repeat of failure (uniformity mistaken for unity) i.e. keep repeating the same theme, the same team, all the while hoping for a different result. Group think, with echo chamber; albeit sounds comforting (Kumbaya) at first i.e. harmony, strength in numbers, hunting in pack etc.. but when “shit hit the fan”, the whole group, party or administration crumbled or dissolved. The Kennedy’s team was purported to be the Best and Brightest. So was Bush’s. Then we got Vietnam and Iraq. Next mistake won’t be as easy to get over.

For once, go for self-validation not self-recrimination or self-sabotage. Then, perhaps, Earth can get on its business of self-correcting and self-healing (fixing climate change by inducing covid, just to push a point). Given the self-righting feature of the universe, our existence and contribution seem trivial and minutia, scale wise (just because the Church said the Earth was flat …). Now we know (ask Shatner, our primary source).

Realizing our short-coming is the first step to self-improvement: Church back to its Confessional Booth, and Scientists back to the drawing board: observation-hypothesis-test-conclusion-re-evaluation. Then and only then should we direct our attention slightly toward others (situation awareness), learning from their “Medieval” mistakes and/or cheering them on on their “scientific” findings. But, don’t interfere or intervene.

Empathy trumps judgment (Jesus himself concentrates on drawing s/t on the ground while Taliban-like crowd just wanted to “stone the bitch” back to Stone Age). Without context and nuance, it’s hard to make a case from initial observation. We dismiss others in a blink of an eye (e.g. homeless folks, non-Catholics, White evangelicals etc..). The less we want to invest in understanding others, the more divided our society becomes.

I once grew up in a family with four adults who, in shifts, told me what to do, what foreign language to spend money on (French was a waste, in hindsight, post Dien Bien Phu era). I was spent….my energy depleted from rebelling and resenting. When I first arrived in the US, well-meaning people even wanted to re-name me – inadvertently invading my space!(as we have all found out, those who speak a foreign language ended up winning the war over the US who speaks the Queen’s English).

American live by privacy, individuality and personal data e.g. social security, credit card, bank account and zip code. Vietnamese sense of self is a collective one: extended clan and village, pushing canons uphill (Dien Bien Phu) or living in underground tunnel (Cu Chi). One’s identity is tied to clan, caste or strategic coupling (college-educated). Harmony is key, and that leads to groupthink. Those Luddites who objected to the 1974 IBM grading machine perhaps saw their nepotism and favouritism enterprise went to the ground, hence, trumped up the misinformation that triggered my “wake”.

The more “naturalised” a refugee becomes, the more he/she own his/her mistakes, more accountable albeit at various speed of self-discovery, self-awareness/improvement and tolerance (for risks/ambivalence). The all-knowing (though we see as “through the mirror darkly”) respects our self-realization (and free will) that some parts are alterable and some not. For our un-alterable part, we need patience, humility and self-compassion. Life is a long journey of getting to know me (self-hacking). Still I prefer doing it comfortably in my own chair, in my own time and term.

Last lesson: BE. Let the sum of my heartbeats to their own drum. Let it be. Children of a lesser parent. So what.

You’ll get there, that I am sure. When time runs out.

Others will gladly take your places. Vacancy. space. possession. Life is like a big hotel, where no one can claim monopoly: it’s my domain my throne.

We are around just for the ride yet we think/act as if we were made of teflon: like Cher like Mick. “You can’t always get what you want…” hear that, x President Trump!

America, land of the free, and of the detail-obsessed. Lots of rules, written and unwritten, spoken and unspoken.

Low prices? No problem. Convenience? No problem. Values? No problem. Buy now, spend now, consume now (The future will take care of itself.) No time to die. No time to think. No time to vote. And of course no time for the soul. Just muscles and money. Texas Strong. Money talk.

If you got no money to invest (in some sorts of Ponzi-scheme) then, give me your time; I will monetize for you. Voila! Ghost work! Crowd source. Egyptian King and the Mechanical Turk. Spin that wheel. Machine learning taught by man to replace man.

If asked, you’ll get tons of answers, first Fortune-cookies wisdom, and now online. Lots of wisdom, podcast and broadcast. From choosing your friends to investing wisely … . 7 Billions of self-interest self-indulgence definitely will collide = ending in a lose-lose proposition at scale, like covid and climate change.

