Life and Logic
A book reviewer today ends his review of a comic book about logic, math, and madness, with an observation that life is bigger than logic. He admits that his conclusion is trite. All the following observations of yours are trite, too. Sometimes, truth is trite; sometimes it is sublime. The wise man knows the difference. You are not wise. You are merely struggling against madness.
The morning greeted you with A's mild rebuke of B's self-righteousness. You had to struggle hard against yourself for not commenting on A'ss put-down by either a terse “Amen!’ or a slightly longer version:
-I don’t know who I am.
-Did you ever know?
-No.
-Then nothing has changed.
Unlike B, you do want to change for the better. You don’t wish to be mired in pettiness or cheap cleverness. After all, you do read philosophy.
Yesterday you had a confrontation with yourself. The result was that you hurried to a hardware store. After lingering there for almost forty minutes, you settled on the Baretta 14-shot 38. It was small enough for concealment, yet packed with enough power for damage. However, when it was time to pay for it, the salesman told you since you were an out-of-state resident, you were not allowed to purchase the tool. You had to settle for a knife with a switchblade instead. The sound the knife makes when it is open is eerie. That should bring reality closer to all those involved. Time to bring everything on or time to back down and walk away. As you are fond of saying, you don’t know who you really are until you are tested. Yesterday you were tested and you acted like a fool, totally in sync with your emotions, but completely disconnected with your intellect. Ah well, you must do better next time. Gratuitous violence is mental retardation. Controlled violence is enlightenment.
As Cicero once said, rational ability without education has more often raised man to glory than education without natural ability. The downturn you are experiencing is testing you whether you have the wherewithal to survive. You are treading on slippery grounds. Be careful. Don’t be blind to your own shortcomings like The Crippled and the Arthritic. At any rate, you are very contemptuous of cowards, of members of the NATO (No Action Talk Only) Society. They make you feel nauseous to the core. Also, you begin to lose respect for those who adopt poses, who try to appear more profound and learned than they really are. Sophistry is just another name for shameless and clever lying. If one has something to say, just spell it out plainly and clearly. There is no need to be cryptic. Also, be sure to back up, to substantiate what you spell out.
People tend to disappoint you. That is your own fault for being naïve and idealistic. Don’t disappoint yourself, however. Hang in there. Work hard and stay the course. Be patient.
You are breathing hard. You are excited. You feel engaged and alive as you are typing these words. You then have an insight that all those poses, those insipid jokes, those pitiful lame attempts of poetry writing, those inane comments (including your own) are just pathetic strivings to be human. A man totally cut off from his fellow men cannot be a real human. Only when he is in communication with others, even in miscommunication, can he become himself. Man is a social, communicative being. Yet he feels alone and lonely throughout his life. That’s why sex and love are powerful drives. He has a strong need to be understood. He needs to be joined with others. During sex, he has an illusion that he is joined physically and, hopefully, emotionally with somebody. (Therefore, it does not take much imagination to think that sex with a prostitute is an empty, lonely act). It takes a very strong man to be indifferent to the drives.
On this planet, everything is evanescent, is subject to dissolution. What’s about God? Well, the reality of the World has an evanescent existence. Contrary to common beliefs, “God is invisible, inconceivable, and unthinkable. No symbol or metaphor can describe Him and none may take His place. All metaphysical representations of God without exceptions are myths, meaningful as such when understood to be hints and parallels, but they become superstitions when taken for the reality of God Himself ” (Karl Jaspers). To talk about God is tantamount to talking about the origin of the Universe. We know the how but not the why. We know about the Big Bang, but we don’t know, at least not yet, why the Big Bang occurred. Those who talk about God as if they understand Him all engage in wishful and delusional thinking. Man is the only animal who is big on delusions and illusions. This paragraph is perhaps the most profound and insightful of the whole essay. We can tell how smart and honest a person is after he expounds his beliefs and ideas about the concept called God. We can tell if he has done some serious thinking or merely parroted what he has been taught and heard.
Likewise, Man can only be experienced and not totally understood. Each man is an island. And Life is a journey of a sailing ship among the islands. Most of the journey is at night amidst rain and howling winds. Occasionally the ship sails in bright sunshine and balmy weather. That’s when life gives you a glimpse of the grandeur and joy life can be. You wonder why the ship can’t cruise during the day and in the better weather conditions more often. The answer lies in the fact that Man likes to do things the hard way. He likes to overreach himself, to go beyond himself. He is never satisfied. Those who are satisfied are not quite human enough. Man, by definition, is a work in progress, not a finished product.
Sooner or later, every man asks himself the questions: Who am I? What can I know? What do I live for? Selfishly for myself or for my family and my fellow countrymen? Am I a real man or merely a monkey in disguise? When I die, am I proud of the way my life has been?
Wissai
(To be continued)
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
You and Your Ideas. Another Manifesto
You and Your Ideas, Another Manifesto.
All men have few ideas to live by. Very few have any original ideas. Original ideas are hard to come by.
Most men live lives of quiet desperation, putting their lives on automatic pilot, going by instinct, and yet longing for Death to arrive to relieve them of the nagging, disquieting emptiness.
Some men go through life noisily and furiously, burdened with a seething, simmering anger. You are one of these men. Violence fascinates you. You fancy that you understand it; you are drawn to it. It gives you catharsis, a temporary purging and release of pent-up anger. You read tales of violence and watch movies of gore. A lot of individuals piss you off for their insolence, ignorance, hypocrisy, lies, and plain animalism. You fantasize about homicide or at least beat these yellow assholes until they are black and blue. You no longer think of them as humans. You regard them as vermin, deserved to be exterminated. You think you understand the mindset of dudes like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pot Pot. All arrogance and contempt and violence. And sadness and loneliness, too.
What saves you from jumping into the abyss of violence and act on your fantasies is your sense of humor. You find these animals so unwittingly funny and ridiculous. They are not aware that they are clowns. You find their insipid jokes ridiculous, their concerns and pontifications laughable, and their justifications nauseating. You are aware that you are sinking into self-righteousness. But what’s right is right. You are glad you are different from those clowns, those monkeys.
The embarrassment and humiliation that El Pedro is suffering should be a warning for you. Walk on the right path. Don’t bite for than you can chew. Don’t take the short cut. And above all, be true and honest and upfront. Fame is fleeting and for the insecure. Be honest with yourself. You are not that good. At best, you are merely mediocre. So, don’t put on airs and don’t adopt poses. Be real.
September 2009
All men have few ideas to live by. Very few have any original ideas. Original ideas are hard to come by.
Most men live lives of quiet desperation, putting their lives on automatic pilot, going by instinct, and yet longing for Death to arrive to relieve them of the nagging, disquieting emptiness.
Some men go through life noisily and furiously, burdened with a seething, simmering anger. You are one of these men. Violence fascinates you. You fancy that you understand it; you are drawn to it. It gives you catharsis, a temporary purging and release of pent-up anger. You read tales of violence and watch movies of gore. A lot of individuals piss you off for their insolence, ignorance, hypocrisy, lies, and plain animalism. You fantasize about homicide or at least beat these yellow assholes until they are black and blue. You no longer think of them as humans. You regard them as vermin, deserved to be exterminated. You think you understand the mindset of dudes like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pot Pot. All arrogance and contempt and violence. And sadness and loneliness, too.
What saves you from jumping into the abyss of violence and act on your fantasies is your sense of humor. You find these animals so unwittingly funny and ridiculous. They are not aware that they are clowns. You find their insipid jokes ridiculous, their concerns and pontifications laughable, and their justifications nauseating. You are aware that you are sinking into self-righteousness. But what’s right is right. You are glad you are different from those clowns, those monkeys.
The embarrassment and humiliation that El Pedro is suffering should be a warning for you. Walk on the right path. Don’t bite for than you can chew. Don’t take the short cut. And above all, be true and honest and upfront. Fame is fleeting and for the insecure. Be honest with yourself. You are not that good. At best, you are merely mediocre. So, don’t put on airs and don’t adopt poses. Be real.
September 2009
The Ground You Shook. The Path You Took
The Ground You Shook, The Path You Took.
To all the Vietnamese dissidents back home
We haven’t met you, but you’re all beautiful to us
Wise as the tigers of old and brave as the heroes of yore
We heard your voice
We saw your choice
They were made for us
You left your words for us to follow you like a map
Within the dark land you gave us a lamp
We heard your voice
We saw your choice
We now walk the ground you shook
The path you took
And follow the words in your book
Until the commies are down
And the Chinks are driven out
Wissai September 2009
Words modified from the lyrics of The Ground You Shook by SixPence None The Richer
To all the Vietnamese dissidents back home
We haven’t met you, but you’re all beautiful to us
Wise as the tigers of old and brave as the heroes of yore
We heard your voice
We saw your choice
They were made for us
You left your words for us to follow you like a map
Within the dark land you gave us a lamp
We heard your voice
We saw your choice
We now walk the ground you shook
The path you took
And follow the words in your book
Until the commies are down
And the Chinks are driven out
Wissai September 2009
Words modified from the lyrics of The Ground You Shook by SixPence None The Richer
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Thư Ủng Hộ
THƯ ỦNG HỘ VIỆN NGHIÊN CỨU PHÁT TRIỂN (IDS) VÀ PHẢN ĐỐI HÀNH ĐỘNG PHI DÂN CHỦ, ĐI NGƯỢC TRÀO LƯU TIẾN BỘ TRÊN THẾ GIỚI, CỦA ĐẢNG VÀ
NHÀ NƯỚC VIỆT NAM
Kính gởi:
Ông Hoàng Tùy, Chủ Tịch Hội Đồng Viện Nghiên Cứu Phát Triển (IDS)
Ông Nguyễn Quang A, Viện Trưởng
và Quý Thành Viên của Viện
Chúng tôi rất bất bình khi đọc được tin Viện Nghiên Cứu và Phát Triển vừa bị đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam gián tiếp ép buộc phải tự giải thể vì Nghị định số 97/2009/QĐ-TTg, do Thủ Tướng Nguyễn Tấn Dũng ký ngày 24/07/2009. một nghị định phản dân chủ, phản khoa học và đi ngược trào lưu tiến bộ trên thế giới.
Chúng tôi hoàn toàn ủng hộ lập trường của Quý Viện qua bản Tuyên Bố của toàn bộ thành viên hội cùng ký tên ngày 14/09/2009.
Chúng tôi kính đề nghị Viện Nghiên Cứu Phát Triển Việt Nam tái xét lại quyết định tự giải tán mà chỉ tạm đình chỉ công tác để nói lên sự phản đối của Viện và tiếp tục tranh đấu cho quyền tự do sinh hoạt được Hiến Pháp qui định.
Chúng tôi cũng tuyên bố phản đối quyết định vi hiến của đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam. Đảng và nhà nước đã vi phạm quyền tự do căn bản của người dân, đặc biệt với trí thức, rường cột của quốc gia, qua nghị định số 97 mà chính phủ vừa ban hành.
Trong khi đảng và nhà nước hô hào, vận động trí thức Việt trên toàn thế giới đóng góp công sức cho quê hương thì mọi tầng lớp trí thức trong nước lại bị kềm chế bắng mọi cách và liên tục bị đối xử bất công. Qua hành động bất nhất đối với trí thức trong và ngoài nước của đảng và nhà nước, chúng tôi đã mất niềm tin vào những lời hô hào của đảng và nhà nước.
Trí thức trong nước luôn bị kềm chế, hăm dọa và ép buộc phải làm theo định hướng của đảng và nhà nước. Trong khi đó đảng và nhà nước lại vuốt ve chiêu dụ trí thức Việt ngoài nước. Đây là sự đối xử bất bình thường.
Chúng tôi yêu cầu đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam nhanh chóng thu hồi nghị định phi lý này để phục hồi niềm tin của trí thức trong và ngoài nuớc, và tạo cơ hội cho toàn dân cùng phục vụ Tổ Quốc và nhân dân Việt Nam cùng chống lại âm mưu xâm lược của ngoại bang.
Đại diên nhóm Bảo Vệ Tổ Quốc
Chống Trung Quốc Xâm Lược.
http://baovetoquoc.blogspot.com/
Lê Quang Long, New Zealand
Ngô Khoa Bá, U.S.A.
Nguyễn Hùng, Australia
NHÀ NƯỚC VIỆT NAM
Kính gởi:
Ông Hoàng Tùy, Chủ Tịch Hội Đồng Viện Nghiên Cứu Phát Triển (IDS)
Ông Nguyễn Quang A, Viện Trưởng
và Quý Thành Viên của Viện
Chúng tôi rất bất bình khi đọc được tin Viện Nghiên Cứu và Phát Triển vừa bị đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam gián tiếp ép buộc phải tự giải thể vì Nghị định số 97/2009/QĐ-TTg, do Thủ Tướng Nguyễn Tấn Dũng ký ngày 24/07/2009. một nghị định phản dân chủ, phản khoa học và đi ngược trào lưu tiến bộ trên thế giới.
Chúng tôi hoàn toàn ủng hộ lập trường của Quý Viện qua bản Tuyên Bố của toàn bộ thành viên hội cùng ký tên ngày 14/09/2009.
Chúng tôi kính đề nghị Viện Nghiên Cứu Phát Triển Việt Nam tái xét lại quyết định tự giải tán mà chỉ tạm đình chỉ công tác để nói lên sự phản đối của Viện và tiếp tục tranh đấu cho quyền tự do sinh hoạt được Hiến Pháp qui định.
Chúng tôi cũng tuyên bố phản đối quyết định vi hiến của đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam. Đảng và nhà nước đã vi phạm quyền tự do căn bản của người dân, đặc biệt với trí thức, rường cột của quốc gia, qua nghị định số 97 mà chính phủ vừa ban hành.
Trong khi đảng và nhà nước hô hào, vận động trí thức Việt trên toàn thế giới đóng góp công sức cho quê hương thì mọi tầng lớp trí thức trong nước lại bị kềm chế bắng mọi cách và liên tục bị đối xử bất công. Qua hành động bất nhất đối với trí thức trong và ngoài nước của đảng và nhà nước, chúng tôi đã mất niềm tin vào những lời hô hào của đảng và nhà nước.
Trí thức trong nước luôn bị kềm chế, hăm dọa và ép buộc phải làm theo định hướng của đảng và nhà nước. Trong khi đó đảng và nhà nước lại vuốt ve chiêu dụ trí thức Việt ngoài nước. Đây là sự đối xử bất bình thường.
Chúng tôi yêu cầu đảng và nhà nước Việt Nam nhanh chóng thu hồi nghị định phi lý này để phục hồi niềm tin của trí thức trong và ngoài nuớc, và tạo cơ hội cho toàn dân cùng phục vụ Tổ Quốc và nhân dân Việt Nam cùng chống lại âm mưu xâm lược của ngoại bang.
Đại diên nhóm Bảo Vệ Tổ Quốc
Chống Trung Quốc Xâm Lược.
http://baovetoquoc.blogspot.com/
Lê Quang Long, New Zealand
Ngô Khoa Bá, U.S.A.
Nguyễn Hùng, Australia
Fantasy
Fantasy
Prologue:
For kicks, some write insipid jokes, others moan about loneliness, and still others pontificate and issue cryptic oracular pronouncements. As for me, I indulge in fantasies, romantic and not sexual. Sexual fantasies are for the coarse, the crude, and the common; romantic fantasies are hard to do and much harder to write about, especially when one is his 60’s and about to enter a nursing home. But I always do things the hard way. I always like to write about women who inflamed my imagination.
Fantasy itself:
You saw her. She saw you, too. The two of you stopped where you were and looked at each other. Finally, panting like you had just finished a marathon, you made a few steps closer to her. She smiled and then shyly looked down at the floor. She remembered me, your mind said to yourself. Your heart was leaping out of your chest; you could hardly breathe. You said, “Is it possible that we get outside and talk?” She said nothing but her cheeks were getting red. You walked out of the library and looked back. She followed you.
She is of course much older now. A lot of water has passed under the bridge; many moons have waxed and waned. Still, she has the same figure and the same beautiful features though wrinkles start marking their presence. She and you stand under the same sycamore tree in the yard. The tree is much bigger now. There are also several smaller trees and bushes of flowers.
- I thought I would never see you again. I’m here on a visit. I’m living in the United States now.
- How wonderful! What city?
- Houston of Texas. You still live in Saigon?
- Yes.
- You graduated from medical school, I assume.
- Yes, but I’m retired now.
- I’m still working, still hunting. I could have retired, but I was stupid. I still don’t know your name.
- Oanh. Hoàng Oanh, like the singer. And yours? (You told her your name). I didn’t know why all of a sudden, you stopped coming to the library.
- I was about to tell you why. I got a scholarship to study overseas. I meant to come to say goodbye and ask for your address so I could write to you, but I was stupid and I was shy and I already had a girlfriend and I have regretted ever since. Anyway, I want you to know that now I read books and sometimes I write because of you, now I study languages because of you, and now I adore women because of you. Listen, listen closely because I don’t know if I can get this out right.
She nods, biting her lips so that they fold into her mouth while looking at you with those large, beautiful almond-shaped eyes of hers.
-Whatever it is, it has never gone away, that summer of 1971….I’m talking for me. Okay? Just for me. It is like one of those unforgettable melodies people talk about. What I’m talking about is vibration. It pulsates. It quivers and quavers, and it never stops. It doesn’t. I feel it. I hear it during my waking hours. I hear it from one year to the next. It’s getting stronger as I get older. I let it, let you, haunt me, own me, and drive me on so I could become a better person. I let it hum and resonate and sing to me. And I longed for the day I ran into you again. That was why the first thing I did when I got into this city was to visit this library. I’m not going to ask you about your personal life, nor am I going to disclose mine. All I wish for is that you allow me once a year, around New Year, to email you a letter to let you know what has happened to me during the year, to share with you my thoughts and feelings on certain things which are dear to me.
She nods once more and scribbles down her email address and hands it over to you and walks back inside the library without looking back. You see that she hesitates and stops momentarily at the entrance before stepping inside.
And you get to the street and hail a taxi to meet your wife for dinner at the hotel. Something stings in your eyes. It could be the ever present acrid air in the city, something you have not got used to; it could be something else. All you know is that tears are welling up in your eyes. You look back at the beloved library before stepping into the taxi.
Wissai
September 21, 2009
____________________________________________________________
Epilogue:
I wrote the above fantasy in one stretch of forty five minutes and went back to add a word here and there after I took a short sleep. I borrowed five sentences from a story I had read. (It would be wonderful if the reader could identify those sentences). The rest were mine. I felt at peace after I opened my heart on paper. I doubt if I ever run into her again in real life. I was stupid and I am stupid still. Stupid is my name and I wear it like a crown of thorns. Yet I’m entertaining hope against hopes. I am an inveterate dreamer. I like dreams and fantasies. They make my life bearable. They help me put words on paper. I like to make words leap and dance and sing and hopefully people will remember my words long after I am gone.
Prologue:
For kicks, some write insipid jokes, others moan about loneliness, and still others pontificate and issue cryptic oracular pronouncements. As for me, I indulge in fantasies, romantic and not sexual. Sexual fantasies are for the coarse, the crude, and the common; romantic fantasies are hard to do and much harder to write about, especially when one is his 60’s and about to enter a nursing home. But I always do things the hard way. I always like to write about women who inflamed my imagination.
