Hanoi reaches new high

In an exile song …there is a line “Hanoi, whose dream reaches out higher than Heavenly high” (Mong voi tay cao hon Troi).

Every generation of refugees, whether it’s Jews from Germany, or Polish from Poland, Cuban from Cuba or Vietnamese from Vietnam, find new ways of expression. Most settled for cuisine, nostalgia and ethnic enclaves e.g. Brooklyn, Bolsa (for Viet-American) or Miami (Cuban-American).

The geo/ethnic/cultural niches are our second incubator e.g. Little Italy, Little Tokyo and Little Saigon: all are hatching either a return or moving on – after a few failed trials (of returning to the place that wasn’t there anymore).

Remarque of “All Quiet on the Western Front” was an expert on this phenomenon. Neither here nor there. The last romantic. Promised Land and Shadows in Paradise.

Romanticizing that which once was ugly (war and destruction) then life in exile (false papers and names on document). He remarks that ” the new land is surrounded by walls, not of steel, but of papers and chain document.”

Right now, as we speak, it’s ironic that the winning side of the North (of Vietnam) produces a new generation of ambitious young men. Back packers, walkers sans borders. CNN reports this latest emigre trend facilitated by human traffickers i.e. Chinese “coyotes” who charge a hefty price of around 20,000 dollars per head for these underground tourists whose final destination would be where else beside the Southern Border of the US. These “backpack people” (as opposed to Southern Counterpart Boat People in the 80’s) transit via a third-country like Canada, Nicaragua, then Mexico where remnants of Ukrainian counterparts still linger since the start of the Russian war.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2024/01/08/china-migrants-culver-pkg.cnn

Chinese have had influence and connection in Africa and South America, where rare Earth were plenty Now, it expands to connection, the route and the territory know-how.

It’s like they are working the base, extracting first some hard currency (raw material), then working their way toward softer ones (traveling through and bribing those connections).

Back to Food destination with Hanoi on top. The irony did not escape us. Nixon’s “bomb Hanoi” (to the Dark Age) then, and Travelers’ Choice Top Food Destination, now (while its owns trying to flee).

All in one generation. From 4 million tons of Bomb dropped to the late Anthony Bourdain’s top taste (sitting on a stool sharing a “bun cha” with former President Obama.)

What a nightmare for Secret Service.

For now, for us non-White to blend in with some false pretenses is still very hard (“poisoning the blood?”) just as it once was around 1944 for Remarque’s characters. It’s much easier for returnees/ tourists: just consul Travelers’ Choice, then take United or American via Japan or Nippon Air. Hanoi and its famous 36 streets is welcoming patrons. Eat eat and eat. Drink the egg coffee. Try the “bun cha”, “mien ngan”, pho Vuong (all the plates are square) and of course, the “banh tom” (fried shrimp cake) Ho Tay.

I spent one whole month there late 2008 (when news of Obama’s as President was announced ). That month, I wandered the streets after class (Cambridge CELTA?) trying to take in the scene, the smell and sensation of winner’s Capital.

What did my Mom do there back in the early 50’s (obtaining a teaching job to support my sister and brother)? Did she feel at a loss or at home? How different a generation makes, between hers and mine. The Northerners always fight harder, trying to survive harsher weather and meet higher expectations, culturally.

It’s not the bombing, or the British Invasion (via Armed Force Radio that shaped my musical taste). It’s the geo political of a larger global interest that set us apart. Someone, somewhere keeps looking at the S-shaped map and devise a scheme to draw the battle line. Sort of Five-O-Clock follies.

We were all the worse for it. Among my fellow classmates, one lost an eye the other had spinal injury .Others like myself still are scattered into the four winds, longing for a home that was no longer.

Refugee life. ” All we have is time”. To wait, to reminisce. What can you do with the rest of your life while carrying that stigma – being on the war-losing side. Drifting and rebuilding into some resemblance of your former life, via cuisine and culture.

Then top destination for food is staring at you. Hanoi, whose dream reaches out higher than heaven. No matter how far and how long your being away, social media is just a click away. But take it from the expert, in Shadows in Paradise, Remarque concludes that ” One can never go back, nothing and no one is ever the same”. That longing and sadness stay with all, because “everything passes and because man is the only animal who knows it”.

Lone survivor

We had 7 Billion just about a decade ago. Last week it’s 8 Billion.

