” I am changing everything” …Like Holden Caulfield, catcher in the Rye.
“Oh I don’t want to die..”. The future that I once fret is my current present.
“All my sorrows”….were for nothing. They said 90% of our worries didn’t materialize. Yet we keep worrying. Like a plague. Dec 21st or 23rd (Mayan Calendar).
Just shop til we drop ( even right after 9/11).
The world is, a bad place, a terrible place to live (lyrics).
The hardest part is to face and live with one’s self.
Tend not to those urges ( self-sabotage and self-destruction.)
Who planted them there? Those seeds? So the Earth would be less populated?
Take me back, to my own home (Lyrics).
Those GI‘s who listened to this song from a transistor radio, deep in the thick jungle of Vietnam. Have they often reflected on that experience? The Amerasian children they left behind? The bodies and chemical agents?
Who won that war? Or any war for that matter!
Perhaps both sides have lost.
Lives destroyed, and environment contaminated .
Bombs and napalms have fallen here when “Reflections of My Life” was at the top of the chart.
A generation of young people were forced to grow up really fast, to reflect on death and dying, to ask hard questions.
All my crying (lyrics)
It hurts to face separation, from neighbors and friends. The comfort zone.
Gone forever. Like a movie reel that got torn at one of the splices.
Tran Hung Dao, the Sea General, was back to sea (his imprint was on the then currency). Dust comes to dust.
In Vietnam, it’s considered “luck” to run into a funeral, not a wedding.
Yet, with Christmas season in tow, I saw 2 weddings this morning.
It’s peace-time Vietnam. The Wedding Hall is named “FOREVER“.
More optimistic in outlook now.
Fewer funerals, more weddings.
Less “reflections of my life”, and more “accumulation of stuff”.
One thing is missing here: Black Friday shopping. That was because, American landed here back in 1965, Pleiku and not Plymouth. Hence there was no Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. No turkey dinner. Just another weekend of laundry, coffee and a rare treat from the band. You can guess what they played here.
Yes, Reflections of My Life. Take me to my own home (lyrics). Holden Caulfield got expelled from school. Not wanting to go back home just yet. Just ride the rail, the taxi, and anything that moves, with no particular stop in mind. The journey is the reward.
Thang Nguyen 555 