Thang Nguyen 555

In Cold Blood. For a silver coin that rolled under the girl’s bed. Each victim’s life was worth 10 dollars plus a few possession e.g. portable radio and binocular. That was before my time. Truman Capote’s “true crime” genre. KC. Dorothy’s land. So goodbye yellow brick road.

Soon, it is my kids’ times: all things digital i.e. no more rolling under the bed. To rob, they would need a password. To guess, they would need the help of super duper strong computer. To profile us, to analyze us, to “know” us better than we do ourselves.

Oh well. Glad to be of service. To exist. To be known better than we know ourselves. BTW, that community near Kansas City – while waiting for the I.D. and capture of the bad guys, all blamed themselves. Suspicion. Doubt. And mistrust.

Aren’t these things human nature. When no one else is to be blamed, we turn it inward. Community. What a word for group exploit. In the 60’s, they tried and failed. The old Soviet model fell flat. All boiled down to how much grain and gun. The supply chain. The reaction and counter-reaction. People of the First World War would never in a long shot thought of their war as numerically First in a series.

Now we took it for granted: WWII, and the threat of what’s next. Bang, bang. We assure Ukraine, we assure Israel, we assure EU, Asia, South Asia, China, Australia so on and so forth. Assurance. If we can keep track of them in the first place. Then the next administration, with altered policies and changed heart (Santos in charge?).

People got killed. In cold blood. Softly. Swiftly. Betrayed with a few silver coins. Bit coins.

Testifying. Star witness and stardom. Silver screen and silver dollars. Tell all. Hardback then paperback, then screen play, then silver screen, then streaming and red box. Finally, like Clint Eastwood’s collection, all in a box. Wrapped up for Christmas, under a tree, where hardly one finds the old silver dollar, all shinny and round-shaped.

It’s Autumn somewhere, in New York, Paris and London. It’s Hellfire by Hamas, artillery and ammunition. Amassed and shot for amusement. Human lives are at stake. Cheap. In Cold Blood. For a mere $10 per head. Let’s do an article on it. No, a book. Then a screenplay. A movie, streamed for convenience and consumption, paid for by bitcoin and not silver coin. To feel scared as preluded to Halloween. The thing about money and murder is that they change form, but not function. Silver coin or bitcoin. Doesn’t make a difference. It’s in the nature of the human beast to kill, to amass property (however trivial) and to show off for Likes and recognition: “Look, look…my trophy wife, in her fur coat”. How about your wife, who does the heavy lifting, with poor manicure.

Told you. Gotta live a little bit. He who gives never receives in return. Trust me. There is no karma.

Or else, we wouldn’t have the Judas of this world. Thou shall not kill. Right! Death tool still rising, the last time I looked. At times, on the cheap, with AI help to compute today’s exchange rates from Silver coin to Bitcoin.

” Don’t give the Dog a Donut” (or else, he would cram in more request, over welcome his stay and occupy your life).

We’ve been had! Seriously. The whole national conversation and the means to deliver it have been hijacked by a few (just scan through Yahoo web page, you’ll see).

Slow-boiling a frog. Socially engineer its survival reflex out of the water.

Voila! Got ourselves a loser here. Boiled frog legs, any one?

We’ve been still as told. Pretend to meditate, to reflect and to recollect. As in La Recherche du temp perdu. Who is our “Swann”? Except we’re not in our death bed. We’re in the proverbial bathtub. Bubble. Slow boil and slow death. Vegetated. “Will you still love me, tomorrow”.

Talking to ourselves. Further divided, to the far end of the spectrum. White and non-White, tattooed and clean-shaven, work-from-home and occupy Airb-n-b (like that Harvard-educated lady who refuses to leave).

Slow-boil. Pre-meditated and meditated. Over time. The whole world watches in horror, into the screen. Seeing only what AI “actors” wanted us to see, to hear and to remember (to eventually buy).

Period.

Merchandising the candidate(s). Sifting through choices, from school to mate (even the matchmaking web-site viewers grew weary).

All the while, our reflex and resistance grow weak. Wobbling legs. Boiled legs. Rabbit, our bi-pedalist, at rest.

More Epsom salt please. It is well with my soul, but not my mind. I was looking for and living in a country. Now I found a cult instead: banned books give-away. Anyone still reads at all?