Fantasy itself:
You saw her. She saw you, too. The two of you stopped where you were and looked at each other. Finally, panting like you had just finished a marathon, you made a few steps closer to her. She smiled and then shyly looked down at the floor. She remembered me, your mind said to yourself. Your heart was leaping out of your chest; you could hardly breathe. You said, “Is it possible that we get outside and talk?” She said nothing but her cheeks were getting red. You walked out of the library and looked back. She followed you.
She is of course much older now. A lot of water has passed under the bridge; many moons have waxed and waned. Still, she has the same figure and the same beautiful features though wrinkles start marking their presence. She and you stand under the same sycamore tree in the yard. The tree is much bigger now. There are also several smaller trees and bushes of flowers.
- I thought I would never see you again. I’m here on a visit. I’m living in the United States now.
- How wonderful! What city?
- Houston of Texas. You still live in Saigon?
- Yes.
- You graduated from medical school, I assume.
- Yes, but I’m retired now.
- I’m still working, still hunting. I could have retired, but I was stupid. I still don’t know your name.
- Oanh. Hoàng Oanh, like the singer. And yours? (You told her your name). I didn’t know why all of a sudden, you stopped coming to the library.
- I was about to tell you why. I got a scholarship to study overseas. I meant to come to say goodbye and ask for your address so I could write to you, but I was stupid and I was shy and I already had a girlfriend and I have regretted ever since. Anyway, I want you to know that now I read books and sometimes I write because of you, now I study languages because of you, and now I adore women because of you. Listen, listen closely because I don’t know if I can get this out right.
She nods, biting her lips so that they fold into her mouth while looking at you with those large, beautiful almond-shaped eyes of hers.
-Whatever it is, it has never gone away, that summer of 1971….I’m talking for me. Okay? Just for me. It is like one of those unforgettable melodies people talk about. What I’m talking about is vibration. It pulsates. It quivers and quavers, and it never stops. It doesn’t. I feel it. I hear it during my waking hours. I hear it from one year to the next. It’s getting stronger as I get older. I let it, let you, haunt me, own me, and drive me on so I could become a better person. I let it hum and resonate and sing to me. And I longed for the day I ran into you again. That was why the first thing I did when I got into this city was to visit this library. I’m not going to ask you about your personal life, nor am I going to disclose mine. All I wish for is that you allow me once a year, around New Year, to email you a letter to let you know what has happened to me during the year, to share with you my thoughts and feelings on certain things which are dear to me.
She nods once more and scribbles down her email address and hands it over to you and walks back inside the library without looking back. You see that she hesitates and stops momentarily at the entrance before stepping inside.
And you get to the street and hail a taxi to meet your wife for dinner at the hotel. Something stings in your eyes. It could be the ever present acrid air in the city, something you have not got used to; it could be something else. All you know is that tears are welling up in your eyes. You look back at the beloved library before stepping into the taxi.
Wissai
September 21, 2009
____________________________________________________________
Epilogue:
I wrote the above fantasy in one stretch of forty five minutes and went back to add a word here and there after I took a short sleep. I borrowed five sentences from a story I had read. (It would be wonderful if the reader could identify those sentences). The rest were mine. I felt at peace after I opened my heart on paper. I doubt if I ever run into her again in real life. I was stupid and I am stupid still. Stupid is my name and I wear it like a crown of thorns. Yet I’m entertaining hope against hopes. I am an inveterate dreamer. I like dreams and fantasies. They make my life bearable. They help me put words on paper. I like to make words leap and dance and sing and hopefully people will remember my words long after I am gone.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Music and Moods
Music and Moods
Yesterday morning greeted you with a rather nasty email from a guy. At least that guy wrote something to let you know of his feelings. The other bastard for whom you had a great deal of respect just ignored you. What an arrogant asshole! You promised to yourself that you wouldn’t support him any longer. At least you took a risk and reached out to him. Anyway, despite an inauspicious start, you came home feeling quite elated because you triumphed over adversity. Moreover, on the way home, the music from the Spanish language radio station cheered you up and made you realize once again that as long as you can still have the faculty of hearing and appreciate music, life is still bearable, even beautiful sometimes.
You are not like Obama, carrying on with the attitude of princely dispassion. You are all fire and thunder and waves of passion.
Today gray light is struggling towards morning. Dawn is breaking. Another morning is struggling to get into view amidst the dust and sand storm. Winds are blowing hard from the west, whipping up the dust and sand particles into the air, creating a hazy view, and enveloping the city in a whirlwind of whizzing sound. Rustling palm leaves sway with the winds. Loose papers and discarded plastics bags flutter in the air. The diffused orange streetlights appear like distress flares falling through murky turbid water. They don’t illuminate as much as give the air a dim sad phosphorescent rippling of the darkness. You have the car stereo on again. Luis Miguel is crooning a ballad of lost love. Of course, you think of her, of why it is so hard to forget her when you know you no longer love her.
Your right foot still throbs with pain from where you kicked the would-be robber. You are not young anymore. You are definitely getting too old for violence. Luckily the robber was not on guard, relying too much on his trusted gun. He made the mistake of waving it around too much and believing in your fake submissive attitude. You make the mental note that maybe next time you bring with you a gun. Actually it was his gun; it’s yours now. (May he rest in peace. He cannot rob anybody now). It’s safer that way. It can’t be traced back to you. Once upon a time you relished in violence and enjoyed the exhilaration of the decisive moments, the freedom from doubt, unfettered by any concerns about good and evil. Only the will to dominate and the triumph of power mattered to you. Now you realize we are all bags of blood ready to burst at any given moment. And you feel no pleasure. Instead, a sense of wariness and weariness is setting in, deeper and deeper with each passing day.
Yesterday morning greeted you with a rather nasty email from a guy. At least that guy wrote something to let you know of his feelings. The other bastard for whom you had a great deal of respect just ignored you. What an arrogant asshole! You promised to yourself that you wouldn’t support him any longer. At least you took a risk and reached out to him. Anyway, despite an inauspicious start, you came home feeling quite elated because you triumphed over adversity. Moreover, on the way home, the music from the Spanish language radio station cheered you up and made you realize once again that as long as you can still have the faculty of hearing and appreciate music, life is still bearable, even beautiful sometimes.
You are not like Obama, carrying on with the attitude of princely dispassion. You are all fire and thunder and waves of passion.
Today gray light is struggling towards morning. Dawn is breaking. Another morning is struggling to get into view amidst the dust and sand storm. Winds are blowing hard from the west, whipping up the dust and sand particles into the air, creating a hazy view, and enveloping the city in a whirlwind of whizzing sound. Rustling palm leaves sway with the winds. Loose papers and discarded plastics bags flutter in the air. The diffused orange streetlights appear like distress flares falling through murky turbid water. They don’t illuminate as much as give the air a dim sad phosphorescent rippling of the darkness. You have the car stereo on again. Luis Miguel is crooning a ballad of lost love. Of course, you think of her, of why it is so hard to forget her when you know you no longer love her.
Your right foot still throbs with pain from where you kicked the would-be robber. You are not young anymore. You are definitely getting too old for violence. Luckily the robber was not on guard, relying too much on his trusted gun. He made the mistake of waving it around too much and believing in your fake submissive attitude. You make the mental note that maybe next time you bring with you a gun. Actually it was his gun; it’s yours now. (May he rest in peace. He cannot rob anybody now). It’s safer that way. It can’t be traced back to you. Once upon a time you relished in violence and enjoyed the exhilaration of the decisive moments, the freedom from doubt, unfettered by any concerns about good and evil. Only the will to dominate and the triumph of power mattered to you. Now you realize we are all bags of blood ready to burst at any given moment. And you feel no pleasure. Instead, a sense of wariness and weariness is setting in, deeper and deeper with each passing day.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Bellyaching
Bellyaching
You have said ad nauseam that we can tell a great deal about a man by the way he writes and what he is bellyaching about. It has reached the point you don’t bother to post your views in the forum anymore because you are getting physically sick of reading the nonsense and the trivia and the hysteria over banality posted in that forum. You don’t want your views get contaminated by that trash.
You get increasingly annoyed by the poses adopted by cowards there. All they do is talk nonsense or remain strangely silent over important matters. When it comes to do something useful and concrete for Vietnam, all kinds of excuses are invented. They must drink the same kind of water, reserved for selfish and timid creatures.
Vietnam is in danger of being overrun by China with the complicity of the corrupt and inept Vietcong. Yet, the so-called intellectuals overseas of Vietnamese descent, at least those you know personally, sit on their asses doing nothing. What a fucking pathetic crowd. You wonder how those bastards can sleep at night, what kind of parents they have, and whether they are truly human.
You are “writing” a plagiarized story which provided you with much therapeutic relief. You feel somewhat better now. Writing the story helped you deal with love and betrayal, fear and death, suicide and homicide. You still think about her, about a love (could be one-sided) gone sour and the scar it left in your heart. As you preach time and time again, one does not know what one is made of until one is tested. You were tested and you proved that you did love her. She was tested and she turned out to be an idol with feet of clay. Then it dawned on you that despite your constant bragging, you don’t know shit about the human heart. Still, writing the story has brought you come temporary peace. You feel tranquil inside. You think you are able to sleep tonight without the aid of booze. You promise to yourself that upon waking up tomorrow, prior to departure for work, you are going to clean up your pigsty apartment.
Wissai
September 2009
You have said ad nauseam that we can tell a great deal about a man by the way he writes and what he is bellyaching about. It has reached the point you don’t bother to post your views in the forum anymore because you are getting physically sick of reading the nonsense and the trivia and the hysteria over banality posted in that forum. You don’t want your views get contaminated by that trash.
You get increasingly annoyed by the poses adopted by cowards there. All they do is talk nonsense or remain strangely silent over important matters. When it comes to do something useful and concrete for Vietnam, all kinds of excuses are invented. They must drink the same kind of water, reserved for selfish and timid creatures.
Vietnam is in danger of being overrun by China with the complicity of the corrupt and inept Vietcong. Yet, the so-called intellectuals overseas of Vietnamese descent, at least those you know personally, sit on their asses doing nothing. What a fucking pathetic crowd. You wonder how those bastards can sleep at night, what kind of parents they have, and whether they are truly human.
You are “writing” a plagiarized story which provided you with much therapeutic relief. You feel somewhat better now. Writing the story helped you deal with love and betrayal, fear and death, suicide and homicide. You still think about her, about a love (could be one-sided) gone sour and the scar it left in your heart. As you preach time and time again, one does not know what one is made of until one is tested. You were tested and you proved that you did love her. She was tested and she turned out to be an idol with feet of clay. Then it dawned on you that despite your constant bragging, you don’t know shit about the human heart. Still, writing the story has brought you come temporary peace. You feel tranquil inside. You think you are able to sleep tonight without the aid of booze. You promise to yourself that upon waking up tomorrow, prior to departure for work, you are going to clean up your pigsty apartment.
Wissai
September 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
A Plagiarized story.
A Plagiarized Story
While others bellyache about traffic tickets or wax poetic about a bottle of good wine or gush praise over a bowl of beef noodle soup, you seem to inhabit a world so vastly different from theirs. You wonder what the fuck you are doing in a dingy gay bar in a seedy locale of Phoenix. A muscular thirty-something guy, in combat boots, tight jeans, and black, loose-fitting T-shirt, with a tattoo: ‘Desert here and the Desert far away” on his forearm, just sat down next to you. He leans over and says: “I love traveling, especially if there’s a chance of hurting myself. I’m a wicked good cook. I never miss the Golden Gloves. I like my bourbon neat, food so spicy the guy sitting next to me catches fire, and cigar after a good lay.” The Stones are on the stereo and Mick Jagger is telling you that time is on your side, and the best night of your life is about to unfold…..
You don’t know what Mick Jagger is crooning is going to materialize or not. You don’t believe in signs and omens; you believe in serendipities and strange coincidences. The man extends his hand, “Oanh said to meet you here at 3pm sharp.” You stare hard at him. Your hand meets his, “Why Chuck didn’t come? You have a name? I don’t know you”. He smiles, “Name is Nick. A friend of Chuck’s. Chuck is scared.”
The table you are sitting is at a corner near the entrance to the bathroom. It gives you a good view of who is coming and leaving. At this hour, there are hardly any customers. Two guys are in an involved conversation at the other corner. Four guys are shooting pool. The barman looks bored out his mind. That’s it. There are no other customers. You have been watching those six guys carefully. They seem to be regular folks, the way they carry themselves. You picked this bar because it is right at the intersection and its parking lot has a wide entrance and exit, easy to get in and out in a hurry. Also it is the last place people expect you to be there.
Nick keeps the stupid smile on his face as if the business at hand is really funny, and not some momentous event. He then says, “You’re going to do it?” In response, you reach over and give a lighting fast patting over his chest. He jumps out of the chair, growling: “What’s the fuck going on? You queer?”
You shake your head and stand up yourself, “Wires. Let’s go outside.”
The sun is bearing down hard on you. The sky is intensely blue. Not a single cloud. Not a single breeze. Everything is being baked. The heat waves are dancing off the asphalt in the parking lot. You look back. None of the six customers is following you. You walk over to your leased Maxima, parking right at the closest spot near the exit. You get into the driver’s seat and turn on the AC at the maximum. Nick is sliding into the passenger seat. You say to him, “You have the money?” Nick is pulling a thick envelope out of his front pocket and hands it over to you. You don’t bother to open the envelope. You put it under the seat. “OK, you can leave. Consider it done. The good news should be coming within two weeks.” Nick gets out the car, but doesn’t close the door. His hand is on the door and he gives you a hard look, “You’d better keep your end of the bargain, otherwise I’ll come and get you.” You snort, “Okay, tough guy. Why don’t you do the job yourself?” A sheepish look comes over his face, “Don’t believe in hurting women.” You point to the tattoo and say, “How far is far away? Iraq?” He nods and then makes an unexpected gesture of putting his hands together and says “Namaste”, closes the door and walks away. There was a man who also putting his hands together like that and you believed him. That belief changed your life forever.
A young Vietnamese woman of twenty without much education but plenty of wiles met an American colonel of Greek descent, aged forty-five, in one of the infamous Saigon bars during the height of the Vietnam War. He was not just a run-of-the mill colonel, but of the military intelligence branch and twice divorced. He was also an ex-pilot. Somehow he fell for her, but the military regulation was that he was not allowed to fraternize with local women. He had to go through hoops to convince his superiors that the woman was not a spy. The army investigated her thoroughly and finally gave him the OK to marry her after she already gave birth to a baby girl. When Saigon was in the throes of being overrun by the Communists in the last days of April, 1975, the colonel had to risk his own life to go here and there to secure the evacuation papers for the woman, their daughter, and twenty eight (!) relatives of the woman. They got to the States and lived in Florida. Although the colonel doted on his daughter, he didn’t give his Vietnamese wife much freedom or money. She had to use all her life skills to survive as a business woman in the restaurant and later jewelry business. She made enough money to retire when she turned sixty. By that time she and her husband had moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, a nice upscale city near Phoenix. She was used to being independent during those tough years when she first got to the United States where she encountered language barrier. She was accustomed to doing things her way. When she retired from business, she and her husband had drifted apart emotionally, though not physically. She spent a lot of time with her female friends gambling in the local casino, leaving her husband at home watching TV or associating with his old military friends. One fine day she came home and found a note from her husband that he had found a new love and was filing for a legal separation. Shocked and angry, she tried to get a hold of her husband but he didn’t come to the phone. Finally, Oanh—that was the woman’s name, had to hire a detective who tracked her husband (Pierre) down. It turned out that Pierre had moved into a house of a Vietnamese woman in Las Vegas whom he had met over the Internet. Overcome with anger and humiliation, Oanh flew to the house of the other woman and made a big scene by shouting and uttering all kinds of profanity. Promptly thereafter, a cop showed up to her house and presented her with a restraining order. Depressed, Oanh couldn’t sleep. Her heart had all kinds of palpitations. That was when she came to you because you moonlighted as a counselor specializing in untangling the entanglements and convolutions of the human heart. The following was a partial transcript of the sessions you had with her.
-What should I do? I want my husband back.
-Let me ask you a question. Do you really love your husband? Or do you simply want him back because he is now shacking up with somebody?
-What kind of a question is that? What kind of a counselor are you?
-A very good question. A very good counselor, also.
-I beg your pardon?
-I’m saying my question to you is a very good one. I’m also saying that I am a very good counselor.
-Ah, I see.
-Do you really?
-What do you mean?
-I mean do you really love your husband or is it the question of the ego here. From the way you described to me, you took your husband for granted. You ignored him. You neglected him. You assumed that since he is an eight-three year-old man, no pun intended, nobody is interested in him. But you were erroneous in your assumption. Now you want him back, but it is a bit late, don’t you think?
-I came to you for help, for getting my husband back, not to hear you putting me down. I don’t know why my friends said you are very good. You certainly are a very strange counselor.
-Strange but good. You will see. Listen, I help people deal with reality, naked reality, unvarnished reality. That’s my mission in life. Nothing but reality. The way I see it, you have a very slim chance of getting your husband back if you continue showing your anger and frustrations. You should email him saying that you are sorry, that you really miss him and love him, and that you realize that you have made a mistake by being selfish and self-centered, and not catering to his needs. You should further state that you are waiting for him to come back till the day you die and that you are not interested in divorcing him. Meanwhile you go on with your life, trying to get over him, pretending that he is already dead, or accepting the ultimate likely scenario that he is going to divorce you and marry his girlfriend. The important thing is that you should never go out with any man prior to the divorce. If your husband gets wind of the rumor that you are dating any man just to get over him, he will divorce you in a heart’s beat. You complain that you can’t sleep because you are both sad and angry. My advice to you is to accept your mistake and think only of the bad things that your husband has done to you so you would start loving him less and less with each passing day until he is just a stranger to you. Once you stop thinking he is a nice and desirable man, you will be able to sleep. What kills a person is not what happens to him, but his failure to accept responsibility of his actions or the reality of the situation. You also must learn not to be so cocky and arrogant about yourself. In other words, learn to be more objective and humble. Too much arrogance is a reflection of unresolved inferiority complex. I realize my words may sting you, but it’s about time you step down from your self-built pedestal and learn to take a good look of yourself and admit that maybe it is logical that your husband is staying away from you because you are difficult to live with. Remember, nobody is running away from a good thing. Do not go for a facile rationalization that your husband is getting senile and don’t know what he is doing. Give him a possibility that he has been so nice and patient with you. He could have left you long time ago. I find your bragging that you would have no difficulty to get ten men interested in you by just flicking your fingers disturbing. I suggest you go back home and have a good look at yourself in the mirror, examine your aggressive, abrasive, uncompromising personality, and ask yourself a question that whether or not you are a desirable sixty-year-old woman. You know and I know that if any man right now who is interested in you, he is interested in your money which you admit there is not much left because of your mounting losses at the casino.
-Are you interested in me?
-You must have a weird sense of humor. I don’t fraternize with my clients. And I don’t like aggressive and coarse women, no matter how much money they have. I do have pride, in case you have not noticed. In fact, I hate money in a romantic relationship. It brings back bad memories.
