it is 7 days past the new year 2020, i have given notice on my home in Hoi An and made plans to leave for Arequipa Peru - and changed my mind. the neighbors who four days ago were inexplicably plaguing me with very loud Vietnamese music most of which i really like, but some sounds like the textbook definition of caterwauling - today when the electricity went down i was in their field to visit in the guise of calming the waters. i did not sleep well last night though i drank little - comparatively speaking. i find in my solitude it is very important that i express myself and continue to push the limits of my company with humans. i have not seen Ms N___ since christmas-eve-day-morning when she rode off with her kuta-cowboy pressing his blue-jeaned phallus into her shapely shift on her scooter set off with tangerine lipstick, but what i remember is her crimson blush when she realized this ride had to be initiated under my bewildered expression· i do not understand the chemistry between us, but it requires considerable mindfulness to keep the mixture benign. i am glad to have not booked a ticket for Peru, and look forward to my introduction to D___ H___, though we have been in seemingly constant communication for some 10 years. she still believes that when i visit HCMC in late jan-early-feb that i leave from there for Peru, it will be interesting to learn how that innocent deception plays out.
meanwhile back at the ranch, i’m eating beet-root-pumpkin-seed salad (note: devoid of pumpkin seed) at Dingo Deli which seemingly reserves a table for me to write at, or the facility is just so large that my table at the door remains empty mostly. i like Viet Nam very much despite its quirks and inherent misunderstandings, i've been reading war histories and Uncle Ho’s Diary - a collection of poems written while in prison prior to the ‘merican war; it is fascinating reading emphasized by the French conversation i hear murmuring in the background while i write now. ironically the hatred of the French is greater than that of the “My”, but my sense is blunted by my isolation and pain. if i am patient and loving it may be i have landed in a place where when my physical force withers and am left with little more than a creative legacy spread across the continents i have been - i may be safe to die. speaking of which, ma is certainly where i left her and heard her last best admonition of my failings - “you are obsequious”, though i’m not sure i can agree with her which may be the root of all our estrangement.
what i don’t want to happen is for her rage at my disobedience to define the last loving relation for which i have waited so patiently. it seems there is a flaw in every conviction e.g. when i was prepared to join the sangha at Từ Hiếu in Hue, i listened to Thay describe how the elder wounded were often too “afflicted” to learn the practice - well shit howdy, d’ya think¿ so what do i do? rail and resist a loving revolutionary lover because his concept excluded my peculiar “affliction” or hunker down and swim upstream like some weakened salmon sperm hoping my DNA strand actual, rather than being spilled into some passion-frenzied-hanky finds residence in the loins of a loving mother which may possess the requisite nurturing skills to allow my strand to join those of the greatly reduced human genome about to wage real war with survival¿ that is the question.
i am now 65 and find certain “holes” in my normally locked thinking - abnormal vacancies as well in my normally ordered existence of desperation-does-life - coming soon to a screen near you. today while attempting to splice my most recent retreat to a stand of sorts i had to face the shortage of electricity which interrupted my “escapist” movie entertainment, dressed up as cultural anthropology cum - youtube nostalgia for the decency of actor Richard Boone - i faced that very real vacuum of naked self with nothing to distract me. what i resorted to was digging in the garden with the neighbors - it is what i grew up with; children today have no such memory to fall back on. i am at a loss how to create pathways for others to follow. fb is not a public utility but rather the outgrowth of an obscene amount of money and research in how to affect the thinking of the population. it seems i am often surrounded by cliques believing by the the uniformity of their thinking that they are invulnerable to such influence - that somehow the solidarity they enjoy in groups renders their thinking independent - oddly similar to the smugness with which i’ve enveloped myself by solitude.
yet just like finding myself deprived of late-afternoon entertainment seeking sobriety the solace i seek in companionship may be nothing more than a chimera which when pulled aside like some curtain of old reveals the same singular fear of death from which no one escapes. so is it escape we seek or a deeper participation in the panoply of reality in which we are all immersed, including the intransigent resistance to ending a sentence with a preposition, or the perverse pleasure of blasting Trinh Cong Son back against the wall of cultural struggle at my back in the “foreigner” enclave where i write now - an illusion consistent with riding back to my lone room drunk in the dark. this coming Monday i will ride to my 2nd visa extension to Laos. it is a 6 hour drive along with the meal at the border where when i was last there i was refused service as much as was possible; it will be curious to see the memory of me picking up plastic and sharing my nothing with the urchins guarding the border. what was hardest was driving past the killing fields my country initiated and which Uncle Ho prevailed by simple decency.
i remain confused by how to mitigate cruelty that is so much a part of where i now live, and rather nurture a loving solidarity for our species. even how to reconcile my egotistical reaction about Nhi’s rejection of my heart offering, down to the “sonic” attack by my neighbors - we are so close, yet so far. it is health i need and for that i require love for which my history hasn’t prepared me well. but why not¿ i’m not a bad guy and don’t want much but peace and kindness. i accept i have hackles that hurt others. i will continue to blunt them as i can, and in the opposite effect a positive force for the betterment of all, because that is how i was trained; what can i do to train others than what i am doing - that is a question .?
jts 05/06/2019
http://stoanartst.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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