Quake, Covid and “surgical” drones only took out a few millions. That leaves us survivors until the next cycle of election. Democratic election, “peaceful” transition of powers, an US diplomatic selling point.

Long ago, it’s the Wild West, where matters were swiftly settled by a draw of a gun. Afterward, it’s the spoils of war: wool, women (widows), children, horses and chicken.

John Wayne played both Wild West and Green Berets (WWII) icon.

Despite his scripted injuries (then swift recovery on screen), the audience rooted for an inflicted hero more than Identification with a Superman (too UFO-like).

Blood-thirsting. Barbarian. Border-line savage. yet we can relate better. Higher abstract notions such as “world order” and “equality and justice for all” somehow are “lost in translation”. Democracy moves and flows , wobbling like a three-legged stool throughout the entire span of population growth: 3, 4, 7 and now 8 Billion.

Will the dominoes fall? Tilted to what side (of the Cold War).

“Tear down that wall”.

“Build that wall”.

Only to see Climate Change broke the dam, collapsed the roofs and tilted buildings.

In a House of Cards our lives are not “like a candle in the wind”, but matches in a match box.

Reptilian brain functions in reptilian body. Nth generation machines 1st generation minds.

Without moral guardrails, conscience and yes, rules of Law, we default into Barbarian Life.

It’s easier that way: no shopping , no shaving, no supply chain.

Life expectancy? perhaps low 40’s (Earth’s 3 Billion at best).

Live it up, live it out. Conquer and conquest. War spoils and Peace but with guns at the ready.

NRA, NRB etc… As long as we employ loaded words (with loaded guns as back-ups) like Patriots, National, Crusading, Conquest and – I hate to say this – Kill them all. Settle the matter. Quickly and with deniability. International tribunals, hunting of the perpetrators etc… that’s for the noose of justice to tighten as time goes on.

Meanwhile, like a Dylan’s song goes, “you might be an Ambassador….taking bribes on the side”.

We all serve somebody, some “causes”. It maybe the Lord, it maybe the Devil…

Where is justice, when millions tons of bombs, spent cases of M-16’s ….descended upon the people whose “hearts and minds” we seek to win over against the advance of Communism. Let them have all the Polish sausages. Just keep the rice. Even then, we can’t even handle the truth.

Per Nixon, our railroad switchman Rusty (Calley) got off with 3 years house arrest. If Rusty were to be casted in a Western, Hollywood would have found the right role for him to match with ethos of the times. You’ve got to serve somebody. But “You can’t handle the Truth”. Again, take 2.

That’s a get out of jail free card, in sending the whole train of 504 into an equivalent of Nazi’s death camp. With each war, we need a new Nuremberg. Try them. Nail them.

Let empathy and reciprocity work both ways. And let it be known, there will always be a price for everything, including inaction. No wonder of late, another generation (among the new Billion) get emboldened, and think they can get away with it. To come out, to pump their chests, utter primal scream. A catharsis from deep down, finally finds release. “Jews will not replace us”.

All spent. Like Stallone shooting up computers and data servers. Do we get to win this time? Sir!

Meanwhile, our lone survivor goes about assessing and repairing the damage. What’s left after the fire and the quake. After the Insurrection (a Koran representative was cleaning up broken glasses – ironically incited by the once Law-and-Order NYC Mayor).

To mourn and rush through the five stages of grief. How does one manage to rush to closure? To accept the unjust terms of a contract one did not sign. The more the merrier? Ask ourselves if supply chain can now accommodate 8 Billion souls on this freaking Earth, where every moment on the Internet, we learn of new revelations and saw new bits of data, facts and fiction that alter our assumption and entice our consumption.

Social history seems to catch Alzheimer early in life. We already forgot the names and faces of yesterday’s victims. Justice delayed is justice denied. And the Statue of Limitations seems not long enough for the wheel of justice to play catch-up.

We’re all under house-arrest while waiting for drippy charges, delivered to our in-box and mailbox. Until the house itself is no longer safe. Foundation – moral and legal- first. For survival. Everything else, bonus. In Storm of Steel, the author depicted horrors like,… even the dead got killed twice (cemetery got bombarded and corpses blown up).

The living had to play dead while the dead got jolted

Be a survivor. Join the human race and be counted in. That makes 8 Billion of us in 2024.

Let the dead bury the dead. Self-deleting. There is an aftermath and a price for everything that happened.

