Thursday, April 26, 2007

Student Surveys

I just had a class in which I taught about media influence. At the end of class I asked seven groups of students (four students in each group) to answer the following questions:

(below I've provided the questions along with the answers from each group separated by " / ")




1. How many hours of TV does your group watch each day? 2 / 10 / 3 / 5 / 6 / 15 / 30
(keep in mind, all of these numbers are split in four ways)

2. How many people in your group read the newspaper each day? 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 2

3. How many hours of radio does your group listen to each day? 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 2 / 0 / 0


4. What type of TV shows does your group watch most often? Variety
[Var.] / Drama / Var. / -- /Var. / Var. / Var.

5. How many hours does your group spend on the Internet each day? 11 / 12 / 0.5 / 5.5 / 6 / 9 / 4

*********

Last week, I taught a lesson on volunteering. I asked a class of 42 students, "Who knows a friend or family member who has ever volunteered for anything? It could have been for one day or one week. Any amount of time. Raise your hand if you know someone."

One student raised his hand.

I thought there was some mistake: did they understand my question? Only one student?! The Japanese teacher translated my question into Japanese.

Again, the same student raised his hand.

A $400 Haircut? Seriously?

left: Complete twat checking for cracks in his mask

John Edwards used money earned through his campaign fundraising to pay for two separate $400 haircuts.

Think about that.

This man is not like us. He's a creature from a planet devoid of hearts, souls, brains, and real problems.

Fit to be president? Well, based on past presidents and how he stacks up on the I'm-Richer-Than-All-The-People-I-Represent Scale, he's A-OK. Fit to be fiscally responsible? Not in a million years.

If he was the only candidate for 2008 who is best suited for a comic strip rather than the White House, I'd laugh all this off. That's the problem: He's simply the next guy in a long line of idiotic candidates and presidents that stretches far back into our history and will stretch, without some sort of country-wide resistance to vacuous leaders, far into our future.

I'm 24-years-old and already so much of what I read about when it comes to elections (not just in America, but all over the world) reeks of silliness and superficiality. I'm so sick of shells of men rising to the top of the heap and ending up as candidates. How is it that we've created a system that allows fools to get rich AND get votes? Shouldn't our smartest, most compassionate citizens with the cleanest records and most humble budgets be our candidates?! Doesn't this make common sense?

A country is truly fucked up when it keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, when it keeps putting cookie-cutter rich guys on election pedestals. Why isn't the whole country repulsed yet? Honestly, why not? How do 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds even drag themselves to the polling stations anymore?

When you know the next 15 steps in the dance and the next 5 minutes of notes in the song, why even lace up your shoes? At what point do you say, "Fuck dancing, I'm going for a swim"?

Read all about how candidates are spending the money Americans are giving them here.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Prison Guards and the People with Different Brains

left: My room at the hotel mentioned in this post. At $10 a night, it was the swankiest place I stayed in and came complete with a pool, A/C in the rooms, and balconies.

When I was debating whether or not to get a room at the hotel, the man at the front desk said, “We have pool, you see?”

He motioned over his left shoulder. Behind him, through dusty glass windows, I could see a pool in the hotel courtyard complete with a 10 foot long, whiskered wooden dragon perched atop a large stone pillar rising from the middle of the pool. I wiped sweat from my upper lip with the back of my hand. I looked back at the man. He was smiling with his eyebrows raised in a “Nice, huh?” fashion.

“OK, I’ll take a room.”

“Great! Here is key.”

*******

Two white men were floating on their backs in the pool like stripped eucalyptus logs when I flip-flopped around the poolside tiles to a chair. They righted themselves and stood waist deep in the water when they saw me.

One man was baby-tooth-white, short, strong, freckled, and pudgy with a shaved head and an orange-haired, trimmed goatee.

The other was tanned, ogre-like with ambiguous body mass—whether he was strong but also a food lover or once fat but now slightly toned was indiscernible. His eyes looked so tired and weary that if new acquaintances were unaware of his profession (more on this later), they would assume he was stoned.

“Hey, how’s it goin?” the short one asked.

“Good, good. How’s the water?”

“Oh it’s lovely, just perfect really,” the ogre-ish man said with a grin.

I dipped my foot in. The water was Vermont-winter-night cold. The men laughed. I sat down on a beach chair by the edge of the pool and prayed for a thermal vent to rip open under the pool's bottom and spill its warmth.

“We been talkin' about it. I think they might refrigerate the water at night. Or put ice in it or something. They must do something to it,” the pudgy man said with authority.

I looked up at the six-floor, L-shaped hotel that surrounded the pool and shaded it from the hot, Vietnamese sun. Ice or refrigeration on a pool-wide-scale in a land where lucky folks make $10 a day seemed plain silly, but I kept my mouth shut.

“So where are you guys from. England?” I asked, hoping to peg their accents.

“Watch it mate! Watch it! England?! Christ, a question like that is bound to get a man killed where we’re from!” The short man laughed only long enough to show me he was both amused and offended.

“Tasmania,” the tired ogre said.

“Tasmania, huh. I’ve never been there but I once met a logger in Australia who said they have some of the oldest, tallest trees in the world in Tasmania. And some of the roughest seas, too.”

The ogre spoke up, “Well actually Tasmania is Australia, it’s one of the territories. Not many people know that. No different than Queensland.”

“Huh, yeah I didn’t know that.” Pause. “What do you do in Tasmania?”

“We’re both prison guards. I’m at a max prison,” the pudgy one said before turning and pointing toward the ogre, "He's at a minimum security prison." He said it in a My-dick-is-bigger-than-his sort of way.

“Wow, prison guards. I have to say, you might be the first prison guards I’ve ever met while traveling.”

The shorter man raised his eyebrows. “Really, I’m surprised—prison guards have tons of vacation time, I don’t know why you haven’t met more of them. Well, at least in Tasmania that’s the case. We get eight weeks off a year plus national holidays. One month off every five months.”

“Holy shit, that’s amazing! Most people are happy to get two or three weeks in America. Teachers get about eight weeks off, but no one else is so lucky I guess," I said.

The ogre laughed and his eyes lit up a bit, “Oh no. We wouldn’t allow that in Tasmania. If the government ever tried to enforce two or three week vacations, the unions would go crazy. That’s your problem: you Yanks have weak unions.”

“Maybe, I don’t know, that's just the way it’s been. No one knows any different.” Pause. “So do you guys enjoy your jobs? Do you ever form friendships with inmates?”

“Ohhh no. Mate, I’m surrounded by the worst rapists and murderers Tasmania churns out,” the pudgy one answered. “We never establish friendships. We establish what’s called rapport.” He said ‘rapport’ slowly, assuming I had never heard the word before. “Inmates know my role and I know their role. We interact within those restrictions. If you do your job, friendship is impossible really.”

