Tag: lobo

Teen boys’ dreams

It’s all there on my friend’s web site: the seating lay-out in the classroom (three jr-high students to a table) I drew up 40 years ago. When you click on a name, it pops up a few byline and that friend’s mushy words about “summer time” or “we will never be this good as a group – cutting classes… knowing a few of us would be drafted to the war zones”.

Also posted was a picture of three guys, who shared a table in the back of the class, all with bell-bottom pants and innocent looks (one of them later came back from the war zone with only one eye left). Ironically, it’s him who later created the web page, which also runs a personal ad looking for the other two.

On my first trip back to Vietnam after 25 years away, I managed to track down a friend who used to sit next to me (table next to last). He in turn helped connect the three in the picture I have just seen.

Those early day “postings” were our version of facebook. They bore imprints of innocence and premonition for our soon-to-be-lost youth , fours years after Tet 68 and one year before the Paris Accord, which was signed 40 years to date.

I still remember those diaries. They were passed around at the end of the school year, to record our impressions of each other and our time in middle school. During the year, we had produced our version of Wall Paper (the student version of White Paper), for the entire school to read.

We stayed up late, typing, designing and laying out. Then, we used the school stencil (roneo) papers the night before deadline.

We named it “Uoc Vong” (Aspiration).

Since co-ed only introduced a few years later and only for night school, we boys had to stick together all those hot afternoons. Extra-curricular actvities would include volley ball, soccer, ping-pong, Rock music practice, karate, fund-raising campaigns for refugees fleeing the war zones (the girl in the  picture) and a bit of home-grown journalism.

Those four years were incubating time.

We were pruned in school tradition with “flame” as our mascot and learned to emulate upper-classmen (Quoc Dung who wrote music at the age of 12, and got noteriety at 16). We participated in and campaigned for student representative posts. Even after getting elected to the Student Council, I still had to observe the pecking order (seniors got to pick the best all-girl schools to sell our Tet magazine to). Being junior, I ended up with a nearby “rough” co-ed schools (where other boys surely wouldn’t give us free rein on their campus to court “their female classmates”).

We also learned a very important lesson: friendship lasts forever!

After four decades of drifting apart (with one known dead, and two wounded) then stumbling upon that picture of the tallest boys, with Lobo‘s hair and bell-bottom pants, facing the black/white camera, I felt a lump in my throat. If they had only known.

Had I only  known.

Yet even then, I sensed that our lives would be swept along by strong political currents.

I wrote  on our Wall Paper ” around the bend, further ahead, where we have yet seen, but with a good chance of turning out not as thought.. in whatever shape or form we found ourselves then, let’s meet and greet as if time had stood still and that we remain friends despite of it all”.

That turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The one-eyed red-beret is currently visiting Vietnam. I showed up early on the third day of Tet at his door step to fetch him, and guided him across a busy street.

He used to be a black belt but has to wear black boots to straighten his crooked ankle (a one-eyed shaky hand and crooked leg man). “No matter what shape or form we found ourselves then, let’s meet and greet as if time had stood still”.

In the US, Vietnam vets are calling attention to the plight of vet homelessness.

It’s the same everywhere: we are quick to forget, unless something triggered our memory and sparked our imagination. It’s not an unsolvable issue, but the “social” dimension needs to be personalized. When asked why a little girl tried to save a star fish when the seas are full of them. She replied “it matters to that one”.

My teen boy’s dream has made a 360-degree turn on me; my personal Timeline has just sent a reminder to my inbox, urging me to click on a link to the past.  Around the bend, further up the road where things have yet revealed themselves to us, let’s make a commitment to stay friends despite of it all (war and its unintended consequences). Dream, dream, dream.

How can I tell her

Lobo was hot in Vietnam during the 70’s.

Decades later, on an American stage, his Vietnamese fans even invited him to perform live for music video.

Just a simple man.

“I love you too much to ever start liking you, so let’s just let the story kind an end…”

The contradiction and dialectic – friend and lover.

How can I  tell people about Vietnam.

Its soul, its sentiment, its sorrow (of war).

People on both sides don’t talk about it.

Nobody wants to talk about it.

In Matterhorn,  we got a glimpse of what it was like back then by a Yale scholar. It took him more than 30 years to pen his experience.