The irony that makes art

If you recall an old movie in which an Armed Forces DJ was the main character, you would figure out right away….. Yes, it’s “Gooooooooooooooood Morning Vietnam”.

(other song would be “I feel good” to depict the era).

At the end, it’s Louise Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World to accompany visual of lush-green fields (riddled with bombs and bullets on the ground) from a helicopter gunner’s POV.

In all, during the Nixon administration, a total of 4 million tons of bombs were dropped in South East Asia. Enough to “deny the enemy his sanctuary”. So much that the finally-late Kissinger had to blurt it out “let’s end this charade quickly” (and in a White House photograph of the final hours of Saigon, he was showed hi-fiving still in tux, interrupted his evening at a Kennedy Center reception).

James-Bond like (I’d prefer Kurt Russell’s as Dr. Grant in Executive Decision), Dr. Kissinger gave talks and hand-shakes in a world in disarray.

He was once quoted as saying “the chaos in the world has exceeded diplomacy capacity”.

Perhaps he was right, given his expertise and experience.

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood bye Saigon then.

It’s a wonderful world. For looters and profiteers ever since Indo-China came into being; as people under French colonial rule, everyone learned to exist as victims, to be multi-faced (as Viet Thanh Nguyen’s latest title).

Sympathizers, two-faced and double agents: “liberal front” this and that.

Yet, none has been more ironic than the movie itself (there was one student portrayed a sleeper terrorist): people there couldn’t sleep after a long night of bombing and bombardment. Yet, our high-spirited Garp-like DJ, soon after having logged in his shift, started his broadcast: “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood Morning Vietnam”.

I remember seeing a CBS documentary showing shirtless G.I.’s in the jungle, with transistor radio dangling on a tree, playing “Reflections of my Life” (oh, I don’t want to die…).

It’s irony that makes art. Wonderful World, and awful war, long sleepless night greeted with Good Morning from a loud-mouth ally.

Lush green fields, yet all cratered and buried with Unexploded Ordinances.

Princess Diana once advocated humanitarian efforts to unearth and do away with those above mentioned (only to later tragically die of paparazzi’s exploded flash-bulbs in a Parisienne tunnel).

Irony makes art.

When we feel bored and there seemed to be nothing on the internet, no friends who are calling. Just remember, it could have been worse: burning monk, naked napalm girl, double-assassination, untried shot terrorist on camera, last chopper out and first tank rolling in what’s once called Saigon.

Then you’ll know and feel what those young G.I.’s felt in the thick of mosquitoes riddled jungle.

Of railroad switchman Calley (“Rusty”) who ordered (or had followed order) to shoot at anything that moves.

There are always a price to pay for entertainment. A price to pay for arts. And most of all, a hefty price to pay for human sacrifice. Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of humanity.

The irony lies in the fact that our diplomacy capacity seemed to be outstripped by the chaos in the world, where bombs and bullets seem to be a quicker way to end a conflict. War will have no end.

At least in my short-lived life . I felt a lump in my throat just to think back to all that was happening back there and how ironic it is for Armstrong’s sound track to underlay the Mekong green as part of God’s creation. 4 millions tons of bomb (more than the 2 WW’s combined) ! What a Wonderful War.

No wonder Sec of Defense under Ford outright disobeyed a Presidential order to send planes for evac (those in the know had already vacated the premise – in one case, with furniture intact to Taiwan). To not cut-off the charade at some point would have been an ultimate irony and insult. Not after the Sec of State celebrated with his high-fives as shown in an Oval Office photograph (Kissinger later admitted he had not been aware that there still were some US personnel on the ground).

Irony. Contradiction. Two-minds, two-faced. Part of life. Depends on where you stand to look (from a chopper’s view, or victor’s tank). Even the event of the same day sees different interpretations. And it’s the irony that makes art. With a jumble mind comes a heart beat.

It’s the only real thing. And there is no need to analyze that which the heart feels. “I feel good”…………………………………….

Our modern times

Countdown “Ten, Nine, Eight…”

Press and drop to Usher in the New Year.

Mechanically predictable! the law of physics:

e.g. Trains arrive on time, auto-payment, life expectancy.

Flip over another calendar page.

Set the alarm.

Direct withdrawal.

Punch in and out mechanically just as the machine at work.

Auto-reminder, preset dental appointment.