“Huh, interesting. What ethnic groups do you see most in the prisons?”

The tall one answered, “Eh, it depends really. Mostly whites, some Asians. Some Aborigines. I see a lot of guys on ice-related charges. Ice is taking over Tasmania, it’s crazy.”

“Yeah I see all sorts of guys, but mostly whites. Lots of ice users, lots of drunks.”

“Huh. Actually, I’m curious to hear what you guys think about this: I visited Australia a few years ago and hitched around and talked to a bunch of people. Most people I met didn’t really like Aborigines. They thought most of them were drunks who didn’t capitalize on the opportunities the government gives them. How do you guys feel about Aborigines? Am I totally off on that? That’s the impression I got from the people who picked me and talked with me.”

“Hey, you said it right there mate,” the pudgy one said. “I hate to say it, but most Aborigines are drunks and they waste what the government gives them. It ain’t all their fault, though, you know. Scientists have proven that their brains are different from ours. They are uh, what’s the word, pre-dis…predispensed…”

“Predispositioned,” the tall one said.

“Yeah, they are predispositioned to be alcoholics. Their brains are wired up to make ‘em drink. It’s a shame really. But I don’t feel bad for them—I know white alcoholics that hold steady jobs.”

“Yeah, and we have given them so much. They got back all the land they wanted back. The government gives every person who is at least 1/16th Aborigine a free university education. They get tons of benefits, and they still drink and do nothing with their lives,” the ogre added. He said 'we' like the word included him personally.

“Wow, yeah I never heard that before about the brain. Well, what do you think they did before white people arrived and brought the alcohol?” I asked.

For a second, their faces went blank. Then, something flashed in the pudgy one’s mind.

“No no no! They were brewing their own crazy shit before white people got there—you can be sure of that! White people stole land in the beginning, but now we’re trying to help them and they don’t want to be helped. It’s sad honestly.”

Both men were starting to shiver at this point—whether or not from the cold water or the racism pulsing through their bodies I can’t be sure. They got out of the pool, dried off, and we said our good-byes.

I stared at the dragon glaring down at me from the middle of the pool atop his perch. His whiskers had a three foot wingspan. His wooden belly came complete with ribs; he was hungry. I jumped in the water and swam circles around him, teasing him, tempting him to try and strike.

I thought about the dragons of men I had just met: I imagined them in their lookout posts, still and quiet like crocodiles, waiting for the men with dark skins, shackles, and unfortunate brain-wiring to do something reckless, something that would allow the guards to act, to move. I dipped underwater and the cold shocked my mind blank.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Cherry-Blossom-Crazy

left: All of these pictures were taken in the last week during hanami, the cherry blossom season in Japan. The first picture is from a camping party we had up on a mountain that looks out over Ueda. You can see a few blossoms starting to open on the trees behind the statue.

Most are from Ueda Castle. My friends and I had a picnic there. During the day, groups of men and women from every district of Ueda carried a large shrine around the castle. Each group wears a different jacket and the men wear sumo-style underwear. At dusk, a bunch of bands and dance groups performed.

The wooden shrine pictured costs $100,000!!!

(larger versions of these photos can been viewed by clicking my Flickr link to the right of this post)

















































































































Thursday, April 19, 2007

Motorbike? Marijuana? Boom-boom? Opium?

Typical dialogue between motorbike taxi drivers and I at night in Hanoi (note: the conversation below would usually take 10 seconds from start to finish and would occur as I walked past motorbike drivers propped up against their bikes on street corners, waiting for customers like lazy lions lounging in an open field)

Motorbike driver upon seeing me: "Hey! Motorbike?"

Me: "No thanks, I'm walking." (At this point, I usually made a little walking motion with my index and ring fingers just to make my intentions clear. This often had no effect on the ensuing conversation.)

"No motorbike? OK, marijuana? You want? Very good, strong."

"No thanks."

"OK, boom-boom? Girlfriend? Beautiful." (This is when the motorbike driver would usually drive his fist into his palm over and over again to show me what it would be like if I were to have sex with his acquaintance... I guess? It would be like a fist hitting a palm?)

"No thanks."

"OK. Opium. Verrrrry good." (Usually delivered in a faint whisper.)

"No thanks."

I later found out that most motorbike drivers one finds at night in certain parts of the city are simply drug dealers and pimps who use the motorbike gig as a front for their more lucrative pursuits.

My questions for you guys and gals reading this are:

What's with the order of offers?

What makes a man who turns down a motorbike ride more likely to buy some pot?

Is a man who doesn't want pot obviously looking for a little love?

And is a man who turns down sex clearly a junkie with a dehydrated libido just looking to score his next fix?

I can only assume there is some logic behind the standard motorbike pitch because, regardless of the driver, I seemed to get offers in the same order: motorbike, pot, sex, opium.

Why didn't I ever hear--motorbike, sex, pot, opium? Or motorbike, opium, sex, pot? Huh? Huh?

Prostitute Deju Vu

left: This picture is awesome!! I wish I had taken myself. Mommies out there: if your daughter is caught with (or caught by rather!) a guy like this, be scared. Be very, very scared. No one with jeans tucked into his high-tops can be trusted.

I had an hour before my train was scheduled to leave Saigon. It was hot. Cold beers are cheaper than water in most of Vietnam. Choosing what to do in this situation was easy.

I sat down at a bar with a few empty tables on the sidewalk. As I sat, a man with a chubby neck and sunglasses on a stool at the back of the bar waved one of three scantily clad girls clustered at a table to bring me a menu. When she stood, I realized my mistake: I had decided to sit at a bar with a pimp for an owner and prostitutes for waitresses.

A girl in a tank-top 10 sizes too small and a skirt that looked like a child's tube sock with the toe cut off sauntered up to my table. She smiled and dropped the menu on my table. She caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my arm.

"Oooooooo! Wow!" She reached out and lifted my sleeve up to rub the tattoo. As she touched my skin, she raised her eyebrows at me as if saying, Do you like this, do you like my hand on your arm? Her lips were doused in shiny lip gloss and looked like the polished fenders of a restored car at a sunny outdoor car show.

"Where you from?" she asked, smiling.

left: Still frame from the classic. The times have changed, but Vietnamese prostitute fashion has not.

"America. How about you?" The question threw her off guard for some reason.

"Me? Saigon. How long you stay in Saigon?" She smiled again. I looked at her mouth. How many sweaty white penises has that mouth enveloped, I wondered.

"I will leave Saigon in one hour to catch a train to Nha Trang," I said in my slow, English teacher voice to avoid any confusion. My answer hit her like a punch to her exposed, pierced belly button.

"Really? Only one hour?" She hoped that I'd ditch my beer and go for a quick romp in the back with her before I caught my train.

"Yes, only one hour," I said apologetically.