-Okay, proud man. You even called me “coarse”. That hurt, but I can take it. I am a tough girl. What I cannot take is defeat. I’m telling you what? I want the woman to be taken care of. I don’t care how. I want it done as soon as possible. And I am willing to pay $15,000 to have it done. Do you know somebody who can do that?
-Wow! Now I start liking you. I like people who are into actions and not mouthing off bullshit. Are you really serious? Are you trusting me that much? We just met.
-I know something about people. I know you are a man of principles. Your words are tough and you are very rough around the edges, but you are a decent man. You understand my pains. You are not going to run to the police. What is going on is my own business, not the business of the police. Fuck the laws. That woman is fucking with me. She does not know who she is messing with. I want her gone.
-In that case, I do know somebody. Bring the money to the Macho Men bar at Oakley and Jones at 3pm sharp two days from now. I will be there.
-Fine, my son-in-law Chuck will bring the money. You have met him. I am counting on you. In fact, if you have it done fast, I will throw in $5,000 as a bonus.
-Don’t worry. I’m interested in justice, too. I don’t like seeing an eighty-three year old man being screwed, pun intended, out of money, especially by somebody who is not his wife.
About eighteen months ago, you met a man in Vegas, in a bar, a regular bar, not the one catering to men fond of cropped hair, leather clothing and earrings. Cooper is his name. Cooper has his head in his hands as he says he can’t believe how fucked up he is. “A mistake, man. That’s all.”
You dip a chicken wing in ranch and strip the flesh from it. Cooper makes a hysterical little sound. “Vance is going to kill me. He wants to make an example.”
And you laugh, because it sounds funny, something out of movie, not something people really say to each other. Cooper gets that look, a half sneer, like an older brother about to pound you, only you never had an older brother, just Cooper. “I’m serious.”
“Okay,” you say, and dump the chicken bone.
“Bob,” he says, and puts his palms together like he’s praying, and for a second you’re back in the front room of a shitty cinder-block apartment, watching Cooper made the same gesture at you over a bloodstained body. “Bob, Bob, Bob, Bobby. I need you, brother.”
The same Rolling Stones song is on. Mick Jagger is extolling about time and the best night of his life.
And you sip your beer and think about the best night of your life.
There is a smell of popcorn and nachos, the growl of hundreds of people talking and betting and shouting. The meaty thump of boxers warming up with their trainers, one-two-back, fists quick and feet flickering. A ring girl, five feet nine inches of toned grace in tight jeans, and a black bodice chatting up the muscled soldiers at the army booth. This is the Golden Gloves, and tonight is the finals, and you are fighting next.
You stand beside the ring, legs moving like a jogger at an intersection, gloves up, savoring the good looseness of your muscles. There is fear, but you picture a tiny basement room with a bare bulb dangling, and shove your fear in and lock the heavy oak door. From the front row, your girlfriend cheers as you slip between the ropes.
Your opponent has tattoos around both biceps and two inches of extra reach. You saw him last year, and he is good. For a moment your fear bangs on the door, the hinges straining and frame rattling.
You danced the first round. Land a jab, then a hook, then take one coming out, sudden stars and black spots. The crowd roar is static singing loud as the adrenaline in your blood. When the round is over, you spit water into a bucket, and it comes out pink.
The second round goes badly, and a split appears in the center of that door. Your trainer rubs your shoulders, tells you it’s not over yet. You just have to believe.
The third and final round, your opponent comes out mean. His eyes look through you. You block one punch, juke out of another. Your shoulders scream and your body has that hot trembly feeling of failing muscles. You throw a jab, but he bats it away and steps forward, winding up a swing that will knock you back to grade school.
But you remember what your trainer said, and you think of her in the front row, and instead of dodging, you step forward with a left hook to the belly that steals his wind. He pauses, just for a moment, but it’s enough. You cock your right and let yourself believe.
Then the other guy is on the ground, and though he gets up quick, the ref counts him standing, and stares into his eyes, and then shakes his head. The bell rings and the fight is yours and the crowd goes crazy, and finally you can hear it not as static but as hundreds of voices yelling in joy for you, surrounding you, making you part of something, and a rep from Pipefitters Local 597 hands you a trophy, and the photographer shoots a picture, the flash bright even under the lights, you with one arm up and the trophy in your other hand and your girlfriend in the background, long brown hair flying as she runs to the ring.
You have never felt this good before. It’s unbearable to think that this will fade, leaving you nothing but a cheap trophy and a job at the Shell station, and so you walk over to the recruiting tent, where the soldiers slap your shoulders and call you a man and say it was a hell of a fight, and that they need men like you, guys who believe and won’t quit.
And you sign up.
You train till you puke. You hurry up and wait. You learn close infantry and Arabic phrases and the name of every component of your weapon. You watch war movies you’ve already seen a hundred times. But this time is different. You’re part of something. A soldier, a lean, mean killing machine ready to kick ass for your country.
A group of you go for tattoos. Crossed rifles and slogans and death’s heads. You can’t decide, think of backing out. A tall, funny kid named Cooper puts his arm around your shoulders, says, “Come on, buddy. Don’t let us down.”
You get an American flag on your bicep. Later, looking in the mirror, you flex your arms grown thick with muscle, and the flag seems to wave, and you feel a surge in your chest, soft fluttery feeling like a girl brushing your skin.
“So how much do you owe this Vance guy?”
Cooper shrugs. “Ten grand.”
You blow a breath. “I don’t have that much.”
“Wouldn’t matter if you did.” He shakes his head. “I heard through a friend, Vance is sending a guy to waste me. Wants to show that even a soldier isn’t exempt.”
“Can your buddy help?”
“He is just a friend, not a buddy.”
“What about the guy who’s coming after you?”
“I’ve never met him. But he’s got a bad reputation.”
“Maybe you should get out of town.”
Cooper stares at you. “Hey, Bob,” he says softly, “fuck you.”
And the heat rises in your cheeks as you remember Cooper behind the M240 Bravo, fingers pulsing in tight clenches that rip the air with explosion. Fighting for his country, shouting and firing as you stand next to him, readying the next ammo belt and trying not to panic, Your first firefight is nothing like you expected, not like the movies you’d watched or video games you’d played. You don’t feel like a lean, mean killing machine, not even a little bit. There is a flash, and then a rocket hits the vehicle ahead, knocking it sideways in a wave of flames. You point to where the man had fired, and Cooper swings the machine gun, the bullets tearing chunks from walls and kicking up dust.
When it’s over, you walk through the humming distance of things, amidst rumble and trash and thousands of spent shell casings. The forward vehicle survived, but the rocket kills two soldiers immediately, and though the ringing in your ears muffles sound, it’s not enough to shut out the screams of a third whose belly was opened.
And the funny thing is that it’s in the aftermath that the fear really hits, as you realize that it was just chance that their vehicle was in front; not strategy or fate or a plan, just chance, a matter of which driver had pulled first. That the difference between life and death was measured in feet and in seconds. Fear burst the door of its basement cage and seized you and didn’t let go, not then and not since.
“The guy Vance is sending,” Cooper says, “they say he cuts your ears off first.” He looks at you, and in the neon light of the bar, you can see fear twist in his eyes like a trash bag in a dark ocean current.
“That’s not going to happen,” you say.
After you leave Cooper in the bar, you drive for a while, watching the sun set the sky on fire. It’s that hour when the shadows are soft and everything is lit from within. Tourists wander the Strip holding three-foot souvenir glasses. People in business suits talk on cell phones. Everyone is happy, on vacation or on their way home. But you are not.
For a second, you want more than anything to turn the wheel of the Bronco hard and jam on the gas and blast right through the garish front window of a strip joint. You clench and unclench your fists, take deep breaths. A car behind you honks, and you move along. From the corner market you get a cheesesteak and a six-pack. You go to the room you rent and turn on the TV and eat dinner sitting at the counter, the news you aren’t watching running in the background.
You think about what Cooper said, how life over there had been too big to grasp, to hold. You remember the conversation with a soldier who was re-upping, how when he talked about getting back to Iraq, he slipped and called it home.
You light a cigarette and think about the girl who watched you win at the Golden Gloves. About the way her hair always smelled clean, and a moment a lifetime ago, lying in bed, when she looked up with eyes like June and said she loved you.
The body on the floor of the Mosul apartment has half a dozen wounds. He’s on his belly, one arm out like he was reaching for something, head cocked sideways and part of his face missing. You recognize him. He’s one of the men who frequently hang around the forwarding operating base, selling Miami cigarettes. Other things, too, the rumor goes.
Cooper kneels beside him, bent over the body at an awkward angle as though he is going to hug it. The image sticks with you, comes back sometimes months later, along with the abruptness with which Cooper straightens as you come in, and how the first words out of his mouth are ‘I had to.”
You narrow your eyes, say, “What are you doing?”
“Checking for a pulse.”
The fear is in you, has been since the first firefight. Sometimes you feel you wear your fear like clothing. Today is bad, a dangerous assignment, the squad was split up and working the houses separately.
Then you notice. “Where’s his weapon?”
Cooper winces, and looks at the body, and then back at you. “I told him to get down, but he came at me, and I thought…”
You reached for your radio.
“Wait.” Cooper takes a step forward. “Wait.” He puts his palms together like he’s praying. “If they realize he wasn’t armed.”
“We have to call on this.”
“I know, but…” He rocks his clasped hands back and forth. Stares in your eyes. “I was scared, Bobby.”
Everyone is scared but no one says so, and when you see Cooper looking at you that way, something in you shivers. It could have you alone in there, could have been you who pulled the trigger. You think of basic, him putting an arm around your shoulders and telling you not to let everybody down.
“Did anyone…” Your voice comes out a croak, and you cough, start again. “Did anyone see you come in here?”
“Just you.”
You nod. Look again at the body on the ground, the way he is twisted. The blood is thickening on the woven rug. Another dark-skinned man dead in another shitty room. Try to make yourself believe it matters.
Then Cooper says. “Please, Bobby. Please.”
Cooper is waiting at the corner, hands tucked in the front pouch of a hoodie the day is already too warm for. He climbs in, pulls a CD from his pocket, Slayer’s Reign in Blood. Maybe in Vietnam it was Wagner, but in the desert, it was always heavy metal.
You ask, “Where?”
“A parking garage.” He gives you the intersection. “I’m supposed to meet him with money in an hour. Figured we’d get there first, scope it out.”
The garage is off the Strip, set amidst warehouses being converted to lofts for whoever lives in lofts. The ramp spirals up through six stories. The top floor is open to the sky. A handful of expensive vehicles are scattered far apart. Car fetishists, terrified of every ding and scratch. You park forty feet from the stairwell, on the far side of the ramp.
The sun is brutal, burning the sky white. The windows are open, and the sweat sticking to your chest feels familiar. “It’s good.”
Cooper nods.
“How many?
“At least two.”
“Armed?”
He nods again. You take a breath, look around. Electricity crackles and snaps between your fingers, the same old feeling you used to get as the squad mounted up. With terrain like this, there’s no reason even to discuss the plan. “Okay,” you say.
Cooper opens the door, pauses. Turns to look at you. “Bob---”
“Forget it,’’ you say. The two of you share the kind of look that only men who’ve gone to war together can. The he slides out of the car and walks over to the stairwell, leans against the wall. You turn off the engine and get out. Stand for a moment in the sun, the same sun that the lights the other side of the world. You twist the passenger mirror up at an angle, then take a breath, go prone and wiggle underneath the truck.
It’s not long before you hear a car climbing the ramp. You take a deep breath and remember the best night you ever had, how you mastered your fear and let yourself believe. The problem with the best moment of your life is that every other moment is worse.
The car is a BMW. It cruises up the ramp smooth and soft. Your keep your face pointing down, watching out of the corner of your eye, trying to picture a basement room with dangling bulb and a heavy door. The car parks about twenty feet away, near the stairs, where Cooper stands with his hands in his pocket. Gently, you slide from under, keeping the truck between you and the men, using your mirror to see.
Two of them, one in a suit, no tie; the other, bigger, in jeans and a muscle shirt. Muscle shirt gives a casual scan of the parking lot. He doesn’t look concerned, lacks the eddy readiness of a man expecting trouble. Still, when he turns his back, you see a pistol tucked into his belt. Cooper raises one hand in greeting, say something you can’t hear.
Keeping low, you ease around the back of the Bronco. Your heart slams into your chest, and you can taste copper. You slide one foot forward, then the other. The distance is only twenty feet. A couple of car lengths. It seems like miles. You feel strangely naked with your hands empty. Step, beat, step.
The man in business suit says something to Cooper. You screen it out. Fifteen feet. Ten. The sun fires jagged glints off the polished BMW. You’re almost to the man in the muscle shirt when he turns around.
Muscle Shirt’s eyes to wide, and he starts to speak, but you don’t hesitate, just take three quick strides and snap off a jab that catches his chin. Your bare knuckles sing. Adrenaline howls in your blood. The fear is gone. You feel better than you have in months. You throw another jab, and he gets his hands up in a clumsy block, and then you crack him hard in the side of his head, near the temple, a wildly illegal blow. His eyes lose focus and his legs wobble, but it’s in you now, the rage, the anger that swelled every time a mortar landed on the FOB, every time a terrorist-towel stepped out of an alley leveling an AK, every time the counselor at the VA said that what you were experiencing was typical, that it would pass. You swing again and again. His head snaps back and blood explodes from his nose and he’d fall if only you’d let him.
A loud gasp pulls you from the trance. You forget Muscle Boy. Turn to the man in the suit and start his way, and in a panicky voice he says, “Cooper, what is this---” and then you break his nose. He whimpers and drops to his knees. He looks up with wide, scared eyes, one hand on his nose and the other up to ward you off, like a child menaced by a bully.
The anger and power vanish. You lower your fists. Then Cooper pushes past you, flips Muscle Shirt over. Grabs the pistol from his belt and comes up fast. The man in the suit screams.
You say, “No---” and then there are three explosions and the man stops screaming. Cooper turns to the one on the ground and fires three more times, two bullets in the center of mass and one in the head, just like they taught you in the basic.
And you stand there, hands trembling, a shattered body on either side of you as the sun beats down.
“Bob,” Cooper says.
You stare.
“I had to. It’s done now.” He takes off his hoodie and uses it to wipe the sidearm clean. He drops it to one of the bodies, then starts for the Bronco.
You look at what’s left of their heads.
Then Cooper says, “Bob!” His voice sharp. “Come on. Move your feet, soldier.” He walks around to the other side of the Bronco and opens the door.
You bend and do something without really thinking about it, and then the sun carves your shadow in concrete as you walk to your truck.
The drive out of Las Vegas is a surreal falling away, first the casinos and bright lights, then the subdivisions that spring up overnight and then retail and then diners and then garages and then warehouses and then nothing. Just dirt and sun on either side of Interstate 15.
Cooper is all energy, the window open and fingers tapping, his whole body vibrating like a tuning fork, “Fuck, that was intense,” he says, grinning. “I knew you’d boxed, but you beat the shit out of those guys.”
Your fingers on the wheel are raw and dark with drying blood. He slaps the side of your truck in time with the heavy metal screaming through the tinny speakers. “Where we going, chief?”
You press the power button on the stereo. Cooper looks at you. A long stare. Some of the energy falls away. “I had to.”
You say nothing.
“I had to show that Vance coming after me is a bad idea. That it will cost him.” He scratches his chin. “Now we can deal. I’ll even pay him, when I get the money.”
“The guy,” you say. Hot dry air roars in the open windows. “He knows your name.”
“Who? On the parking deck? So what?”
“You told me you’d never met him. But he said, ‘Cooper, what is this?’”
He shrugs. “Vance must have told him.”
“It sounded like he knew you.”
“He didn’t.”
Your hand tightens on the steering wheel. You wait. You know Cooper. Silence he can’t take.
Finally he laughs. “Ah, shit, okay, you got me.” He turns to you. “I did know him. But the rest of what I said, it was true. And Bobby, thank you. I mean it. I always knew I could count on you.”
You nod. It was true. He had always known that. You ride in silence for another couple of moments, then pull off a lonely gas station. “I am thirsty.”
‘Get me something, would you?”
In the minimart you snag a couple of Gatorades and a pack of beef jerky and a can of lighter fluid. The woman behind the counter is as old as death. When she counts out your change, the motion of her lips fractures her cheeks like sunbaked mud. In the Bronco, Cooper has his feet on the dash. As you put the truck into Drive, he opens the jerky, says, “You got a destination in mind, or we just cruising? Because the chicks, man, they’re the other direction.”
The highway is nearly empty, cars strung out like beads on a necklace. You open the Gatorade and take a long pull. After a few minutes, you take the exit for US-93, a two-lane straight into the cracked brown American desert.
“Seriously, Bob, where we headed?’
“What were you doing when I came in?”
“What?” His eyes scrunch. “Came in where?”
“In Mosul. The apartment. When I came in, you were bending over the guy’s body. What were you doing?”
He cocks his head. “I was checking for a pulse.”
“I’ve thought about that a lot since I got back. The way you bent over him. It was strange.” You set your drink in the cup holder. “You weren’t looking for a pulse, were you? You were going through his pockets.”
“That’s crazy.”
You say nothing, just look at him sideways, put it all in your eyes. For a moment, he keeps it up, the façade, the Cooper Show. The he says, “Huh,” and the mask falls away. “When did you know?”
“I guess I knew then. In Mosul, I just wanted to believe you.”
Cooper nods. “See, I knew I could count on you.”
“What I want to know is why.”
He sighs. “I had a sideline going with the guy---weed, meth---but he got unreliable. Always talking about Allah, you know.”
He shrugs. “And today, well, I really did owe Vance ten grand.”
“That why you shot him? He was the one in the suit, right?”
“You didn’t miss a trick, Bobby.”
“Why bring me into it?”
‘I couldn’t be sure how many guys he’d have.”
“No. Why me?”
“What do you want me to say?” He shrugs. “Because you buy the whole lie. You win the Golden Gloves and to celebrate, what do you do? Get drunk and nail your girlfriend? Not you. You join the army.”
“You used me.”
“You let yourself be used.”
‘I could go to the cops.”
“They’d arrest you, too. But you know what?” He shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. You didn’t do that in Iraq, and you won’t here. That’s why I came to you. Because you’re predictable, Bobby. You never change.”
The moment stretches. You remember your trainer saying all you had to do was believe. Remember the feeling of being part of a team, a soldier, and what it got you, a diagnosis of PTSD and a rented room in a city you hate and a raw and formless anger that seems some days more real than any version of you that you once thought might be the real thing.
And then you raise the pistol you took from the parking deck and put it to Cooper’s head and show him he’s wrong.
Your knuckles hurt and your lips chapped. There’s a line from an old Leonard Cohen song running through your head, something about praying for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away. You’ve been the atheist. You try to pray this time. Again. And like many other times, you can’t do it. You can’t believe in Him. You tried to believe in others, in being part of a team, in fighting for your country, in having a friend. That didn’t not work either.
When the sun slips toward the horizon, you get up from the shade of a boulder you’ve been sitting. A quiet corner of searing nowhere at the end of an abandoned two-track, brown rocks and brown dirt and blue sky and you.
The Bronco’s passenger window is open. You reach in your pocket and pull out the can of lighter fluid and pop the top and lean in the window to spray it all over your friend and the front seat and the floorboards, the smell rising fast in the heat. You squeeze until nothing else comes. You think you might be crying, but you’re not sure. Something stings in your eyes.