In Bao Ninh‘s Sorrows of War, it took him less time, but painful nevertheless.

It eats you up from the inside.

You can’t forget it.

Everyone was affected by it.

The younger generation only heard about it.

The older buried it.

But it grows inside, like a cancer.

Sudden loss, separation and interruption.

One cannot swim in the same river twice.

Maybe you can go back in place, but not in time.

First cut is the deepest.

Now you hear only sentimental songs whose lyricst barely scratch the surface.

Who will speak for them?

Who can understand them?

Betrayal and bewilderment.

How can I tell her about you.

I am just a simple man.

I love you too much to ever start liking you.

So Lobo incidentally touched the nerves (top of the chart in US as well).

Just you and me and the dog named Boo.

Rhyme and rhythm.

Chorus and replay.

It gets right under your skin.

And stays there.

The artist has moved on.

But his fans are still lingering.

Like the smell of napalm.

The taste of Pall Mall, among other PX supplies: peanut butter and jelly,

cheese and fruit cake.

Go go girls in leather boots and mini-skirts.

Bob Hope and the choppers’ drops.

When I saw you standing there, I felt the blood goes to my feet.

Baby, I love you to want me.

Unassuming, unpretentious.

Pure longing and pure loss.

Fleeting flirt and life-time sorrow.

On top of the sorrows of war.

On top of post-war reconstruction.

There is still a glimpse of hope, of finding love once again.

Maybe this time, it’s different.

Maybe, when I saw you standing there, I once again, felt the blood goes to my feet.

Nobody cares if Lobo no longer stays at the top of the chart.

To the Vietnamese heart which he once conquered, Lobo occupied a well-deserving spot. I once felt ashamed that I had liked him. Now I no longer want to please what’s trendy. Just stay there, my simple man, because “everything seems right, whenever I am with you”……..

Things we wish we could take with us

When at Indian Town Gap in 1975, I was busy helping out at the Bureau of Child Welfare so time passed rather quickly.

But not for my fellow countrymen. Many sat there worried: how were they going to make it in America, that winter was coming.

Many hurried weddings took place at the camp chapel.  People were busy matching up sponsors and foster children.

For me, I was glad I could earn a few bucks by being a translator. And spent them all on cassette tapes.

We recorded music (one machine would play, the other recorded, in the barrack’s bathroom).

“Lovin you” was number 1 on the Hit Parade that year. And ironically, someone was playing “Band On the Run”.

We left unfinished youth: time spent at cafe, listening to Lobo‘s number 1 hit “You and Me and the dog named Boo”.

Or felt so spiritual with “My Sweet Lord” .

If you want to “break in” to the Vietnamese market, best way is to figure out your niche, then play those music subliminally.

Mix in some French songs, because the Romantic era never left Vietnam, especially Hanoi. In fact, time seems to freeze there.

You can still see a Citroen on a good evening.

Back to my odyssey. So when I got to Penn State, I immediately made friends and we threw a party.

It’s one of those times when you could spot someone Vietnamese on a cold Harrisburg night, and he would let you sleep on the floor.

And never forgot the hospitality of people of the same human condition. And I realize now the things I wanted then to take with me: my dreams, my expressions of those dreams, and the heritage I left. No wonder song writers wrote about Hanoi after the evacuation of

1954, and Saigon, 1975. Those places are symbols of one’s lost times, unrealized dreams and definitely, curators of both wise and foolish choices.

To tourists , these cities are just crowded network of concrete dividers, and  trees are few. Tourists would place Hanoi, Hue and HCMC against a back drop of 100 places to see before they died. But little do they know, they have their own” Hanoi” and “Saigon” too. They just didn’t care to acknowledge, until the 11th hour.  No wonder I can identify with Cinema Paradiso. The Italian have a lot in common with the Vietnamese. We both like Sophia Loren.  We know what’s nostalgia is and do not feel ashamed to admit it.

What’s wrong with burning incense and feeling reconnect with loved ones, since they might not be living, but the relationships are very much alive. In fact, one loves one’s parents more when they are gone because absence makes the heart grow fonder. ” I love you too much to ever start liking you, so don’t expect me to be your friend”. Lobo knows how to say it, in a very Asian way. No wonder he can still have some Asian fans, late in his career.