Now, fast forward to two days later. I'm in Nha Trang at some bar by the beach. The sun is doing a swan dive into the ocean and I'm drinking a beer while writing in my journal. I'm writing about the scene described above. Just as I write the line, "Really? Only one hour?" a woman approaches me and smiles.

Her high heels dig deep into the sand and she's wearing a mini skirt and snug baby-tee. She sees my tattoo on my arm from a few feet away.


"Ooooooo! Beautiful! Very nice!" she says as she reaches out and lifts up my t-shirt sleeve.
"Where you from?"

I was shocked.

What are the odds of being interrupted by a prostitute who reaches out to touch my tattoo just as I'm writing about a prostitute who interrupted me two days before by reaching to touch my tattoo?!?!?

Only in Vietnam. Or Thailand.


The repetition of an event like this is only testament to the sheer volume of foreign semen discharged (for a price) in this country.

Mao


Night.

As I watched pairs of Vietnamese friends kick shuttlecocks back and forth over chalk lines drawn on the sidewalk in the park, a man emerged from the darkness, pointed to the empty space on the bench next to me, and asked, "Can I sit?"

"Sure," I said.

Immediately I pulled back from my complete absorption in the scene before me and shifted into on-guard mode. Just as any traveler would do after meeting a new person in a dark park at night, I looked the man over and tried to, in an instant, evaluate if he posed any threat to me. He had nothing in his hands. He wasn't drunk. He looked clean. He didn't look emaciated or desperate.

He was slight of build and wore typical Vietnamese urban garb: light dress pants, flip-flops, a faded, untucked button up dress shirt with rolled sleeves. His hair, black as onyx, blended into the night behind him.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"America. Where are you from?"

He laughed. "Vietnam! Of course Vietnam. I live in Saigon my whole life."

"My name is Andrew. Nice to meet you." We shook. His hand felt small but strong in my grasp.

"I am Mao. Nice to meet you."

I talked to Mao for an hour and a half that night. I knew he wanted to practice his English, but I didn't feel that I'm-being-exploited-for-a-free-English-lesson feeling that I sometimes feel speaking with eager Japanese people in Japan. We were very open with each other and talked about our opinions on current events and our dreams for the future.

Mao is 31. He is a tailor who makes vests, but he also sells suitcases part-time in his parent's luggage shop. He earns $200 a month--two times as much as the average Vietnamese person working in Saigon. He studied English only in high school because he had no opportunity to study it earlier, although, he explained, children today in Vietnam start studying English in elementary school. Mao tries to speak to foreigners to practice his English so that one day he might be able to expand his parent's business by opening a store an area that sees foreign foot traffic.

After we had told each other about our families and our jobs, Mao turned to face me on the bench.

"What do you think of George Bush?" he asked.

"Good question, what do you think of George Bush?" I asked, laughing.

"Hmmm. Well many people don't like him. But I think he has difficult job. Very difficult. He make mistakes. But President of America--very difficult job. He must think about many things--America, Iraq, money, other countries. It is difficult," he said. "You agree?"

"Yeah, it's a difficult job, but he has many smart advisers, many helpers, to help him make good decisions. He shouldn't make such big mistakes. His job is too important for him to be making such big mistakes all the time. "

Mao smiled. "Maybe," he said. We agreed to disagree and stared out at the games of shuttlecock.

"It's easy. You should try!" Mao said as he motioned toward the games.

"Ehh maybe tomorrow, it's too hot tonight!"

A moment passed.

"Mao, I have a question for you. Today I visited one of the war museums in Saigon. I felt so strange in the museum because there were many Vietnamese people there and I felt horrible about the pictures I saw. I felt guilty because my government caused the death I saw in the pictures. Do you think older Vietnamese people see me in Vietnam and still feel angry about the war? Do you think older Vietnamese people meet Americans and feel angry with them?"

Mao tilted his head a bit to the side while he thought like a dog looking at a fly fluttering across a window pane. "I don't think it's problem. Maybe some old people feel sad, but many people see you and feel happy. Because when we see tourists we think Vietnam is safe now. Tourists make Vietnamese people think the economy is good."

"Do you feel the economy is getting better? For example, do you feel like it's easier to get a job in Saigon now than it was 10 years ago?"

"Yes. I can feel it. There are many jobs now. Many new buildings. I think the economy is getting strong, but too fast I think."

"Too fast?"

"Yes. It's not good. It's too strong now. It can't be this way for a long time. Some time the strong will stop. It must."

Journal Excerpt: March 21, 2007--Saigon Sighting!

After two days, after seeing hundreds of people pass me on the street, I saw my first fat person today.

Outside of America and a few of her industrialized counterparts, gluttony lurks only in the darkest of corners.

(Just to clarify, the guy in the pic is not the person mentioned above! The pic is just a random pic of a store front in Saigon. And yeah, I've also seen fat kids in Japan--see comment--but I would also consider Japan one of America's 'industrialized counterparts.')

Monday, April 16, 2007

Artists Who Make Lunches

I just walked down the hall and saw this headline on an article taped to the hallway wall:

Japanese Mother's Turn Lunch Making Into High Art.

In Japan, mother's make bento boxes (the equivalent of American lunch boxes minus the chips, cookies, sodas, and pre-packaged stuff) for their children and husbands each day. The bentos are filled with bite-sized portions of many different kinds of Japanese food. According to my students, some mothers spend 15-20 minutes preparing a single bento box.

I once asked a student, "Does your dad ever make your bento?"

The student just looked at his friend and burst into laughter, "Eghhhhhhh?" (Japanese sound for surprise)

The thought of a married man in Japan cooking anything is silly. In Japan, gender equality is nothing but a hazy idea that is rumored to exist in other countries. This is the country in which an elected government minister recently called women "baby making machines" and wasn't forced to step down because of his remark.

Japan may be a rich country monetarily, but it is broke poor when it comes to giving both men and women equal opportunities and respect.

Scared + Excited = Scarited?

In reading the blog of a guy I really respect, a man named Conor who spent a year traveling around the world and then opened up an orphanage in Nepal, I came across this passage in the linked post:

"There was only one overwhelming rule about life in general that I discovered on this trip – everything is much scarier before you do it than when you actually do it. It is uncanny. That may be pretty useless advice, perhaps, but for me personally, if I can remember that – really remember it, I mean – I think I’ll be a lot more adventurous in my life."

I hope this proves to be true, because right now I'm scared. Really scared. And it's not a Oh-Shit-Is-That-A-Ghost 'scared'. It's a 'scared' born from a long, drawn-out, faint pulse of fear that jumps alive whenever I think about this trip. When you couple this fear pulse with excitement, you're left with a lightheaded feeling not unlike the feeling you get before you meet students and teach the first class of a new school year. But this doesn't go away. I would say it's cool--the buzz-ness of it--but seriously, it doesn't go away.