The butane catches with a soft whomp and a trail of blue-yellow flame leaps around the inside of the truck you once loved. The upholstery catches quickly, and Cooper’s clothing. Within a minute, greasy black smoke pours out the windows, a fierce crackling rises.
You stand on the ridge of the desert and watch. Another truck engulfed in flame beneath another burning blue sky. Your past seems to burn along with it. For the first time ever since you got back from Iraq, you feel at peace.
And then you turn and start walking to US-93. Once you get there, you thumb your way to Phoenix. After being in Iraq and Las Vegas, you like the dry heat. Everyday you go to the main library to read the Las Vegas Review-Journal to see if there is news about the truck fire in the middle of the desert, but strangely there is no report of it. You stop reading the Review-Journal after four weeks. You make peace with yourself and accept if one day the law comes to you, it comes. There is nothing you can do about it, unless you want to go down to Mexico. You like the Mexicans, but not that much to start a life of an expatriate. You like to tempt fate. You want to live life in the open, not on a run. You find a job working in a casino poker room. The pay is not great, but it keeps you fit since you have to walk all day servicing the needs of the players, getting them poker chips and take-out meals from the in-house restaurant. You start talking to people and they seem to like you since you are a great listener and a man who understands the human heart. You meet Chuck, Oanh’s son-in-law, a great poker player, who encourages you to open a counseling service.
Now you have to determine how to make Pierre’s girl-friend disappear. Maybe she doesn’t need to be cremated like Cooper did. Maybe she could be persuaded to go back to Vietnam for good.
___________________________________________________________________
Based on a story by Marcus Sakey. Fifty-five per cent of the story and words are his, the rest are mine. I initially just wanted to copy the story verbatim because I liked it very much. It was the only story out of twenty three in an anthology that I read three times, though I didn’t like the ending that much. In fact, all the other twenty two stories had lousy, unsatisfying endings which made me think the stories were contrived and not authentically “inhabited”. Anyway, as I started to copy down the story as a means to calm me down (I had flashes that day and entertained homicidal thoughts) and get the mechanics of narrative (sort of literary reverse engineering), my mind got flashes and I injected more and more of my own words.
Most of the introduction was written by me. I also wrote the first bar scene, the parking lot of the first bar, the transcript of the sessions I had with Oanh, and the ending. I condensed the rest from Sakey and modified a few words here and there.
Wissai
September 2009
While others bellyache about traffic tickets or wax poetic about a bottle of good wine or gush praise over a bowl of beef noodle soup, you seem to inhabit a world so vastly different from theirs. You wonder what the fuck you are doing in a dingy gay bar in a seedy locale of Phoenix. A muscular thirty-something guy, in combat boots, tight jeans, and black, loose-fitting T-shirt, with a tattoo: ‘Desert here and the Desert far away” on his forearm, just sat down next to you. He leans over and says: “I love traveling, especially if there’s a chance of hurting myself. I’m a wicked good cook. I never miss the Golden Gloves. I like my bourbon neat, food so spicy the guy sitting next to me catches fire, and cigar after a good lay.” The Stones are on the stereo and Mick Jagger is telling you that time is on your side, and the best night of your life is about to unfold…..
You don’t know what Mick Jagger is crooning is going to materialize or not. You don’t believe in signs and omens; you believe in serendipities and strange coincidences. The man extends his hand, “Oanh said to meet you here at 3pm sharp.” You stare hard at him. Your hand meets his, “Why Chuck didn’t come? You have a name? I don’t know you”. He smiles, “Name is Nick. A friend of Chuck’s. Chuck is scared.”
The table you are sitting is at a corner near the entrance to the bathroom. It gives you a good view of who is coming and leaving. At this hour, there are hardly any customers. Two guys are in an involved conversation at the other corner. Four guys are shooting pool. The barman looks bored out his mind. That’s it. There are no other customers. You have been watching those six guys carefully. They seem to be regular folks, the way they carry themselves. You picked this bar because it is right at the intersection and its parking lot has a wide entrance and exit, easy to get in and out in a hurry. Also it is the last place people expect you to be there.
Nick keeps the stupid smile on his face as if the business at hand is really funny, and not some momentous event. He then says, “You’re going to do it?” In response, you reach over and give a lighting fast patting over his chest. He jumps out of the chair, growling: “What’s the fuck going on? You queer?”
You shake your head and stand up yourself, “Wires. Let’s go outside.”
The sun is bearing down hard on you. The sky is intensely blue. Not a single cloud. Not a single breeze. Everything is being baked. The heat waves are dancing off the asphalt in the parking lot. You look back. None of the six customers is following you. You walk over to your leased Maxima, parking right at the closest spot near the exit. You get into the driver’s seat and turn on the AC at the maximum. Nick is sliding into the passenger seat. You say to him, “You have the money?” Nick is pulling a thick envelope out of his front pocket and hands it over to you. You don’t bother to open the envelope. You put it under the seat. “OK, you can leave. Consider it done. The good news should be coming within two weeks.” Nick gets out the car, but doesn’t close the door. His hand is on the door and he gives you a hard look, “You’d better keep your end of the bargain, otherwise I’ll come and get you.” You snort, “Okay, tough guy. Why don’t you do the job yourself?” A sheepish look comes over his face, “Don’t believe in hurting women.” You point to the tattoo and say, “How far is far away? Iraq?” He nods and then makes an unexpected gesture of putting his hands together and says “Namaste”, closes the door and walks away. There was a man who also putting his hands together like that and you believed him. That belief changed your life forever.
A young Vietnamese woman of twenty without much education but plenty of wiles met an American colonel of Greek descent, aged forty-five, in one of the infamous Saigon bars during the height of the Vietnam War. He was not just a run-of-the mill colonel, but of the military intelligence branch and twice divorced. He was also an ex-pilot. Somehow he fell for her, but the military regulation was that he was not allowed to fraternize with local women. He had to go through hoops to convince his superiors that the woman was not a spy. The army investigated her thoroughly and finally gave him the OK to marry her after she already gave birth to a baby girl. When Saigon was in the throes of being overrun by the Communists in the last days of April, 1975, the colonel had to risk his own life to go here and there to secure the evacuation papers for the woman, their daughter, and twenty eight (!) relatives of the woman. They got to the States and lived in Florida. Although the colonel doted on his daughter, he didn’t give his Vietnamese wife much freedom or money. She had to use all her life skills to survive as a business woman in the restaurant and later jewelry business. She made enough money to retire when she turned sixty. By that time she and her husband had moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, a nice upscale city near Phoenix. She was used to being independent during those tough years when she first got to the United States where she encountered language barrier. She was accustomed to doing things her way. When she retired from business, she and her husband had drifted apart emotionally, though not physically. She spent a lot of time with her female friends gambling in the local casino, leaving her husband at home watching TV or associating with his old military friends. One fine day she came home and found a note from her husband that he had found a new love and was filing for a legal separation. Shocked and angry, she tried to get a hold of her husband but he didn’t come to the phone. Finally, Oanh—that was the woman’s name, had to hire a detective who tracked her husband (Pierre) down. It turned out that Pierre had moved into a house of a Vietnamese woman in Las Vegas whom he had met over the Internet. Overcome with anger and humiliation, Oanh flew to the house of the other woman and made a big scene by shouting and uttering all kinds of profanity. Promptly thereafter, a cop showed up to her house and presented her with a restraining order. Depressed, Oanh couldn’t sleep. Her heart had all kinds of palpitations. That was when she came to you because you moonlighted as a counselor specializing in untangling the entanglements and convolutions of the human heart. The following was a partial transcript of the sessions you had with her.
-What should I do? I want my husband back.
-Let me ask you a question. Do you really love your husband? Or do you simply want him back because he is now shacking up with somebody?
-What kind of a question is that? What kind of a counselor are you?
-A very good question. A very good counselor, also.
-I beg your pardon?
-I’m saying my question to you is a very good one. I’m also saying that I am a very good counselor.
-Ah, I see.
-Do you really?
-What do you mean?
-I mean do you really love your husband or is it the question of the ego here. From the way you described to me, you took your husband for granted. You ignored him. You neglected him. You assumed that since he is an eight-three year-old man, no pun intended, nobody is interested in him. But you were erroneous in your assumption. Now you want him back, but it is a bit late, don’t you think?
-I came to you for help, for getting my husband back, not to hear you putting me down. I don’t know why my friends said you are very good. You certainly are a very strange counselor.
-Strange but good. You will see. Listen, I help people deal with reality, naked reality, unvarnished reality. That’s my mission in life. Nothing but reality. The way I see it, you have a very slim chance of getting your husband back if you continue showing your anger and frustrations. You should email him saying that you are sorry, that you really miss him and love him, and that you realize that you have made a mistake by being selfish and self-centered, and not catering to his needs. You should further state that you are waiting for him to come back till the day you die and that you are not interested in divorcing him. Meanwhile you go on with your life, trying to get over him, pretending that he is already dead, or accepting the ultimate likely scenario that he is going to divorce you and marry his girlfriend. The important thing is that you should never go out with any man prior to the divorce. If your husband gets wind of the rumor that you are dating any man just to get over him, he will divorce you in a heart’s beat. You complain that you can’t sleep because you are both sad and angry. My advice to you is to accept your mistake and think only of the bad things that your husband has done to you so you would start loving him less and less with each passing day until he is just a stranger to you. Once you stop thinking he is a nice and desirable man, you will be able to sleep. What kills a person is not what happens to him, but his failure to accept responsibility of his actions or the reality of the situation. You also must learn not to be so cocky and arrogant about yourself. In other words, learn to be more objective and humble. Too much arrogance is a reflection of unresolved inferiority complex. I realize my words may sting you, but it’s about time you step down from your self-built pedestal and learn to take a good look of yourself and admit that maybe it is logical that your husband is staying away from you because you are difficult to live with. Remember, nobody is running away from a good thing. Do not go for a facile rationalization that your husband is getting senile and don’t know what he is doing. Give him a possibility that he has been so nice and patient with you. He could have left you long time ago. I find your bragging that you would have no difficulty to get ten men interested in you by just flicking your fingers disturbing. I suggest you go back home and have a good look at yourself in the mirror, examine your aggressive, abrasive, uncompromising personality, and ask yourself a question that whether or not you are a desirable sixty-year-old woman. You know and I know that if any man right now who is interested in you, he is interested in your money which you admit there is not much left because of your mounting losses at the casino.
-Are you interested in me?
-You must have a weird sense of humor. I don’t fraternize with my clients. And I don’t like aggressive and coarse women, no matter how much money they have. I do have pride, in case you have not noticed. In fact, I hate money in a romantic relationship. It brings back bad memories.
-Okay, proud man. You even called me “coarse”. That hurt, but I can take it. I am a tough girl. What I cannot take is defeat. I’m telling you what? I want the woman to be taken care of. I don’t care how. I want it done as soon as possible. And I am willing to pay $15,000 to have it done. Do you know somebody who can do that?
-Wow! Now I start liking you. I like people who are into actions and not mouthing off bullshit. Are you really serious? Are you trusting me that much? We just met.
-I know something about people. I know you are a man of principles. Your words are tough and you are very rough around the edges, but you are a decent man. You understand my pains. You are not going to run to the police. What is going on is my own business, not the business of the police. Fuck the laws. That woman is fucking with me. She does not know who she is messing with. I want her gone.
-In that case, I do know somebody. Bring the money to the Macho Men bar at Oakley and Jones at 3pm sharp two days from now. I will be there.
-Fine, my son-in-law Chuck will bring the money. You have met him. I am counting on you. In fact, if you have it done fast, I will throw in $5,000 as a bonus.
-Don’t worry. I’m interested in justice, too. I don’t like seeing an eighty-three year old man being screwed, pun intended, out of money, especially by somebody who is not his wife.
About eighteen months ago, you met a man in Vegas, in a bar, a regular bar, not the one catering to men fond of cropped hair, leather clothing and earrings. Cooper is his name. Cooper has his head in his hands as he says he can’t believe how fucked up he is. “A mistake, man. That’s all.”
You dip a chicken wing in ranch and strip the flesh from it. Cooper makes a hysterical little sound. “Vance is going to kill me. He wants to make an example.”
And you laugh, because it sounds funny, something out of movie, not something people really say to each other. Cooper gets that look, a half sneer, like an older brother about to pound you, only you never had an older brother, just Cooper. “I’m serious.”
“Okay,” you say, and dump the chicken bone.
“Bob,” he says, and puts his palms together like he’s praying, and for a second you’re back in the front room of a shitty cinder-block apartment, watching Cooper made the same gesture at you over a bloodstained body. “Bob, Bob, Bob, Bobby. I need you, brother.”
The same Rolling Stones song is on. Mick Jagger is extolling about time and the best night of his life.
And you sip your beer and think about the best night of your life.
There is a smell of popcorn and nachos, the growl of hundreds of people talking and betting and shouting. The meaty thump of boxers warming up with their trainers, one-two-back, fists quick and feet flickering. A ring girl, five feet nine inches of toned grace in tight jeans, and a black bodice chatting up the muscled soldiers at the army booth. This is the Golden Gloves, and tonight is the finals, and you are fighting next.
You stand beside the ring, legs moving like a jogger at an intersection, gloves up, savoring the good looseness of your muscles. There is fear, but you picture a tiny basement room with a bare bulb dangling, and shove your fear in and lock the heavy oak door. From the front row, your girlfriend cheers as you slip between the ropes.
Your opponent has tattoos around both biceps and two inches of extra reach. You saw him last year, and he is good. For a moment your fear bangs on the door, the hinges straining and frame rattling.
You danced the first round. Land a jab, then a hook, then take one coming out, sudden stars and black spots. The crowd roar is static singing loud as the adrenaline in your blood. When the round is over, you spit water into a bucket, and it comes out pink.
The second round goes badly, and a split appears in the center of that door. Your trainer rubs your shoulders, tells you it’s not over yet. You just have to believe.
The third and final round, your opponent comes out mean. His eyes look through you. You block one punch, juke out of another. Your shoulders scream and your body has that hot trembly feeling of failing muscles. You throw a jab, but he bats it away and steps forward, winding up a swing that will knock you back to grade school.
But you remember what your trainer said, and you think of her in the front row, and instead of dodging, you step forward with a left hook to the belly that steals his wind. He pauses, just for a moment, but it’s enough. You cock your right and let yourself believe.
Then the other guy is on the ground, and though he gets up quick, the ref counts him standing, and stares into his eyes, and then shakes his head. The bell rings and the fight is yours and the crowd goes crazy, and finally you can hear it not as static but as hundreds of voices yelling in joy for you, surrounding you, making you part of something, and a rep from Pipefitters Local 597 hands you a trophy, and the photographer shoots a picture, the flash bright even under the lights, you with one arm up and the trophy in your other hand and your girlfriend in the background, long brown hair flying as she runs to the ring.
You have never felt this good before. It’s unbearable to think that this will fade, leaving you nothing but a cheap trophy and a job at the Shell station, and so you walk over to the recruiting tent, where the soldiers slap your shoulders and call you a man and say it was a hell of a fight, and that they need men like you, guys who believe and won’t quit.
And you sign up.
You train till you puke. You hurry up and wait. You learn close infantry and Arabic phrases and the name of every component of your weapon. You watch war movies you’ve already seen a hundred times. But this time is different. You’re part of something. A soldier, a lean, mean killing machine ready to kick ass for your country.
A group of you go for tattoos. Crossed rifles and slogans and death’s heads. You can’t decide, think of backing out. A tall, funny kid named Cooper puts his arm around your shoulders, says, “Come on, buddy. Don’t let us down.”
You get an American flag on your bicep. Later, looking in the mirror, you flex your arms grown thick with muscle, and the flag seems to wave, and you feel a surge in your chest, soft fluttery feeling like a girl brushing your skin.
“So how much do you owe this Vance guy?”
Cooper shrugs. “Ten grand.”
You blow a breath. “I don’t have that much.”
“Wouldn’t matter if you did.” He shakes his head. “I heard through a friend, Vance is sending a guy to waste me. Wants to show that even a soldier isn’t exempt.”
“Can your buddy help?”
“He is just a friend, not a buddy.”
“What about the guy who’s coming after you?”
“I’ve never met him. But he’s got a bad reputation.”
“Maybe you should get out of town.”
Cooper stares at you. “Hey, Bob,” he says softly, “fuck you.”
And the heat rises in your cheeks as you remember Cooper behind the M240 Bravo, fingers pulsing in tight clenches that rip the air with explosion. Fighting for his country, shouting and firing as you stand next to him, readying the next ammo belt and trying not to panic, Your first firefight is nothing like you expected, not like the movies you’d watched or video games you’d played. You don’t feel like a lean, mean killing machine, not even a little bit. There is a flash, and then a rocket hits the vehicle ahead, knocking it sideways in a wave of flames. You point to where the man had fired, and Cooper swings the machine gun, the bullets tearing chunks from walls and kicking up dust.
When it’s over, you walk through the humming distance of things, amidst rumble and trash and thousands of spent shell casings. The forward vehicle survived, but the rocket kills two soldiers immediately, and though the ringing in your ears muffles sound, it’s not enough to shut out the screams of a third whose belly was opened.
And the funny thing is that it’s in the aftermath that the fear really hits, as you realize that it was just chance that their vehicle was in front; not strategy or fate or a plan, just chance, a matter of which driver had pulled first. That the difference between life and death was measured in feet and in seconds. Fear burst the door of its basement cage and seized you and didn’t let go, not then and not since.
“The guy Vance is sending,” Cooper says, “they say he cuts your ears off first.” He looks at you, and in the neon light of the bar, you can see fear twist in his eyes like a trash bag in a dark ocean current.
“That’s not going to happen,” you say.
After you leave Cooper in the bar, you drive for a while, watching the sun set the sky on fire. It’s that hour when the shadows are soft and everything is lit from within. Tourists wander the Strip holding three-foot souvenir glasses. People in business suits talk on cell phones. Everyone is happy, on vacation or on their way home. But you are not.
For a second, you want more than anything to turn the wheel of the Bronco hard and jam on the gas and blast right through the garish front window of a strip joint. You clench and unclench your fists, take deep breaths. A car behind you honks, and you move along. From the corner market you get a cheesesteak and a six-pack. You go to the room you rent and turn on the TV and eat dinner sitting at the counter, the news you aren’t watching running in the background.
You think about what Cooper said, how life over there had been too big to grasp, to hold. You remember the conversation with a soldier who was re-upping, how when he talked about getting back to Iraq, he slipped and called it home.
You light a cigarette and think about the girl who watched you win at the Golden Gloves. About the way her hair always smelled clean, and a moment a lifetime ago, lying in bed, when she looked up with eyes like June and said she loved you.
The body on the floor of the Mosul apartment has half a dozen wounds. He’s on his belly, one arm out like he was reaching for something, head cocked sideways and part of his face missing. You recognize him. He’s one of the men who frequently hang around the forwarding operating base, selling Miami cigarettes. Other things, too, the rumor goes.
Cooper kneels beside him, bent over the body at an awkward angle as though he is going to hug it. The image sticks with you, comes back sometimes months later, along with the abruptness with which Cooper straightens as you come in, and how the first words out of his mouth are ‘I had to.”
