Thang Nguyen 555

Whether the incident was personal or professional, the past – our past – will show up to haunt us. One mistake is all it takes. In 8th grade, I took up Hapkido ( a cross-over from Aikido and Tai Kwan Do): a lot of arm twisting and jumping/kicking. I was just following a trend which my classmates started: some were into Judo, others Tai Kwan Do.

A month into my Hapkido practice, a visiting Red-belt stopped by the studio. He held up high a piece of wood and had all the students – white-belts like myself included – line up to run, jump and kick it. When it was my turn, he – for some reason – moved the target in mid-flight. I was aiming for it high, just to find myself landed flat on my arm.

That whole summer, I suffered ( people even wanted to sign on it to further my shame). Those of you who had ever broken a bone, know how painful the experience was. I could not ride the motorcycle anywhere. Homebound, I turned reflective and retrospective. I picked up an English phrase book and worked on it from cover to cover. Most importantly, I had a chance to quiet down (all the youthful energy subsided – no guitar of course) and saw ahead of the curve. I knew then and I know now, each of us is the sum of our choices.

Some will always be risk-averse. Others, risk-driven.

The former will work in a bank, the later with a cash-trap start-up. For instance, one of my classmates was already on a plane out of Saigon on its last day. He wasn’t sure it could take off, given its over-capacity due to the evacuation chaos. He then made a fateful choice to jump off it.

Years later, he saw an iron gate about to fall on some children. Once again, he reflexively ran to it just to end up paralyzed from the waist down. The end of the story was that he finally got to San Diego – 43 years since that plane trip he could have taken had he closed his eyes and said a Hail Mary.

One of the most fateful choices we have ever made would be that of choosing a mate.

How it turns out – will we be rejected etc.. Professionally, being in Sales is one of the most frightening undertakings: to have that internal dialogue to face each day, filled with rejections.

Yet it’s the most rewarding of careers, since life and work are full of risks. Scott Peck began his book ( The Road Less Traveled) with “Life is difficult”. Always a fork on the road with unseen potentials and problems. Yet we have made it thus far, albeit broken bones but not spirit.

Those who lived through a divorce or a death in the family learn to cope and move on.

Life is difficult. A sum of all our choices and circumstances. A propensity for risk-taking might not be all that bad. Bitter-taste life yet lived in full. Not missing a beat. I missed that one kick and learned since not to miss any opportunity.  I ended up working out on that left arm during therapy and working on my English phrasing. One of my favorites: In crisis, there is opportunity. Wait a minute, it’s Chinese, isn’t it.

History sometimes comes in full circle. 1968 gave us the battle at Hue, but also at the picket line in Chicago. It’s been 50 years and it might as well be yesterday. My class 68 marked a rough and interrupted start – hell, the US Embassy in Saigon couldn’t even get themselves together for a work day, much less school children like ourselves. Then when my classmates were about to graduate in 1975, the US called it quit. Just like that: choppers ferrying Ambassador Martin and the US flag out while defense contractor’s barges pulling up their anchors. “Where are you going?”. “Out of here” was the reply.

Back to 68. VC’s in black pajamas and sandals trying to outrun the local police.

I saw two of them outside my window. Bang, bang.

Heads down! (but I could not help looking up and out)

Later, when B/W documentary showed the defense of the Embassy, we watched the US Marines guarding it, flak jackets and M-16’s, clearing inch by inch of the US sovereign ground (the VC’s were charging in and climbing over the high walls in a suicide mission). Meanwhile, protesters charging the Chicago convention center, at about the same time the Five-o-clock follies reports kept churning out optimistic assessment of the war.

Until Walter Cronkite decided to step out of his anchor desk to see for himself.

Johnson later said, “If I lost Cronkite, I have lost America”.

Stalemate. Decent interval. Peace with honor. Resignation not without shame.

Peace-signs farewell from Air Force One helicopter (Nixon).

Number 3 Ford stepped up to the plate, sworn on the Bible to uphold the Law.

America finally woke up from a long nightmare (Watergate) but mine had just begun. So were a few hundred thousand refugees. My sister’s kids fared pretty well, since they did not carry the burden of guilt and shame.

But we should, for all the lies we have told, the shameful acts we have committed (My Lai).

Until recently, the nation honored John McCain who was “guest” at Hanoi Hilton.

Jane Fonda herself expressed guilt over her younger years. And the John Kerry of the world turn their backs on history, selling memoirs and memorabilia. We were young once, in 1968.

A year in delay is a year one too many. There was a dent, a rift and a hole in that calendar. As if the gods have rifted it out of our human timeline. President Johnson decided not to seek reelection – and grew his hair instead.

Lady Bird tended her Austin garden while Jackie accepted a millionaire’s proposal.