With each passing day and each blog or book related to bike touring I come across, the following thought seeps further and further into my consciousness:

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when it comes to bike touring or bike maintenance.

Some of the backwoods repairs people have had to do while touring scare the shit out of me. I have never once changed a flat tire on my own bike! Ever! And I'm going to ride to Cairo!!! !!!

I'll learn. I'll learn. I'll learn. The whole point of this trip is to learn. Learn everything I can wrap my brain around. Including bike maintenance.

I have to keep telling myself: Everything is scarier before it begins. If I wasn't scared, this wouldn't be exciting and rewarding.

scared (in a healthy way) in front of my computer,

Andrew



Thursday, April 12, 2007

Journal Excerpt: March 25, 2007, Hoi An

All the pretty girls here have boyfriends. I have not seen a single single, beautiful girl walk down this street. Why is that?

Her: Eyes Like Bullets. Him: Hands of a Boxer

left: My Son ruins

There were no more seats inside the My Son rest area cafe so I sat outside on a bench under an umbrella. My shirt clung to my back with sweat and I stared blankly at the lug nuts on the front wheel of the bus. Although hotter than the seats under the fan inside, my seat spared me from stress: the owner of the rest area was circulating among a cluster of bedraggled tourists inside and saying things like, “You look hot, let me get you a cold drink?” and “Who wants a cold drink? Very cheap!” and to the man looking with slight interest at the ice cream fridge in the corner, “Oh sir, here—look here. We have many ice cream. Very cheap for you.” I wanted to be as far away from the owner as possible; it was too hot to deal with anyone so aggressive. Since arriving in Vietnam, I had grown an allergy to these types of pushy vendors who blabber fractured English a mile a minute.

“Excuse me sir, you need to buy something if you want to sit there. Or...you could come inside and buy something?”

Exhausted, ready to throw a punch, I turned toward the voice. I squinted and held my hand to my brow to block the sun and looked up. A lanky white guy smiled and sat down on the next bench.

“I’m joking,” he said. It was so hot, it took me a few seconds to realize he was not working for the cafe owner.

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s why I’m sitting out here. I’m afraid I’d kill him if he tried to sell me something. I can’t take any more today. It gets to be too much sometimes.”

left: Amazing moth at My Son

“Yeah, it’s amazing though: they never quit. I can’t believe they don’t understand Westerners don’t buy things like that—by being prodded by someone bouncing around them begging them to buy. If people want a cold drink, they’ll walk up to him and ask him for one.”

“Yeah, I know," I said. "I think the Vietnamese would sell much more of everything if they just let customers come to them. The second I see someone doing what that guy is doing, I want to get as far away from him as possible. I guess if you’re thirsty, though, it doesn’t matter what he says—you’re going to buy something.”

“Yeah.” Pause. “My name’s Ezra.” He reached out his hand. We shared a clammy shake and I looked down at the beads of sweat on our forearms. For some reason, a sweaty shake is always a more intimate one.

“Andrew, nice to meet you.”

The tour guide returned and waved us over to the bus. Time to go. We stood and walked.

“Where are you from?” Ezra asked.

“Outside Philadelphia, a town called Cherry Hill.” Before I could regret wasting time by being so specific—what are the chances anyone outside of Jersey has heard of Cherry Hill?—Ezra bounced.

left: My Son

“No shit! I’m from the Main Line! Wow, you definitely win the closest-to-home award for us so far on this trip. We’ve met people from—my girlfriend and I—” Ezra looked over his right shoulder toward the rest area and stood on his tip toes (even though he was taller than everyone in line waiting to board the bus). A woman tapped him on the shoulder and for a moment I couldn’t see her because Ezra was between us. She leaned forward around Ezra to introduce herself.

“Molly,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

My brain fizzed and short wired. Thankfully, I had shaken a few hands before in my lifetime and past experience sparked a reflex. I extended my hand. We shook. Her hand wasn’t sweaty, but unfortunately, mine was.

“Andrew. Nice to meet you.”

I saw her from afar when we were walking around the ruins, but hadn’t been close to her, hadn’t been flattened and melted and immobilized by a direct look into her eyes. She was so stunningly beautiful up close I immediately became self-conscious and worried that my attraction to her was scrawled across my face for all to see like a line of blue polka dots. I looked down at the ground and boarded the bus to escape.

With an aisle between us, I started talking with Ezra and Molly. As each word we shared dissipated into the dry, weakly air-conditioned air of the bus, I felt less intimidated by Molly’s beauty and slowly loosened up.

The three of us had one of those conversations that we rarely have in life in which we can’t spill the words from ourselves fast enough. We bounced ideas, names, advice, and laughter back and forth between us for an hour. It felt as if we had been waiting for years to meet each other, as if we had finally made contact but weren’t sure how long our time together would last.

Although I felt more and more comfortable speaking with Molly as the moments slipped away, every once in a while I would make eye-contact with her and loose my train of thought. I can’t remember the last time I was so frequently derailed by the eyes of a new acquaintance.

The gem-ness of Molly’s green eyes was magnified by the fact that they were set in a smooth, tanned, symmetrical face. Her hair was held up in a tangled bun at the back of her head and large, circular mother-of-pearl earrings dangled from her ears. She wore a bark colored ankle-length skirt and a grape Popsicle colored tank top. She wore no make-up, and I noticed, unlike the three bleached-blond sorority gals sitting in front of me, she didn’t pluck her eyebrows. Her look was very organic and completely aligned with the way she carried herself and the radiance in her eyes. She was the type of girl who makes beautiful-but-painstakingly-done-up girls jealous. (You will find no pictures of Molly here because I didn't take any of her. A picture of her face would be a dangerous thing--flashing it to passing cars would surely cause an accident and, no doubt, it would drive me--and anyone else unfortunate enough to get a glimpse of it--insane with desire.)

Ezra was wiry but had strong, mature hands. He wore a loose fitting tombstone colored t-shirt and weathered sandals. His fuzzy turf of sandy hair bespoke of an old crew cut left to grow to death. He had a smile that he unleashed only when a grin would not suffice. His speak was slow and deliberate; he was a good listener.

At first, when I saw that Ezra was Molly’s boyfriend, I was shocked—how could a woman whose intense beauty attests to the fact that a master creator must exist somewhere in the universe date such a…well…normal looking guy? Where was her Adonis? And more, didn’t she drive herself crazy knowing that she could easily date the personification of Michelangelo’s David but instead ended up dating Ezra? As we spoke, the shock lifted and I realized neither of them ended up dating the other. Neither settled for the other. They both were very much in-tune with each other and were so perfectly synchronized in temperament and life philosophy that on paper their identities could fuse into a single cognitive fingerprint. It seemed like they had the type of connection drawn into Disney fairy tales.

left: Cool colors in Hoi An

During our short bus ride, I learned that Ezra was a stonemason with some experience in carpentry and furniture building. Molly was a newly-licensed Pilates instructor with hopes of one day opening up her own yoga studio. Ezra’s parents had recently purchased land in Virginia by the side of a river and Ezra was going to build five or six houses on the land over the next 10 years: one for him and Molly, one for his parents to retire to, and three or four for a few other families who share their views on environment, education, health, and community. They both would move to Virginia when they returned to the states to live in a trailer on the plot and start construction. The four months they were traveling through Southeast Asia was the intermission in their life’s play.