Pedagogy of the oppressed. Give me your time, your expertise, your firstborn, your creativity. your content and your contact. While at it, we’ll take your bedrooms and your backseats. Bam, the sharing economy. purportedly seeks to democratize access, yet ends up exploiting the commons (while pocket the profit! Capitalism at its ugliest apex).

Don’t know what to do with your time? No problem. Don’t know where you’re going? No problem. No soul? No problem. The age of muscles over mind, money over morality. No memory? Now, we do have a problem.

On a fly, I just booked it. Screw it, let’s do it.

It’s now or never. It’s autumn. It’s Vermont and New Hampshire. It’s the leaves, the times of our lives.

I know those who sang “forever young” are now dead. Delusion. Self-deception.

We, human, carry a capacity to lie to ourselves. That everything is gonna be OK. That the end comes, certainly, but always for others, not us.

Wait for the booster shot. Wait for better travel condition. Wait for airline promotion. Wait, wait, wait.

It’s now or never. Elvis lives on. Artists live on. But only in our hearts and memories.

New ones come along. New opportunities, but mostly, for others.

I don’t have the luxury. I call a spade a spade. No distortion. No deception.

I have grown older. I have seen people and myself fade. New actors on the scene. Old scripts.

Even the virus got its new variant. Delta variant.

Dressed to kill. And to a wider implication, dressed to scare. The pandemic panic.

We’re all scared: sipping water in between masked/unmasked on airplane.

Air travel has never been like this. But I am grateful that I do it at all since Feb of 2020.

Stuck at home. Inside the four walls. Imagination runs wild. But my body, which houses the brain, where imagination originates, stays in place. Stuck.

Software vs hardware. Brain vs body. Virtual vs real.

Now all I want is to feel the rustling of the wind, the falling of the leaves and myself inside those Vermont pictures, no photoshops.

Instant gratification without instagram.

To reclaim what is ours for ourselves. Not for Mark, for facebook, for others.

Us. Out there. Nature. Where we belong. Where we once were familiar with. Where it stings, it is cold, hot and lukewarm. But it’s real. It’s ours, not copyrighted by youtube, facebook, google and/or Apple.

Between tech and virus. Isn’t it time for us to grab an opportunity to step on the falling leaves, to feel the rustle of the Northeast wind and to see some smiling faces that have since carried worrying wrinkles and saddened eyes. It’s time to feel, once again, like human that we are, or to be more truthful, once were.

Stripped off nobility, You can still have dignity. That’s the difference. You and I have the latter while very few inherited the former. Not even Bezos or Zuckerberg. They might be able to “buy” the title “Sir” (Charlie Chaplin, Elton John and Paul McCartney earned it by their talents and fame). Once again, I scanned a David Brooks’ NYT column. He touched on the price tag of 4T, a not-too-arbitrary number – enough to re-gain respect for the working people of America. Call it a reparation fee, or a fine the top tier for indulging in Capitalism excess at the expenses of common people, whom we live with, who serve us Starbucks and Big Macs and turn around to be consumers of goods we produce. Makes the world go round.

Henry Ford used to pay his workers a wage that , in his opinion, allowed them to afford the very automobiles they were assembling. Today’s inflation and supply chain problems, off shoring and vaccine inequity ; a confluent that put us in an untenable situation: to re-shore some jobs (Intel investment). That is, if our Sinema from AZ would open the gate (all bottle neck through Manchin and her/him).

Meanwhile, here in Austin, people tossed molotov cocktail to the Democratic HQ in the hope of igniting further unrest (Who said President Johnson can R.I.P.). They used to burn themselves at the steps of the Pentagon in his days. At least, the only person harmed was themselves. Today, the unvaccinated and unmasked inadvertently elect to become covid carriers. A Jim-Jones suicide pact, without Jim Jones.. Just like the 9/11 terrorists, only exponentially. Currently we are at 700,000 deaths and counting. By the time we are done with boosters, vaccines for kids and the conversion of the unvaxx, we might be at the 1- million milestone.

Preventable deaths.

