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.