Life went on for some, but for others, whose lives were lost, hopes dimmed, 68 was quite a scar. What were we doing back then and there, at the Capital of South VN and Chicago?

I can still smell the tear gas. Moist eyes and fainted hearts. Optimism crushed and dead bodies exhumed and exposed (a few thousand were buried in Hue). The propaganda TV kept playing its underlying sound track (Exodus) while its 16mm camera slowly panned across Hue’s mass graves. May they rest in peace and God shed some light on the situation, 50 years on. I did not know better, then or now.

I must be crazy and you crazier to touch on these subjects in today’s environment. In today’s environment, one must talk apps, talk data, talk of the town: anti-aging not anti-war, and anti-immigrant not anti-growth.

Charlie Wilson of GM once answered a congressional inquiry this way, ” what good for GM is good for the country”. In other words, we are inter-linked on a floating planet. In a blink of an eye, things that once were, could no longer be.

Post-war rebuilt was a result of  paying forward: Japan and Europe are strong today thanks to US tax payers who chipped in. Selective memory aside, people back then acted out of conscience and compassion: conscience that took a stand, and compassion that lent a hand.

Fast forward to today’s digital environment, with surround sound and artificial intelligence, we forgot that once upon a time, in America, existed bootleggers, dirty cops and politicians, union bosses and mafia bosses.

America is a beauty parlor that bleaches people of colors who came in late. Instead of ICE, we should have ice-cream to greet kids who cross the borders. Send in the clown. Re-ignite that dormant conscience and deeply fatigued compassion. Make it once again, in America, the land that I love, where people would risk their lives and livelihood to come and build new ones.

I drove by Hope, Arkansas last week. A man used to live there, in a house facing the railroad tracks. Out of a seemingly hopeless town rose a leader of the free world.

If Bill of Hope can make it, so can you and I. So can those new immigrants and infants. Together we shall overcome, any adversity and any obstacle. Pain ain’t hurt. Separation does. If not for conscience or social contract, then have compassion. May His Mercy endure forever.

This morning, I learned that five more had died in a chase at the would-be Trump wall.

The other day, in 100-degrees heat, I saw a homeless lady standing under a tree wearing everything she had on her. They could all be my mother back in 1975, when she was left behind in a PA refugee camp all by herself. Only that it was September cold, in a military barrack. Meanwhile, all three of us, sons and daughter (with 4 of her kids) got sponsored away into the four winds: divided and defeated. We were in a hurry to unburden ourselves from the Federal system, after three previous stops: Subic Bay, Wake Island and then Camp Indian Town Gap.

I understand separation well. Especially when it comes to family separation.

And mostly, when it is separation due to immigration.

I was 19. Debut as janitor by night, freshman by day. Yet I still cried my heart out. For being so helpless. For self-recrimination and for survivor’s guilt.  We could not defend South VN. We could not hold our families together ( refugee sponsorships were voluntary, not a Congressional or Executive Order). And I could not work myself up to fill my first grocery card on my $150 government one-time allowance while my mom, retired teacher and fellow escapee, being left behind in the camp without any hope of resettlement (reminds me of team picking, when the opposite captain decides who to be on his/her team: survival of the seemingly fittest). When in graduate school, I was quite motivated to be among the first few to fly back and help fellow Boat People in their plight and resettlement process.

I still held dear to my mom’s discharge paper, dated a few months after all of us had been relocated into neighboring North Eastern  States. Despite the now “happy ending”, our refugee tale has never been told in detail. We “‘bragged” on facebook about my sister’s 80th birthday, with bleached-teeth kids – but not dark tales, model minorities but not about betrayal and skin-shedding, very much like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks ( rack-focus shot from a perfect middle-class green lawn, but once revealed- full of insects and bugs underneath).

My Dad joined us a decade later (1985) while my Mom got picked up after much deliberation by a Jewish D.C. lawyer consortium to reunite with my sister and her family.

I meanwhile worked my way through each Student Union bathroom (where Bruce Springsteen once made a stop to grace us with “Born to run”) at night, and each course reading assignment by day. The campus Jesus freaks figured me for an easy sale, dialectically worked their rehearsed pitch about heaven-hell, Yes-No proposition on how to get to heaven stair-less-ly . To date,  no Christian friends ever asked and learned about my hidden secret: I brave myself enough to ask for my name be put in a separate file, with my newly issued Social Security, so I wouldn’t be a burden to our band of nine, 4 of whom children. Self-separation was painful, gut-wrenching and necessary for survival.

