Tag: Apocalypse Now

On “Fraction of a Whole”

We are not invited into this dysfunctional family of three generations, all 750 pages of it.

Crime fiction, social commentary and extremely hilarious saga.

I stayed up late last night for its racing conclusion.

A year and a half ago, I read Freedom by Franzen. As engrossing as Fraction of a Whole.

This family questioned everything, but centrally, they wrestle with Death inevitable (committing suicide is to take the wind out of “natural” death’s sail).

From cover to cover, we learn to think and reason like Martin, Terry and Jasper Dean (Father, Uncle and Son), given ample details for contextual understanding. On the way, we learn to like the women in their lives as well. The settings took us from Europe to Australia, to Thailand and back.

I know a few Aussies. But this book took me deep in the woods, where to warn his family of imminent danger, Jasper had to resort to telephathy.

Terry Dean later resurfaced as huge as could be. With the locals taking the law into their own hands (machetes etc…), it reminded me of a scene from Apocalypse Now “horror, horror”.

It’s Jasper Dean who played memory keeper. He had his own set of problems: trying to find as much as possible about his deceased Parisienne mom.

This book  raises an important question: are we 100 per cent ourselves? How about our neighbors? Perhaps we all try to blend in, interacting with the lowest  common denominators (in the age of carefully crafted image on social network). If so, then, let’s turn the page and hear Martin Dean’s speech on the night his grand idea got implemented (making the population of Australia all millionaires).  Even fools sometimes got a point. And for someone whose debut got a finalist vote on Man Booker‘s prize, this is as good a read as can be. For me, it’s a rare treat,to follow the Deans in Vietnamese version. Fraction of a Whole. And that “whole” will soon be 9 Billion souls by 2050.

Each with a story to tell. In Deans’ case, a fraction turned out to be quite a hand full.

un film de Coppola

I heard “Bonjour Vietnam” again last night…”un film de Coppola…”

http://stanmark.multiply.com/reviews/item/9?&show_interstitial=1&u=%2Freviews%2Fitem

It evoked psychedelic images and texture of horror (adapted from  Conrad’s Heart of  Darkness.) Yet we were sitting in a boutique studio, with aged ladies sang along to Le Uyen Phuong’ s Last Word to You , equivalent of Bono and Cher: “let’s lay down one last time, kissing and caressing as primates in the wild.”

To top it all, we were introduced to an Anglo singer who performed three numbers, two of which by Trinh Cong Son, Bob Dylan’s equivalent of Vietnam (Ha Trang and Diem Xua).

For a moment, I was unsure of where I was: America? Vietnam? What time zone was it? Good Morning America or Bonjour Vietnam?

Both sides have paid a hefty price for the conflict that tore both nations apart: the anti-war movement in the States and the still-have-work-to-do integration of  the new Vietnam. Unlike in “un film de Coppola”, Vietnam Today has to manage the ever rising expectations in a flat world.

“Just want to overtake Thailand” commented an engineering department head at a Community College. Well, at least on two occasions that I knew of, Vietnam did just that: SEA games, and rice exporting.

Tourism is still up for grab for both countries.

The upcoming two-week break will see a lot of domestic touring.

Vietnam will see an exodus of its people taking buses, trains, planes and automobiles, just as  American comedian  John Candy and Steve Martin portrayed two strangers met in a snow-stranded airport.  In Apocalypse Now, our main character also came home, with chopper roar in the background overlayed Sheen’s narration ” I have found the enemy and the enemy is us”.

Coppola ran over budget multiple times (Dennis Hopper was half-stoned during the entire shoot).  But somehow, it turned out to be one defining movie of that decade.  To juxtapose 2012  (with dooomsday written all over) with the images of Apocalypse Now is to be redundant.

Vietnamese growing up all over the world can relate to “Bonjour Vietnam” who was sung by a Vietnamese-French girl.  They are curious, but have no context for their immigrant legacy. To self-protect in our age of data deluge, they partitioned their hyphenated existence from their parent’s experience. But the more they try, the stronger the grip (which according to sociologists, will manifest fully in the third generation). Eventually, both generations will have to reconcile and negotiate a truce. In Vietnam, it’s peace time. It’s America who is still in the state of war or readiness for war.

Bonjour Vietnam. Happy New Year. Let my people go.. home. Let them read from the tablet. Hopefully on it we will find:  love God and your neighbors (far and near) as you would yourself i.e. fight not without , for the enemy,  as found in un film de Coppola, is us.

Brief shinning light

TIME and Life’s Turbulent Years (60’s) has a picture of JFK just an hour before his  death.

Presidential, Camelot and eternally youthful in that Dallas morning.

Another picture shows after a dip in Santa Monica. What other President would do that today.

Summer time. Pool is opened. Life guards and their whistles.

Sun shades and sun tan.

Sun burn and sun block.

Heart throbbing and heart breaking.

I had one indelible summer memory of staying indoor: had a broken arm from Hapkido went wrong.

Summer-long restlessness.

Forced me to sit down. To be reflective.

Trajectory deflected.

Before that, I hadn’t realize that life never travel in a straight line

(white, yellow, blue, brown then black belt. Supposedly).

Even product planners can tell you that (S curve, valley of death etc…).

Instead, forced disruptions, surprised and blessed events strung together to make what’s called life.

Those in leadership factor in  the “unexpected”, plan B, plan C , worst-case scenario.

Even then, things still turn out not as planned.

(ComSat with low battery life, no reception etc… that forced our Lt Mike Murphy to the clearing hence drawing fire).

The team that got Bin Laden, even with the Iranian hostage crisis in hindsight, still left a burned helicopter.

Apollo, Challenger all had their shares of disasters. Skype with multiple dropped calls,  bought out twice to land in Seattle, Washington (but managed finally to link Video Chat for friends on Facebook).

Camelot and America’s brief shinning moment “Ask not…”.

So we did. A race to the moon, and a race to the jungle of South East Asia.

B-52 is now a throat-burning drink (ironically) and Apocalypse Now, a gay bar in former Saigon.

Horror! (line from the film).

I still remember where I was when I heard JFK was shot.

I was discussing it with Pierre, my half-breed schoolmate, on our way to L’Ecole Aurore via a short-cut.

We were in blue uniform, pretending to be adults. Even then, we knew somehow life would never be the same.

That world events somehow would directly impact our little lives (not too long before that, our own President had been assassinated along with his brother).

Still we had a dream (that Vietnamese kid and half-breed French kid would happily go to school).

Summer time, and youthful dream (especially when you are confined at home on cast).

And no matter what, taking down political leaders didn’t seem right in my naive assessment.

I have waited to see better solutions. And lately, with the trial of Egyptian President, I started to see that things have changed for the better.

And that if you waited long enough, what’s right will always have its day in court (or get declassified).

For that brief shinning moment, no one knew the handsomest President would hold office for only a little over 1,000 days.

Yet, his impact and influence lasted way beyond his grave e.g. private-sector space travel like Virgin Group etc..

Ask not….. for you will never know when the bell toll for thee. Summer time. Youthfulness. In restless dreams I walk alone.