Thang Nguyen 555

You know it because it rings true.

We live in a mechanical society i.e. data, speed and accuracy.

What rings true at the “heart” level needs confirmation. Hard data for hard decision.

Yet ALL of us, and I am pretty sure (no hard data to back up this hunch though) there had to be love at everyone’s conception. Then if that’s true, why what was once was so true, now deluded and decried by society as imprecise, emotional, weak, unproven and pussy.

People in the helping business was touted during Covid as heroes. Then of late, at least in CA, they had to strike to get their rightful raise.

We love Happy Ending. It pumps the juice. Happiness. Endorphin. Like they finally had a Speaker of the House ( “I felt it in my heart….best days are still ahead”).

21st-century men, deflated and often defeated when they let their emotions got the better of them. Get over it (whatever it is that gets you down).

Don’t even acknowledge it. If not recognized, it were as though it didn’t exist. Those matters of the heart.

The love for one’s motherland, one’s mother and one’s family. If it’s in the women’s department, we take it for granted. But male? go to war. Go out and drink. Go out and fight.

Then one day, the heart gave. Then we know what’s important. Like Jeremy Renner – injured in a snow plow accident – recently said he now lives a lean life, no fat whatsoever. He meant families, or what’s been regarded as important like matters of the heart.

Do we need the years to show us that? An accident? A setback?

When it comes to matters of the heart, let’s err on the side of too much rather than too little.

Give the heart its proper place – the center. After all, it gotta be love that got us all out here on Earth.

I grew up with a set of parents already in their 40’s. To me, parents mean old. And given the culture I was born into, I hardly ever associated my arrival with their bedroom encounter. It’s all hush hush.

Just be filial, give one’s highest respects to King, Teacher and parents in that order. When colliding with free wheeling Western culture e.g. spousal swapping, gay coupling and test tube babies, I was like a deer facing oncoming headlights.

My “Confucius” upbringing confused me. My reflexes (culturally) were at odds with prevailing mores. Where do I come from? Adopted maybe? Where and who were my playmates?

Finally, facebook gave me some recommendations (based on precise data they bought from other servers), for virtual friends. To widen my network and increase my Metcalfe’s influence.

Wave patterns. All digital and exponential. The more the merrier. Volume. Quantity. An imaginary audience, present and future (if by accident, they found me on Google via key word search).

Then what once was a matter of the heart, suddenly feels forced. Arbitrary. Pragmatic. And synthetic.

He who dies with the most Likes wins.

Our new society of vain narcissistic popularity. Unfit for a lonely child I used to be.

I might choke. Might throw up. Might cry out loud. For a click doesn’t solve all my social problems.

Only a heart-to-heart can feel each other’s beats. The same rhythm, like rain drops on the tin roof. A dance. A celebration.

That’s what made me me. You you. It gotta to start and end with love. Matters of the heart.

All else are sideshow, like a fortune cookie when they show you a bill after a Chinese meal.

For fun. To soften the blow. In it, we always find something agreeable and heartfelt e.g. “You will soon find your soulmate”. Things of that nature. Hard to prove and to predict. Not without more data and algorithm, to narrow down the uncertainty and risks.

“Our best days are yet ahead”.

Even with an unknown future , I know for sure I was conceived on one of those best days in the past.

In all fairness to everyone in this vast expanse. Each has his shares, his lots in life and the times of his life. 15 minutes of fame if you asked Andy Warhol. For others, in the age of YouTube, fake fame might be longer. Only that, in the age of amateurism, what’s repetitious and unoriginal get fewer responses. Nature has a way to “select” and sift through , discard and keep what’s suitable for taste, texture.

It took very long for an Eclipse, like the one we saw yesterday. Sun, Moon and Earth, passing and aligning for a few hours. Only to show, we are not alone.

In football parlance, we’re the receiver (Earth), as the Sun tries to pass its warmth and light, but the Moon, for a duration, plays blocker. Voila. Just as in a diagram, aligned and not alone.

Whether it’s Mars or Venus, Kramer vs Kramer, in all fairness, all deserve a hearing. Given the division of labor, different assignment and alignment, each delivers different values, on the same team. All quiet on the Western front. At times, we relied on the Cook to carve the pig. Other times, a Comrade to carry us out of the muddy trench.

We’re survivors of that modern-day trauma.

A lot of pre-judging statement and very few pre-fab housing. More destruction, demonstration and demolition than construction. In case no one noticed, China has had a good peace-time run as builders: housing, road, infrastructure and raw materials. No wonder it craves for more: from IP to AI, from the silicon clean room to the hospital clean room.

Meanwhile, on the Western front, kids consume fentanyl, fantasizing on YouTube and other “truths”. No national dialogue, no constructive criticism, and since last week, taking on a Middle East fight right here on campus. I am for debate, for dialogue and dialectic. We grow as a result.

I fear apathy, antagonism, and just irrelevance. Everyone does and should. Relegated onto a year-round cruise ship (because to book it back-to-back is cheaper than living in a nursing home ). Then drifting, coasting and floating. Playing a symbolic role (blowing those birthday candles, multiple of them), matriarchal or patriarchal, on special occasion, before get sent back behind the Home’s reception desk and door.

