Tag: Literature

Life as Unfinished Book

I brave heavy traffic to get to the book store on Nguyen Hue again.

Just to find out if Murukami’s 1Q84 part II in Vietnamese was available.

It hadn’t. Back and forth for nothing. But the two interwoven stories must have that crisscrossing point, a happy ending.

Can’t wait to find out.

And that was just a novel.  With its dream-like quality.

How about our own lives?

It’s Christmas in Vietnam. The lottery-ticket peddlers are still out pushing luck. The dumpster divers are still after a lucky find. Children are in school, workers at work just to improve their lots.

Nothing unusual, except for the concentration of tourists and picture takers at Saigon tourist quarter, where hotels put up Vegas-style Christmas display.

Noel, as it is called here, is a convergence of realities, now as it has always: manger and Magi, homeless and Honda.

People here don’t believe in magic. Just money.

Isn’t everywhere else?

Cash or credit?

The tree can be fake or real, but the cash has to be cold and hard cash.

Will your life and mine have a happy ending? or like the story of Christmas, it started with birth and ended with burial. The Resurrection sounds like it was added on to give the movement some momentum (Like the Mayan believers after Dec 21st).

For now, the story got another reading. Baby and bath water.

Don’t throw both out. Just believe. Finish the first part of the book.

Just like your lives and mine: beginning, middle and ending.

Can someone tell me what happens to Aomame and Tengo in 1Q84. Will they meet again and have a happy ending. I can’t wait to find out.

Twice the romance

For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable).

Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm

Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance.

As evolving species, we will adapt, both to adversity and austerity. Just eating in.

You might resent the new acronym (PIIGs), but wait until you have to go without pork (like in China in the time of inflation).

The Chinese are stepping up to the plate by offering to stabilize the Euro zone currency. with condition.

They failed to mention the arm shipments to Libya during Gaddafi‘s time (perhaps, already a market-economy exchange on that deal).

With every earth-altering discovery like that planet with two suns, we need to re-examine our assumptions.

What if we can also discover alternate energy out there? What if we can alter our attitude toward consumption and community?

Why would the damn vehicle always have to seat 4 people in “bowling alone” era (how about sidecar motorcycles; after all, Henry Ford was just tying two motorbikes together to make his first 4-wheeler, all in black, of course). As of this edit, Toyota concept EV is doing just that: three-seater enclosed vehicle.

What defines “hip” and romance (Gaga , the mermaid on wheels, w/ a “bad romance”).

What if we were given another shot at life, with our current macro-economic vantage point? (the rogue trader is doing it again, this time in the tune of 2 Billion).

Planet Bollywood.

Las Vegas in Macau.

Ford auto assembly plants mushrooming along China’s Eastern coasts.

We only transplant and replicate what works.

A tweaking here, a tweaking there. Not an overhaul. Not a paradigm shift.

Until, it’s in our face, at planetary level.

Two suns.

A discovery that should silence both Galileo and Copernicus .

Before we know it, we will adapt and take the two sunsets for granted. We will long for thrice the romance, two off-line, and one line.

Enlightenment turns entitlement again.

Turn off the telescope and turn on the microscope to look inside. We will find the thing called desire. And it’s unquenchable, and our last frontier to be conquered.

The happiest moment might not be a  Hollywood sunset. The happiest moment lies in our selective memory, wired in our deepest part of the brain. There, you will find twice the romance. More than provided by the two-sun planet’s. It’s a remarkable discovery nevertheless. Go NASA!