Preventable drama and subpoena ( Oath Keepers – whose leader, incidentally, wears an eye patch, a mirror image of the Taliban hardline minister), preventable government shut-down (now pushed to December- kick that can down further down the road) and preventable decline in infrastructure, climate and health care.

We are due for a course correction. Every four decades or so. Gas lines are long in Britain (back in the early 70’s, it’s the US). The top 1 per centers have their tax overdue (un avoidable with re-shoring of jobs and evaded taxes now that Pandora file wide opened). May workers find jobs, good jobs once again. Not gigs. Jobs. With a smile on their faces and paychecks in hand. Not “ghost work” (a merge between pro-sumersim and automation) that might help consumers catch up with inflation, but it eliminates many jobs (self-serve at groceries stores and Walmart).

We don’t wait to be re-born into nobility. We start today. With our own hands and our heads. Just look at the Haitians, the Afghans, the El Salvadorans. Why would they want to come? Hope is stronger than fear. They might come wading through waters but someday, they will be driving. Maybe not as groovy as in Motown days. But they will find a way to re-invent themselves, to prove not to the world, but to themselves, that given an opportunity, they can preserve and protect their dignity. Wait not for funerals or weddings. No Jimmy Hendrix (funeral) nor Romanov (wedding). Just be Happy Today. With their god-given talent, dedication and perseverance. That’s dignity. That’s divinity. To live productive lives and be buried under God’s Earth. Good Earth.

We have put so much emphasis on progress at the expense of tradition. We forget we used to respect the elders, open the door for the handicaps, protect our young and punish the unjust. Now, it seems like we worship a new neon god, the machine, technique – hard and soft wares. We are talking about a bail out. Too big to fail. But not 2008. This bail-out is the Mother of them all: the bail out of man’s dignity, not banking industry. Machines took away jobs (even picking grapes besides corn). Machines will have to pay us some compensation: so we can just sit, consume “misinformation” and other assembly-line products. Will have to teach them to be more “human” and more “socially responsible” (instead of the other way around: Un Temp Moderne, Chaplinesque – who – after punching out – still see work everywhere he went).

Maybe 4 Trillion is still cheap. Heck, Afghanistan will cost us 6.5 Trillion, when all said and done. How about American back to (trade) school, back to work (rural broadband), and putting transparency and democracy back in the Constitution and the voting booth. Give me a “d”. Give me an “i”…..you know the drill. We’re only as good as our next door neighbor. When his house burned, or Northern California forest burned – or oil spill in the Gulf or Huntington Beach (weakest link) we all get burned. Same with young man who tossed the Molotov cocktail, the Oath Keepers, An eye for an eye…Kansas or Kabul?

It’s one thing if we were royalty. But we are not (all got our humble start as Boat People, Mayflower that was). And Dorothy, you are no longer in Kansas. It begins to feel like Kabul. So Goodbye Yellow Brick Road… plenty like me to be found… that spark of divinity deserves more dignity, right now, while living, not when he/she is dead, by covid or what not. Who would be around to hear “don’t speak ill of the dead”, while he/she can appreciate a raise or a paycheck. You should have seen the smile on that homeless lady’s face when she saw it’s a ten (I split, since I had found a twenty). Money talks

“Mongrels who ain’t got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you”

I was conceived and designed to be the tallest. Everyone wanted a piece of me (and my twin): taking pictures, walking a tight wire from one end to the other; reserving tables at Windows on the World (Carpenters’ Top of the world on muzak) then using commercial jet liners to hit me and my twin, to burn and bury us. Inadvertently turning us into a mass-grave complex complete with waterfalls, shaded tree lines and of course, WTC memorial. Even scrap metal (what’s left of us) were salvaged to build the USS New York or sold to BaoSteel.

On our last day, we saw the best and the worst: footsteps going down and footsteps going up (Emergency workers’). People ignored people, people helping people and media people covering people in trouble.

Who would have thought! There will never be a Tuesday in September that comes close. An otherwise crystal clear day, when people was about to take a post-summer vacation (nicer weather), or back from a vacation and people who had their eye glasses upgraded (as in the case of the WoW restaurant owner). People attended seminar (or too lazy to attend it hence survived like the owner). Thousands of little everyday decisions: attending an Elementary reading session (Potus), complying to Oracle’s business trip (Todd Beamer). Travelers crisscrossed the country on thousands of flights. Big country. America the Beautiful.