Or we just scroll up, press Like and let the AI register your presence or protest (no Unlike button).

Make it easy for the consumers (suckers) to buy. Rule 1 in Marketing. Shock and Awe.

Attention and retention.

We’re what we own. Period.

Excess capital, excess consumption, excess criticism.

Life on display, merchandised. Always out front, in the front (who is Thich Nhat Hanh?). Soul stuffs are for the slow, soul foods in backwaters.

Here in the city, only the front, the window display – Tiffany’s – that matters.

Croissant s’il vous plait!

Slowly we allow ourselves boiled away. Wasted. All because we could not say NO.

Do not give the dog a donut.

Do not scroll, click and share.

Sharing economy means it’s our house, our car and time. Been in McDonald lately? contactless.

Just like at the pump. No one is there to even greet you. Start here. Review your Order. Pay here.

We have evolved to the here and now. our ATM society. Withdraw that which we don’t put in (in the name of Sharing).

As life continues here on Earth (and soon it is on Mars), we reminisce the old conversation, the ballade of Moon River and the bravery of Black/White characters in the movies. Back then, they projected the movies on Silver Screen. Big one. Shared and seen by the multitude. In the dark. Groping and kissing. Eating pop corns and slurping Coca Cola. Cinema Paradiso.

We dream one dream. And we wake up when it says THE END. Follow the Exit sign.

With slow-boiling, there isn’t a definite end point. Dead frogs we become in a society that doesn’t give a damn about suckers, consumers and losers. Getta of here, before I call the cops.

“…the kind they sell in drug stores ” as in If you can read my mind.

Graham Greene in Paris of the Orient, Hemmingway in original Paris etc…both found inspiration out of war and wound ( “we’re all broken in many places….where light can shine through”.

Many soldiers were wishing to “someday, when this war ends.. we will march triumphantly under the Arc …” – or even better, will grab a nurse and kiss her right in Times Square (to then appear on TIME cover).

War brings out all kinds of people e.g. profiters, rhetoricians, mercenaries, suppliers, warehouse workers (3 of 4 are just behind the firing line, supplying the troop with meals and ammo).

Then the novelists with their paperback novels, romanticizing death and destruction.

In war, we’re in love. Time is of the essence. Short. No beating around the bush. No horseplay, No foreplay.

Just do it, Reaction time would be too slow. Shoot and kill. Search and destroy. Deny the enemies sanctuary. Let Court Marshall lawyers heck it out later. Shoot, aim, ready. \

War footing is quite different. Situation report, situation ethics. We signed up for this? Can’t wait for the war to be over (as oppose to “can’t wait to start one” not too long ago).

Last night, there was war in Israel once again. First in the news. Guns pop up here, and there (Ukraine).

Then follow by the newsmen, the support troop, the politicians and the paperback novels. The kind they sell in drug stores. Revisionist history. Looking back at them (wars) in new lens. One war that surprised me is the Korean one. Been since 1950, lasts a lifetime. There is no “when this war is over….we will march under the Arc….).

Other wars, like the one in Ukraine, it’s ongoing. With war correspondents in and out of the front. Had they a Continental or Caravelle Hotel like in Paris of the Orient, we would find novelists all over the coffee bar, trading snippets of war, a rumor here and there. “When are we pulling the plug” etc.. or as in the case of Ralph White in the last week of Saigon, praying in the Church, then pick up a chic ( I read until the part when he negotiated a deal to hire a call girl to be a personal page).

The mere fact that he mentioned it, his editors allowed it, it is to show, there had been a sad attempt to revise history. Trivializing man’s nobility and human suffering for a few dough, all the while, denying a sad fact that “we’re all broken in many places…where the light can come in.”

Even WWII triumphant march under the Arc today stands back near the curtain of history, yielding front row stage to new actors in this war theatre, much younger and Hard-back novel characters. The kind they sell in Barnes and Noble, under Non-Fiction and Current Affairs. Still, over coffee, I miss the old days, the tall figures of soldiers in B/W movies. Reminds me of my Dad, and allow me, to romanticize that selective past. The kind written in novels, whose paperback versions sold in drug stores.

I was about 4. Growing up in a refugees enclave of Saigon. In the days leading up to Mid-Autumn Festival (aka Children’s Festival) one could witness torches, chants and marches…convoluting through all alleys and byways. The mob grew in size, as if it were trash day, except it’s kids, and not cans. “Tung tung tung, dzo dzo…Tung tung tung dzo dzo” (in a trance, all sweated and hyped up).