When we arrived back in town late that afternoon, after realizing we happened to be staying in the same hotel, Ezra, Molly, and I agreed to meet up later that night in the hotel lobby to go out for dinner and drinks. I went to my room and showered. In the foreign comfort of A/C, I lounged in bed in my boxer shorts, my back propped up with pillows, and watched some of The Last of the Mohicans in Vietnamese. Even without English, Daniel Day-Lewis was still the baddest motherfucker ever to walk the earth.

left: Hoi An riverfront where we ate

In the lobby we greeted the way hungry people do: briefly. Hi! OK! Let’s eat! We walked a few blocks to the river and found a restaurant that I had visited the day before, one that served $0.20 draft beers. The place was empty (the town is fully saturated with restaurants and we were visiting during the off season for tourists) and the waitress showed us to a table upstairs that looked out over the river. The sun was sinking in a candy colored spread of cloudy quicksand and the road that tracked the bank of the river was peppered with couples holding hands, tourists with blistered feet being pulled by ambitious tour guides, and dogs trotting like they had places to go.

We were happy to be alive in this place, with this view, with each other for company. We had our whole lives ahead of us at that moment and were thankful for it.

“Drinks? Beers? Fruit shakes?” I asked.

“Hmm, I definitely want a beer. She doesn’t drink beer,” Ezra said, not looking up from his menu. He turned to Molly, “What do you want, babe? Fruit shake?”

“Yeah, hmm. What do they have? Ooo! Mango with no sugar. Yummy.”

We ordered. The drinks came.

“So, tell me about your trip so far! Four months away from home and work, you must be loving it!” I assumed.

“Well, yeah, it’s been awesome. We’ve been away for two months so far. We’ve had some bumps in the road, you know. Nothing too serious. Molly was bit by a dog in northern Thailand. That was one little bump.”

“Really? Holy shit.”

left: Dog with awesome teeth in Hoi An

“Yeah it came out of the blue. I didn’t see the dog until it bit me because it ran at me from behind. It laid into my leg in one bite and then released and ran away. It broke the skin, and at first, I wasn’t planning on getting rabies shots. Well, let me rephrase that: I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to, but…I was kinda playing it by ear and waiting to talk to other travelers and to see what they thought. In the end, I went to a hospital about a week later and got my first shot.”

“Yeah it’s been crazy—she’s needed—how many Mol—like nine shots so far? You have to get the shots every four or five days or so. When you’re traveling, obviously, it’s kind of difficult to find hospitals that can give rabies shots and it’s even harder to find hospitals during the times when you need the shots.”

“It’s definitely affected the itinerary for our trip. But I’m glad I’m getting the shots; rabies can be deadly.”

“Wow. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s been bitten by a dog.”

“I know! It seems like people are rarely bit while traveling—I guess because so many people are on the lookout for it when they go to developing countries. It was weird though: I felt this strange connection to the dog. Like, I don’t think that dog bit me just because I happened to be walking by—I think it bit because it wanted to connect with me. There was this strange energy between us for a split second. I feel like he was trying to tell me something through the bite.”

“Huh. What do you think he was trying to communicate?”

“I don’t know really, but I felt connected to him some how. It was like we shared some sort of energy and his bite was drawing my attention to that.”

Ezra looked toward the stairs hoping the waitress would walk up them so we could order some food. He had heard all of this before.

I was curious—Molly seemed to share my viewpoint on the cyclical nature of energy, on the possibility that the historical footprints of energy could connect creatures now living on or in distant continents or galaxies. I wanted to hear more.

“Explain! Explain!” I said. I was excited and it seemed as if Molly and I were talking now and Ezra was only there because he had to be. The waitress popped her head up into view on the stairs like a mole in those those smash-em whack-em games in the arcade. Ezra waved her over.

“Well, I think we all share a type of energy. I don’t know, energy is not the word for it but I guess it’s the best word that we both know—”

left: Cau Lau at a street vendor stall.

“What do you want Mol? I’m getting the Cau Lau. You want to share that and something else?”

“Yeah, uhh. Spring rolls?”

“Yeah cool. Uhh OK, can we have one Cau Lau and one order of spring rolls? Pork? Yeah, pork spring rolls please.”

“OK, and you?”

“Uhh, can I have…where is it here…ahh…one order of vegetable fried rice. But can you add pineapple to that?” Pause. Nod. “Oh, cool, OK I’ll have that. Thanks.”

“So…you were saying: energy is not the best word for it…”

“Oh yeah, not energy. Maybe, uh, maybe life force or something like that. There is a certain life force that is present in all living things, and to some degree, all inanimate things as well. Anyway, I think that this life force can be recycled. Kind of. When a creature dies, the earth absorbs that energy, that life force, and eventually that energy is drawn up by a plant and used to feed another creature, or used to convert spent oxygen to new oxygen. This life force circulates, and has been circulating, through all things walking the earth today and all things that have died and gone back into the earth. So even the soil contains it. I think it’s even the root of compassion or respect, you know. Um, for example—there’s no way you can smack the shit out of a parakeet if there is a chance that you and that parakeet are connected by strands of the same life force, if there is some of you in the parakeet and some of the parakeet in you! It would be like smacking yourself because you are connected to each other!” She laughed. I laughed. Even Ezra flashed a smile.

I was convinced I had fallen in love. I felt guilty. Colleen and I had broken up only three months before. Should I still be upset and grieving the death of our relationship? I still was and did at times, but tonight my heart was ready to dance, ready to love hunt. I also felt guilty because this girl’s boyfriend sat right across from me. I knew it was only a fantasy and all in my head, but for a few moments at least, I felt a love for this creature pulsing with recycled energy before my very eyes.

“I feel that same way, I agree with you on the whole idea of recycled energy. And I always think, How different would this world be if that concept was a tenet of global thought, if somehow it was infused into every culture across the planet and applied to the creation of laws, foreign policy, every big decision made? Hmm, well it might be difficult for everyone to have faith in the idea: there isn’t a single idea that every culture embraces, but I’d settle for 99% of all cultures taking it up! Just like I think it’s safe to say 99% of all people would be against throwing a newborn baby into a starved lion’s cage. There are certain things most of us can agree upon. I wish this was one of them.”

left: The market in Hoi An

The food came. Energy talk ended. Ezra and Molly asked if they could sing a short song before we ate, something similar to Grace for Christians. We held hands and they sang a short little ditty about being thankful for the food we were about to eat and how the food came from Momma Nature. They finished and we started to eat.