Ours has been a clocking society (data quants know this).

Homo Sapiens are behavior-modified and clocking regulated….to fit and function in a mechanical and technical society (the train will only stop at predesignated stations at a certain time for only a certain minutes).

Forget “hunters and gatherers days”. Stay put. Amazon Prime will deliver.

Man in turn adapts and speeds up just to keep up…e.g. a tennis star hitting those machine-spit balls like McEnroe or Charlie Chaplin lab-lunch eating corn on a self-mechanized rolling feeder (to shorten break time).

We used to have Recreational Hall (Rec Hall) – where at least, we bump into fellow joggers (“excuse me”, “Pardon me”). Now it’s just a gym, loft-type ceiling and individualized cubicle station. Work culture has spilled over to non-work, warehouse-style (re-industrializing our individual lives).

On top of it, people use their own devices to atomize music and audio books, ignoring gym etiquette (everything is now wearables). Even the big screen TV’s and big popcorn buckets can’t make it nowadays (unlike shared moments of grief of the past when bystanders stopped in front of an electronic store to watch an unfolding event e.g. Dallas 1963 or Moon Landing 1969).

Atomizing. Atomic Habits. Mass-Customizing. Starting with paperbacks that fit in one’s pocket, then phones that fit. Strangers mumbling or facetiming to someone through the ethernet, the other side of Earth, in-language.

Slowly then suddenly, we acquired machine-immunity while machine cross-adapts (per evolving algorithms) to human (our “Likes”, comprehensively converted into data stream and customer profiling to be auctioned and bought by highest ad bidder).

Voila. Our modern times.

Man, and machine meet each other half-way, no longer alien to each other – it’s us human who are.

We are people of “low-tech” and high-cholesterol in a high-tech low-cholesterol society.

No longer do the mass tune in to mainstream news broadcast at 6PM (900 million on Sept 5, 1972, when PLO took Israel Olympic team hostages) or to catch a Connecticut commuter train, before a ride in “maximum occupancy” elevator of the Twin Towers … That social context and shared common e.g. gray flannel suit/hat in Richard Yates novels are bygone.

Instead, we avail ourselves with flex and freedom @WeWork i.e. sharing cubicle and software. The later eats everyone’s lunch (remote workers’ 35% more likely be laid off). As of this edit, IBM and Tesla try to reverse remote work in our post-Covid era.

The inflection point. Yes, we’ve got some setback (Y2K). But machine learns to learn. VC’s also learned. Society sifts and filters to force-rank talent like a Yelp rating. The measures of a man.

It’s easier for man-machine, than for East- West (man-to-man) – so called the Last Few Inches – to relate. So big Tech exploit the minutia, the minutes and the brain power of the mass: massive Supply Chain. Economy of Scale. Zero-marginal cost economy and social media.

You may watch a Kung Fu, interrupted frequently by YouTube’s Cyber Monday ads. That is, if you had not ordered your groceries from a personal shopper … that which used to belong to Beverly Hills concierge class (Warren Beatty type).

Machine conforms to people’s wishes having known almost everything about them.

Apple evolves to its 17th version, but users are still on their nature-born 1st-version. Our sensory perceptions get inundated while we amuse ourselves to death, this time, not via Television, but Twitter (now X) and Tik Tok. Gone were the days of searching for cave painting and hunters’ arrows.

Last century called for an ethical decision: to press or not to press (the nuclear button). Now, it’s him/her who presses what and when, to destroy where/whom via drones. We’re busy watching “unprecedented” reality TV, “the like of which we have never seen before”. Again, sell the sizzle not the steak. Let the red phone ring-no-answer and go to voicemail (sorry, but your voicemail box is full).

This is huge. An existential matter. How are we going to measure the worth and value of each transaction that adds up (Walmart self-check-out: the usual bait-switch, pushing Holidays purchase as if they care for sabbath).

We have access to data which grow exponentially at Moore’s Law speed. But we don’t know how to extract them to exploit nuances (nutrition) for a usable narrative that serves our core needs: who am I, what am I put here for? where am I going eventually.

Like a non-stop machine, we also sift, extract and de-fragmentize. But currently we’re confused and desensitized per deluge from the sewage and feces our of 8 billion + people, all turned “creators” from being “creatures” of recent one-way broadcast blast. All are returning this time to lost (digital) Paradise (again without shame of being naked like a Rodin statue). Our passport is our log-in code and command are at the speed of thoughts.

