I know a man, a good friend of mine

Dear all:

Modified from a song. The last two stanzas were all mine.

Wissai

I know a man, a good friend of mine
He spends all his time trying to make love work out right
But the woman he loves, she doesn't feel the same,
No, she doesn't
I don't know much about love but at least I learned one thing:

If it doesn't come easy, you'd better let it go
Because when it doesn't come easy, there's no natural flow
Don't make it hard on your heart
You're better off alone
If it doesn't come easy, you'd better let it go,
You'd better.

I know a woman, she's got a heart of gold
You know she'd do anything to make her man feel right at home
But the man she loves, now,
He's a restless kind of guy
I wish there was a way I could make her realize
That if it doesn't come easy, you'd better let it go
Because when it doesn't come easy, there's no natural flow

If it doesn't come easy, you'd better let it go, yeah
Let it go, though it's hard, I know
Let it loose, I'll tell you, it's no use

You'd surely wonder how the hell that I know so
I'm telling you I just do
After so many women just come and go
Into my life like they come to watch a show
About Michaelangelo

I am no artist, but this much I know:
Life ain't pretty if you ain't got no money
And you ain't got no real women
If all you do all day is to sit on your ass and write poetry

Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
December 30, 2011
__._,_.___

Year-End Meditations

I once told my High Priestess that it took more than at least three million U.S. dollars for me to find her. And she was worth it. She had a very biased (and high) opinion of herself. She didn't think she was fallible. I learned not to argue with her. Some blind people never learned to realize that they were blind. As the year of 2011 is drawing to a close, I have the following meditations:

1. Most humans are fucking no good. Education does not really make a damn difference to their character. All it does to accentuate their foibles and shortcomings, especially they have no grounding in philosophy and respect for truth and integrity like the Asshole and the Monkey I mentioned in various posts of mine.

2. The worst traits humans have are three: greed, anger, and mania. They all have to do with lack of moderation. Of those three, I have two. That's probably why greedy people turn me off. Yet these same people often righteously condemn me for being "cheap". I'm telling you, most humans are no fucking good. They are ready to condemn others and usually are easy on themselves. I look at their simian faces and I feel like putting them out of their misery.

3. With special homage to Chip Mosher, I have the following largely plagiarized words:

A few more short days, I'll turn sixty-three.
For more than thirty six years, I've been free,
Free of hunger and suppression.
But more than four million Vietnamese
Had to die so I could live with feelings of liberation.
A few weeks ago, they announced the war was over in Iraq
When the news reached me, my heart cracked
What a war! And for what?
Just like the wars in Korea and Vietnam,
All were for nothing.
I wonder what this once great country is coming to.
Useless ventures in order to serve the vultures.
The walking wounded and the living dead.
Souls maimed, humans turned animals.
Residual costs were in several trillion dollars lost,
All in the name of freedom and liberty,
But actually for the sake of making money
For the privileged few.
This adopted country of mine, sweet land of liberty,
Is now like Germany, after WW II, a nation of war criminals.
I have read the news today.
Oh boy, the war is over.
But how come no joy, no parties,
No dancing in the streets,
No parades of celebration,
No church bells clanging, banging ,
No people hugging one another.
Daily I look at the faces in the streets
And I realize I'm not in Garden of Eden,
But a cesspool of humanity,
Where Cain is chasing Abel,
Singing, I'm not my brother's keeper;
Don't you know I'm his killer
For he has what I want
And I envy who he is

4. Doesn't the fact I can't write anything these days without a shrill, strident tone suggests that I could not really shake free of the past? A friend of mine told me I had to get the past go if I wanted to be free. He was right, of course. But somehow I keep clinging to the past, my long lost country with all the noise, the dust, the music, the aroma of food wafting in the air, and the faces of young women I used to know. I don't think I suffer from a pathologization of sentiments. I think I just hang dear to the memories so I would know who I am.

