On Love

Foreword:

Chiều nay tui đọc lại "Love is a Four-letter Word". Hơi dài, nhưng thú vị. Đúng every word is a musical note! English của anh thật súc tích!!!!!!

Cảm ơn nhiều, và chúc luôn bình an, may mắn.

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 5:15 PM, Roberto wrote:

I appreciate your phone call. I hope you enjoyed the various emails I sent today. 

The piece on "Love is a four-letter word" is gravid with meaning. The more you read it, the more you will like its "lyricism." It will grow on you. It will give you Peace. It's like a slow soft sweet song sung in the background throughout the night. Almost every word in it is a musical note. Go back and read it again. You will understand what I meant. I am a magician with words, with the English language, in my untempered moments of self-evaluation.

I am one of the world's authorities, if not the authority, on Love. And I am a wannabe "poet" and "writer", on top of being a small-time poker player and big-time braggart. What I lack in talents, I make up by bragging. Bragging does wonders to my self-esteem and accomplishments. It has  forced me to get off my ass and do something to justify my bragging. I am by nature lazy, unintelligent, undisciplined, and unfocused, but I have been backed into a corner by my public bragging. Since I do have a lot of pride, I have to produce proofs and evidence. That's been my modus operandi of living which I dread. But dying is a worse alternative. So I have no choice but to live. But since I'm literally dying in a few years time, writing is taking on an urgency. All my words are now part of a strange swan song. 

Yesterday, a new lady friend named Blumen confided to me that she had a knee problem on account of her advanced age. She probably needed to have her knees operated on. I told her that her problem was no big deal. Other people had much worse medical problems at her age. I supposed she didn't like her my frank comparative analysis of ailments that afflict us. She was looking for sympathy and I sort of withheld it. I was not being cold and cruel. I was simply rational and analytical. But I hoped she knew that I really cared about her condition, my affected indifference notwithstanding. I know she likes  me, and I like her, too, but that is about the extent of our mutual affection. There are certain lines you don't cross. There are certain minefields you don't traverse. You just can't tempt Fate too often. Count your blessings and be cool. That's what I've been telling myself. At my age, I must take care of the basics: sleep, food, peace of mind, small projects and doable ambitions. The days of grandiose dreams were over. She has been good for my soul, though. I've become gentler and less belligerent under her influence. She's a dignified, passionate, sensitive, practicing Buddhist, unlike the Bitch who's an unthinking parrot and full of platitudinous hot air, not counting a tart tongue and a stupid wit. 

You can't love "people" like the Bitch. You just can't love the unlovable. They have a way to annoy and irritable you. They can't help themselves. They have no charm and no common sense. Once you were born bitchy, you stay bitchy. They have a very big cross to bear. That's why they're bitchy. They feel the hurts and pains, and feel that they must spread them around to lessen the heavy loads that are weighing them down. Deep down, they have no love inside them. None. Nada. Rien. Nichts. They think they do, but they really do not. And they talk about Love and Peace a lot. If you come across assholes and scumbags like them, run, don't walk. A person's character shows in how he uses language: the words chosen and the tone of his voice. 

I am no Jeremiad, but I see no future in assholes and scumbags. But habits die hard. Sometimes I feel I have to interact with them and overreach just to find out who I really am and who the others really are, and what we are really made of. I can't help myself. I must compare and contrast. That's how I learn things. That's how I roll. The other day, yesterday as a matter of fact, a friend counseled me that I must learn to make the reader care about the characters I'm creating in my so-called short stories. The problem is that there are no real characters in my stories. They are all variations of me. 

Almost everything I have written in my stories is just made up, the stuff of imagination, the projections of wishful thinking, the obliteration of the demarcation between reality and fantasy. In the process of writing, however, I discover small joys about the interplay between thought and language. That's why I do it.

I was not lying to Martha, my fiery German girlfriend, that all my life I've been in search of my long lost twin brother who is a woman. The search has led me to include Love is a four-letter word. This is nothing new to most people, I just found out, but obscenely brand-new to me, for I long thought Love was something transcendental. I suppose you could call me a stupid idealist or dreamer or whatever. Words are just a vehicle of designation. We create so many words because we love to dance around a certain topic. 

