The Year of the Cat.
Al Stewart in white suit.
Cyclical, eternal and in sync with nature. No “dominion over the land and seas” as in Western theocracy (in an ironic twist, outside my window, the work crew keeps digging, plowing, flattening and paving the sidewalks – one after another, from water to power, cable to phone companies – one dead-end street, multi-crew, stretching on for months).
People just want to rest, renew and reinvigorate.
Eat the fruit and replant the seed.
Eat the fruit, and remember those who planted the seed.
Greet the young and remember the old.
In letting go, one is free to receive the first visitor on New Year.
I could always tell who was going to be our first visitor while growing up in Vietnam.
Great Uncle, in bow tie.
(It would be an equivalence of man in black during New Year Eve’s party).
The bouquet, the basket of fruit and a bowl of brisket, all symbolize abundance from nature . This was during a pre-supermarket era i.e. fresh, not frozen.
Lunar New Year presents a different perspective.
I remember a movie joke line “the only restaurant opens over Christmas is Chinese“.
And perhaps the opposite is also true: the only establishment that is open in Vietnam during Tet is Circle K. (backpacker’s alley).
I miss the firecrackers. They replace them with fireworks now.
But the scent and sound of firecrackers truly marked the changing of the “animal” (from Tiger to Cat). New Year Day saw various shades of pink and red firecracker’ s ash on rich man’s lawn.
Everyone yearns for the new: new clothes, new money and new coat of paint. The ancestral altar also got buffed up. My late parents used to pen some poems right after midnight.
If they had Web 2.0 back then, they probably would have gone on Facebook and “status” it. People forgive and forget. Life is hard enough with war, separation and loss.
For three days, food is taken for granted.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Let’s hear it! 10-9-8…count down. No, there is no such clear-cut.
Just a crack here and a pop there, and before you realize it, New Year has arrived . It dropped a ton of optimism in a hurry, like an overtime UPS man running late. Growing up in war-time and in poverty is like doing exercise: you have to do it every day to make it work for you (you learn to look at yourself and others not by the amount of possession, but by the richness of one’s relationships).
New Year in Vietnam is a time for communal self-renewal. Everybody yearns for the new, for a better tomorrow. For now, Al Stewart’s the Year of the Cat will do just fine, since it was a top hit back then. Every twelve years, it becomes relevant all over again.
Thang Nguyen 555 