I was that immigrant child that had been “forced” to come of age in a hurry, to re-learn what it means to be human in a world that got tired of giving out spare change. I was initiated into the world of work from the ground up: to wipe others’ toilets waiting for my ship to come. That tale involved voluntary/forced separation (only a few hundred millions appropriated for the evacuation of thousands), while being together would depend on sheer determination and decency in a post-Vietnam society already weighed down after a decade of war and division. I cut my family ties to move on from “Kent State” to Penn State, to find my own voice and my own identidy. The youngest and weakest link would wipe away involuntary tears to become a man of hope and helping hands. I did not know at the time what was awaiting me in Happy Valley, but I know now that I would not be silent when others are going to step into the same deep hole.

“hey, that’s not right!”.

Separation of families always brings horror, and togetherness hope.

Together>separated.

For my Father

“when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose” Bob Dylan

I was 9 i.e. first bike and first romance.
Not everything was rosy now that I look back to that time. The neighborhood bully destroyed my innocence if not for my father’s swift intervention.

We called him “Cu Lon” (to this day, I still do not know his real name) to differentiate him from another of the same name “Cu Nho”. Cu Lon (Big Dick) fittingly was son of a Colonel who lived in a two-stories house – Army-issued Jeep parked out front. Cu Nho, on the other hand, was son of a male mobile nurse. It’s not Small Dick that this story is about. It’s Big Dick’s and Big Daddy’s.

Cu Lon was used to getting his way: a slick motorbike, the best girl – my first love – and plenty of brand cigarettes. He hung out with the right crowd, older guys. Cu Lon, in short, was a poster child, ripe to show off his derivative power: richer, stronger and in the know.

Despite his grander in size and status , we fought on one of the unavoidable occasions . The trigger I can not now recall. I remembered I stood my ground and kept standing back up after repeatedly got beaten up, and told to stay down. He wanted submission, wanted me to be broken.

Before anyone knew what happened, I ran into the house – in a trance – and back I came out with a machete. (drama happened in that serpentine alley almost hourly, if not daily). It must have been a divine intervention. My Dad happened to be back from work and was locking up his bike when he saw his youngest in blood, sweat and tears.

Vietnam was hot, people hungry and tired. After 1954 the country had been partitioned at the 17th parallel, much like Korea today, having to build a refugee life in the slum of Ban Co, then Saigon.

At least 20 kids formed a mob that followed us to the Colonel’s house, situated at the end of the alley. No one wanted to miss the show. My Dad with chain in one hand and me on the other, while I was still holding my weapon of personal defense.

Together we marched in front of the eager crowd. You should have seen the lay-out of this neighborhood, whose entrance opened up with two long winding tombs. On occasion, my cousin who lived next to the tombs would show movies from work, turning the open space into an outdoor cinema – my childhood Cinema Paradiso (Netflix night), transforming a dark alley into a dreamscape.

Back to the century’s confrontation.

With unmatched intensity, my Dad demanded to see the Colonel. RIGHT NOW! The Army’s driver/gatekeeper hurried back to fetch his boss who was strapping his Colt 45 over his T-shirt to receive us, an unwanted and unannounced throng. Meanwhile I was scared out of my wit, seeing the situation escalated way out of hand.

Yet justice demanded this. And my father played the anti-hero in this real-life drama.
He said in unmistaken tone to a slightly intimidated and flabbergasted Colonel:

“Your son is bigger yet he beat my son bloody-nose. From here on out, when this happens again, I will give the same sh** right back in your face so you know how my son feels”.

Not a pin drop. The crowd fell silent. If someone were to light a match, the high-octane atmosphere would have exploded.

Indeed, what transpired after that flew by like a thin veil. All I knew was, from then on out, at times, when Cu Lon and I spotted each other, he still threatened me with his clenched fist, but only from a safe distance. Remote bullying. No further physical fights had ever broken out between us. He simply couldn’t afford the consequences: dragging the two hot-blooded bulls into a lock-horn.

My father, a discharged Artillery man, must have meant every word (and body language) that day.

At last, we had some peace during war-time.

I was crying throughout the incident. Tears of rage, of having to live an underdog life (Northern refugees were not quite accepted and integrated throughout my childhood) in a shabby slum well-known for its trash dump and ill-exposed tombs. Worst of all, of not having running water (I had to hook up a long running hose between my cousin’s house and mine every other day to get our subsistence and get all dirty).

My rage also ran deep because I had to pick up broken pieces of porcelain from the floor, every time my parents had an argument over meals. (It wasn’t illegal for men in Vietnam before that time to practice polygamy, as long as you can afford it.) Somehow, overtime, this madness has turned into melody, and my guitar my guard. That world was closing fast on us, like the pace of the Northern advancing army stepping on the fallen geographic dominoes.

The US 34th Congress was much slower. When finally acted, it voted against a needed aid package to the South Vietnam Army (among whom was the Colonel, the alley bully’s father in this story).
Despite my father’s shortcomings, I looked up to him and did all I could for him, from giving him a back rub over siesta to shinning his shoes (he turned out to be salesman/collector for VN Airlines).