We winded and made sharp turns, passing through neighborhoods of bad and good smells (Da Ly Huong, known for its scent which comes out only at night – the opposite of Sunflowers).

Time was standing still, while our feet moved in rhythm. Many in the crowd were without a shirt. Most without shoes. Every other kid seemed to hold something: lanterns, torches, and even lit matches.

Lucky we did not cause any fire – unlike Old Chicago with Mrs. O Leary’s cow.

Old Saigon. Mob by day and mob by night.

By day, we were either in school or out looking for trouble. Most times, in war time, troubles found us: monk burning, palace bombing, city terrorized, gun shots, hand combat and loud quarrels (stress, poverty, congestion and heat).

There was one fountain for everyone’s daily ration. Across the way was an ever-growing trash dump site. The smell in mid-day heat would keep any visitor away. For survival, we ignored all environmental transgression: just kept one’s head down, no eyes contact and go about hurriedly on one’s business and tried not to get in anyone’s way. It’s human instincts to recognize those who did not “belong” in the neighborhood.

Visiting friends who looked and acted “tough”, our Fonz would be glad to teach them a lesson pretty quick e.g. sand in their scooter’s tank, or airless tires.

I was beaten bloody once …perhaps due to my singing too loud which was “enviable” or offensive to the bully.

Either way, the neighborhood (my second and last in Vietnam), afforded me childhood games, in the rain and under the sun. Within the confine of the alley, I grew up, being pruned and got chided. I developed “common sense”, conscience and courtesy. People need to take their mid-day siesta, so turn down the radio etc… a neighbor was holding three-day funeral, so let them park out front.

Given limited space, we made it work for everyone. District 3, district 1 etc…the protocol was first for the Southerners who had lived there for generations, then us, refugees from the North, finally were those migrants who drifted from the countryside to look for housework.

We had household help, since my parents and siblings were all busy at work. Four paychecks, one family of five. No wonder they could afford sending me to private school, a French Elementary. There, I came across names like Fontaine, Rousseau and Balzac.

It was a complete change in etiquette, every time I passed through that door: “Parle Francais, s’il vous plait” etc…It’s as\if one needed a backpack and a passport for school. My buddy was a half-breed named Pierre: whiter and bigger. We talked about everything, including the assassination of J.F.K. (even when we were only 7). Then the mob summoned us to join its larger species, whose current drifted from elsewhere far away etc.. Kent State and Jackson State, Woodstock and Washington.

My oldest sister was very level-headed. She often had to play surrogate mom (both women in my family were working women, with school and bank pay checks). She was the one who found me and yanked me out of the crowd, which began to get out of control due to its increase in size and distance.

She was always the first to sense that things did not appear as they seemed (working at Agri Bank would raise her antenna sensitivity a bit). So the last crowd we joined was on that last trip – a convoy to Pier 5 (read My Sliding Door).

Leaving behind everything, including our Father (who got left behind in old age, by himself, for a good decade), we joined the mob exodus. Drifted at the mercy of International Rescue in International waters. Lucky we weren’t the Boat People who showed up much later riding the same waves and roving in the same waters, like current migrants near the coast of Greek islands.

But mob anywhere is the same: a stripping process begins with an assigned number (A-number, then Social Security number), then an IRS account number (if joined account)….and finally a card carrying number, be it this or that. Join the fight, for ideological and economic equality. Upward mobility for some and justice for all.

In my experience with the mob – Children’s Festival march and onward – is that no one’s ever wins, except those who incite it or observe it from the outside, be it the press, the politicians or the police (injured or paid).

For some reason, still hidden, we still could not function as mere individuals, to think for ourselves outside of the system ( the box of pooled wisdom, common denominator, and a sense of belonging – translating to fear of missing out). It’s a call to a false sense of comfort, of collective identity, of the familiar, albeit very provincial and turf-territorialism as long ago displayed in my neighborhood.

Tung tung tung dzo dzo, tung tung tung dzo dzo.

Let’s challenge Social Media and all that it entails. It’s evil to see those profiting from it, from our memories and personal wisdom, all the while laughing at us from the outside. We’re thought of as those of “low” IQ’s, easy to manipulate and maneuver, like cows in Texas, herded through a funnel gate to be branded.