You narrow your eyes, say, “What are you doing?”
“Checking for a pulse.”
The fear is in you, has been since the first firefight. Sometimes you feel you wear your fear like clothing. Today is bad, a dangerous assignment, the squad was split up and working the houses separately.
Then you notice. “Where’s his weapon?”
Cooper winces, and looks at the body, and then back at you. “I told him to get down, but he came at me, and I thought…”
You reached for your radio.
“Wait.” Cooper takes a step forward. “Wait.” He puts his palms together like he’s praying. “If they realize he wasn’t armed.”
“We have to call on this.”
“I know, but…” He rocks his clasped hands back and forth. Stares in your eyes. “I was scared, Bobby.”
Everyone is scared but no one says so, and when you see Cooper looking at you that way, something in you shivers. It could have you alone in there, could have been you who pulled the trigger. You think of basic, him putting an arm around your shoulders and telling you not to let everybody down.
“Did anyone…” Your voice comes out a croak, and you cough, start again. “Did anyone see you come in here?”
“Just you.”
You nod. Look again at the body on the ground, the way he is twisted. The blood is thickening on the woven rug. Another dark-skinned man dead in another shitty room. Try to make yourself believe it matters.
Then Cooper says. “Please, Bobby. Please.”
Cooper is waiting at the corner, hands tucked in the front pouch of a hoodie the day is already too warm for. He climbs in, pulls a CD from his pocket, Slayer’s Reign in Blood. Maybe in Vietnam it was Wagner, but in the desert, it was always heavy metal.
You ask, “Where?”
“A parking garage.” He gives you the intersection. “I’m supposed to meet him with money in an hour. Figured we’d get there first, scope it out.”
The garage is off the Strip, set amidst warehouses being converted to lofts for whoever lives in lofts. The ramp spirals up through six stories. The top floor is open to the sky. A handful of expensive vehicles are scattered far apart. Car fetishists, terrified of every ding and scratch. You park forty feet from the stairwell, on the far side of the ramp.
The sun is brutal, burning the sky white. The windows are open, and the sweat sticking to your chest feels familiar. “It’s good.”
Cooper nods.
“How many?
“At least two.”
“Armed?”
He nods again. You take a breath, look around. Electricity crackles and snaps between your fingers, the same old feeling you used to get as the squad mounted up. With terrain like this, there’s no reason even to discuss the plan. “Okay,” you say.
Cooper opens the door, pauses. Turns to look at you. “Bob---”
“Forget it,’’ you say. The two of you share the kind of look that only men who’ve gone to war together can. The he slides out of the car and walks over to the stairwell, leans against the wall. You turn off the engine and get out. Stand for a moment in the sun, the same sun that the lights the other side of the world. You twist the passenger mirror up at an angle, then take a breath, go prone and wiggle underneath the truck.
It’s not long before you hear a car climbing the ramp. You take a deep breath and remember the best night you ever had, how you mastered your fear and let yourself believe. The problem with the best moment of your life is that every other moment is worse.
The car is a BMW. It cruises up the ramp smooth and soft. Your keep your face pointing down, watching out of the corner of your eye, trying to picture a basement room with dangling bulb and a heavy door. The car parks about twenty feet away, near the stairs, where Cooper stands with his hands in his pocket. Gently, you slide from under, keeping the truck between you and the men, using your mirror to see.
Two of them, one in a suit, no tie; the other, bigger, in jeans and a muscle shirt. Muscle shirt gives a casual scan of the parking lot. He doesn’t look concerned, lacks the eddy readiness of a man expecting trouble. Still, when he turns his back, you see a pistol tucked into his belt. Cooper raises one hand in greeting, say something you can’t hear.
Keeping low, you ease around the back of the Bronco. Your heart slams into your chest, and you can taste copper. You slide one foot forward, then the other. The distance is only twenty feet. A couple of car lengths. It seems like miles. You feel strangely naked with your hands empty. Step, beat, step.
The man in business suit says something to Cooper. You screen it out. Fifteen feet. Ten. The sun fires jagged glints off the polished BMW. You’re almost to the man in the muscle shirt when he turns around.
Muscle Shirt’s eyes to wide, and he starts to speak, but you don’t hesitate, just take three quick strides and snap off a jab that catches his chin. Your bare knuckles sing. Adrenaline howls in your blood. The fear is gone. You feel better than you have in months. You throw another jab, and he gets his hands up in a clumsy block, and then you crack him hard in the side of his head, near the temple, a wildly illegal blow. His eyes lose focus and his legs wobble, but it’s in you now, the rage, the anger that swelled every time a mortar landed on the FOB, every time a terrorist-towel stepped out of an alley leveling an AK, every time the counselor at the VA said that what you were experiencing was typical, that it would pass. You swing again and again. His head snaps back and blood explodes from his nose and he’d fall if only you’d let him.
A loud gasp pulls you from the trance. You forget Muscle Boy. Turn to the man in the suit and start his way, and in a panicky voice he says, “Cooper, what is this---” and then you break his nose. He whimpers and drops to his knees. He looks up with wide, scared eyes, one hand on his nose and the other up to ward you off, like a child menaced by a bully.
The anger and power vanish. You lower your fists. Then Cooper pushes past you, flips Muscle Shirt over. Grabs the pistol from his belt and comes up fast. The man in the suit screams.
You say, “No---” and then there are three explosions and the man stops screaming. Cooper turns to the one on the ground and fires three more times, two bullets in the center of mass and one in the head, just like they taught you in the basic.
And you stand there, hands trembling, a shattered body on either side of you as the sun beats down.
“Bob,” Cooper says.
You stare.
“I had to. It’s done now.” He takes off his hoodie and uses it to wipe the sidearm clean. He drops it to one of the bodies, then starts for the Bronco.
You look at what’s left of their heads.
Then Cooper says, “Bob!” His voice sharp. “Come on. Move your feet, soldier.” He walks around to the other side of the Bronco and opens the door.
You bend and do something without really thinking about it, and then the sun carves your shadow in concrete as you walk to your truck.
The drive out of Las Vegas is a surreal falling away, first the casinos and bright lights, then the subdivisions that spring up overnight and then retail and then diners and then garages and then warehouses and then nothing. Just dirt and sun on either side of Interstate 15.
Cooper is all energy, the window open and fingers tapping, his whole body vibrating like a tuning fork, “Fuck, that was intense,” he says, grinning. “I knew you’d boxed, but you beat the shit out of those guys.”
Your fingers on the wheel are raw and dark with drying blood. He slaps the side of your truck in time with the heavy metal screaming through the tinny speakers. “Where we going, chief?”
You press the power button on the stereo. Cooper looks at you. A long stare. Some of the energy falls away. “I had to.”
You say nothing.
“I had to show that Vance coming after me is a bad idea. That it will cost him.” He scratches his chin. “Now we can deal. I’ll even pay him, when I get the money.”
“The guy,” you say. Hot dry air roars in the open windows. “He knows your name.”
“Who? On the parking deck? So what?”
“You told me you’d never met him. But he said, ‘Cooper, what is this?’”
He shrugs. “Vance must have told him.”
“It sounded like he knew you.”
“He didn’t.”
Your hand tightens on the steering wheel. You wait. You know Cooper. Silence he can’t take.
Finally he laughs. “Ah, shit, okay, you got me.” He turns to you. “I did know him. But the rest of what I said, it was true. And Bobby, thank you. I mean it. I always knew I could count on you.”
You nod. It was true. He had always known that. You ride in silence for another couple of moments, then pull off a lonely gas station. “I am thirsty.”
‘Get me something, would you?”
In the minimart you snag a couple of Gatorades and a pack of beef jerky and a can of lighter fluid. The woman behind the counter is as old as death. When she counts out your change, the motion of her lips fractures her cheeks like sunbaked mud. In the Bronco, Cooper has his feet on the dash. As you put the truck into Drive, he opens the jerky, says, “You got a destination in mind, or we just cruising? Because the chicks, man, they’re the other direction.”
The highway is nearly empty, cars strung out like beads on a necklace. You open the Gatorade and take a long pull. After a few minutes, you take the exit for US-93, a two-lane straight into the cracked brown American desert.
“Seriously, Bob, where we headed?’
“What were you doing when I came in?”
“What?” His eyes scrunch. “Came in where?”
“In Mosul. The apartment. When I came in, you were bending over the guy’s body. What were you doing?”
He cocks his head. “I was checking for a pulse.”
“I’ve thought about that a lot since I got back. The way you bent over him. It was strange.” You set your drink in the cup holder. “You weren’t looking for a pulse, were you? You were going through his pockets.”
“That’s crazy.”
You say nothing, just look at him sideways, put it all in your eyes. For a moment, he keeps it up, the façade, the Cooper Show. The he says, “Huh,” and the mask falls away. “When did you know?”
“I guess I knew then. In Mosul, I just wanted to believe you.”
Cooper nods. “See, I knew I could count on you.”
“What I want to know is why.”
He sighs. “I had a sideline going with the guy---weed, meth---but he got unreliable. Always talking about Allah, you know.”
He shrugs. “And today, well, I really did owe Vance ten grand.”
“That why you shot him? He was the one in the suit, right?”
“You didn’t miss a trick, Bobby.”
“Why bring me into it?”
‘I couldn’t be sure how many guys he’d have.”
“No. Why me?”
“What do you want me to say?” He shrugs. “Because you buy the whole lie. You win the Golden Gloves and to celebrate, what do you do? Get drunk and nail your girlfriend? Not you. You join the army.”
“You used me.”
“You let yourself be used.”
‘I could go to the cops.”
“They’d arrest you, too. But you know what?” He shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. You didn’t do that in Iraq, and you won’t here. That’s why I came to you. Because you’re predictable, Bobby. You never change.”
The moment stretches. You remember your trainer saying all you had to do was believe. Remember the feeling of being part of a team, a soldier, and what it got you, a diagnosis of PTSD and a rented room in a city you hate and a raw and formless anger that seems some days more real than any version of you that you once thought might be the real thing.
And then you raise the pistol you took from the parking deck and put it to Cooper’s head and show him he’s wrong.
Your knuckles hurt and your lips chapped. There’s a line from an old Leonard Cohen song running through your head, something about praying for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away. You’ve been the atheist. You try to pray this time. Again. And like many other times, you can’t do it. You can’t believe in Him. You tried to believe in others, in being part of a team, in fighting for your country, in having a friend. That didn’t not work either.
When the sun slips toward the horizon, you get up from the shade of a boulder you’ve been sitting. A quiet corner of searing nowhere at the end of an abandoned two-track, brown rocks and brown dirt and blue sky and you.
The Bronco’s passenger window is open. You reach in your pocket and pull out the can of lighter fluid and pop the top and lean in the window to spray it all over your friend and the front seat and the floorboards, the smell rising fast in the heat. You squeeze until nothing else comes. You think you might be crying, but you’re not sure. Something stings in your eyes.
The butane catches with a soft whomp and a trail of blue-yellow flame leaps around the inside of the truck you once loved. The upholstery catches quickly, and Cooper’s clothing. Within a minute, greasy black smoke pours out the windows, a fierce crackling rises.
You stand on the ridge of the desert and watch. Another truck engulfed in flame beneath another burning blue sky. Your past seems to burn along with it. For the first time ever since you got back from Iraq, you feel at peace.
And then you turn and start walking to US-93. Once you get there, you thumb your way to Phoenix. After being in Iraq and Las Vegas, you like the dry heat. Everyday you go to the main library to read the Las Vegas Review-Journal to see if there is news about the truck fire in the middle of the desert, but strangely there is no report of it. You stop reading the Review-Journal after four weeks. You make peace with yourself and accept if one day the law comes to you, it comes. There is nothing you can do about it, unless you want to go down to Mexico. You like the Mexicans, but not that much to start a life of an expatriate. You like to tempt fate. You want to live life in the open, not on a run. You find a job working in a casino poker room. The pay is not great, but it keeps you fit since you have to walk all day servicing the needs of the players, getting them poker chips and take-out meals from the in-house restaurant. You start talking to people and they seem to like you since you are a great listener and a man who understands the human heart. You meet Chuck, Oanh’s son-in-law, a great poker player, who encourages you to open a counseling service.
Now you have to determine how to make Pierre’s girl-friend disappear. Maybe she doesn’t need to be cremated like Cooper did. Maybe she could be persuaded to go back to Vietnam for good.
___________________________________________________________________
Based on a story by Marcus Sakey. Fifty-five per cent of the story and words are his, the rest are mine. I initially just wanted to copy the story verbatim because I liked it very much. It was the only story out of twenty three in an anthology that I read three times, though I didn’t like the ending that much. In fact, all the other twenty two stories had lousy, unsatisfying endings which made me think the stories were contrived and not authentically “inhabited”. Anyway, as I started to copy down the story as a means to calm me down (I had flashes that day and entertained homicidal thoughts) and get the mechanics of narrative (sort of literary reverse engineering), my mind got flashes and I injected more and more of my own words.
Most of the introduction was written by me. I also wrote the first bar scene, the parking lot of the first bar, the transcript of the sessions I had with Oanh, and the ending. I condensed the rest from Sakey and modified a few words here and there.
Wissai
September 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
I follow the ants
Theo chân kiến
luồn qua cụm cỏ
Bóng âm u
Thế giới chập chùng
Quãng im lặng
nghe mùi đất thở.
Tuệ Sỹ
The French Translation
me faufilant entre les herbes
je pursuis la fourmi
Ténèbres profondes
Mondes de pénombres
silence entre silences
J'entends la respiration de la terre
Dominique de Miscault
Attempt at English Rendition
I follow the ants
in edging my way through the grass,
dark shadows,
and the world of flickering lights
while listening to the breathing of the earth
in the vast stretch of silence
Wissai 09112009
luồn qua cụm cỏ
Bóng âm u
Thế giới chập chùng
Quãng im lặng
nghe mùi đất thở.
Tuệ Sỹ
The French Translation
me faufilant entre les herbes
je pursuis la fourmi
Ténèbres profondes
Mondes de pénombres
silence entre silences
J'entends la respiration de la terre
Dominique de Miscault
Attempt at English Rendition
I follow the ants
in edging my way through the grass,
dark shadows,
and the world of flickering lights
while listening to the breathing of the earth
in the vast stretch of silence
Wissai 09112009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Cowards, Cowards, and Cowards
Cowards are everywhere. The more noise they make, the more cowardly they are. I cannot stand cowardly noise makers anymore. I want them to put their self-professed love for Vietnam where it counts, like some concrete action such as putting their damned names in the Declaration against the bullying acts of China. No, a simple act of defiance against China like that is way beyond their capability. Instead of being honest and admitting that they were too cowardly to put their names in any document of protest, they rationalized that declarations were not an effective means to combat Chinese imperialism. They forgot to tell us what the effective means were, after all we, the overseas Vietnamese, possess no army. Our voice is our only weapon. The truth was that they were too yellow and chicken-hearted to fight. They preferred getting on the internet and talked nonsense or pontificated about sex or trafficked in gossip. Now one of them tried to lecture me by urging me to integrate more and denigrate less. I will denounce and denigrate all those cowards till the cows come home. I countered to the hypocritical "lecturer" by posting a quick reply in the forum that he had better practice what he preaches. Not too long ago he preached that he was against declarations and petitions because he deemed them to be "infertile". In addition, he and the Monkey denigrated my efforts and those of like-minded individuals in putting together the Declaration ( he put in all kinds of negative arguments to dissuade others from signing in the Declaration). I sternly reminded him in my reply to him that inconsistency is the hallmark of a scoundrel.
The Monkey is back to his favorite tricks of name-calling and rehashed, nauseating, nonrhymed lines of nonsense. How fucking tiresome! How unimaginative! How fucking repetitive! I already knew the bastard did not have an ounce of creativity in him. Now he confirmed that by posting the same nonsensical lines of "poetry" (sic!) about going up the mountain to be a recluse and about horses and water buffaloes loving to seek animals of the same kindred spirit. Now I truly know the meaning of the word "revolted". I was physically revolted when I saw his rehashed tricks. What a fucking animal! That is what he is. He is only good for fucking and nothing else. Even so, perhaps he is no longer able to fulfill that role anymore because he once posted a "poem" in the forum about his sexual impotence. Yech! All animal and no mind, and not much sex either.
Sandi was too fucking dumb to understand the purpose of my posting the email about the insights of Sam Chauhan. If she could not understand such a simple message, I would not expect her to understand more subtle thoughts and intricate arguments from me. Maybe her English is not good enough to grasp the nuances of my words. It's time for her to take a remedial course in Basic English even though she is a native speaker. Apparently she didn't have the aptitude to comprehend written English yet. However, ironically enough, she had the gall to call my letting off steam repetitive chattering. Here we had a case of a willfully self-delusional creature who got lost in the wilderness for such a long time and who was fortunately rescued by me, now is calling me indulging in chattering. Now she is lecturing me on the nature of reality! How funny and how droll! I just cannot understand some creatures. They are beyond my imagination. Their inane remarks are way off the left field. Like the Monkey, Sandi is another pathetic example of being a stranger to oneself. Individuals like the Monkey and Sandi are simply deficient in self-awareness or maybe moral courage, that is to say, the ability to see one's shortcomings. Instead, they expend their energy in covering up their sense of inadequacy by lashing out at people like me who make them feel uncomfortable of themselves. That's their damned fault for messing with me. They should know that an attack on me will invite a fierce counter-attack. Fuck them! Enough about these animals. I have done enough throwing up for a day.
The Monkey is back to his favorite tricks of name-calling and rehashed, nauseating, nonrhymed lines of nonsense. How fucking tiresome! How unimaginative! How fucking repetitive! I already knew the bastard did not have an ounce of creativity in him. Now he confirmed that by posting the same nonsensical lines of "poetry" (sic!) about going up the mountain to be a recluse and about horses and water buffaloes loving to seek animals of the same kindred spirit. Now I truly know the meaning of the word "revolted". I was physically revolted when I saw his rehashed tricks. What a fucking animal! That is what he is. He is only good for fucking and nothing else. Even so, perhaps he is no longer able to fulfill that role anymore because he once posted a "poem" in the forum about his sexual impotence. Yech! All animal and no mind, and not much sex either.
Sandi was too fucking dumb to understand the purpose of my posting the email about the insights of Sam Chauhan. If she could not understand such a simple message, I would not expect her to understand more subtle thoughts and intricate arguments from me. Maybe her English is not good enough to grasp the nuances of my words. It's time for her to take a remedial course in Basic English even though she is a native speaker. Apparently she didn't have the aptitude to comprehend written English yet. However, ironically enough, she had the gall to call my letting off steam repetitive chattering. Here we had a case of a willfully self-delusional creature who got lost in the wilderness for such a long time and who was fortunately rescued by me, now is calling me indulging in chattering. Now she is lecturing me on the nature of reality! How funny and how droll! I just cannot understand some creatures. They are beyond my imagination. Their inane remarks are way off the left field. Like the Monkey, Sandi is another pathetic example of being a stranger to oneself. Individuals like the Monkey and Sandi are simply deficient in self-awareness or maybe moral courage, that is to say, the ability to see one's shortcomings. Instead, they expend their energy in covering up their sense of inadequacy by lashing out at people like me who make them feel uncomfortable of themselves. That's their damned fault for messing with me. They should know that an attack on me will invite a fierce counter-attack. Fuck them! Enough about these animals. I have done enough throwing up for a day.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monkey is yelping again
Monkeys can't stay still for long. They have to make noises. That's in their nature. Compared to true humans, they are not creative. They tend to make the same noises, day in and day out. Since they are sub-human animals, they cannot comprehend humans, but humans can understand them. As I said before, the below can't comprehend the above. Being sub-humans, they look at the world from pure animal standpoints.