All of a sudden, it’s not Charlie Chaplin that makes us laugh. It’s us who entertain ourselves to numbness. By morphing and conforming to machine, we have become what we made, all Frankenstein, or a religion of make-believe i.e. the more Likes, the more ego on passing our inevitable journey from the Here/Now to the Here After.

Machine and man waltzing and stepping on each other while the Titanic is sinking, an inch at a time toward the center of the Earth in icy cold data deluge. Sink or Swim: Without an acquired skill set on how to calibrate and curate in an age of information excess (long ago, scarcity is key motivation).

“If you missed the train I am on, you’ll know that I am gone” (smoke and sound of steam engine gaining speed as it pulls out of Istanbul station). Then Sydney Lumet would say “Print”.

That mechanical society and its associated melancholy: steam (stimulus and substitute for tears) now belongs in the industrial past.

“You will hear the whistle blow a hundred miles”.

Just an act

We have seen the carnage played out. Almost to its final act.

We came, and have yet conquered. Yes, the land perhaps. But not hearts and minds.

I am not referring to Vietnam. I am talking about America. Its young history, fickle ambition and shifting shadow of past glory.

We should have paused and enjoyed our bounty right after WWII. Instead we have to dip in all the pots in the name of this and that. The world barely recuperate from Covid and have yet caught a breath. Then bang! two hot wars, and a bunch of court cases (91?) that surely distracting like Hell.

It were as if we had outsourced our shooting to Prague and elsewhere. “Send them ammunition”.

The manufacturers of gun powder would care less who the target was. As long as the chuck chink sound is heard at the cash register. So are the ad men/women, search-technology assisted. America is going back to school in legalese and euphemism. A long saga and winding charade.

The Wild West exported and outsourced overseas.

Kids (in foreign land and in state) lost their lives, limbs and outlook for the future. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart”… This year, save me some tears, I ordered it from Amazon and have it delivered at the front door.

We don’t grow old. We grow more cynical as we can hardly believe anything said, unless it’s done. And even then, action got to bear consequences.

Recent examples I have in mind include Santos and Guilianni.

Both are out of a job and perhaps a place of dwelling.

A desperate attempt to stay relevant, in the news and sensational Fox. Then a steep fall from grace.

Riding the wave of drama. As if life and career is just an act, a trans beauty contest.

(Both by the way, put on either make up or hair dye).

And so it goes. Life in the 21st century. Everyone is dress-rehearsed, like the night before the wedding. Except we talk to ourselves, seeing ourselves reflected in the mirror (the screen, made in China).

It’s just an act. Solo act. Like the King of Cool Steve McQueen after another failed escape attempt in Papillon, throws and catches his old baseball against his familiar solitary confinement.

Just an act. But it needs to be performed. The audience is waiting, egging on as the laugh soundtrack is Ever ready when you are “Frito lay”.

About to say

Kennedy was about to say in his undelivered speech in Dallas on November 22, 1963 (per Theodore C. Sorensen):

” Words alone are not enough….Where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help”.

We almost missed a great speech, if it weren’t for historian’s preservation. Apparently, the torch (which had been passed on to a new generation just a thousand days earlier) was then quickly handed over, a heartbeat away, to President Johnson, who along with all, graced with his predecessor’s wit and wisdom, taste and class, elegance and briefly “Camelot”.

Unlike today.

Unlike anything we’ve seen so far: the descent at speed uncontrollable (the Viking man at Mike Pence’s still-warm podium).

The Constitution seems to be able to speak for itself, but the Capitol (building structure) needs defending. Shattered glass, shattered hope.

“If we are weak, words will be of no help”.

I learned about strength from observing and benefitting from my Dad’s defending me against the neighborhood bully and his father.

The non-verbal and take-no-prisoners body language oozed out of my Dad speaks for itself.

From that confrontation on, I had a smooth ride in a rough area throughout my childhood.

Back to our leaders, whose torch keeps getting passed on “It’s just another job” quoted Obama. Have they lived up and paid up their debt of honor and oath? We saw immediately after that undelivered speech, a lot of happenings: quagmire in Vietnam, break-in at the Watergate (Kissinger was quoted as saying to Haigh “We’ve got to end this charade as quickly as possible”, or as Ford put it “…our national nightmare is finally over”…but not quite… until a Presidential Pardon was granted – a nice way around and out of admission of guilt).