Wake up and think folks. Be all you can be, live a short life well-lived and worthy to be remembered. In thinking back to my days with the mob of children, I want to stop here and thank my sister for collecting me. Tossing me behind a shut door and put me in her “program” of mob anonymous. To sit in front of an open book or a guitar. Lonely existence. Spartan and secure.

But then I developed my common sense, courtesy and conscience. Qualities which hardly exist in any mob, which often champions a lowest common denominator (three-words chants) in their race to the inevitable cliff: that zero at the bottom. It’s lonely down there too, when you stop breathing.

Upon reading Ralph White’s “Getting out of Saigon”, I noticed a sad fact about the bayan tree of the US Embassy, as if it had once been a symbol of America’s resolve, up until it’s time to “turn the Embassy’s courtyard into a lumberyard” pg 37.

It also reminds me of a story about visiting the sick and dying (in looking out the window, the patient noticed the last leaf was still hanging in – which the perceptive visitor later managed to paint it , overnight and permanently on the wall, to help prolong the inevitable”….

The good Senator of California has died today.

Last leaf fell.

The banyan tree got chopped down, dollars burned and helicopters landed and took off, frequently.

Flag half-staff or flag folded.

Martin and the Marines.

The will to fight, to live and to die. To let history speak for itself. To let Art flow. To let my people go.

So much pain. Drama. Until the last minute, up in smoke.

Hell No We won’t Go. No will to fight. No will to stay. Last leaf and last testament.

All withered or wasted. Like those 58,000 names on the Wall, and subsequently million unnamed deaths at sea.

The will to live and die, sapped. Hearts stopped. History moves forward with course-correction. With leisure trajectory.

Lay down for now. Lion next to the Lamb. Rested but not in peace. For en-masse we fled, we grabbed and we shared not.

Survival of the fittest.

Natural selection. Of the elite? I am afraid not. Coward perhaps. Courageous at best (with Revisionist Historian accounts).

Mostly just time and chance. The right moment. Up to the minute. With memories behind, bodies unaccounted for.

So many instructions, intentions ended up in destruction.

Self-reinvention amidst PTSD…like Rambo’s “Do we get to win this time?” (Rhetorical ).

Or Captain Kurtz “Horror, Horror…” Un film the Coppola.

Gooooooood Morning Vietnam…..It’s a Wonderful World.

I look forward to the second installment of the ” A Man of two faces”…by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Meanwhile, back to evacuation, the closing down of Chase bank branch in Saigon. Suspense.

“turning the courtyard into a lumberyard. ” After all, it’s just one tree. A symbolic and practical tree.

Now we plant trees, at the tune of One Billion, thanks to President Biden.

To heal the Earth, after all the pain and destruction e.g. kids grow up all distorted and contorted.

Agent Orange and Agent 007. Missions are always Impossible. Should you choose…either way, the message will be self-destructed in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….

Music please.

Our mission today is to strengthen the will to live and should we choose to die, e.g. cut off your ears (as Vincent Van Gogh), breathe out your last breath (Mozart), or paint it on the mural as in The Last Leaf, then do so contributively. Don’t be bested by a mere tree. (Except in the case of those 19th century living oaks, planted 100 years ahead in anticipation of Oxford’s New College beams which later needed replacement).

When did Ms Feinstein know it’s her time to go? When the last leaf got pulled down by gravity. How would anyone know by April 15, 1975 when tax payers were mailing in their checks – that Saigon would soon fall like the last domino (of a war which had started out with the Domino Theory as raison d’etre)?

Then the bayan tree was still there. It got a two-weeks life extension (not by the IRS), to exert itself, to show strength and provide some shade. To save its best for last.

The bayan tree, the will to live and die. To fight. To stand. To do what it was meant to be and do all along.

It’s dark outside. Very early morning. Every day. The person sleeps all stretched out on the pavement, just outside of the local AMC. No shows at that time. No one around. Just under the neon sign, that says “AMC”. Relax, enjoy our feature presentation: dream, dream, dream…the American Dream.

One half says this, the other half says that.

Who wants to wake up to reality! Like a line in Breakfast at Tiffany’s “you have penchant for the wild, Doc, and when they grow stronger, they fly away, even towards the sky”….

