Just like an old-time movie, friends met yesterday to rehash.
We mentioned briefly the passing away of our friend’s brother: nerdy, good old boy and an ATM machine service man and family man. In short, the least likely candidate to die young. Yet, he had been long gone (by now 3 years).
Earth, Wind and Fire used to have a song out called “Time is on your side”.
I don’t think so.
One can conjure up various scenarios for end-of-life, but it will end regardless, without credits roll (perhaps we should get going with our acknowledgement page just in case).
Feature-length movies, by convention, last one hour and a half (same way Twitter limits a tweet to 140 characters).
Except for Costner’s and Cameron’s (Dancing with Wolves and Titanic).
Life happens while we are busy planning it (John Lennon).
It came concurrently and not sequentially: a brief sunset, a nagging child, a teacher’s stern look.
One can find happiness in confinement (Life is Beautiful) or at the last moment (Mozart’s Requiem).
It’s not over until it is truly over
When I was 4 or 5 years old, I saw neighbors carry out a dead man .
He had lived alone in a house in the alley.
I did not know his name. Only learned later that he had died without any relatives around him.
By all measures (culturally), he died unhappily.
He could have lived twice his age then, but his death was still viewed as an unhappy one. Quality trumps quantity.
Biotech has extended our “feature-length” narrative, from one-hour-and-a-half lifescript to that of Titanic’s and Dancing with Wolves’.
What are we going to do with all those extra hours? Amusing ourselves to death while waiting for death (there hasn’t been a playbook for seniors – Paterno for instance has just passed away at 85 after getting sacked by the BOD at my school).
In Silicon Valley where Steve Jobs started out, the motto was “trust no one above 30”.
Yet, Sculley and other investment banking CEO’s pocketed huge severance despite their poor performance.
Time is on whose side?
Of course not on the side of the poor or the pure of hearts (keep the faith).
Even with director’s cut, a feature-length film still needs to be trimmed down.
As creatures of selective memories, we often edit out and reinvent our past.
Nowhere else can you find serious anticipation of the new and relinquishing of the past than in Vietnam, during Tet.
The Year of the Dragon has finally arrived. It roars, dances and puffs out fire.
We invent myths and matiarials to redefine who we are (he is from a Royal breed, a Lexus owner).
Vietnamese people are known as descendants of Dragon and Angel. To understand Vietnam, you need to understand its literary life.
Vietnamese honors duty above death, sacrifice above love. These tales of heroism are the baseline. “Time is on whose side” is an irrelevant question. Happiness defined as personal fulfillment is also out of the question. People here see themselves as in transit, with Earth another station along the way. Home is where ancestors are waiting, provided you had fulfilled your filial obligation and honored them by courageous living. Try to work that in the State of the Union address, and see its impact on American society? (You lied!). On the CEO’s on Wall Street. On the armed men who preyed on US campus.
America needs Vietnam as much as Vietnam needs America, since time is on neither side.
Thang Nguyen 555 