Tag: Back to Blood

Same river twice

This is not about going back to your prom night, or re-entering the job market.

It’s about locality and landscape that have been gentrified and occupied by new comers as time passed. I happened to be by the old neighborhood where I used to live 30 years ago: same Peking Duck restaurant, same Post Office.

Even a bunch of day laborers standing around and trying to keep warm.

My parents however have passed away.

So the scenery and streets evoked warm memories.

What’s new was a French Restaurant which was staffed with recently arrived immigrants (while the speakers played French lessons, naturellement).

The neighborhood has taken on some wrinkles. So have I.

Especially on this first day of March (the worst of winter was now behind), and first day of Sequestration (even the country got some wrinkles).

People refused to break away from winter hibernation and spending spree.

Wish I could turn the clock back, to see myself receive my US citizenship again. That time frame would put me to the time waiting eagerly for my Dad to immigrate and be reunited with us.

That year (1983), I embarked on a long trip, my second one to SEA.  Only years later that I was able to attribute my hidden motivation: atonement. When we had first arrived, we were each man to his own, leaving our Mom behind in the refugee camp. My subsequent trips back to SEA similar camps were for carthasis, a counter-prevailing statement to popular  “habits of the heart”.

No fanfare. Just slipped out and away.

Trying to pay forward.

Among the Best-selling books after Habits of the Heart was, Bowling Alone, the logical next step. People turned inward, each man for himself (Ask  what you can do for yourself).

Conservatism got anointed by televised and telegenic preachers (who later confessed to unfaithfulness and unraveling affairs).

President, Pope and Pop star (j Lennon) all got shot.

Are you talking to me? For I am the only one here! Tony Montana wanted to “go to the top”, starting in Miami (after a brief stop at Indiantown Gap refugee processing center, same place our now scattered families had passed through).

I had blurry memories of the mid-80’s simply because I was concentrating on non-profit work overseas.

When I got back, I seemed to have missed a few beats (Boy George? Cindy Lauper?) and a few friends’ weddings.

So, after three decades, the memory gap is huge. Can’t seem to swim in the same river twice.

I have changed. The place has changed. It’s now colder than I remembered. Perhaps I have turned to be a “tropical species”.

Maybe I should be migrating South to Florida, and joining the “snow birds” .

Maybe a cruise ship, so I don’t need to belong anywhere in particular, or swim in any river per se.

The price of being a global citizen is the loss of one’s local identity.

I will never forget the punch line in Cross-Cultural class: it’s easier to cross the ocean miles away than the neighbor next to you. When I saw the new neighbors in that neighborhood today, the above saying seems to take on new meaning: they did all the ocean-crossing to get here. And to reach out across the aisle seems to be doubly hard, because of rules and signs that say “first comes first served”, “Do not trespass”, or “Do Not Disturb” “Beware of Dogs”. Maybe I should return in the summer, when the community pool is opened to all residents, regardless of color, race and creed. “Swim at your own risks”. Even then, you are lucky to strike a conversation across the lounge chairs. Be quiet! People are reading. Hope they don’t work on “Habits of the Heart” in 2013. Even Tom Wolfe has moved on down to Miami with Back to Blood, away from New York ‘s Bonfire of  the Vanities.

All to the payload

Nothing goes to waste. Neither a minute nor an experience, good or bad.

This is not pre-destination. It is how our brain stores and evolves. Millions of calculation, prediction, reflection and reinvention.

Like technology which evolves, so do we. We made a mistake. We did it again. Then we learned. Both David Brooks and Jeremy Rifkin talked about Empathic Civilization and how men have come to relate emotionally.

We (men) were taught at an early age to hunt, to conquer and move on.

e.g. the All-terrain man (NYT Magazine March 20-2013)

If we failed, shake it off with whiskey and move on.

Tough guys don’t dance, or buy-in to empathy, emotional intelligence or group therapy.

Yet studies like the Grant Study found that men do learn from mistakes and adjust in due course.

Partly because the nature of warfare has changed (from hard to software), partly because of women have moved further in the workplace (which gave birth to a bunch of stay-at-home dads).

Whatever the reasons, we do see a generation of sensitive men emerge (or titles like “The End of Men”.

Men who use I-pod, I-phone and I-pad.

Men who drive electric cars (which Tom Wolfe calls the Elf, in his latest Back-to-Blood novel). Men who could be President (Clinton) or just be big-dog supporter of our currently re-elected President.

Not much ego there. Just collaboration across the aisle and across the ocean.

We are living in interesting times: Outgoing Chinese President, and incumbent US  President.

We wouldn’t hear comments as back in Watergate days “I would run over my grandmother for the job” (Chuck Colson).

Now, it’s 2012. The world is tweeting, sharing, Liking, posting, commenting and crowdsourcing.

Utopia? Not quite.

But much better. More empathic a civilization. The late stage of evolution. Grown men do drink milk. Wear tight pants, and do yoga. Yes, I know how you feel. Nothing goes to waste. Those hours of watching and feeding the kids.

It’s well worth it. The bonding at bed-time reading. We have become role-models. For me, I hope my generational “curse” stops here. (unlike the final scene in Exorcist where the young priest, tormented so much he had to take his own life to end the never-ending downward spiral).

I hope for my girls a much better life than mine.

Nothing goes to waste. We transmit those DNA strands and a few variables of our own. It happens to be the first stage of empathic men, last stage of Alpha male.

God bless Aimy and Maily.