Then on and on. Words and action. Misquotes and misconstrued rhetoric. “I could be Presidential”….

When an office holder, act like an office holder. When an office seeker, speaks like an office seeker. Attack, attack. Where is the weakest link? The English-as-a-second-language speakers? Wetback?

Come harvest times, who are going to work the orchards. Come supper times, we can order from AI (Would you like to have fries with it? What else) but someone somewhere with a nickel-and-dime wage would have to fulfill the order, put it on the conveyor belt for door-dashers to deliver and send the proof photo to our inbox.

Voila. Blood poisoning. Food poisoning. The swam is here, in us, as our words “will be of no help”.

I invoke myself to the defense of truth i.e. action over words, strength in vulnerability and risk-taking.

I wish my Dad were still alive, to stand up one more time – like father like son – facing the force of tyranny and bullies. But then, “the torch has been passed to another generation”.

Most of us, if not all, are not descendants of a Native American tribe. Perhaps with the exception of our former First Lady, whose jacket – on her assigned trip to the border = says: ” I don’t care, do u?”.

Words alone are enough, in this case.

Caught in a conflict

So this is what it was like: watching news of war from foreign soil in the comfort of home i.e. TV dinner between viewers and the 19-inches screen. Back then, it’s the three networks, beaming daily footage back to American homes from the rooftop of Saigon’s Caravelle Hotel.

It’s surreal, to have lived here almost 5 decades, trading places by way of naturalization, to be on the receiving end of information flow. Today, I watched Thai agricultural workers in Israel turned hostages, then released to reunite with loved ones in their home country.

If I could rewind time, it would be a younger Kissinger seen shaking hands with Le Duc Tho, then the two together shared a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, the screen was B/W. Then and now, a lot of collateral damage. Lives destroyed, bodies maimed. Caught in a conflict.

Victims of war. Victims of birth. Victims of a shifting policy. Scars in the face and in the head. Nightmares in restless nights.

Who would come to the rescue? When you’re abandoned, left to drown at sea? Those of us who were fortunate, got “sponsored” into the four winds, by churches: Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist and in my case, a group called themselves “house church” (Penn State Profs led by an x-Unitarian minister).

So we got acquainted with a new land and a new religion. Hell was behind. The only way is up. But home is very very far away, if ever be seen again. Our president’s calls often went to voice mail, much less refugees’. So we got cut off from each other, those who stayed behind and those who must make a living in the name of self-sufficiency: a professional journey from the boiler room to the boardroom

We tossed and turned. Then throw many balls in the air, including remedial learning of the art of driving and typing (Vietnam War raged on, and we’re lucky to stay alive, pick up a foreign language and some theoretical- base learning; without the luxury of extra curriculum like baseball and basketball ; football and Prom Night).

So we learn to say “Hi”, to learn the rope and climb the totem pole. Until one day, watching the news on YouTube, hearing the sound of gun fires and bombardment from stereo speakers. Memories at once flood back. To that day of recent past, our yesterday, when we ourselves were seen on TV as those caught in a conflict, venturing out to sea to tempt fate.

Once resettled, we acquired language skills, culture skills and professional skills. But most importantly, we’ve got empathy. We know how it feels: to lose loved ones or to reunite with them. Many were held hostage for days, or months. In my case, not seeing my Dad for exactly one decade.

He brought with him our family violin. It is currently enshrined in my dinning room. Its sound is still reverberating: “Que sera sera…the future is hard to see”….But then, every other American is or evolved out of similar circumstances i.e. caught in a conflict. So the early Pilgrims, the Irish, the Hungarian, Iranian, Cuban, Vietnamese, Afghan and Iraqis. Always in between worlds and languages. Over cuisine and culture (music, art and drama) we may manage to get across our deepest hopes and fear. But mostly, we try to grow roots, to forget and to adapt.

Then the evening news comes on. We watch, from the comfort of home. This time, it’s other people’s turn to suffer, for the hope of human kind ‘s better future. But first, the pain, the punishment and the price. One lifetime, many burdens.

I now look back, having past my prime, and can clearly see patterns of conflict, shifting policies and wider perspectives. Men like Kissinger perhaps lived longer, seeing finer shades of gray. But I know beyond any doubt that little guys always caught in a conflict, no matter how tenable the solutions.