“That was great, where did you learn that?” I asked.

“Ez and I both went to Waldorf schools when we were younger. Ezra went for his whole life basically, but I just went my senior year in high school. Waldorf teaches you all nature-based stuff like that.”

“Ah-ha. So is it a private school or a charter—”

“Yeah, private,” Ezra replied. “Basically, they are schools that were founded by this guy Steiner in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The schools stress the importance of creativity in child development and try to teach students to be well-rounded critical thinkers. They also integrate anthroposophy into—”

“Anthroposophy?”

“It’s uh…how can I explain this easily.” Ezra looked at Molly. “Well it’s this whole set of ideas created by Steiner. Without turning this into a night-long discussion, it’s hard to explain kind of.”

left: Yum. Hoi An market

They went on to describe their experiences at Waldorf schools, how Ezra learned to read and write when he was in the second grade, how students learn one letter at a time and learn to read and write when "they’re ready", how all students are encouraged to eat organic food, how Ezra’s parents own a small health food store franchise in Pennsylvania that acts as a meeting place for Waldorf families, how if Ezra and Molly ever had kids “it’s either home schooling or Waldorf. No way public school,” how they never buy anything unless they absolutely need it and hence don’t understand American consumerism, how they cook organic food every night and go out “maybe once a month,” how they live simply and don’t own a computer or watch TV.

In talking, it became clear they lived a cloistered life, but also one focused on thought and respect for the environmet, family, and health.

At one point, after talking about politics, the conversation shifted to talk of the future. Ezra spelled out their dream for me:

“You know, that’s why I’m so psyched about the land in Virginia. The world is so fucked up. I think Mol and I will be most happy with our little spread, our family, our house by the river, our vegetable plot. That’s all we’re working for. My folks will be down there and maybe some other Waldorf families in the other homes on the land. That’s it, really.”

left: Fish vendor in Hoi An

I couldn’t help feel like they were throwing in the towel and running for the woods, literally. They’re so smart, so awakened, that hearing this sort of thing from them saddened me. People need to learn from them, I thought. They have to spread their views through educating others. This is how Americans should be thinking about food, the environment, and love.

I understand why people like Ezra and Molly want to isolate themselves: the world around them doesn’t embrace their ideals and I’m sure it makes them feel like they are constantly swimming upstream. Still, running from it all while their fingers are on the pulse of compassionate living, after they have figured out a way to leave behind the consumption/production-based model of existence that American society has prescribed for them, for everyone in America (and more increasingly people around the world), seems unfair to the rest of the world, unfair to the kids who haven’t yet charted their life courses and who still have a chance to stroll down that grassy, overgrown path less traveled.

Talking with Ezra and Molly made me think about my own life. I have been tempted to toss it all in and move into an intentional community (ie. commune) somewhere deep in the woods or out on an island in the sea or at the top of a mountain or in the middle of the desert, to find someplace that would fit me like a glove where I’d be surrounded by people who value the same things I value, someplace away from blue-light specials, SUVs, Republicans, and car washes. But I think that even if I left behind all the shit that’s piling up in the industrialized world with each passing day, it would still stink to high heaven. And that would irk me.

I don’t know why, but I feel an obligation to help right things that are silly and ass-backward in the world. I feel like I have to stick around and find some way to pick up a shovel and DO something. Whether it be through teaching, working for a non-profit that likes to get dirty, volunteering, or some combination of the three, I feel like I must do something to help someone, something.

left: Pretty paint, Hoi An

I don’t know what makes some people feel this obligation while others don’t. Some folks are perfectly content busting their asses their whole lives to make a buck and buy shiny things. Sometimes I wish I could do that—life would be so much easier, the mountain on my shoulders so much lighter. Where does this sense of responsibility come from?

I would say it came from my schooling, but that can’t be it: most of my peers from school now want to buy shiny things and climb career ladders. I would say from my parents, but that can’t be it either: my sister, who came from the same house and was subjected to the same parental speeches and dinnertime talk, doesn’t feel the same drive to bring about change in the world. I think no one source can be credited (or blamed!) for instilling this sense of urgency, of obligation to make change, in me.

I do know that it was only after I started dating Colleen, after I had some fantastic, conscious professors who forced me to read some left-of-center texts, after I met and befriended artists and other thinkers while in university, after I dropped out of my university’s business school and took up English, after I allowed my noggin to mature a bit that I started feeling this sense of obligation. I’d also like to think it was the seeds my parents sewed long ago in my ethics and values that sprouted into the sapling fruiting a sense of duty now thickening in my conscience.

Nothing is forever…ever! Maybe.

A man I respect immensely who has devoted his entire life to study and introspection through the analysis of myth, Joseph Campbell, believes that the chaos we see in the world today is all part of the life cycle of man. The war, corruption, violence—it’s all an extension of us. Despite the fact that these things will always exist as long as humans are alive, Campbell claims, we can’t stop trying to help those in need, trying to fix what needs fixing. Our willingness to help (even though a long-lasting solution to many world problems is not even in the cards for man) determines who we are as humans. In the face of endless news headlines that beg us to embrace hopelessness, this message is easy to forget.

Will I one day find my own patch of land at the edge of a river in the middle of nowhere? Who knows. I love rivers and I love the middle of nowhere! But I can’t predict the future (nor do I want to). What I do know is how I feel now: I can’t laugh and shop and sleep and live like everything in the world is fine and dandy. Because it isn’t. I’m not selfish enough to block it all out. For this, I’m grateful. After all, shiny things fade.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Death of a Pimple

left: We rock the bicycle helmets.

Huy has this way of knowing when I’ve had enough on the motorbike. Just as I am feeling like my ass couldn’t take another stone or pothole, he veers off the dirt road into a gas station. We hop off the bike and, as he tells the attendant to fill up our tank, Huy reaches for a bamboo water pipe leaning up against one of the pumps. He packs a wad of dry, stringy Vietnamese tobacco into the chamber, lights a match, and waits for it to catch good and well before gingerly letting the flame kiss the tobacco. He pulls; the pipe bubbles to life.

“You can sit there,” he says between tokes and motions to a cluster of plastic chairs and tables at the roadside café across the street. I waddle over as he pays the gas attendant and take a seat.

The dusty bandanna around my neck makes me look tougher than I feel. My ass is so sore I sit forward in my seat to put some weight on my legs. I have blisters on the same spots on both hands from gripping the back handlebar on the motorbike. My back aches and makes me think of my father. My eyes are pink and itchy from the ever present cloud of dust that hangs lazily above all rural roads in Vietnam. The insects drone on hypnotically and, despite my damaged posterior, I become comfortable the second I sit down. Fatigue catches me, finally. I stare at a stain on the plastic tablecloth to give my eyes a rest.

left: The monster. 100 cc's. Purrs like a kitten. Our backpacks are resting on the center console and Huy had to straddle them with his legs whenever we rode.