Time heals everything, and turns rage into rhythm, misery miracle, terror-father protector father. Years later, when I came back to visit the old neighborhood, I couldn’t help noticing it has shrunk (people expanded their balcony to the max, creating an almost enclosed dome). I asked about Cu Lon and learned he had died of an overdose cutting short his privileged life, while my father out-survived the neighborhood bully (his heart gave on a Winchester night. He was 94).

My father and I wanted to beat the odds. Against the dysfunctional genes, dysfunctional families and society (including war). For me, it’s an adrenaline surge each time I recall this incident.

My father always faced aggression with overwhelming response (he threw a knife that hit the door frame during the night to scare away a neighborhood thief). Once for all.

Thanks to him, my life’s trajectory was deflected and redirected from its downward spiral (kids were drafted, deformed and died). I grew up draft-deferred like “private Ryan” with family members already in the service. Humanity wants to preserve its “seed” for future reproduction. This I did well.

But don’t misperceive my penchant for people-pleasing: I wouldn’t guarantee how I might react when coming home from stressful sales work, seeing my child all bloody-nose with machete in hand.

All I know was my father shined briefly that day and still lives on in me today.

It depends on how far you want to zoom out in space and time: men will look like ants

(Apollo’s first photo of the Earth) and the rise of the Nazis , according to a far-right-party guy – will be viewed as a footnote in German history (his clothes were stolen while he was swimming in the lake yesterday).

WE DON’T WANT TO FORGET!!! Not even amnesia can separate us from our long-term “footnotes”.

Where I live, people double-name their streets: one, the usual, and second name – ethnic hero. In case the grandkids ask.

1968- 2018   Fifty years. A  quick search will tell you that it started with a French student wanting to have a reciprocal right to visit an all-female dorm that triggered unrest in Paris.

Meanwhile, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; the execution of  a Viet Cong insurgent on the street of Saigon; the high-octane Chicago Democratic Convention together made 68 a hot-boiled year.  “He ain’t heavy He is my brother” was a hit that year. Sitting out in the open, I looked up to my upper classmates band, who performed that song flawlessly. I knew then and I know now that I was witnessing history.

After all, the war (Vietnam) brought out everything: the go-go bars and the body bags. I DON”T EVER WANT TO FORGET in case the grandkids ask.

A lot has happened since: people moving in and out of my life, places I have passed by and moved on from…. everything I read and re-read, faces I failed to recognize.

1968 was the year of growing up fast, faster than the drone noise of Operation Frequent Wind in 1975.

Faster than the advancing “enemy”. Faster than I can say “Thank you President Ford”.

But there were other villains I don’t want to forget either. Save that for another time.

When you zoom out, really zooming out, the bad and the ugly both look like blips. Just blips. And goodness somehow shines on, despite the years and places in between. I remember an innocent line in “Saturday in the park” by Chicago ” a man selling ice-cream”. That’s what it’s all about: have an ice cream just like 50 years ago, last year and yesterday.

Blip!

Young folks always assert themselves:  in the Graduate, plastics, in Santa Fe, TX,  the gun, and in Hanoi, the guitar ( Mai Khoi awarded recent International Prize in Oslo).

It’s an unfair comparison to when I was growing up: a refugee kid repeating his parents’ script. But I know one thing – to use George Harrison’s catchy album title: “All things must pass” including : run the fingers, strike a chord, and mouth the lyrics ( in the hope to connect, to stir up and to move the room.)

We, adults, have failed our kids badly: from being the Graduate to becoming the Mega-rich 1 percent-er, from getting rich with “plastics” to leaving behind an iceberg wrapped in plastics (National Geography’s cover picture), from missing their school play performances to missing tax deadlines.

We are a generation of Someday. Someday we will make good and make right. Occasionally we reflect upon the Vinyl years, wishing it could have been or should have been. While Bill Gates was on the quest for the perfect Third-World toilet, Asian moguls sit on toilets made of pure gold. It’s not enough for evangelists to do their jobs over the airwaves, they now need to do it on the airplanes.

Now comes the fun part: nobody gets hired anymore, but work flow still flows. We care about “what technology wants” more than “what the people want”.  Machine is learning, while man isn’t. (The best major now is Data Sciences). From Adam to Analytics, we have certainly made progress, giant leaps as a matter of fact: self-driving cars, self-healing network and self-cleaning buildings.

Structures and institutions will remain, with new owners and new passwords. But influential people must heed the advice: pride comes before the fall. All things must pass, no option there. Fail not yourselves, your kids and your ideals. No should haves, could haves or Someday. Just now, next and the rest. Press reset. Breathe in/out and Think. The girl and the guitar got me thinking: where has myself gone?