My journey started long before I got to college. It had its genesis in elementary school. I was eight years old. I know I wrote about this before. But I am too lazy to look up what I wrote. Basically, I attended a co-ed private International School the first three years of my school life. The school was set up for privileged children of the well-to-do in Saigon and the children of the diplomatic corps. The medium of instruction was English. I was lazy and undisciplined so I was regularly at the bottom of the class. Hell, I didn't know any better. The desire to do well scholastically was foreign to me then. I was also the class clown, cracking jokes and doing all sorts of silly things to get the attention I didn't have at home. The top student of the class was always a girl named TT Anh Đào ( The Cherrry Blossoms of the Royal Family). Her family hailed from Huế, the former Imperial City of the Kingdom of Vietnam. Her father was some big shot in the Saigon government. Strangely enough, AD took a liking to me. We were close friends. She liked to hang around me at recess. I got the exposure to feminine charms, intelligence, and beauty at young age. I liked and admired her a lot. She was breathtakingly beautiful, had an oval face and soft, sweet, gentle voice. We usually talked while waiting for the chauffeurs to pick up us after school. During the week before Summer holidays in the third year at the school , I was less animated than usual. She noticed that and asked me what had happened. I told her that I wouldn't be back to school due to changes in family's fortunes. She was stunned and started crying. I cried, too. Then I said, "Je t'aime. Je t'aimera toujours." And I meant it. 

My father got me enrolled in a public school near our house for the fourth grade in the following school year. I didn't do well there either, but I managed not to repeat the grade. The pattern repeated till I reached the age of fifteen when I got my first nervous breakdown and wanted to kill myself. But I loved my Mom and didn't want to devastate her so I hung on living, night after night.  I started reading philosophy to save myself. I wanted to know why I wanted to kill myself. In the process  of reading philosophy, I came in touch with great thinkers and geniuses. And I wanted to be like them. For me to do that, I realized that I must be a good student. So, almost overnight I decided to hit the books seriously. 

I had some academic success once I applied myself at school. Meanwhile my raging hormones tormented me, but I learned to sublimate my volcanic sexual urges while thinking of my beloved Cherry Blossoms, wondering what was going on with her. She must be very pretty, in the full bloom and prime of her beauty, breaking hearts and causing young men to swoon, or was she still innocent and devoted her time to studying? I didn't know because I foolishly lost track of her. I didn't even think of asking for her mailing address at the last day of school. 

Anyway, in those days my mind was often overwrought, obsessed with doing well at school, playing catch-up with my learning, trying to make up for my misdirected, misspent "youth". I had no peace then. All my time was devoted to studying, sleeping, and studying again. I was too stupid to take up physical exercises. I thought that would be a waste of time. As a consequence, though I was tall and good-looking, I looked gaunt, burdened, obsessed, intense, even insane. 

All that studying paid off when I competed on a nation-wide basis for an exchange student fellowship program whereby I would spend a year with an American host family while attending the senior year in high school.

In the group of students that went with me to America that year, back in 1966, there was a girl who could be a stand-in for TTAD. The same oval face, the same long hair draping over the shoulders, the same sweet gentle voice, albeit with a Southern accent. Naturally, I was instantly smitten with her, with Spring Sunshine by the Lake (SBTL) but I was too stupid, too unsure of myself, too timid to make any headway with her. Forty-eight years later, in a reunion get-together in Vegas, several dudes and gals in the group slyly asked me about my feelings for SBTL, I told them the truth, "Yes, I was smitten with her, but apparently she was not with me. C'est la vie. What could I do?".

Of course, what I said was an under-statement. I was in pain but I had to soldier on. Then I met a former classmate of her in college. I thought I found love, but I was rudely and sadly wrong. Still, I was a very stupid and slow learner. I didn't learn from the errors of my perceptions and thinking. I kept swimming against the tide. Fortunately, I didn't get drowned in the Sea of Love. There was a couple of close calls, but I summoned the strength inside me and I survived. Now, at the age of 66, and in the throes of Death, I'm looking back and a realization is slowly coming to me that we are who and what we are, and that our Fate is determined by our very Character and Personality. I'm not regretting any of my romantic relationships. I was honest and I was sincere and I was foolish. Some women, the ones I had to eventually break off and say goodbye to might think differently, but then they didn't understand me well at all. They all thought illogically and unduly too highly of themselves. They should have come to the same conclusion as I did when women left me decisively, "Nobody walks away from people and things of value".  