Meanwhile, there were a total of 19 of them. Laying low. Cell by cell of sleepers. Ordering pizzas and call girls. Attending flight schools, obtaining driving licenses, renting mailboxes and buying first class tickets, all financed from our oil addiction, sitting near the cockpits. Near the flight control gears. Avoid detection, avoid rousing suspicion. Early in the month, they took a surveillance flight, to finalize their fourth target: the Capitol or the White House, with made up minds about me and my twin. After all, we were the tallest, most iconic and visible landmarks hence top-mind.

Passengers were subdued, planes commandeered to become weapons of mass destruction. Imagine just a truck plowing through a crowd, much less a plane – full of jet fuel (intended for an East-West coast route). Sit back, and relax. Right! Attention: you have been hi-jacked. We will deplane you as soon as possible (when and if our ransom demands are met – we would have thought! ( before that, it would have understood just that way).

When shit hit the fan, all hell broke loosed: elevator shafts stuck, people jumped, screamed, hid under desk or ran down the stairs (leaving phones behind). A few stopped to help a lady in the wheel chairs, down 46 flights, to safely be driven away in an emergency vehicle. FD Chaplain ran up, along with NYC fire crew. As portrayed by Nicholas Cage, many of whom were stuck when the towers crumbled, never to be found. Others got recovered and rescued from the rubble. All-hands were on deck. Lives shattered, dreams delayed and loved ones missing.

Have you seen him? Here is her picture. Photos of the most wanted plastered next to photos of the most loved. On fences and posts. Me and my twin, or what were left of us, turned make-shift information centres. Widows of the world, once always looking-at the rest. Now, the rest looking at us.

It’s been twenty years since. On that spot, sprung life, trees and water falls. Tower and tickets (parking). “People bowl and pray, to the neon god they made”.

Me. “my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence”.

I stay in awe at the depth of depravity. Inspired by the height of heroism. How can people who did not look at each other in the eyes (not when you are in a crowded elevator, whose Sliding Door slammed automatic, just like in the movie – at shoulders touching, riding up and down 110 stories with frequent stops), turned in an instant to be so “humanly” with each other. People hurting people. People helping people. Who are we to trust.

Free will is elusive. O’ Neill was with the Bureau, retired and took a job as Towers’ security chief. Only to die on the job at the depth of that destruction. Cause? Our failure of the imagination (besides failure of intelligence). Ten years later, it took an Executive order to take out Bin Laden. The job of the President of the United States, ranging from reading a book to school children in Sarasota, FL to ordering “Take the shot” at the compound in Pakistan (via satellite feed).

After id the body, perhaps taken a photo, the SEAL team bagged their acquired target (Geronimo) and dropped it mid air in remembrance of those WTC falling men. Eye for an eye, as well versed by today’s Taliban hardline leader. After all, many WTC workers jumped heads first – straight down – to escape certain death in 2200 degrees boiler rooms. A high-speed shutter camera captured their free falling, looked as if they were suspended at mid air without a bungee rope.

The emergency stairways that day saw many hurried footprints. Mostly heading down. A few up. Then everything imploded. Incinerated. Burned and buried. As if to archeologically cover our shame and sorrow.

No longer business as usual over a cup of coffee at the Today Show, or on Wall Street with ticker tape running, traders shouting and elevators humming; people hurrying past , divorcing or returning to each other’s arms ( after a long commute.)

Instead, we saw a beginning out of that end, venturing into the Unknown unknown, from us, the known Towers. The famous ones that our French climber walked his tight wire briskly in exhibition and with pride. Human free will. Human free fall. Human most dangerous gift from God: to choose between good or evil. From the Garden (Gethsemane) to Ground Zero; to sell out for 30 pieces of silver or to give one’s life for others.

We’d love to stay around a little bit longer, but time was up. Being the tallest and all, we once were the talk of the town… everyone wanted a piece of us.