Huy strolls up to the table with that bounce of his. He never seems to tire. I’m amazed that he’s done the 900 km. roundtrip from Hanoi to Sapa over 50 times. The ride is 11 hours one way and is filled with hundreds of hair pin turns on bumpy, dirt roads through the mountains. How he manages to stay energized and unaffected by such an endurance test is beyond me. Well, he’s not totally unaffected: the whites of his eyes are blood red from dust and flies and small pieces of tree bark and leaves kicked up by the trucks. He’s used to it, he explains, and knows it always goes away after a day or two back home in the city.

“You thirsty? Maybe you thirsty.” He plops into a chair, throwing his arms up a bit as he sits.

“Nah, I’m OK,” I say. He’s always looking after me and it’s comforting during times like this, when I’m too tired to try to communicate with the café owner staring at me from the corner.

“Shit it’s hot today!” Every time Huy says ‘shit’ he looks at me to see my reaction, see if the curse words tourists have taught him actually work in his sentences. I laugh.

“Yeah it is. Hottest day so far in the four days we’ve been riding,” I say. Pause. “Actually, I don’t want a drink but I would like a watermelon,” I motion to the stack of bubbly football shaped watermelons on a table in the shade by the road.

“No problem.” Huy orders a watermelon for me and a Number 1 energy drink for himself.

A slight spindly women slinks from the corner and smiles at me as she passes. Her shirt is stained on the sides where she dries her hands and her thin forearms are strong with all the tendons visible. She inspects the watermelons and acts like she’s trying to pick the best one for me. She tries to cut the melon into eight pieces at our table and I stop her; four is fine.

I hear the bubble of another water pipe. Huy draws in on the two foot long bamboo pipe and then slaps the top of it. A small, damp lump of tobacco shoots from the chamber of the pipe like a tiny brown cannon ball and lands on the floor a few feet away. He leans in and clears the tube of its smoke. He cracks open his drink.

“I love Number 1. Many times, I drink Number 1 when I drive. It makes me awake. Like a Redbull but stronger. And cheaper!” he laughs and takes a swig.

“I don’t like caffeine, but I can understand why you need it on a ride like this. You want a piece?”

“No thank you, too sweet for me.”

“Where should I spit the seeds?”

Huy laughs. “On the ground! Always on the ground in Vietnam!”

I look around. There are yellow, pink, and light blue plastic bags scattered around and weighted to the ground with the small pools of liquid they hold. Cigarette butts and bottle caps circle a sleeping mutt with her tongue unrolled onto the pavement. Her nipples are swollen and look like brown thimbles extended from deflated, stretched breasts. I spit a few seeds at my feet.

Huy sparks a cigarette and I get the impression he doesn’t even know he’s just done it. He smokes two packs a day most days, but yesterday he admitted smoking three. His justification: my job is boring sometimes. By that logic, there should be a thick stale cloud above most of the planet.

I look up and he’s patting the back of his hand against a pimple on his chin that’s been swelling and gaining strength for days like a summer hurricane. He’s just noticed it. He catches me looking at him.

“I hate this man. I really really hate this thing. I always have a problem like this.”

He reaches to the table and picks up a square of ripped napkin. Like a kid picking up a bug in the bathroom with a piece of toilet paper, he covers the pimple. I think at first he’s going to clean his face with the napkin somehow. All of the sudden, he squeezes his thumb and forefinger together and his eyes squint with a flash of pain. I flinch and hope he doesn’t see me. He pulls the napkin away and looks at its contents. I stop chewing the watermelon in my mouth.

“Why is our skin different?”

At first his question seems heavier than it actually is because I forget he’s talking about his pimple. I start thinking, Yeah, why is our skin different?
“Why don’t you ever get these on your face? Why me?”

“I get those too sometimes,” I say. “If I’m really sweaty for a while or my face is dirty I’ll get those too. In English we call them ‘pimples’. It’s not just you. Everyone hates them!”

Huy blots his face and gives the napkin red polka dots. The pimple, quite angry now, is generous with its blood and drips like a pricked fingertip.

“Yes, but you don’t have them like me. I have them on my face always. And my back too. I hate them. I went to doctor to fix them, but he said he can’t fix. He said my skin is bad.”

I really feel sorry for him. He pushes the napkin hard up against his face while talking like he’s done it a few times before. He takes a drag from his cigarette.

“Hey, how tall are you?”

“One hundred eighty five centimeters,” I say clearly so he can pick up the big number. It takes a second or two to register.

“Wow! You’re big! Wow. No one in Vietnam is 185. You are 20 more than me. I’m 165. Too short I think.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I want to be 170, I want five more. Then I will be happy. 165 is not enough. In Vietnam, many men are 170 or more. 170 is good. But no one is 185!” he laughs.

Huy takes a drag on his cigarette and it triggers a coughing fit. I put a watermelon peel on the plate and take another piece, trying not to look at him because, for some reason, I feel embarrassed. After about thirty seconds, he stops coughing and regains his composure.

Wooh! Crazy man, I need to stop cigarettes. Only smoke the water pipe! I’m killing myself!”

I think about this for a moment.

“Why don’t you? Why not just smoke the water pipe? It has to be better than cigarettes because the smoke passes through the water before it goes into your body.”

Ehhh, water pipes are not everywhere. Cigarettes are everywhere because I always have them.” I look across the street at the pipe leaning up against the pumps. Next to the gas station, I spot the familiar bamboo pipe leaning up against the leg of a table at an outdoor rest area. Squinting, I see another pipe at the next restaurant.

“Everywhere we go you find a pipe to use! They’re everywhere! I think that if you wanted, you could easily find enough water pipes to get you through a day of driving.”

All this talk of pipes starts him craving and he puts his cigarette down and loads up a wad of tobacco into the pipe at his feet.

“You know,” he exhales, “I was in hospital for three months once. A doctor said I almost died. Lung problems. It was like cancer but not the real cancer.”

“And you didn’t stop after that?”

“I tried but I couldn’t. I will die young, I know it. Hey, you know I once lost $500 US because I couldn’t quit?”

My jaw hits the ground as I raise my eyebrows—that’s two to three months of pay for Huy.

“Are you serious? How?”

“My girlfriend from Holland, she bet me that I couldn’t quit. I only said OK because if I quit, she pay me $800. After one month, I lost. I didn’t pay her $500, but for a long time I took her out to dinner and I took her on a motorbike trip to Saigon for a few weeks. So maybe I pay almost $500, but I don’t know. It was a lot. I should have quit.”