Right now, I am not short of candidates and prospects who are curious as to who and what I really am. I still maintain contact with Blumen, Cherry, and Martha. But sometimes I do feel tired, I must admit. I'm tired of human duplicity, cowardice, and materialism. So I'm just lying low and playing coy, back to my old shell, reading, writing, and learning languages like those days of yore when I was young and green and didn't know what the fuck Love was all about. I read the other day in the local newspaper that some woman, not even over 30, flatly stated that Love was a four-letter word and she was through with it, and that she was thinking going overseas down in South America, and working for some kind of evangelical missionary Baptist church to help the poor and the deprived. I have to sort of agreeing with her. I wonder whether she minds if I go with her. She looked pretty and smart enough. There's a problem, though. I am not a Christian. I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus. 

Afterword: 

House of Flying Daggers 

Somebody's knocking on the door of my heart?

Is it true or am I dreaming?

Oh, my lady, please don't depart;

My heart's door is open, come on in.

A marvelous film. I just watched it again. Wonderful narrative. Wondrously romantic. True love is to die for the one you love. True love is like parental love: self-sacrifice and unconditional. Haunting flute music and cinematography are marvelously done. A work of art. A masterpiece in baroque, magical realism. 

This movie and Pulp Fiction are the two films that define me. Pulp Fiction is a religious movie, despite the ultra-violent overtones. 

Spring Sunshine by the Lake: the same oval face, the long hair draping the shoulders, the same, sweet, gentle voice, the top student of the class.

Asceticism, meditation, paranormal powers. You must learn to fly with fire and style.

Pride and Silence.

Memories and longings. Truths. Be truthful to oneself. Death.

Life starts with Love and ends with Love. 

Keep a green bough in thy heart and birds will gather and sing for thee every morning.

Be gentle, ever gentle.

Sexual desires must originate from Love. Sex is an act of giving oneself to the Other, not possessing the other.

I write for Cherry, the memories of hand-holding, the unconscious expression of desire and communication and communion.

-"Mr Wissai, I'm a good person. I've helped a lot of people. I am a giver. Never a taker. I have never hurt anybody, never said a mean thing to anybody. That's why God loves me and protects me. I have peace, Mr. Wissai, knowing that I'm loved and taken care of by God. Whether or not that sounds illogical and untrue to you, it does not matter to me. The important thing is how I view myself and how God views me. You understand?" 

-"Cherry, my dear Cherry, I do. I do completely. I also do know about the secret dreams and silent fantasies of the human heart. Why don't you look up some Chinese meditation flute music on YouTube tonight? Maybe then, you will understand the longings of my heart."

I write for Martha, the unspoken affection and respect, the nobility in bearing, speech, and deeds, the awesome signs of advanced spirituality. 

Truths must be spoken/delivered with kindness. Treat and speak to others the same way you want to be treated and spoken to. Aggressiveness is a mask for weakness. Firmness is better than aggressiveness. Aggressiveness lacks the respect and kindness inherent in firmness.  

Educated, literary, stylish, light on his feet, a happy warrior who never raises his voice even when delivering bad news. You must cultivate this ability.

Translate/transmute the patter of empty talk into the argot of real life. 

Warrior ethos. Death is a constant adviser. Live in death helps you understand the meaning of life.

This fucked-up, cruel world is for the strong-minded folks only. Weaklings cannot survive. 

H is for Hawk, W is for Wissai. R is for Roberto. RHW.

You are measured and judged by how you express yourself, in deeds and in words, in the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the way you eat, and how you handle money. A noble person does every thing in a noble way: polite, considerate, pleasant, self-possessed, and alert.  A bum, on the other hand, has allowed the dignity to slip away from him. A bum is not necessarily a person without money. It could be a person without manners, without self-respect, without respect for others. All the bum does is for himself. He uses others, by instinct. He's not developed into a human yet. 

In old age, things begin to take on a startling clarity. I am also able to step back and look at myself objectively, in the eyes of others. We all started from the Self and we reach out, step out, and learn to take The Other into our consideration. That's what love is all about. 