5. I like the wilderness. I grew up in the tropics where the flora was abundant and verdant even during the dry season, where water and swamps and irrigation canals and ditches were everywhere, where there were bugs and birds flying around of all hours. Now I am discovering I like dry, arid lands. The few weeks ago, I camped in a national park near Las Vegas. I went for a walk on the first night. The night air was thick with an undefined odor of wilderness. The wind came down from the mountains and I felt its coolness. I saw the leaves on the some willow-like trees ripple in the wind. I smelled the pine and the scent of flowers. I looked up at the sky and thousands of twinkling stars and the full solitary shining moon. And I felt a kinship with the land, the air, and the sky. But moments like those are rare. These days I am laboring to put away my nagging desire to strike, to draw blood. With great efforts, I am writing. I write so the demon can be kept at bay.

6. As I said, I am not really a greedy man. I just want to make enough money to pay for food and shelter so I don't have to beg in order to survive. I never want to steal and cheat and lie and take away things, including money, in order to prove that I am smarter than my victims. I look at myself in the mirror have no reason to feel shame. Greed brings sufferings. I have seen that over and over again.



(to be continued)

Nỗi Lòng Tô Vũ

Dear all:

With a motley admixture of temerity, hubris, and humility,
I am laying out for all to see 
The wondrous words of Bui Giang's poetry 
I hope I have done some justice to BG.
If not, I won't cry for not having tried.
Most translated stanzas read like prose.
For that I plead guilty for having nothing better to propose.
I strongly urge you at this to try your hand
As Confucius once said, "you hear you forget, but if you do, you will understand."

Wissai/NKBa'

Nỗi Lòng Tô Vũ
Kỷ niệm một đoạn đời 15 năm chăn dê ở núi đồi Trung Việt Nam Ngãi Bình Phú

Đồi tăm tắp chạy về ôm chân núi
San sát đồi phủ phục quấn núi xanh
Chiều xuống rồi tơ lòng rộn ràng rối
Trời núi đồi ngây ngất nhảy dê nhanh

Thôi từ nay tha hồ em mặc sức
Nhảy múa tung sườn núi vút giòng khe
Thôi từ nay tha hồ em mặc sức
Vang vang lên đồi núi giọng be be

Những bận nào Trà Linh qua Đá Dừng Hòn Dựng
Dùi Chiêng về Phường Rạnh ngược Khe Rinh
Bao lần anh cùng chúng em lận đận
Bôn ba qua rú rậm luống rùng mình

Những bận nào Quế Sơn Rù Rì con suối ngược
Nước trôi nguồn nước lũ xuống phăng phăng
Những bận nào mịt mùng mưa gió ướt
Đẫm thân mình co rúm lạnh như băng

Em nhớ hay không? hồn hoa dại cỏ
Những ngậm ngùi đầu núi canh khuya
Vàng cao gót nai đầu truông hãi sợ
Gió cây rung trút lá mộng tan lìa

Nhưng từ nay Giáp Nam anh đóng trại
Cố định rồi - em khỏi ngại ngày đêm
Dưới nắng mưa tha phương du mục mãi
Cay đắng từng, bùi ngọt mặn mà thêm

Chiều hôm nay bên chó vàng chễm chện
Anh lặng nghe em bé hé bên sườn đồi
Khoanh mấy vòng tay anh thoăn thoắt bện
Vòng cho em từng chiếc sắp xong rồi

Chiều đã xuống em đà no nê chắc
Huýt tù và! em xúm xít lại anh đeo cho
Mỗi chúng em mỗi vòng mây mỗi sắc
Lại mau đây! to nhỏ cổ anh so

Này em Đen chiếc vòng vàng tươi lắm
Này em Vàng chiếc trắng há mờ đâu
Này em Trắng chiếc hồng càng lóng lánh
Này em Hoa Cà * hỡi! chiếc nâu