Let go. If you love America and all its ugliness. Just let go. It’s the whole wide world now, both on the web and out there in real life.

We’re no longer in Kansas, Dorothy. Four “strong men” dominate world politics, while others are emerging such as Zelenskyy ( 18 months in and pledged to be all in ). We’re on war-footing. And such, death toll rising. Very much like daily upward updates of flood victim deaths in Libya.

The old Fox announces retirement. His Dad left him an Australian newspaper and from that springboard, he built. Empire of lies. Of half-truths and distorted truths.

The unknown unknown. We’re all in it. The hole, the bubble and self-deceit posture. New York Post over New Yorker.

Who wants to have breakfast at AMC’s when one can just “sit back, relax and enjoy ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s!'”

Art and life. Dreadful. No escape and no exit.

No choice. Except to accept. Without hesitation. So help me God. “Not guilty” until proven to be the opposite. In South Carolina and elsewhere, everywhere. People carry on with a straight face, “honest tongue and dishonest heart”.

Tax-payer dollars at work. Question the question. Ask the question. But is it the right question?

Is it constructive? building up or tearing down?

More aid and ammunition, please. We ought to fight and keep on fighting. For the right to dream, even to lie. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Now rockets and drones flew over “walls”, seeking electricity grid to destroy. Except the technology now is more nimble, from Starlink to Starbase. While the size of things shrinks, the ambition of men grows. More “honest tongue and dishonest heart”.

Breakfast anyone? Where? at Tiffany’s or AMC’s? Even in the former, it’s self-deceitful, the “wild” in the city, from the outside looking in (croissant and coffee). Both – phony and real phony – are living a lie, and both are looking for a home.

It is one of the most dreaded experiences. It left without us. From the Internet to the Space Ship, from one lover to the next. Opportunities. Missed.

I have a nephew who missed the boat. Out of compassion for his daughter who became ill overnight.

Karma rewarded him with wealth gone wildest.

Sometimes we have to avail ourselves for other opportunities:

e.g. clearing the deck for the next chopper (as on the Last Day of Vietnam), or an inevitable divorce (hell or home).

The reason we all fear “missing the boat” is because we did not have a plan B, or have never experienced setback, or always with cushion and insulation.

When 9/11 struck, a bunch of people had to rent a van and drove across the country since ALL planes were grounded except for Air Force One.

Talking about Missing the Boat.

There are three types of setbacks: self-inflicted, unavoidable and happenstance.

Life is exciting for each of us precisely because of unknown. It makes for Hollywood materials: meet girls, lose girls, get girls back etc…

Then both grow old, ugly and live out the rest of petty and lousy life.

Every once in a while, life affords us those milestones: graduation, career option and promotion, then of course, cremation.

I love to quote myself ” with minutes, we merely exist – with moments, we live”.

Why do we miss sunset while letting the torturing noon to dominate our thought life! With moments, a mix of them, we live a colorful life. Prisoners of long sentences count only the minutes and the days to release.

Self-recrimination. Those missing-the-boat moments. If I literally missed the boat today, I would stick around for the sunset on the beach. Might as well.

My nephew abandoned his planned trip, purposefully missed the prepaid boat. For his daughter’s sakes.

Karma rewarded him. Karma rewards all of us who chose to miss the boat out of compassion for others. With moments (of decision that aligns with cosmic Karma) we live as intended.

Missing the Boat. Might not be a bad thing after all. Circling back, looking at our previous life with fresh eyes, even fell in love with it as if for the first time.

Guys get girls back, together they live happily ever after.

Admire or despise and anywhere in between. There exists a whole range, since perception and opinion tend to shift as more data become available.

Like the 12 people. The jury. In the court of public opinion. We, human being, learn to distinguish the poisonous from the perfect, what is toxic and what is nutritious.

We teach our children lessons learned the hard way: don’t touch poison ivy.

Stay away from chemicals, drugs and unexploded ordinance.

Here. Read this. People worthy of our admiration and imitation.

Role models. Teacher and instructor, counselor and coach.

(I have personally found PE coaches the most helpful… they taught me how to swim, to handle stress and stay away from injury.)

We all grow up admiring Pasteur and Marie Curie, Confucius and Christ. Our predecessors. All went through similar struggles, yet emerged triumph. Our performance benchmark.