When you eat meat, it should be the meat of a live animal you expend time and energy to hunt and kill, not a piece of a carcass you bought from the store, not part of an animal raised for food, without its knowing so until the moment it was led to the slaughterhouse. Hunting for  good makes you feel like an animal, but the moment of its death makes you feel like a human. And you feel more so as you dress it, cut it into pieces, put them in an icebox, bring the pieces home and store them in the freezer. After a few hunting expeditions, the bloodlust, the primeval call of the wild dies down as you look at the eyes of the animal you just killed, from a distance, with a rifle equipped with a scope, the eyes that just glazed over, unfocused, gray and lifeless, desperate and then resigned, you feel sick and sad and empathetic. Then one day, you bring the hunting rifle to the pawn shop. As you leave the pawnshop afterwards, you feel a return of humanity in you. You now respect life. You learn to tame the anger within. From now on, you only kill in self-defense. You also cease eating meat.  

I no longer dwell on the archaeology of grief or the architecture of my current malady and my looming death. I stay at the present, one day at a time, savoring life, making the most of it while preparing to say farewell to everything I hold dear in my heart. 

Note that I don't use the word "everybody" as deep down there's nobody, there lies the rub. We came into this world alone. And we die alone. And around us are selfish assholes, not angels. 

Who says living is easy? No, it is not : greed and competition for power and benefits, that would muddle our thoughts and soil our souls. Some even hanker after empty fame since they stupid think fame equates respect. I give no shit about fame, but I do care about respect. Without respect, assholes would step on you. So you must be careful to navigate through life. Speak only when you have no choice. And speak nicely of and about people, not disparagingly. There is no point in making enemies. Keep your contempt hidden from view. 

We can only understand those who are equal or less endowed than us. We can never understand those who are better than us. That's the humbling truth we must accept. So to those who think that they are better than us and don't want to have anything to do with us, we must understand the reason and respect their wish. There's no point to ask for humiliation and disdain from them. Life is too short for that. 

The book "H is for Hawk" is a difficult book. It is meant to read very slowly, but you will become wiser after reading it. So read it only when you have plenty of time and in a relaxed state of mind. We get out of books of what we put an effort into it. The same as every undertaking in life. Life experiences, especially the adverse ones, make us wiser. What does not kill us, makes us stronger. Our immunity is strengthened. 

I daydream and fantasize and think of Cherry. Silent dreams and secret fantasies. That's been the nature of my romantic life. I am a dreamer at heart. I go after the impossible and the far-out. The feasible and the commonplace bore the bejesus out of me. 

So, I fuck you long and hard, tender and passionate. I fuck you like I have never fucked before. And you are fucked like you have never been fucked before. Together we reach the realm called Love and Care and Concern. And afterwards we no longer feel alone or lonely. Instead, we feel safe and secure. Life is sweet because we each found out that somebody does care. So if one of us dies, the other still has the strength and the equanimity to carry on. Happiness is simple. It's being who you are and somebody loves you just the way you are. I may die at any moment now, but somehow I am not afraid. Love is the Peace that you experience, the Confidence of your Worth, and the Acceptance of someone whom you respect and for whom you have affection. 

Love is to die for the one you love. That's the reason why I love the film "House of the Flying Daggers", a sumptuous, lush, romantic treatment of love. If you never have a feeling of providing protection, of self-sacrifice, of giving your own life for the Other, you don't really know what the fuck Love is all about. 

If you want to be loved, don't be repulsive in appearance, words, and deeds (words and deeds are the manifestations of thoughts. So watch your thoughts). 

For years I was accused and laughed at for being childish. Of course, my feelings were hurt but in fairness I deserved to be mocked, laughed, and ridiculed. I was childish, pure and simple. I didn't know any better. I acted from instinct. Then solely I began looking at myself from the Other's perspective. It dawned on me that I was too self-oriented and too impulsive. So I made an effort to change, to end the sufferings. I am working towards to practicing  silence and eschewing revenge. Life is too short to tangle with the ignorant, the stupid, the envious, the hypocritical, and the vicious. They suffer and want me to suffer as they do. Silence from me breaks the vicious cycle. 

Life is a journey to find out what your worth is and and to learn to accept it. You cannot pretend who you are not. Self-alienation is insidious and a source of suffering and a driver for lack of peace. 

R. H. Wissai