Ngẩng đầu lên! dê ơi anh thong thả
Đeo vòng vào em nghển cổ cong xinh
Ngẩng đầu lên! đây lòng anh vàng đá
Gửi gắm vào vòng mây nhuộm tơ duyên

Ngẩng đầu lên nhìn anh mờ mắt lệ
Từ lần đầu vòng ngọc tuổi hai mươi
Trao người em trăm năm lời ước thệ
Đây lần đầu cảm động nhất mà thôi **

Vòng em xong, vòng anh dành riêng chiếc
Dành riêng mình - Dê hỡi hiểu vì sao ?
Vì lòng anh luống âm thầm tha thiết
Gán đời mình trọn kiếp với Dê Sao

Nhìn anh đây các em Vàng Đen Trắng
Tía Hoa Cà lổ đổ thấu lòng chưa ?
Từ từ đưa chiếc vòng lên thủng thẳng
Anh từ từ đưa xuống cổ đong đưa

Và giờ đây một lời thề đã thốt
Nghìn thu sau đồi núi chứng cho ta
Cao lời ca bê hê em cùng thốt
Hòa cùng lời anh nghẹn nỗi thiết tha

Và giờ đây hoàng hôn mờ chĩu nặng
Bốn bề tràn lan bóng mịt mùng sa
Xếp hàng ngay nhanh lên hàng ngũ thẳng
Rập ràng về bế hế rập ràng ca

Bui Giang

A soliloquy of modern-day goat herder Tô Vũ
In memory of fifteen years of tending goats among the hills and mountains of Nam Ngãi Bình Phú, Central Vietnam


Rolling foothills rushed home and hugged the mountains tight,
So tight they are intertwined with the green mountains.
When late afternoons arrive, joys explode under the sky
And among the mountains and hills where the fleet-footed goats dance.

From now on, with abandon
You could  dance on the mountain slopes and leap across bubbling brooks;
From now on, with merriment
Your voice would echo among the hills.

Remember the times we passed by Halted Rock, Installed Islet, Sacred Tea, 
Striking Stick, went up the Noisy Brook on the way back to Canal Hamlet;
The times through the thickets we struggled 
And tramped through thick beds of forests;

The times we went up the Murmuring Stream on the Cinnamon Mountain,
Trekked by the rushing waters of flooded creeks;
The times the blinding rains fell and the winds blew nonstop. 
We huddled, shivered, and were cold as ice.

Do you remember? The lost souls of wild flowers and weeds
Grieving on the mountain top in the wee hours of the night,
The tall amber-colored horns of frightened deer,
The winds shaking free off the trees the leaves of blasted dreams.

But henceforth, I settle here in Southern Frontier.
Nights and day, you should no longer fear
The endless nomadic trekking under the sun and the rains,
The kind of life full of bitter and sweet pains.

This late afternoon, sitting by the golden-haired, smug-looking dog,
I listen to your bleatings on the hillside
While my fingers nimbly fashion
Collars for each of you out of vine.

The evening's drawing near, your stomachs must be full.
I blow the whistle and you all gather around me.
For each of you I'm going to place a color collar around your neck.
Come here quick! I'm taking your measure.

Here's the bright yellow collar for you, my little Blackie
For you, little Goldie, the white one no less bright
While the gleaming gold adorns my little White
And you, my adorable Purple, the brown one.

Lift your head, my dear, I'm leisurely placing
The collar around your lovely erect neck.
Lift your head high, in this vine collar infused with love
Went my precious gemstone heart.

Lift your head and look at my teary eyes
Ever since I placed the precious stone collar
On her as a token of my love when I was twenty years of age, 
I have never been as moved as I am now

Your collars done, now it's my turn. 
Do you, my dear,  understand the reason why?
For I've silently vouched to devote myself 
To you for the rest of my life.

Look at me, all of you, White, Goldie, Blackie,
And Purple, understand me now?
Slowly I am lifting the collar up high
And slowly placing it around my swaying neck.