At the minimum, we are to observe the Law, obey traffic signs and stay away from shady characters.

In short, no longer we’re searchers in high school, looking for a sense of belonging and identity.

That’s puberty.

We’re in a social-media society, powered by chips and AI, motivated by forces unseen. We’re primarily wanted for our eye balls, our purses and our time. There is no need for high intellect and skill-set. Just scan. Just post. Just Like. Just buy. Perhaps you might want to “friend” this unknown person. What’s the point? Metcalfe Law (the network is stronger per each added member – exponential law).

We’re in short, part of the Web, to be manipulated and mass-marketed to.

There is no longer a society in which individual accomplishment counts – at least not as in centuries past. It’s now scaled up, spreaded out and strengthened by numbers.

Quants rule.

Once we were told to go deep, to elevate ourselves beyond mere reptilian existence.

Now, the script changes on us. Just scan, look, comment and post. On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.

Case closed. Now is not the time for the 12 to deliberate. In fact, the whole wide world is the jury.

And at our fingertips, we vote, we decide and we character-assassinate someone from the distance. Cyber-bully them. Anonymously write them off, put them down in one fell swoop.

The power is enormous. Without any responsibilities. Sue me. See me. Feel me. We’re all alone, we’re all alone. Alone again, naturally. When we turn off our devices, we return to the three-dimensional analog reality of aging, of decline and isolation.

Then we long for our selective past, when role models were still alive, nudging us to learn, to emulate persons like Marie Curie and Confucius. Somewhere in time, those people loomed large, lived selflessly and left behind irrefutable legacy.

At times, the gene pool graces us with admirable people, just as it often produces killers and robbers.

The whole Law-Order apparatus exist to sort out and shut out those deemed unwanted and despicable.

That leaves us on our own to seek out that which is honorable, admirable and sustainable. The range, at far end of that spectrum make a lot of noise and garner a lot of attention, dominate news cycle and drain tax payer’s money.

But when devices are off, silence returns. We then hear the still small voice, urging the hero in each of us to rise to the occasion. To nudge others and leave great legacy, just as previously demonstrated by past role models, teacher and instructor, counselor and coach. Love those PE ones. I owe them a bag of gratitude. My still kicking, breathing strong, all thanks to the discipline of working out and healthy habits.

It takes two to tango. An admirable role model and a dedicated follower to lift up the gene pool. Or else. Just let go, let gravity does the work – slip slide in the race to the bottom. That’s reptilian living. Dog eats dog, especially on the Internet, where nobody knows who you are. Perhaps you might want to connect with so and so…nobody knows if it’s a he/she/or it. Be it the later, we might want to skip Metcalfe Law, and jump onto Zeroth Law (robots cannot harm human being).

We Are. Extra.

Backgrounding in a comedy in the making. Just like those men of the mass who once surrounded Howard Cosell in the hope of showing our faces on “Bananas”.

Been a long time, but the script kept rehashing. Especially when writers strike.

Machine learning, writing and scripting. A new mix of formula: boy meets girl, loses girl and gets girl back in the end. Be it Count Monte Cristo, Papillon or Gatsby.

The latest did not get her back. Only regret, sorrow and tormenting: “Summer ends. How I wish I could grab it and wouldn’t let go of it”. Something in similar vein.

I finally got to finish “In Cold Blood” by Capote. What a treat (not a feast of violence and dread). I felt cold, chilled and everything in between, just to enter that world, that scenery and setting.

Extra extra.

We are. All tied up, gagged and shot. To our eternal sleep, some in pajamas, others, naked.

Extra extra. Bananas we are. Dictators are meeting up, making deals and promises.

Lots of extra standing around, getting their faces on camera: “Mom, did you see me on TV”.

Shakespeare once said the world is a stage. If so, we’re all extras, “Take two” (start walking, try to make it as normal as possible, as bystanders would, minding one’s own business and not of the world’s).

Let Moroccan die on their own. The 9/11 victims, the once Mayor of that fateful town, the semi-conductor business shift to Vietnam, away from its once-concentrated China facilities.

Let the fight and competition be then between Ohio and Hanoi (once, Silicon Valley vs Taiwan).

Extra extra. We all are. The writers strike. The world spins. And the people walk, drudgingly dragging their feet until hearing the director say “Cut”.

Let’s do it once more. This time, try to fake it until you make it.