Some humans are nothing but monkeys in disguise. These proto-humans look like humans from the outside, but after we true humans interact with them for a while, they reveal themselves as brutish, stupid, ignorant, and noise-hungry. These proto-humans are only useful to true humans when true humans want to cure themselves of constipation or food poisoning. The mere sight of these proto-humans makes true humans run for the bathroom.
Some humans are nothing but monkeys in disguise. These proto-humans look like humans from the outside, but after we true humans interact with them for a while, they reveal themselves as brutish, stupid, ignorant, and noise-hungry. These proto-humans are only useful to true humans when true humans want to cure themselves of constipation or food poisoning. The mere sight of these proto-humans makes true humans run for the bathroom.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Insights learned from Sam Chauhan
Insights from Sam Chauhan
Recently a friend showed me an article about Sam Chauhan, a mindset coach who was credited for helping various individuals overcome their greatest adversaries: themselves. The following observations are taken from the article.
1. Tiger Woods has numerous coaches that work with him on his mindset. Think about that. Here’s the golfer universally regarded as the best in the world, and yet he constantly finds ways to improve his mindset since he knows golf is the game of the mind. You are in the battle with your own mind.
2. About Ego and Pride: To live with dignity, one must have a modicum of ego and pride. However, like everything else in this world, too much of a good thing is bad. One must cultivate the ability to take things in moderate amounts. Remember others have ego and pride, too. Maybe they have more than you do. It does not matter whether the image they have of themselves is justified or not. What matters is your own image of yourself is justified or not.
3. Everyday, prior to leaving the house, you tell yourself that you are going to conduct yourself in the best manner that you know how, that you are a true member of the species homo sapiens, and not some monkey escaping from a zoo.
4. You want people to be attracted to who you are inside, not of what kind of noise you make. The noise you make had better reflect your true self, and not just to make you look good or feel good.
Wissai
September 07, 2009.
Recently a friend showed me an article about Sam Chauhan, a mindset coach who was credited for helping various individuals overcome their greatest adversaries: themselves. The following observations are taken from the article.
1. Tiger Woods has numerous coaches that work with him on his mindset. Think about that. Here’s the golfer universally regarded as the best in the world, and yet he constantly finds ways to improve his mindset since he knows golf is the game of the mind. You are in the battle with your own mind.
2. About Ego and Pride: To live with dignity, one must have a modicum of ego and pride. However, like everything else in this world, too much of a good thing is bad. One must cultivate the ability to take things in moderate amounts. Remember others have ego and pride, too. Maybe they have more than you do. It does not matter whether the image they have of themselves is justified or not. What matters is your own image of yourself is justified or not.
3. Everyday, prior to leaving the house, you tell yourself that you are going to conduct yourself in the best manner that you know how, that you are a true member of the species homo sapiens, and not some monkey escaping from a zoo.
4. You want people to be attracted to who you are inside, not of what kind of noise you make. The noise you make had better reflect your true self, and not just to make you look good or feel good.
Wissai
September 07, 2009.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Words, Words, and Words
Words, Words, and Words
Words are all I have and all I need are words. I reread what I wrote in Collage and Pastiche. And I must confess that I like what I wrote, some risqué words notwithstanding. The poem Laura is a masterpiece and deserves wider circulation. Thus, I’m rendering it into English, knowing fully well that “traduire, c’est trahir”. The music in the French original is largely missing in this English version.
Laura
Laura, do you remember
It rained without end in Saigon that evening in November?
We were taking shelter in the veranda
Of the library of Centre Culturel Francais
And I was babbling about my hope and plan.
I was talking in English,
A language I would like to master.
On and on I kept talking while the rain continued falling.
You were listening,
Smiling, ravishing with the rain on your face.
I boldly took your wet hand in mine
And you smiled and kissed me lightly on the cheek.
Oh, the kiss that forever made me lose my mind.
When I got back home that evening,
An intoxicating joy exploded in my heart
And my life seemed like a field of flowers.
I was leaving for Paris, three years later.
At the airport, I said:
“Baby, please don’t cry!
I will come back for you.”
This evening in Saigon, it is raining without end
As it did a long time ago.
Rain keeps falling on me and through my heart.
How lonesome I feel
Because you are here no more.
Laura, do you remember
It rained without end that evening
And you put your head
Against mine and you said:
“How beautiful the rain is!
I wish it would rain forever.”
Where are you now
While I’m standing outside the same veranda
In this rain of no tomorrow?
I, who have held you in my arms,
Will continue loving you without end.
I’m going to love you against the rising tide of time,
Against this rain of sorrow, this rain of pain.
Laura
Rappelle-toi, Laura
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Saigon ce soir-là.
Nous nous abritions sous la veranda
De la bibliothèque de la Mission Francaise
Et je parlais sans cesse de mon espoir,
Mon plan pour l’avenir.
Je parlais en anglais,
Une langue que je voudrais maitriser
Mais que tu as déjà possedée.
Je parlais sans cesse
Comme la pluie en cette nuit-là
Et tu m’écoutais
Souriante, ravissante, ruisselante
Avec la pluie sur ton visage
Et je prenais mon courage
Et saisissais ta main mouillée
Et tu souriais et m’as donné
Un baiser léger sur ma joue.
Oh baiser doux qui m’a rendu fou!
Cette nuite-là, quand je suis revenu chez moi
Une joie intoxicante explosait en mon coeur
Et ma vie semblait immersée dans un champ de fleurs!
Trois ans plus tard, je suis parti pour Paris.
A l’aeroport, je t’ai dit:
‘Ne pleure pas.
Je pars, mais je reviendrai.”
Ce soir à Saigon, il pleut sans cesse
Comme it pleuvait autrefois.
Cette pluie qui tombe sur mon chapeau
Semble penetrer dans mon coeur.
Oh mon dieu, comme je suis triste!
Tu étais ici.
Maintenant tu es partie.
Rappelle-toi Laura, ce soir-là.
Il pleuvait sans cesse
Et tu appuyais la tête
Contre moi et disais:
“Comme la pluie est belle!
Je souhaite qu’elle tombe jusqu’à l’éternité.”
Qu’es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de douleur!
Moi, qui te serrais dans mes bras.
Je vais t’aimer sans cesse.
Je vais t’aimer contre la marée du temps,
Contre cette pluie de douleur, cette pluie de tristesse.
Commentaire: Laura était reelle; la pluie était réelle. Mon amour malheureusemente était reel auusi. Je n’aime plus Laura. La douleur était effrayante. J’aime beaucoup ce poème. Malgré ma limitation de la langue francaise, je n’ai pas eu de difficulté de composer ce “chef-d’oeuvre”. Les mots arrivaient rapidement.
I was numb from the translation effort. It took a lot out of me. I no longer love Laura, but I can’t help talking and writing about her. Maybe I am trying to talk myself from falling in love again. Needless to say, whenever it rains hard and long, I go a bit crazy. I did go completely crazy once and almost took a jump into the abyss. It took me a long time to recover. I wrote the French version back in 1994 when I thought I still loved Laura. The funny thing is that the poem was a testament to my power of imagination. The only thing true about the poem was the rain. It did rain that evening. She and I were taking shelter from the rain in the veranda of the American Library in Saigon. We were getting to know each other then, so none of the dialogue and kissing took place. I especially loved the poem’s last stanza. It was truly beautiful, even in the English translation. The last stanza gave me a belief that I do have artistic sensibilities and the making of a poet. Note the choice of words and the resultant imagery and music. While I am basically an honest person, when it comes to creative writing, I give free rein to my imagination. I inflate and I exaggerate. I lie. I even plagiarize. I feel completely free of social conventions. I use strong words, I confess, and I bleed all over the pages. I use writing as a form of therapy. So, while I wrote that I was going to love Laura till the end of time, the reality was that I completely stopped loving Laura about three years ago. I woke up on a glorious Sunday morning with blue sky, light breezes, and fine temperature and realized that Laura was common as common can be and that she didn’t deserve my love. I don’t even want to see her ever again. Lately, I have started being more withdrawn. I have stayed away from old correspondents. They didn’t really understand me. Some of them thought they were too good for me whereas the reality was the other way around. I’m getting more prideful and difficult. I know I am hurting myself socially and emotionally, but somehow I don’t care. I now concentrate my remaining energy on making money and taking care of my health.
In moments of reflection, I stumble and slouch towards a realization that deep down I don’t care for money, fame, or power. I merely hanker after Love, the one with a capital L, but I am admitting that true love is rare and maybe I will never get it because I don’t work hard enough at it. I am too lazy and prideful. So, I lose myself in books and dreams. Still, I feel there is a certain closure, a certain peace in my conversations with you. I finally talked to you and you sounded as I imagined you to be. I utilize my imagination and dreams to strengthen myself. I’m getting more disciplined and focused and moralistic. I am not generous but I am fair. I detest greed, jealousy, and dishonesty in people.
I am waiting for Death to arrive. Meanwhile I am trying to live a life with honor and dignity, that is to say, I will not beg, steal, or lie to survive. We all die anyway and I am not a common person. I am an artist, a philosopher, and a seeker of knowledge. My current project is learning not to be self-righteous. Peace. Namaste.
I know I have been a fool, but I can’t help myself. I’m too much a dreamer. I dream of peace and of the improbable if not the outright impossibility. I like to swim against the currents of conventions and of time itself. There’s a river flowing between us. I am standing on this side of the river and when the mood is right, I take to singing. I sing off-key, but I sing anyway. It does not really matter if you hear my singing, and if you do, whether you like it. The important thing is that I know you are there, on the other side of the river. The only thing that matters is my belief that you are not a common person. That belief has given me peace, has given me strength. Even if one day you decide not to live on that side of the river anymore and move away, I still treasure the memories associated with you.
Wissai
February 2006
That was what I wrote more than 3 years ago. How time flew! A lot of things happened in three years. I got older and not wiser. I got fatter, too, but I have just managed to get back to my fighting weight, the svelte figure I used to maintain when I was in college: 155 lbs. Since the title of this piece is Words, I might as well indulge in them. From here on, you will see the record of my journey with words.
Tim Page, a music critic, characterized the music of Beach Boys as “vaporous, ethereal, elaborately ornamented musical clockworks, distinguished by a blossoming tenderness and sheer sonic splendor”. Wonderful, don’t you think? Ever since I first learned to speak, sound has fascinated me, but I can’t sing. But I loved to talk although I suffered from a speech impediment: stuttering. The more I wanted to talk, the more I got stuck in producing the sounds I wanted. So I thought of words visually. In my brain, words got lined up and I just spoke as I saw them. As I got older, I stuttered less. Now I only do when I get over-excited. Meanwhile, I discovered that I got some facility with words. I fancy that I think very quickly with words and am extremely efficient with ripostes, retorts and repartees. ________________________________________________________________
Words are all I have and all I need are words. I reread what I wrote in Collage and Pastiche. And I must confess that I like what I wrote, some risqué words notwithstanding. The poem Laura is a masterpiece and deserves wider circulation. Thus, I’m rendering it into English, knowing fully well that “traduire, c’est trahir”. The music in the French original is largely missing in this English version.
Laura
Laura, do you remember
It rained without end in Saigon that evening in November?
We were taking shelter in the veranda
Of the library of Centre Culturel Francais
And I was babbling about my hope and plan.
I was talking in English,
A language I would like to master.
On and on I kept talking while the rain continued falling.
You were listening,
Smiling, ravishing with the rain on your face.
I boldly took your wet hand in mine
And you smiled and kissed me lightly on the cheek.
Oh, the kiss that forever made me lose my mind.
When I got back home that evening,
An intoxicating joy exploded in my heart
And my life seemed like a field of flowers.
I was leaving for Paris, three years later.
At the airport, I said:
“Baby, please don’t cry!
I will come back for you.”
This evening in Saigon, it is raining without end
As it did a long time ago.
Rain keeps falling on me and through my heart.
How lonesome I feel
Because you are here no more.
Laura, do you remember
It rained without end that evening
And you put your head
Against mine and you said:
“How beautiful the rain is!
I wish it would rain forever.”
Where are you now
While I’m standing outside the same veranda
In this rain of no tomorrow?
I, who have held you in my arms,
Will continue loving you without end.
I’m going to love you against the rising tide of time,
Against this rain of sorrow, this rain of pain.
Laura
Rappelle-toi, Laura
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Saigon ce soir-là.
Nous nous abritions sous la veranda
De la bibliothèque de la Mission Francaise
Et je parlais sans cesse de mon espoir,
Mon plan pour l’avenir.
Je parlais en anglais,
Une langue que je voudrais maitriser
Mais que tu as déjà possedée.
Je parlais sans cesse
Comme la pluie en cette nuit-là
Et tu m’écoutais
Souriante, ravissante, ruisselante
Avec la pluie sur ton visage
Et je prenais mon courage
Et saisissais ta main mouillée
Et tu souriais et m’as donné
Un baiser léger sur ma joue.
Oh baiser doux qui m’a rendu fou!
Cette nuite-là, quand je suis revenu chez moi
Une joie intoxicante explosait en mon coeur
Et ma vie semblait immersée dans un champ de fleurs!
Trois ans plus tard, je suis parti pour Paris.
A l’aeroport, je t’ai dit:
‘Ne pleure pas.
Je pars, mais je reviendrai.”
Ce soir à Saigon, il pleut sans cesse
Comme it pleuvait autrefois.
Cette pluie qui tombe sur mon chapeau
Semble penetrer dans mon coeur.
Oh mon dieu, comme je suis triste!
Tu étais ici.
Maintenant tu es partie.
Rappelle-toi Laura, ce soir-là.
Il pleuvait sans cesse
Et tu appuyais la tête
Contre moi et disais:
“Comme la pluie est belle!
Je souhaite qu’elle tombe jusqu’à l’éternité.”
Qu’es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de douleur!
Moi, qui te serrais dans mes bras.
Je vais t’aimer sans cesse.
Je vais t’aimer contre la marée du temps,
Contre cette pluie de douleur, cette pluie de tristesse.
Commentaire: Laura était reelle; la pluie était réelle. Mon amour malheureusemente était reel auusi. Je n’aime plus Laura. La douleur était effrayante. J’aime beaucoup ce poème. Malgré ma limitation de la langue francaise, je n’ai pas eu de difficulté de composer ce “chef-d’oeuvre”. Les mots arrivaient rapidement.
I was numb from the translation effort. It took a lot out of me. I no longer love Laura, but I can’t help talking and writing about her. Maybe I am trying to talk myself from falling in love again. Needless to say, whenever it rains hard and long, I go a bit crazy. I did go completely crazy once and almost took a jump into the abyss. It took me a long time to recover. I wrote the French version back in 1994 when I thought I still loved Laura. The funny thing is that the poem was a testament to my power of imagination. The only thing true about the poem was the rain. It did rain that evening. She and I were taking shelter from the rain in the veranda of the American Library in Saigon. We were getting to know each other then, so none of the dialogue and kissing took place. I especially loved the poem’s last stanza. It was truly beautiful, even in the English translation. The last stanza gave me a belief that I do have artistic sensibilities and the making of a poet. Note the choice of words and the resultant imagery and music. While I am basically an honest person, when it comes to creative writing, I give free rein to my imagination. I inflate and I exaggerate. I lie. I even plagiarize. I feel completely free of social conventions. I use strong words, I confess, and I bleed all over the pages. I use writing as a form of therapy. So, while I wrote that I was going to love Laura till the end of time, the reality was that I completely stopped loving Laura about three years ago. I woke up on a glorious Sunday morning with blue sky, light breezes, and fine temperature and realized that Laura was common as common can be and that she didn’t deserve my love. I don’t even want to see her ever again. Lately, I have started being more withdrawn. I have stayed away from old correspondents. They didn’t really understand me. Some of them thought they were too good for me whereas the reality was the other way around. I’m getting more prideful and difficult. I know I am hurting myself socially and emotionally, but somehow I don’t care. I now concentrate my remaining energy on making money and taking care of my health.
In moments of reflection, I stumble and slouch towards a realization that deep down I don’t care for money, fame, or power. I merely hanker after Love, the one with a capital L, but I am admitting that true love is rare and maybe I will never get it because I don’t work hard enough at it. I am too lazy and prideful. So, I lose myself in books and dreams. Still, I feel there is a certain closure, a certain peace in my conversations with you. I finally talked to you and you sounded as I imagined you to be. I utilize my imagination and dreams to strengthen myself. I’m getting more disciplined and focused and moralistic. I am not generous but I am fair. I detest greed, jealousy, and dishonesty in people.
I am waiting for Death to arrive. Meanwhile I am trying to live a life with honor and dignity, that is to say, I will not beg, steal, or lie to survive. We all die anyway and I am not a common person. I am an artist, a philosopher, and a seeker of knowledge. My current project is learning not to be self-righteous. Peace. Namaste.
I know I have been a fool, but I can’t help myself. I’m too much a dreamer. I dream of peace and of the improbable if not the outright impossibility. I like to swim against the currents of conventions and of time itself. There’s a river flowing between us. I am standing on this side of the river and when the mood is right, I take to singing. I sing off-key, but I sing anyway. It does not really matter if you hear my singing, and if you do, whether you like it. The important thing is that I know you are there, on the other side of the river. The only thing that matters is my belief that you are not a common person. That belief has given me peace, has given me strength. Even if one day you decide not to live on that side of the river anymore and move away, I still treasure the memories associated with you.
Wissai
February 2006
That was what I wrote more than 3 years ago. How time flew! A lot of things happened in three years. I got older and not wiser. I got fatter, too, but I have just managed to get back to my fighting weight, the svelte figure I used to maintain when I was in college: 155 lbs. Since the title of this piece is Words, I might as well indulge in them. From here on, you will see the record of my journey with words.
Tim Page, a music critic, characterized the music of Beach Boys as “vaporous, ethereal, elaborately ornamented musical clockworks, distinguished by a blossoming tenderness and sheer sonic splendor”. Wonderful, don’t you think? Ever since I first learned to speak, sound has fascinated me, but I can’t sing. But I loved to talk although I suffered from a speech impediment: stuttering. The more I wanted to talk, the more I got stuck in producing the sounds I wanted. So I thought of words visually. In my brain, words got lined up and I just spoke as I saw them. As I got older, I stuttered less. Now I only do when I get over-excited. Meanwhile, I discovered that I got some facility with words. I fancy that I think very quickly with words and am extremely efficient with ripostes, retorts and repartees. ________________________________________________________________
Saturday, September 5, 2009
L'amour, C'est Pour Rien. Love is For Naught
Comme une salamandre,
L'amour est merveilleux
Like a salamander,
love is marvelous
Et renait de ses cendres
comme l'oiseau de feu,
And reborn from the ashes
like the bird of fire,
Nul ne peut le contraindre
Nothing can compel it
Pour lui donner la vie.
To give up its life.