Goodbye my senior relatives’ clarity. Goodbye Sun and Moon eclipse (til the next one). We’re all on the path and occasionally, cross-path like an eclipse. In all fairness, we each have a function to perform. Be it Bach or Beethoven. Just make those pearls, those goose’s eggs and beautiful stanzas. The world can use them all. Consume it all. Even those with audacity on YouTube, putting up an act, be it amateurish at that. (their function is to help contrasting quality vs quantity, treasure vs trash).

Then in all fairness, it will all be sorted out. In the server in the Cloud. By AI. By all. Please vote for me. Please pay me. Please deposit and do not withdraw.

By the next eclipse more skeletons will cry out in a desert where flowers still bloom.

In all fairness , we have progressed beyond our level of competency. Have consumed beyond our need and destroyed more than we built.

As there are limits to growth, there are also limits to regret. When the D words out-shadow every other positive and constructive ones. What do you expect, when on the news, of late, we only see demonstration, destruction and demolition. Try to explain that to a kid who is playing with his construction toys: canes, shovels and sand. Kid! the future is yours.

I grew up in a household whose gender was in equal number ( as shown in our B/W album on opposite page) Dad and Brother, Mom and Sister. The female in my family, wore the seat of the pants. They left early for work, came home to cook, then stayed up late to grade papers or sew, iron, clean, organize and water the plants. Even keeping an eye on me, their little one who totted around in our ghetto alley.

My Mom, Mother Hen, and later, my Sister, acted from the same page: female and family. Role model. Old timer: not a lot of make-up on them. Purely professional and presentable.

They carried themselves admirably (teacher/banker). I might have picked up on some bad speech from the alley, but I have never heard bad language out of their mouths. School teachers were supposed to teach the ABC’s while exhibit quality and values, in a society which, at the time, still honored proper conduct and harmony (even in our big city).

Then all hell broke loosed: the dollar and its lure, the gun and its sway, and the Jeep and its imposition. While in the US, we saw Station Wagon and Volkswagen, in Vietnam, we still heard echoed horse carriage footsteps on city pavement.

The French were moving out, their timing overlapped with the US moving in. Like Move-In Date on campus. Any tips where to find the women? Whiskey? and good exchange rate?

TIME and Newsweek overshadowed Le Monde. Society in transition, people in motion, people in motion. ( more at Vietnamizing Woodstock). For more than 18 years, I never saw our society sitting still. Au contraire, they were all moving about at dizzy pace: vendors, cyclo – pedaled or with engine – trucks, Jeeps, convoy, taxi, velo-solex, mobilette, Vespa, bicycle, horse carriage, buses, train and plane.

Our airport was known to be the busiest due to the war. Our ground carpet-bombed, by tonnage of both World Wars combined. Trees, children, wild life, none were spared. Deny the enemy his sanctuary.

Our playground turned battleground. My early life speeded up, quick. No time for careful calibration. All reflex without context. Jump. My friends, most of them, went to Kung Fu school after Middle School. Few joined up to be paratrooper or Air Force. Finishing High School in a continuous flow? Hardly.

World disrupted, if not ended. Flag-draped caskets were a normal sight. Urban growth included an enlarging cemetery.

Besides the invasion of boots, we saw the accompanied invasion of all things Western: cigarettes, Zippo, peanut butter and guns. To exist meant to fight. Candles burned from both ends. With very little to live on, we somehow lived large in a paradoxical and toxic way.

Quick bucks, quickies and quick transaction. Everywhere and anywhere. Perhaps not at the Agri Bank where my sister worked. Perhaps not at the school where my Mom taught. But everywhere else , I noticed a sense of urgency; fast life and fast buck. Until one day, the anxiety and apprehension reached breaking point . The unsustainable regime collapsed, like a rag doll without support. One’s defeat was another’s victory. Shame and Pride co-existed on the same ground at the same time.

Admirably, the female of my family managed to pack up pictures and Ao Dai in their carry-on. While the situation called for nothing but being frantic, they came across calm and collected.

And in the new land, they rebuilt and nurtured again, by survival instinct. Continued Education, raising family and sending kids to school. Except this time, in much colder weather and with fewer resources (did not get Cup O Noodles until years later at a nearby Chinese groceries store).

Whatever treatment they received, it wasn’t surprising . Somehow the Chinese immigrant community had provided the cultural context as backdrop . We turned Asian American, without protest and without say. The American experience continues, with us, then later others: by train, plane and on foot. The business of America is business. Conducted in green. With accrued interests. So we all learn this quick. Thrift and saving. Protect and plan. This, again, fell on the female of our family.

In full circle, they conduct themselves admirably and honorably. I am not being subjective. Just the way it is. I have never seen them in the mood for self-pity, self-victimize or self-sabotage. The female of my family exemplify human’s best: nurturing and conserving. Respect for the environment and for others. Conduct becoming. Best role-models.

Lucky me. With snacks waiting after school. Guitar and songs, books and movies. I am where I am today, largely thanks to their selflessness. The untold tale of the Vietnam War, and its post-war era: female as scavengers and nomads in strange shores, hanging on to their last ounce of self-respect. One thing no one can deny: they paid a dear price to stay in place. that enviable and desirable place where they can fully be themselves. Female in family.

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.