Between the screen and the viewers lays the TV dinner, mass manufactured and distasteful, like the content on the evening news itself.

Unknown

Erich Maria Remarque set Ravic, his German refugee surgeon protagonist, in the shabby Hotel International, not far from the Arc de Triomphe with its “faint, lonely flame on the tomb of the unknown soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness.”

At one point, in between Adieu and farewells, he reflects on the state of being a refugee “like a stone between two stones: one which was viewed as a traitor by his countrymen, the other, as being a native of the country of origin by the host”. In other words, neither here nor there.

Living in a \constant state of flux. Using a “borrowed tongue” to express oneself, a fake I.D. to present to the authority, and working for cash under the table…until the hour of death, as in the case of Joan, Ravic’s lover, ” Mi sonno sentita perduta senza di te” (without you, I feel lost). “Mi ami?” (very much like George Floyd the second before his death by choking….Mama.) ..Life has just begun!”

Yet snuffed out. To end the journey of wandering, gathering and wondering if life could have been better elsewhere (the refugee’s half-life).

“One can die in the middle of love”. Without the borrowed language (French has been an official language for International Treaty). In facing the final hour, we shed all pretenses: Garden costume party, whores on work leave to recuperate, and refugees getting by on sold Impressionist Arts.

Staten Island on this side of Pre-war Paris was receiving boat-loads of refugees fleeing Europe. Black-out Paris, as our Ravic notices ” there was no light anywhere. The square was nothing, but darkness. It was so dark that one could not even see the Arc de Triomphe”.

Perhaps the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French, can still be visible from a distance, like a lighthouse that offers clear direction and warm support to hopeful wanderers and gypsies of other times.

When push comes to shove, all pretenses are dropped, borrowed tongues included. As Bread’s IF would sing “then one, by one, the stars would all go round, then you and I would simply fly away”.

As Icarus flaps his wings of wax further away, the Tower of Babel becomes just an unrecognizable dot and multi-lingual sounds undistinguishable: Je t’aime. Ti amo. I love you. Anh yeu em. Ngo ai ni. And finally the more to-the-point last gasp. Half-life, half-baked speech, but twice understood.

There isn’t more time.

It’s time.

And ” it was so dark in pre-war Paris that one could not even see the Arc of Triomphe.” The tomb of the unknown soldier feels like mankind’s last grave” faint and forgotten.

P.S. Cam on cac ban da doc nhung giong suy tu nay (Thank you all for skimming through these unedited reflection).

It’s complicated!

In life, not everything is cut and dry e.g. Santa vs Santos, Kissinger praised, Kissinger despised.

It’s complicated. Not just in diplomacy i.e. the enemy of my enemy is my friend etc… That path, pretty soon, leaves us with no real friends. I have good friends for a good five and a half decades. Being 6th graders, we shared a desk. We even read a fictional story about a desk (personification) pleading to students not to scratch, to taint it with ink etc…( by the time we were in Middle School, we already used ballpoint pen).

We learned to trust students sitting around us, like soldiers in the trench. The bombardment in this case was Chinese letters (“khau”), French ( la bouche), English (mouth), and the assault, our Head of Security in the school with his ever-ready spanking.

Nothing was complicated then: follow the instructions, listen to the teachers. Attendance matters. School insulated us from a hot war. Simplicity inside, complication outside where there were invasion of the dollars, of ammunition and foreign goods. Black market and Black soldiers ; Mini-skirts and bell-bottom pants. ” hair to his knees…Come Together….right now…”.

The yin and the yang. The warring and the anti-war. Clamming down and rebelling against (they made us boys sitting in the back of scooters – both legs on one side – traditionally female’s form – for fear we may stand up and throw a bomb. The result? we complied every time we approached a check point. But only then).

Our freedom was curtailed in the name of fighting for it. Quite an irony! Then comes “practical” Kissinger ( to preserve order as long as necessary, by any means – especially bombing – necessary). The results? Hollow skulls in mass graves and sorry names on the Wall.

Dark decade. It’s complicated. You can argue either way, as long as you have a following.

Then a handshake, shown in B/W 16mm news reel, signified the beginning of the end. ” They i.e. South Vietnam- are at your disposal, under your sphere of influence diplomatically speaking. ” China won. China built. China replaces the old Soviet as a heavy-weight contender, diplomatically speaking. Beijing firewall is the new Berlin wall.