In the end, who else can we be, identifiable and predictable, but ourselves: conceived in a womb, at the intersect of two people, who themselves were products of billions of permutations and years of evolution.

David Brooks opined that we – human being – have yet made much progress on self-awareness. We can re-frame our selected narratives. But self-awareness? Illusion!

In short, we are pretty much programmed, like a garage light automatically flipped on as motion is detected.

My brother doesn’t eat beef or fish. It’s not in our family’s menu or to his liking – a chicken & egg riddle i.e. my mom did not cook them knowing his preferences, or because my mom did not offer them, that led to his habitual avoidance. Perhaps it’s his mental imprints during the 1945 famine up North (VN), where cows and fish were rarities.

At age 82, he doesn’t fly and hasn’t been for quite a while.

His limited self-awareness clusters around fear of flying and of eating fish.

By now, we’ve figured out what we don’t like (negative trumps positive). Once burned twice shy, after numerous mistakes in choosing a mate, a major or a mascot (ITT students got some loan cancelled. Lucky for them).

Self-deceit lasts as long as the honey moon with one’s self; after that, it’s we whom we have to live with 24/7 (no one else to blame ). If in retirement, we learn quick about intrinsic values vs individual contributions e.g. babysitting grandchildren, that there is only one “you”. In and of ourselves we remain Numero Uno. So, do the world a favour: be yourself always. This makes it easy to I.D, easy to predict.

Identified victim No 1 of 9/11 was Father Mychal Judge, NYC Fire Department Chaplain. A Franciscan. First to the other side to meet and greet the next 3000, among them falling men and WTC jumpers. Who else? Born to run- as a fire fighters’ chaplain – against the crowd, up the stairs.

With a heightened self-awareness, he was aware of his higher calling, what he was made-of and what his vocation demanded of him. Father Judge was meant to be, for that notable end. It’s us who are unsure, easily swayed: “buy this, buy that…then you’ll become this and that” , easy marks for Con America.

For me, I learned an awful lot at an early age: picking up broken pieces of rice bowls under our dining table (during my parent’s fights). I learned people don’t get along 100% of the time. I learned people were made of different genes, hence different temperament and strength ( weakness not withstanding). I learned conflict is a big part of life (heck, I am a refugee) and it does occasionally erupt, like volcanos. Someone said we’re either in a pre or post-war era.

So I developed humility and compassion, emotional and social intelligence, the hard way; under the shadows of four adults who rushed out every morning in search for food (hunters/gatherers). I saw both their shame and social grace. Who else could they be, besides themselves. Me, who else can I be? Father Judge, who else could he be, what ending was he to have, on that fateful morning. After all, ships aren’t built to dock in a harbor forever and fire fighters are to run toward, not away from burned buildings.

They say “Pick your battle”. As if we had choices. Often times, it’s the battle that comes to us, given who we are, where we were situated and from: born at the intersect of two different people (even in an arranged marriage of two equals as in my parent’s case).

Back to the contrast between my brother and I. I enjoy a hamburger and an occasional glass of wine. He wouldn’t touch either one. And guess how I was able to get back and forth to/from Vietnam? Who else can I be, once under our dinning table in my youth then to be up in the air using those Boeing arm-rests for dinning support!

After a long time away, I was back to watch the same Vung-Tau sky, once dotted with 7th-fleet war ships. In its absence, I ended up projecting out and adopting a 7th-fleet like saviour/guilt complex for coping mechanism.

We, geography seekers (they have just discovered a footprint of 23,000 years in New Mexico), are so outward-focused at the expenses of our interior space; only to come home and discover ourselves (our own worst enemy) for the first time. As David Brooks observed, self-awareness eludes us and our quest for it, an illusion. Good for those who in the end realised who they really were and were made of (intrinsic worth).

Numero Uno victim of 9/11 sermonised and embodied his message til the end, in quite contrast to the 19 , who wanted whatever they had been told (via rote learning) so bad to voluntarily give up their lives for it. Their acts of terror triggered a war of a different dimension (action, reaction and inaction) killing our Fire Department cleric, with face toward the Sun and ending with OBL, their chief strategist, with body disposed of in the thick of the night.

Identifiable with predictable end.

Who else!