Sylvester Stallone, go “Do we get to win this time?”.

P.S. Saw him as an extra on the Woody Allen’s Bananas (subway hooligan).

We shall rise, shall overcome….SOME day. Maybe not today, not tomorrow. Some day.

Meanwhile, just act normal. Walk like you normally would, crossing the street, minding your own business. Leave the war, the weapons and the worries to main actors on world stage. Yes, the world is a stage. But yours is so small. It doesn’t even count. As soon as you’re gone, they issue death certificate, and with birth certificate, you’re a new logged away case. Cold case. If not killed In Cold Blood.

Capote says goodbye to Kansas like this:

“Then starting home, he (Dewey, the detective) walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”

The End. (each life killed was worth 10 dollars, per robbery gone misinformed and misguided).

Extra extra. We all are.

We are living in the age of the Megaphone: zooming out from any city, the sight might be breathtaking, but the sound dotted with white noise and all.

Lots of sound: high, low, medium, baritone, tenor, alto etc… “I heard he sang a good song…I heard he had a style”.

We need our stories to be told, our tales to be heard, and our rights to be observed. Our day in court. Both small “c” and one day, big “C”. Have you been baptized? For insurance should we face Judgement Day.

For smaller “c’s”, the worst is to be sentenced to silence. 24/7 in confinement. No one to talk to. To tell our tales to. To rant and rave. To be listened to.

In listening, we withhold our pre-judgment (without wearing a robe) until BOTH sides are heard. Every day, we play judge and jury, without being conscious of it. When there is no one around, we turn against ourselves: pulling out “cold” cases from the past e.g. that guy crossed me, that gal rejected me.

At times, I want to completely erase the past. Press reset, reboot.

Uploading ALL memories to the cloud somewhere and never have to deal with past unsolved cases. Heck. You don’t really live until you stored up a bunch of running-in’s.

People self-project. They disliked themselves, hence immediately notice imperfections in you. From there, it’s easier to pick on what’s out there, as oppose to what’s in here.

Inside, the noise gets louder and louder as outside gets quieter. Here is the progression of inner and outer communication: first, we heard voices of the nurse and doctor, our mom and closed families. Then we , at least me, heard the sound of drum beat, telling us it’s time to end recess.

Many of us growing up hearing and learning to ignore the sound of gun shots, of B-52’s rumbling, and of terrorist getting chased on rooftop. Those same roof first rain often bounced off, announcing a long overdue wet season. Rainy and dry. Half a year wet, half a year dry. No way around it. Just the way it is.

So we learn to tune out what can’t be controlled. We learn to crowd out the rain outside, playing the guitar, singing a song. “I heard he sang a good song…I heard he had a style”.

Many smoked. Others clung their beer bottles. Just to pass the time. To coast. To count to the end without making it count. Stoically. What else can you do. B-52’s can’t solve it. Kissinger kisses my *ss. Johnson, Nixon and Ford. Sounds like car dealerships in Motor City. Can’t solve it.

So we went on, putting blinders on our eyes and ear plugs in our ears. Seeing no evil, hearing no evil. Until Judgement Day. The rain on the leaves…on the tin roof…on our wet pavement.

“Hot cakes here”…the sound of peddlers and street vendors. Of those widows and orphans of war.

Echo in my mind. No pension no regrets.

Just live on. Finish up what you did not start. This wretched life whose ending no one knows.

Sentenced to a life of silence. Of grief unobserved and tales untold.

Among the living and the dead, the later are assumed to be at rest, more peaceful (R.I.P.) while the former tossed and turned even while on top of the most expensive mattress there is in Costco.

They say stress will kill you. I say, it’s silence, not stress, that does. Slowly, deliberately and mercilessly.

We’re both judge and jury. Of our own shame and guilt, buried deeply in the past, waiting for the labeled “cold” case to be re-opened in light of new evidence. Memories are selective. But never completely erased. If we are ever see real peace, it’s within ourselves when no one is watching.

We’re all sentenced to silence, eerie sound it tends to and should be….

” In restless dreams I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone ‘Neath the halo of a street lamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light That split the night And touched the sound of silence ”

Sound of footsteps on street of cobblestone, of gavel on wood …just give it some time, coming, coming. Bam! Then zooming out of any city, lots of lights yet without noise. Sentenced to silence.