Et rien ne peut l'eteindre
And nothing can put it out
Sinon l'eau de l'oubli.
But the water of neglect.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux pas le vendre
Thou can’t sell it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux l'acheter.
Thou can’t buy it.
Quand ton corps se reveille,
When thy body heats up,
Tu te mets a trembler.
It makes thee tremble.
Mais si ton coeur s'eveille,
But if thy heart awakens,
Tu te mets a rêver.
Thou start dreaming.
Tu rêves d'un echange avec un autre aveu,
Thou dream of an exchange with another a confession,
Car ces frissons estranges
For the strange quiverings
Ne vivent que par deux
Only live by two.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux pas le vendre
Thou can’t sell it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux l'acheter.
Thou can’t buy it.
L'amour, c'est l'esperance,
Love is hope
Sans raison et sans loi.
Without reason and without rule.
L'amour comme la chance
Love is like luck
Ne se mérite pas.
Which is undeserving.
Il y a sur terre un être
There is somebody on this Earth
Qui t'aime a la folie,
Who loves thee to distraction,
Sans même te connaitre
Without even knowing thee
Prêt a donner sa vie.
Willing to give thee his life.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught.
Tu ne peux pas le prendre
Thou can’t take it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Mais tu peux le donner.
But thou can give it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
L'amour, C'est pour rien.
Love is for naught.
artist: enrico macias
translated by wissai 9/5/09
L'amour est merveilleux
Like a salamander,
love is marvelous
Et renait de ses cendres
comme l'oiseau de feu,
And reborn from the ashes
like the bird of fire,
Nul ne peut le contraindre
Nothing can compel it
Pour lui donner la vie.
To give up its life.
Et rien ne peut l'eteindre
And nothing can put it out
Sinon l'eau de l'oubli.
But the water of neglect.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux pas le vendre
Thou can’t sell it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux l'acheter.
Thou can’t buy it.
Quand ton corps se reveille,
When thy body heats up,
Tu te mets a trembler.
It makes thee tremble.
Mais si ton coeur s'eveille,
But if thy heart awakens,
Tu te mets a rêver.
Thou start dreaming.
Tu rêves d'un echange avec un autre aveu,
Thou dream of an exchange with another a confession,
Car ces frissons estranges
For the strange quiverings
Ne vivent que par deux
Only live by two.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux pas le vendre
Thou can’t sell it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Tu ne peux l'acheter.
Thou can’t buy it.
L'amour, c'est l'esperance,
Love is hope
Sans raison et sans loi.
Without reason and without rule.
L'amour comme la chance
Love is like luck
Ne se mérite pas.
Which is undeserving.
Il y a sur terre un être
There is somebody on this Earth
Qui t'aime a la folie,
Who loves thee to distraction,
Sans même te connaitre
Without even knowing thee
Prêt a donner sa vie.
Willing to give thee his life.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught.
Tu ne peux pas le prendre
Thou can’t take it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
Mais tu peux le donner.
But thou can give it.
L'amour, c'est pour rien
Love is for naught
L'amour, C'est pour rien.
Love is for naught.
artist: enrico macias
translated by wissai 9/5/09
Letter to Mr. Cha Sang-Geun
September 04, 2009
International Maritime Organization
4, Albert Embankment
London
SE1 7SR
United Kingdon
Email: info@imo.org
Attn: Mr. Cha Sang-Geun
Re: Mr. Cha’s act of bravery
Dear Mr. Cha:
We are the organizing members of the Committee to Save Vietnam from China Campaign. It has come to our attention that early this year in January, you and your crew braved a fierce storm in the East Sea in answer to the distress call of the fifteen Vietnamese fishermen whose boat was capsized. It was our understanding that there were patrolling Chinese vessels in the vicinity, but they didn’t bother to rush to the rescue. Instead, you and your crew risked your lives to combat the elements and to elude those patrolling Chinese vessels before you could reach our fellow Vietnamese.
We were very gratified to learn that for your humanitarian deed and act of bravery, the International Maritime Organization is to confer to you the Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea. The ceremony is going to be in London, England this September of 2009.
We would like to salute your bravery and to register our gratitude on behalf of the Vietnamese people.
Sincerely,
Le Quang Long in Auckland, New Zealand
Nguyen Hung in Sydney, Australia
Ngo Khoa Ba in Houston, Texas, the United States
The Committee email address: savevietnam09@gmail.com
International Maritime Organization
4, Albert Embankment
London
SE1 7SR
United Kingdon
Email: info@imo.org
Attn: Mr. Cha Sang-Geun
Re: Mr. Cha’s act of bravery
Dear Mr. Cha:
We are the organizing members of the Committee to Save Vietnam from China Campaign. It has come to our attention that early this year in January, you and your crew braved a fierce storm in the East Sea in answer to the distress call of the fifteen Vietnamese fishermen whose boat was capsized. It was our understanding that there were patrolling Chinese vessels in the vicinity, but they didn’t bother to rush to the rescue. Instead, you and your crew risked your lives to combat the elements and to elude those patrolling Chinese vessels before you could reach our fellow Vietnamese.
We were very gratified to learn that for your humanitarian deed and act of bravery, the International Maritime Organization is to confer to you the Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea. The ceremony is going to be in London, England this September of 2009.
We would like to salute your bravery and to register our gratitude on behalf of the Vietnamese people.
Sincerely,
Le Quang Long in Auckland, New Zealand
Nguyen Hung in Sydney, Australia
Ngo Khoa Ba in Houston, Texas, the United States
The Committee email address: savevietnam09@gmail.com
Uptight
Uptight
You slept well last night, despite the stress and the anger and the disappointment. You got up when the sun was almost at the zenith. You felt good, recharged, and ready to take on the world once again. You got to the bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror and were pleased at what you saw. You looked years younger than your age. This morning, you even sported a nice ruddy complexion. You did some Yoga while telling yourself that you would need to go to bed at reasonable hours in order to preserve your looks.
Monkeys irritated you yesterday. All those constant screamings and scratchings at the armpits in order to get attention, in order to be heard bored the shit out of you.
Today you wonder why there are such creatures on this planet, why there are so many of them, why they don't have any self-awareness. But then you realize they are only monkeys, only animals, for Christ’s sake. What do you expect? Monkeys are funny animals, unwittingly. In other words, they make a mockery (a nice phrase: monkeys make a mockery of themselves!) of themselves and don’t know that. All those banal yelpings are tiresome, however. You can't stand them anymore. They nauseate you. You can't reach the “Delete” button fast enough.
One more thing: the more you know about monkeys, the more you despise them. They all try to show their best side to the world first, but sooner or later their base, despicable, contemptible, brutish, crude, animalistic side surfaces; that’s when you feel nauseous when you see their stupid faces and their antics. Your disgust has reached the point that you regard them as monkeys with advanced stages of leprosy.
Another thing (and another, when you have time to think more of these stupid simians): monkeys love to talk about sex or forward sex materials. While mouthing off nonsensical yet couched in cryptic, oracular pronouncements on out-of-sync, refuse-to-retire tendencies of people in their 60's, the monkeys love to engage in titillating the viewers with sex-laden materials. You wonder why the monkeys don't see the irony of their act. The spectacle of seeing a monkey in its 60's, busy gathering sex materials so it can post on the Internet is so ridiculous, so contempt-inviting that it renders you awestruck with the ludicrousness of the situation. You would love to defenestrate the monkey along with its out-of-place sex materials.
Yes, you are ululating against these monkeys because they offend your sensibilities. You are thankful that despite the onset of Alzheimer's illness, you are still lucid to command enough words to portray your disgust. Being able to vent in this deliberately highfalutin fashion delights the hell out of you. You are not shy. You are not habituated to voice your displeasure in susurrant sounds. In fact, your ability to write this blog today in this manner has brought you a great whimpery happiness, not unlike passing a clear urine.
Wissai
You slept well last night, despite the stress and the anger and the disappointment. You got up when the sun was almost at the zenith. You felt good, recharged, and ready to take on the world once again. You got to the bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror and were pleased at what you saw. You looked years younger than your age. This morning, you even sported a nice ruddy complexion. You did some Yoga while telling yourself that you would need to go to bed at reasonable hours in order to preserve your looks.
Monkeys irritated you yesterday. All those constant screamings and scratchings at the armpits in order to get attention, in order to be heard bored the shit out of you.
Today you wonder why there are such creatures on this planet, why there are so many of them, why they don't have any self-awareness. But then you realize they are only monkeys, only animals, for Christ’s sake. What do you expect? Monkeys are funny animals, unwittingly. In other words, they make a mockery (a nice phrase: monkeys make a mockery of themselves!) of themselves and don’t know that. All those banal yelpings are tiresome, however. You can't stand them anymore. They nauseate you. You can't reach the “Delete” button fast enough.
One more thing: the more you know about monkeys, the more you despise them. They all try to show their best side to the world first, but sooner or later their base, despicable, contemptible, brutish, crude, animalistic side surfaces; that’s when you feel nauseous when you see their stupid faces and their antics. Your disgust has reached the point that you regard them as monkeys with advanced stages of leprosy.
Another thing (and another, when you have time to think more of these stupid simians): monkeys love to talk about sex or forward sex materials. While mouthing off nonsensical yet couched in cryptic, oracular pronouncements on out-of-sync, refuse-to-retire tendencies of people in their 60's, the monkeys love to engage in titillating the viewers with sex-laden materials. You wonder why the monkeys don't see the irony of their act. The spectacle of seeing a monkey in its 60's, busy gathering sex materials so it can post on the Internet is so ridiculous, so contempt-inviting that it renders you awestruck with the ludicrousness of the situation. You would love to defenestrate the monkey along with its out-of-place sex materials.
Yes, you are ululating against these monkeys because they offend your sensibilities. You are thankful that despite the onset of Alzheimer's illness, you are still lucid to command enough words to portray your disgust. Being able to vent in this deliberately highfalutin fashion delights the hell out of you. You are not shy. You are not habituated to voice your displeasure in susurrant sounds. In fact, your ability to write this blog today in this manner has brought you a great whimpery happiness, not unlike passing a clear urine.
Wissai
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tears in the Rain
You woke up this morning feeling good and refreshed after a much-needed sleep. The flashbacks involving BF and the sense of humiliation and impotence and rage associated with the years when you were a farmer seemed small and easily managed. You know they will roar back and demand attention. And you know you will handle them the same way: they are nothing but a reflection of your mind’s growing recognition that it is all about money and survival. Of course, your clumsy, impractical disposition towards love has something to do with it. You are getting older with each passing day. Death is grinning at you when you open your eyes in the morning and it follows you every step along the way during the day. It is on your left; it is on your right. Sometimes it even dances right in front of your eyes. So, you try to take care of your health and your looks while trying to regain your money. You are the hunter now. The hunting has been arduous but you feel alive and filled with a mission. Love is no longer a preoccupation because finally you don’t believe in it anymore. You have become crass and cheap and unromantic like so many others whom you have despised in the past. You only care about money and health and survival. You are learning to be taciturn and circumspect, but since you are what you are, you occasionally can’t help but to display your wit, your gift of gab, your instantaneous ripostes and repartees like you told a fellow hunter the other day that while with you there’s a very fine line between genius and insanity, in his case there’s a big divide. You cackled after you said that, all very pleased with yourself. And why not, you have to feel good about yourself, somehow. The world has tried to make you feel small, impotent, and lonely. You know you are not good at the games farmers play. So, you opted for hunting, instead. So far, you are doing all right as long as you don’t get cocky and get shot by an irate fellow hunter. Occasionally, far into the night, when sleep plays hard to get, out of the depths of the immature past, words arrived and you wrote something like the following:
Tears in the Rain
The wind and the rain
The air and the land
One summer evening by the sea,
You and me
Hand in hand
Walking on the sand
We finally met once again
After so many years.
The eyes, the smile, the hair,
They were still there, including the tears.
You asked, “So, have you been good?
Have you been true?”
I said, “As good and true as I knew.
There were many others,
But nobody was like you.
You are like the stars in the sky.
The light of my night,
The fire of my loins,
The love of my life.
I once said I would love you forever.
Forever means ever and ever,
Not even the end of time.
So, what happened?
Did he finally die ?
Or did he leave you for somebody else ass I said he would?
You looked at me and said nothing.
Tears kept coming without end.
Tears in the rain.
Wissai 8/06.
So, Baby, I wrote words like these to ease the pain, to come to terms with the innocent past, to deal with the impossibility. I, of course, no longer love you because you have revealed to me that you are crass, cheap, and unromantic. I no longer harbor the desire to show you the countless poems, some of them in French, I wrote because of you. I no longer wish to ask you for explanations and clarifications. I only want the past to cease tormenting me.
Tears in the Rain
The wind and the rain
The air and the land
One summer evening by the sea,
You and me
Hand in hand
Walking on the sand
We finally met once again
After so many years.
The eyes, the smile, the hair,
They were still there, including the tears.
You asked, “So, have you been good?
Have you been true?”
I said, “As good and true as I knew.
There were many others,
But nobody was like you.
You are like the stars in the sky.
The light of my night,
The fire of my loins,
The love of my life.
I once said I would love you forever.
Forever means ever and ever,
Not even the end of time.
So, what happened?
Did he finally die ?
Or did he leave you for somebody else ass I said he would?
You looked at me and said nothing.
Tears kept coming without end.
Tears in the rain.
Wissai 8/06.
So, Baby, I wrote words like these to ease the pain, to come to terms with the innocent past, to deal with the impossibility. I, of course, no longer love you because you have revealed to me that you are crass, cheap, and unromantic. I no longer harbor the desire to show you the countless poems, some of them in French, I wrote because of you. I no longer wish to ask you for explanations and clarifications. I only want the past to cease tormenting me.
The Heart is the Lonely Hunter
Sex and Love
To Apple Two
We humans like to talk about sex and love. Sex is easy to know because it is a physical act. Love, on the other hand, is complex and has myriad forms. Everybody has their own definition of love. Saint-Exupery once said that love does not consist of two people looking at each other, but at the same direction. And Eric Segal is famous with the corny line: Love means never having to say you are sorry. Roberto, the infamous half-Italian wannabe fiction writer, disagrees whole-heartedly with Segal. To Roberto, love means you say you are sorry all the time because you don’t want to hurt the feelings of your beloved, because you put her own feelings and welfare before yours. But how often we do that, Roberto wonders. We almost always love ourselves first and foremost.
Sex is coarse and animalistic. We come up with sex jokes and talk about/practice rough sex or group sex. We don’t talk about rough love or group love. Romantic love is almost always about tenderness and exclusivity. And romantic love is what Roberto mostly wants to ruminate about today. He should be an authority on the subject because he has a “big heart” and has fallen in and out of love so many times that he has lost the count. Today he decided to venture into this mine field of the heart because he is seeking solace and understanding while a teaching from Buddha is echoing in the back of his mind. The biggest debts are those of the heart.
He passed by her former house today. He had to. He was in town and he wanted to confront his own heart. So he asked the cab driver to make a detour on the way to the hotel. And there it was. The old villa was still there. He recognized it right away, even with newly planted trees and a new gate. In a flash, memories flooded back and overwhelmed him. His heart felt constricted and tears formed in his eyes. The biggest debts are those of the heart, indeed. He no longer loves her, but he cannot forget her, not for long anyway. A scarred heart has long memories. He does not want to meet her in order to ask her some questions so he can shut the door to the past because he is afraid of the answers he might get. He would rather spend the rest of his life speculating on the reasons why she left him. The speculation would do him more good than bad because he would be gnawed with the uncertainty, the sorrow, the anger, and the distrust of all women who arrive after her. And all these unpleasant feelings would drive him to write.
Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, a celebrity in the Vietnamese diaspora, was dumped by her second husband. She was in so much pain and full of public humiliation that she sought catharsis by posting an article in a forum in which she movingly and eloquently bared her anguish. Roberto was dismayed to see a disparaging comment posted on the internet with regard to Ky Duyen’s article. Where is the compassion? Where is the empathy? In this forum, some bloggers have a penchant to post x-rated sex materials. While some of the materials are funny, most of them border on bad taste and that makes Roberto wonders about the sexuality of the bloggers. Sex is meant to be private. Constantly telling sex jokes or posting sex-related materials in public is an indication of something quite amiss in the “state of Denmark”. Love, on the other hand, can be talked about in public because love is universal and has been one of man’s deepest longings. In addition, talking about love can bring catharsis and transcendental feelings. No wonder we always have an endless supply of songs and stories about love throughout the ages while stories about sex are of limited circulation because sex by its nature is short-lived and boring if not sustained by love. For the first few years of his youth, when he was making love, he had to focus hard not to think of her. Sex rarely kills unless one engages in some severe sadomasochistic act or one has a weak heart, but love kills. During his recent travel, Roberto heard of the following heart-rending story. A male radiologist was courting a female obstetrician-gynecologist. The latter was interested but played hard to get. Then the former met a vivacious, charming cavaliere. He fell under the sway of this woman and lost interest in the ob-gyn doctor who later hooked up with an engineer. The radiologist married the cavaliere who promptly dumped him after managing to get almost all of his money. In a moment of despondency, he hanged himself and died. After Roberto was told of the story, he shook with fear and sadness and anger. Suppressed memories came back. He once almost died of love. You don’t really know what love is until you are willing to die in the name of love. Maybe at one time in your life, you got close to the abyss, looked down into it, and it looked back at you invitingly. But you were strong enough to resist the temptation to jump. So you stepped away from the abyss. During the walk back to your car, back to reality, you suddenly realized that nothing in life could hurt you more and that you would endure and survive. From that moment on, life has a special meaning and so does love. Love is no longer absolute to you. You can talk and write poetry about it, but in your heart of hearts, you know you have lost the innocence and the purity of youth.
Roberto walked around the city and saw her name everywhere, the name once was beautiful and almost sacred to him. Now it brought him pain, but not enough to make him cry. He recalled in his first year in college, a woman’s name appeared all over the campus, written by a man obviously in pain. Roberto always wonders what happened to that man, whether he could survive the pain of love. Roberto didn’t write her name anywhere after she was gone. He did write in his last letter to her that in this whole wide world, nobody would love her as much as he did. For years, he suppressed all memories associated with her. He didn’t listen to love songs in her native language. He listened to Spanish language radio stations, instead. And whenever his mind turned to her, he would shake his head vigorously for a few seconds and try to focus on something else.
He stayed in the city for four days and tried to shut everything associated with her out of his mind. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, the sight of young couples on motorbikes reminded him of the three years he was with her when he used to drive her around on his Honda. He wondered if he could ever stay in the city this long if he traveled all by himself. The group tour helped alleviate much the sorrows caused by the invasion and intrusion of indelible memories. There were usually fellow travelers around him to occupy his thoughts. Only at night, the ghost came back and tormented him. Love was short while memories were long.