The dog wakes and tries desperately to eat a fly circling its head. His jaws keep clapping shut with such force I’m sure he’s piercing his gums with his teeth.

“Crazy dog,” Huy says. “A dog can’t catch a fly.” He says this like it’s a known fact or some mystical Vietnamese proverb. I believe him.

Clap…clap clap…clap……clap clap clap.

Black seed constellations are clustered at my feet and attracting fly astronauts.

“Well, maybe we go now?” He rises before waiting for an answer and flicks his butt towards the dog.

“Maybe,” I say smiling.

I leave bills on the table and push myself up out of my chair with my arms. My ass sends pain to my brain and begs me to stay off the motorbike. I walk back across the street with legs spread and ease myself onto the back of the bike. A soft landing. I put my shades on, buckle my helmet, and pull my bandana up over my nose. The bike whines to life and pulls us out into the dust and sun.

You're either WITH US, AGAINST US, OR...A BYSTANDER

CLICK ON THESE TO SEE ENLARGED IMAGES. TAKE A GOOD, LONG LOOK.

Gulf of Tonkin confusion combined with rich white guys who were allowed to wage war without being required to suit up and pull the triggers themselves spawned this...

Effects of Agent Orange.

Its inventors should have been prosecuted. Or at least made to bury / treat these people.

Pictures of pictures from The American War Remnants Museum, Saigon. The photo below shows a man whose mother had come in contact with the chemical.

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Where Chaos Goes to Party

left: Saigon at dusk. Check out the cop--loungin'

Saigon is where chaos goes to party. The city is a pressure cooker roasting three million buzzing motorbikes that ricochet between stop lights like dull metallic comets, old shortened hunch-backed women in conical hats selling fruit and bouncing as they walk under the pain and weight of their ripping baskets of mango and banana and pineapple, motorbike repair shops on every corner spilling their oil and greased tools and sweaty mechanics onto the sidewalk like gray urban cornucopias, little blue and red plastic stools surrounding noodle vendors like toadstools, pot-bellied white men with recent hair cuts and tucked in pastel polo shirts ordering bottles of gin for the table that cost more than their waiter makes in three days. It all meshes together in the cauldron that is Saigon and at night, the mess bubbles.

If we could bottle Saigon and ship it all over the world, TVs and movie theaters would be run out of town. You can sit at an outdoor table at any cheap Saigon bar or restaurant and, before your very eyes, under your nose, through the fuzz on the backs of your hands, you can see and smell and feel a show that TVs and theaters try but fail to catch. It’s all too grimy and too loud to package for an audience. It’s a place you end up in and can’t leave because leaving requires an emergence from hypnosis, a sitting up when the world is heavy on your chest taking a shit and honking its horn. To sit at an outdoor table and watch it all go buy is to touch the electric fence of life and wriggle out in spastic frenzy from the point where your finger makes contact with the wire, unable to pull away or close your eyes.

left: Not the safest powerline set-up

And right now, I’m wriggling and loaded with current. The undersides of my forearms are sticking to the plastic tablecloth as I write. Afraid I’ll miss a 25-bike-pile-up or kid peeing on a dead bird or a whore giving a blowjob to a backpacker in broad daylight, I lower my eyes to the pages of my notebook in quick little glances. It’s late afternoon and the whole city is sweating and leaking.

Large bottles of beer are a dollar at this place and they taste better the hotter it gets and the more I drink. I call the waitress over and ask her to take away the two empty bottles next to a half-full cold one—a couple just sat two tables away and I don’t want them pitying me. Not for my sake really—for theirs. Their clothes are crisp and clean and I can tell they’re on a short vacation. There’s no time for pity on short vacations.

Rich, I feel so bad for that guy. He’s all alone and drinking his sorrows away. Maybe we should invite him to sit with us? Or send over an order of ice cream or something?

I know, babe, it’s so sad that people come on vacation and can’t leave their devils back home. Let’s leave him be though—I’m really hungry and we said we would just eat-and-run, remember? The bus is picking us up at five.

left: View from my table as I wrote this piece.

Plus there’s no need to pity me. None at all. I am happier than a pig in a sea of shit just sitting here taking in the honking horns and the shoe shine boys and the café owners flinging dishwater into the street like fishermen casting nets. A man alone at a restaurant table is assumed to be a man desperate for something, for everything. Just a sad, lonely man. I used to wait tables and all the waiters hated waiting on lone diners. It was too depressing. They would tip just like any other customers, but there’s something saddening and crushing about unscrewing a mini bottle of wine for an old man on a Saturday afternoon before the dinner rush. How could such a man be happy? Waiters want no part of it.

Now I am the old man at the table. And I like it. I think what I want, stay as long as I want, and have delicate, paced, well-preserved conversations with my notebook that never last longer than I want them to.

There is a boulder of silence squashing the couple a few tables away. The man looks up at the restaurant awning and for a second, I swear he’s begging God to speed up his food order. The woman has her elbow on the table and is turned half-way around to look at the play with no end and no beginning that is ever-spinning out in every Saigon street. Their silence swells and envelops tables on either side of it. I can feel it start to nudge the pinkie toe on my right foot, the foot closest to the couple, and I take a swig of beer. I look out to the street and the tension recedes to look for some other victim.

The alcohol is pulsing through my system now to the beat of my heart and wants nothing more than to run its course. I feel sewn into the scene around me and am at home and calm. Feeling so at home in such a foreign place knocks my socks off and I smile. I suddenly feel as if I’ve never been more comfortable in any other place on earth, a type of Christmas-morning-comfort.

I’ve still got my wits about me and am far from drunk, but I’m aware of my breathing and aware of the miracle of man whirling around in front of me. I see: All of these people need each other. They have established routines and lives that depend on the routines and lives of others around them. The ice vendor needs the restaurants. The tourists need the restaurants. The restaurants need the tourists. The landlords need to collect rent from the shop owners. The shop owners can’t afford to buy shop space and must rent from the landlords. Everyone needs everyone, and although this is true for any group of people sustained by commerce, although it applies to every place I have ever lived, I notice it more here. The connections between people are more direct, almost tangible, like red yarn stringing together a necklace of people dependent on one another.

left: Fruits and flowers

I feel like I’m a part of this strange web of connection and it makes the world seem smaller somehow. This is our ant farm. Our bee hive. We accept anyone anywhere as long as they can move dirt, buy honey, or both. Sure, busy bees keep the queen fat and warm, but the queen seems so far removed from this moment. I know all this commerce brings in taxes and keeps powerful people powerful, but they’re not here with sweaty forearms stuck to the tablecloths. They don’t walk among the men and women in the conical hats pushing and pulling and lifting and dragging all day to make a buck. This scene is far too genuine and devoid of superficiality to attract a puppet master or a stage director. I forget we’re actors and puppets and worker bees here—it all seems real and driven by necessity and honest. Everyone is sweating here. Everyone.