Leaders promised each other to answer the phone, and not let it go to voice mail.

It’s complicated. School was simple. Schooling in real world diplomacy is complicated. Still the same desk. Same ink blot. Desks still cry out (in the House, Santos’ is unoccupied except for immigration aids). The plea was and still is, “and it is Christmas, Happy New Year”. Let Peace be on Earth.

As children, our world was much simpler and more exciting: the days before Christmas. Waiting for Santa. As adults , as we occupied bigger places (“to hell with this place”, says Santos about the House of Congress – after overspent his credit limits and welcome), things get more complicated.

In the words of Kissinger, “we tried to preserve order as long as necessary, by any means necessary”.

When we learn to let go our early life, perhaps we can peal layers of present complexity. I relate well to truth seekers like Norman Mailer who referred to “4 assassinations later…” as he sarcastically sums up modern history. What we don’t understand, don’t like, we eliminate. Killing is simple. Living is complicated. Now I “get it”. Glad you point that out. Glad to still be alive to “get it”.

Excuse me. I am going to call my friend who told me “the world has changed and moved on. It’s you who don’t want to change”. True. Last night, I dreamed of helping a little boy with his laundry to cram into an already heavy load. Then this morning, I remembered that refugee boy, a stuttering boy with only a dirty pair of shorts tossed and swung on a basket in S China Sea, to finally arrive at Jubilee Prison-turned-refugee detention center in Hong Kong.

May he see better days, somewhere in England, where he was immigrating to. May he learn well the Alphabet, from A to Z , stuttering but comprehensible enough to get by.

Words like “mouth”. Like “I am hungry”. What’s more complicated than hunger and simpler than the sign that homeless man held : “Happiness is a cheeseburger”.

Self-editorializing

Self-editorializing instinctively precedes self- expression.

We all are self-editors of words said and unsaid.

To err is human. To unleash uncensored unedited thoughts e.g. racist, put-down or out-of-bound/below-the-belt comments is to ask for a tit-for-tat, if not outright violent reaction.

Lately, uncensored expression under the guise of freedom of expression have been rampant and re-tweeted. The FCC and law makers have yet come up with a compromise to hold “violators” into account. (Section 230?)

All the while, a Silent Majority remain silent and stand by. What a lonely planet. The evil and the good, both with their shares of rainfall.

Common grace.

We teach our kids. Yet we forgot to re-teach ourselves those civic lessons half-learned.

Why are we here? To advance the ball? To chop wood and carry water – before and after Enlightenment.

Arts, science and technology, conspire to present us with more complexity (drones kill surgically, for instance). Does it mean morally, it’s more acceptable since we lessen the amount of collateral damage?

The Editorial department of our local papers got stripped off. We’re de facto a self-editorial department of one. Like a self check-out cashier job, we live and learn, bumping our heads, skinning our knees (for centuries, we just sit and get washed over by one-way propaganda. From a stoic mode to a spoke-person mode, it will take us another century). Curse words used to shunned. Now it’s cool to sprinkle them here and there to show we “get it”. What the f**k.

Stop the world, I want to get off. Too dizzy a ride. Too many Nike choices. Can’t “Just Do It” when material and moral options flood our simple mind. They preached Monotheistic theme in a pluralistic society. In other words, the more aggressive their approach (Christian Nationalism, for one) the more likely we enter another World War between Christian, Muslim and Jews. “We are right ,You are wrong. Zero-sum society.” Oil and water don’t mix. Kill Kennedy. Murder MLK.

Homogeneity is a concept that doesn’t exist outside of the marketing department i.e. market segmentation. Meanwhile, Santa continues to come knocking on every kid’s door. The month before, every kids knock on every door. It’s a numbers game. It works. The more the merrier. We optimize our choices and hedge our bets with diverse choices. Let the winner emerge.

It’s not a Lonely Planet, unless we wanted it too. Just stay home. Close the blinds and put on “All by myself”. Only in death should we do it alone. In life, we do it with others. Then, with every expression, every utterance, self-editorialized. Words that build up, not tear down.

We need to overcome that natural tendency to rise and scavenge on dead bodies (from hunter-gatherer days). To feel superior over others by putting them down. A local homeless man put up a sign which says “Happiness is a cheeseburger”. There is no further need for self-editorializing. Simple and straightforward. He got my vote and my dollar.