On the morning he had to check out of the hotel, he felt numb and listless. He came down to the restaurant and had his usual buffet breakfast. The beef noodle soup still tasted good. As he started on the fruit dessert, a couple walked by and an unmistakable voice rang out. He was jolted out of his lethargy and looked up at the couple. By this time, she was walking to the section of the restaurant facing the street. There was only one woman in the world that would walk like that, but he had to make sure. He got up and followed them. They had reached their table. She put down her purse and turned around and headed for the food section. That was when she saw him. Their eyes locked. He was dead sure that it was her. The dimples, the split chin, and the high cheekbones gave her away. He was nodding at her. She looked at him with puzzlement. Then her eyes hardened and she turned to the European next to her, put her hand in his, and led him to where the noodle soup was being served. He got back to his seat, gathered his briefcase, and walked out of the restaurant and straight to the restroom where he promptly threw up his breakfast’s contents. And he sobbed uncontrollably in the confines of the stall. True love never died. And it hurt like hell. No wonder Ky Duyen bared her soul and the radiologist killed himself.
Wissai
February 3, 2009
To Apple Two
We humans like to talk about sex and love. Sex is easy to know because it is a physical act. Love, on the other hand, is complex and has myriad forms. Everybody has their own definition of love. Saint-Exupery once said that love does not consist of two people looking at each other, but at the same direction. And Eric Segal is famous with the corny line: Love means never having to say you are sorry. Roberto, the infamous half-Italian wannabe fiction writer, disagrees whole-heartedly with Segal. To Roberto, love means you say you are sorry all the time because you don’t want to hurt the feelings of your beloved, because you put her own feelings and welfare before yours. But how often we do that, Roberto wonders. We almost always love ourselves first and foremost.
Sex is coarse and animalistic. We come up with sex jokes and talk about/practice rough sex or group sex. We don’t talk about rough love or group love. Romantic love is almost always about tenderness and exclusivity. And romantic love is what Roberto mostly wants to ruminate about today. He should be an authority on the subject because he has a “big heart” and has fallen in and out of love so many times that he has lost the count. Today he decided to venture into this mine field of the heart because he is seeking solace and understanding while a teaching from Buddha is echoing in the back of his mind. The biggest debts are those of the heart.
He passed by her former house today. He had to. He was in town and he wanted to confront his own heart. So he asked the cab driver to make a detour on the way to the hotel. And there it was. The old villa was still there. He recognized it right away, even with newly planted trees and a new gate. In a flash, memories flooded back and overwhelmed him. His heart felt constricted and tears formed in his eyes. The biggest debts are those of the heart, indeed. He no longer loves her, but he cannot forget her, not for long anyway. A scarred heart has long memories. He does not want to meet her in order to ask her some questions so he can shut the door to the past because he is afraid of the answers he might get. He would rather spend the rest of his life speculating on the reasons why she left him. The speculation would do him more good than bad because he would be gnawed with the uncertainty, the sorrow, the anger, and the distrust of all women who arrive after her. And all these unpleasant feelings would drive him to write.
Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, a celebrity in the Vietnamese diaspora, was dumped by her second husband. She was in so much pain and full of public humiliation that she sought catharsis by posting an article in a forum in which she movingly and eloquently bared her anguish. Roberto was dismayed to see a disparaging comment posted on the internet with regard to Ky Duyen’s article. Where is the compassion? Where is the empathy? In this forum, some bloggers have a penchant to post x-rated sex materials. While some of the materials are funny, most of them border on bad taste and that makes Roberto wonders about the sexuality of the bloggers. Sex is meant to be private. Constantly telling sex jokes or posting sex-related materials in public is an indication of something quite amiss in the “state of Denmark”. Love, on the other hand, can be talked about in public because love is universal and has been one of man’s deepest longings. In addition, talking about love can bring catharsis and transcendental feelings. No wonder we always have an endless supply of songs and stories about love throughout the ages while stories about sex are of limited circulation because sex by its nature is short-lived and boring if not sustained by love. For the first few years of his youth, when he was making love, he had to focus hard not to think of her. Sex rarely kills unless one engages in some severe sadomasochistic act or one has a weak heart, but love kills. During his recent travel, Roberto heard of the following heart-rending story. A male radiologist was courting a female obstetrician-gynecologist. The latter was interested but played hard to get. Then the former met a vivacious, charming cavaliere. He fell under the sway of this woman and lost interest in the ob-gyn doctor who later hooked up with an engineer. The radiologist married the cavaliere who promptly dumped him after managing to get almost all of his money. In a moment of despondency, he hanged himself and died. After Roberto was told of the story, he shook with fear and sadness and anger. Suppressed memories came back. He once almost died of love. You don’t really know what love is until you are willing to die in the name of love. Maybe at one time in your life, you got close to the abyss, looked down into it, and it looked back at you invitingly. But you were strong enough to resist the temptation to jump. So you stepped away from the abyss. During the walk back to your car, back to reality, you suddenly realized that nothing in life could hurt you more and that you would endure and survive. From that moment on, life has a special meaning and so does love. Love is no longer absolute to you. You can talk and write poetry about it, but in your heart of hearts, you know you have lost the innocence and the purity of youth.
Roberto walked around the city and saw her name everywhere, the name once was beautiful and almost sacred to him. Now it brought him pain, but not enough to make him cry. He recalled in his first year in college, a woman’s name appeared all over the campus, written by a man obviously in pain. Roberto always wonders what happened to that man, whether he could survive the pain of love. Roberto didn’t write her name anywhere after she was gone. He did write in his last letter to her that in this whole wide world, nobody would love her as much as he did. For years, he suppressed all memories associated with her. He didn’t listen to love songs in her native language. He listened to Spanish language radio stations, instead. And whenever his mind turned to her, he would shake his head vigorously for a few seconds and try to focus on something else.
He stayed in the city for four days and tried to shut everything associated with her out of his mind. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, the sight of young couples on motorbikes reminded him of the three years he was with her when he used to drive her around on his Honda. He wondered if he could ever stay in the city this long if he traveled all by himself. The group tour helped alleviate much the sorrows caused by the invasion and intrusion of indelible memories. There were usually fellow travelers around him to occupy his thoughts. Only at night, the ghost came back and tormented him. Love was short while memories were long.
On the morning he had to check out of the hotel, he felt numb and listless. He came down to the restaurant and had his usual buffet breakfast. The beef noodle soup still tasted good. As he started on the fruit dessert, a couple walked by and an unmistakable voice rang out. He was jolted out of his lethargy and looked up at the couple. By this time, she was walking to the section of the restaurant facing the street. There was only one woman in the world that would walk like that, but he had to make sure. He got up and followed them. They had reached their table. She put down her purse and turned around and headed for the food section. That was when she saw him. Their eyes locked. He was dead sure that it was her. The dimples, the split chin, and the high cheekbones gave her away. He was nodding at her. She looked at him with puzzlement. Then her eyes hardened and she turned to the European next to her, put her hand in his, and led him to where the noodle soup was being served. He got back to his seat, gathered his briefcase, and walked out of the restaurant and straight to the restroom where he promptly threw up his breakfast’s contents. And he sobbed uncontrollably in the confines of the stall. True love never died. And it hurt like hell. No wonder Ky Duyen bared her soul and the radiologist killed himself.
Wissai
February 3, 2009
China's Aggression at the Sino-Indian Border
TAWANG, India — This is perhaps the most militarized Buddhist enclave in the world.
Uneasy EngagementEnclave of Hostility
This is the second in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China’s emergence as a global power.
Related
Uneasy Engagement: Australia, Nourishing China’s Economic Engine, Questions Ties (June 3, 2009)
Perched above 10,000 feet in the icy reaches of the eastern Himalayas, the town of Tawang is not only home to one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most sacred monasteries, but is also the site of a huge Indian military buildup. Convoys of army trucks haul howitzers along rutted mountain roads. Soldiers drill in muddy fields. Military bases appear every half-mile in the countryside, with watchtowers rising behind concertina wire.
A road sign on the northern edge of town helps explain the reason for all the fear and the fury: the border with China is just 23 miles away; Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, 316 miles; and Beijing, 2,676 miles.
“The Chinese Army has a big deployment at the border, at Bumla,” said Madan Singh, a junior commissioned officer who sat with a half-dozen soldiers one afternoon sipping tea beside a fog-cloaked road. “That’s why we’re here.”
Though little known to the outside world, Tawang is the biggest tinderbox in relations between the world’s two most populous nations. It is the focus of China’s most delicate land-border dispute, a conflict rooted in Chinese claims of sovereignty over all of historical Tibet.
In recent months, both countries have stepped up efforts to secure their rights over this rugged patch of land. China tried to block a $2.9 billion loan to India from the Asian Development Bank on the grounds that part of the loan was destined for water projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the state that includes Tawang. It was the first time China had sought to influence the territorial dispute through a multilateral institution. Then the governor of Arunachal Pradesh announced that the Indian military was deploying extra troops and fighter jets in the area.
The growing belligerence has soured relations between the two Asian giants and has prompted one Indian military leader to declare that China has replaced Pakistan as India’s biggest threat.
Economic progress might be expected to bring the countries closer. China and India did $52 billion worth of trade last year, a 34 percent increase over 2007. But businesspeople say border tensions have infused business deals with official interference, damping the willingness of Chinese and Indian companies to invest in each other’s countries.
“Officials start taking more time, scrutinizing things more carefully, and all that means more delays and ultimately more denials, “ said Ravi Bhoothalingam, a former president of the Oberoi Group, the luxury hotel chain, and a member of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. “That’s not good for business.”
The roots of the conflict go back to China’s territorial claims to Tibet, an enduring source of friction between China and many foreign nations. China insists that this section of northeast India has historically been part of Tibet, and should be part of China.
Tawang is a thickly forested area of white stupas and steep, terraced hillsides that is home to the Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism, speak a language similar to Tibetan and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa. The Sixth Dalai Lama was born here in the 17th century. The Chinese Army occupied Tawang briefly in 1962, during a war with India fought over this and other territories along the 2,521-mile border.
More than 3,100 Indian soldiers and 700 Chinese soldiers were killed and thousands wounded in the border war. Memorials here highlighting Chinese aggression in Tawang are big draws for Indian tourists.
“The entire border is disputed,” said Ma Jiali, an India scholar at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government-supported research group in Beijing. “This problem hasn’t been solved, and it’s a huge barrier to China-India relations.”
In some ways, Tawang has become a proxy battleground, too, between China and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetans, who passed through this valley when he fled into exile in 1959. From his home in the distant Indian hill town of Dharamsala, he wields enormous influence over Tawang. He appoints the abbot of the powerful monastery and gives financial support to institutions throughout the area. Last year, the Dalai Lama announced for the first time that Tawang is a part of India, bolstering the India’s territorial claims and infuriating China.
Traditional Tibetan culture runs strong in Tawang. One morning in June, the monastery held a religious festival that drew hundreds from the nearby villages. As red-robed monks chanted sutras, blew horns and swung incense braziers in the monastery courtyard, the villagers jostled each other to be blessed by the senior lamas.
At the monastery, an important center of Tibetan learning, monks express rage over Chinese rule in Tibet, which the Chinese Army seized in 1951. I hate the Chinese government,” said Gombu Tsering, 70, a senior monk who watches over the monastery’s museum. “Tibet wasn’t even a part of China. Lhasa wasn’t a part of China.”
Few expect China to try to annex Tawang by force, but military skirmishes are a real danger, analysts say. The Indian military recorded 270 border violations and nearly 2,300 instances of “aggressive border patrolling” by Chinese soldiers last year, said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, a research organization in New Delhi. Mr. Chellaney has advised the Indian government’s National Security Council.
“The India-China frontier has become more ‘hot’ than the India-Pakistan border,” he said in an e-mail message.
Two years ago, Chinese soldiers demolished a Buddhist statue that Indians had erected at Bumla, the main border pass above Tawang, a member of the Indian Parliament, Nabam Rebia, said in a session of Parliament.
Tawang became part of modern India when Tibetan leaders signed a treaty with British officials in 1914 that established a border called the McMahon Line between Tibet and British-run India. Tawang fell south of the line. The treaty, the Simla Convention, is not recognized by China.
“We recognize it because we agreed to it,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile. “If China agreed to it now, it would be a recognition of the power of the Tibet government at that time.”
China has grown increasingly hostile to the Dalai Lama after severe ethnic unrest in Tibet in 2008. This year, it turned its diplomatic guns on India over the Tawang issue. China moved in March to block a $2.9 billion loan to India from the Asian Development Bank, a multination group based in Manila that has China on its board, because $60 million of the loan had been earmarked for flood-control projects in Arunachal Pradesh. The loan was approved in mid-June over China’s heated objections.
“China expresses strong dissatisfaction to the move, which can neither change the existence of immense territorial disputes between China and India, nor China’s fundamental position on its border issues with India,” Qin Gang, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement.
In May, weeks after China first tried to block the loan, the chief of the Indian Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi, now retired, told a prominent Indian newspaper that China posed a greater threat than Pakistan.
Another official, J. J. Singh, the governor of Arunachal Pradesh and a retired chief of the Indian Army, said the next month that the Indian military was adding two divisions of troops, totaling 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers, to the border region over the next several years. Four Sukhoi fighter jets were immediately deployed to a nearby air base.
Since 2005, when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China visited India, the two countries have gone through 13 rounds of bilateral negotiations over the issue. A round was held just last month, with no results.
“The China-India border has got to be one of the most continuously negotiated borders in modern history,” said M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a leading expert on China’s borders. “That shows how intractable this dispute is.”
Uneasy EngagementEnclave of Hostility
This is the second in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China’s emergence as a global power.
Related
Uneasy Engagement: Australia, Nourishing China’s Economic Engine, Questions Ties (June 3, 2009)
Perched above 10,000 feet in the icy reaches of the eastern Himalayas, the town of Tawang is not only home to one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most sacred monasteries, but is also the site of a huge Indian military buildup. Convoys of army trucks haul howitzers along rutted mountain roads. Soldiers drill in muddy fields. Military bases appear every half-mile in the countryside, with watchtowers rising behind concertina wire.
A road sign on the northern edge of town helps explain the reason for all the fear and the fury: the border with China is just 23 miles away; Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, 316 miles; and Beijing, 2,676 miles.
“The Chinese Army has a big deployment at the border, at Bumla,” said Madan Singh, a junior commissioned officer who sat with a half-dozen soldiers one afternoon sipping tea beside a fog-cloaked road. “That’s why we’re here.”
Though little known to the outside world, Tawang is the biggest tinderbox in relations between the world’s two most populous nations. It is the focus of China’s most delicate land-border dispute, a conflict rooted in Chinese claims of sovereignty over all of historical Tibet.
In recent months, both countries have stepped up efforts to secure their rights over this rugged patch of land. China tried to block a $2.9 billion loan to India from the Asian Development Bank on the grounds that part of the loan was destined for water projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the state that includes Tawang. It was the first time China had sought to influence the territorial dispute through a multilateral institution. Then the governor of Arunachal Pradesh announced that the Indian military was deploying extra troops and fighter jets in the area.
The growing belligerence has soured relations between the two Asian giants and has prompted one Indian military leader to declare that China has replaced Pakistan as India’s biggest threat.
Economic progress might be expected to bring the countries closer. China and India did $52 billion worth of trade last year, a 34 percent increase over 2007. But businesspeople say border tensions have infused business deals with official interference, damping the willingness of Chinese and Indian companies to invest in each other’s countries.
“Officials start taking more time, scrutinizing things more carefully, and all that means more delays and ultimately more denials, “ said Ravi Bhoothalingam, a former president of the Oberoi Group, the luxury hotel chain, and a member of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. “That’s not good for business.”
The roots of the conflict go back to China’s territorial claims to Tibet, an enduring source of friction between China and many foreign nations. China insists that this section of northeast India has historically been part of Tibet, and should be part of China.
Tawang is a thickly forested area of white stupas and steep, terraced hillsides that is home to the Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism, speak a language similar to Tibetan and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa. The Sixth Dalai Lama was born here in the 17th century. The Chinese Army occupied Tawang briefly in 1962, during a war with India fought over this and other territories along the 2,521-mile border.
More than 3,100 Indian soldiers and 700 Chinese soldiers were killed and thousands wounded in the border war. Memorials here highlighting Chinese aggression in Tawang are big draws for Indian tourists.
“The entire border is disputed,” said Ma Jiali, an India scholar at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government-supported research group in Beijing. “This problem hasn’t been solved, and it’s a huge barrier to China-India relations.”
In some ways, Tawang has become a proxy battleground, too, between China and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetans, who passed through this valley when he fled into exile in 1959. From his home in the distant Indian hill town of Dharamsala, he wields enormous influence over Tawang. He appoints the abbot of the powerful monastery and gives financial support to institutions throughout the area. Last year, the Dalai Lama announced for the first time that Tawang is a part of India, bolstering the India’s territorial claims and infuriating China.
Traditional Tibetan culture runs strong in Tawang. One morning in June, the monastery held a religious festival that drew hundreds from the nearby villages. As red-robed monks chanted sutras, blew horns and swung incense braziers in the monastery courtyard, the villagers jostled each other to be blessed by the senior lamas.
At the monastery, an important center of Tibetan learning, monks express rage over Chinese rule in Tibet, which the Chinese Army seized in 1951. I hate the Chinese government,” said Gombu Tsering, 70, a senior monk who watches over the monastery’s museum. “Tibet wasn’t even a part of China. Lhasa wasn’t a part of China.”
Few expect China to try to annex Tawang by force, but military skirmishes are a real danger, analysts say. The Indian military recorded 270 border violations and nearly 2,300 instances of “aggressive border patrolling” by Chinese soldiers last year, said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, a research organization in New Delhi. Mr. Chellaney has advised the Indian government’s National Security Council.
“The India-China frontier has become more ‘hot’ than the India-Pakistan border,” he said in an e-mail message.
Two years ago, Chinese soldiers demolished a Buddhist statue that Indians had erected at Bumla, the main border pass above Tawang, a member of the Indian Parliament, Nabam Rebia, said in a session of Parliament.
Tawang became part of modern India when Tibetan leaders signed a treaty with British officials in 1914 that established a border called the McMahon Line between Tibet and British-run India. Tawang fell south of the line. The treaty, the Simla Convention, is not recognized by China.
“We recognize it because we agreed to it,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile. “If China agreed to it now, it would be a recognition of the power of the Tibet government at that time.”
China has grown increasingly hostile to the Dalai Lama after severe ethnic unrest in Tibet in 2008. This year, it turned its diplomatic guns on India over the Tawang issue. China moved in March to block a $2.9 billion loan to India from the Asian Development Bank, a multination group based in Manila that has China on its board, because $60 million of the loan had been earmarked for flood-control projects in Arunachal Pradesh. The loan was approved in mid-June over China’s heated objections.
“China expresses strong dissatisfaction to the move, which can neither change the existence of immense territorial disputes between China and India, nor China’s fundamental position on its border issues with India,” Qin Gang, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement.
In May, weeks after China first tried to block the loan, the chief of the Indian Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi, now retired, told a prominent Indian newspaper that China posed a greater threat than Pakistan.
Another official, J. J. Singh, the governor of Arunachal Pradesh and a retired chief of the Indian Army, said the next month that the Indian military was adding two divisions of troops, totaling 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers, to the border region over the next several years. Four Sukhoi fighter jets were immediately deployed to a nearby air base.
Since 2005, when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China visited India, the two countries have gone through 13 rounds of bilateral negotiations over the issue. A round was held just last month, with no results.
“The China-India border has got to be one of the most continuously negotiated borders in modern history,” said M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a leading expert on China’s borders. “That shows how intractable this dispute is.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)