So the oath has been uttered 
And witnessed and honored for eternity
By mountains and hills, your lilting voice 
Together with mine fused in heartfelt unison.

And now dusk is firmly in place;
Misty fog is spreading far and wide
You please assemble in right formation.
We are heading home while singing in undulation.

Very rough draft translation by Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
December 30, 2011

Translations

Ánh trăng mỏng quá không che nỗi
Những vẻ xanh xao của mặt hồ
Những nét buồn buồn tơ liễu rũ
Những lời năn nỉ của hư vô.

The moonlight is too faint to cover
The lake's pallidness
The willow's hanging sorrows
The cries of emptiness 


The moonlight was too faint to lighten
The pale frailty of the lake
The drooping willow in melancholy
The pleading echoes from emptiness
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That's a tough challenge. Poetry goes with culture, translating it from one language to another will filter out the uniqueness of that culture, rendering the poem into nothing.

To me I think he meant the softness moon light using the word thin. The meaning of softness here is used in its opposite sense, meaning too "bright" so all the lake, willow branches, can not be hidden.

Here is my translation, don't laugh.

Soft, feeble moon light 
too weak even to hide
paleness of gloomy lake,
in misery hang willow branches,
from emptiness, its silent wail.

Assholes

Though I am not a physiologist, I know a lot about assholes. My knowledge about them increased with leaps and bounds over the Christmas Day. A pompous, bumptious, ignorant, self-impressed pontificating asshole intimated that I was trying to ride the coattails of the crazed, but talented poet Bui Giang to fame despite my lack of comprehension of the poet's works. What a croak of shit the asshole proved himself to me. He went on accusing me of being deficient in both Vietnamese and English when he proved in his bumbling, babbling, sputtering, stammering, stuttering prose in Vietnamese and English that he was a fucked-up, ignorant, short, ugly peasant who often didn't know what the fuck that he was pontificating about. Luckily for him, he didn't profess that he could write poetry as the Monkey asserted, otherwise I would pillory him in the public square of the capital where the shameless liar resided.

Then at the other end of the spectrum of gender, there was a vixen who was denounced by me on the early morning of Christmas morning as the incarnation of stingy, calculating, cheap tawdriness. The bitch had long held a despairing, futulitarian, desperate, yet vainly illusional crush on me. I did nothing to encourage her. I was merely polite and courteous as she was my landlady. I rented a condo from her. Because of her affection for me, she let me stay in there with a reduced rent. To trade off, I had to endure long phone calls from her about just everything under the sun. I moved out of the condo on Christmas when I was told by a mutual friend that the landlady bitch had been telling peoole that I was trying to seduce her with my physique, but she was holding out because she thought I was not physically endowed enough. Have you ever heard of such a filthy nonsense and absurdity in your life? Women are crazy, let me tell you, especially if they think they have a hook into you. I was fooled enough in my life. I now know better.

Anyway, yesterday something very odd and moving happened to me. That is making me revise my thinking about chance, fate, and spirituality. Before I go into that wondrous experience, let me preface that I always had a vain, deep, dark, secret inkling and intuition that I was a rare man, possessing some rare gifts of clairvoyance and extrasensory perceptions that allowed me to milk and plumb some well of subconscious. My explorations of poetry via he medium of a foreign language reflect this fascination of mine about language acquisition and the question if a borrowed, non-native tongue is adequate in understanding and trasmitting beauty and truth. Back to the moving experience that I had of yesterday. I took my little harem out to lunch. We had a good time. After the lunch, we stopped at the little snack shop for desserts, where we slurped and stuffed ourselves with Viet delicacies. We were as high as kites by the time we staggered out of that paradise of sweets. I herded my aficionadas into my Toyota Sienna and headed back to my headquarters. I always took the interstate route because it was faster and thus more to my liking. But yesterday, I took the long way back home because inexplicably I failed to change into the right lane to get into the interstate. Not only that, I got into the far left lane so I could turn left once I passed the overpass bridge. As I got to the overpass bridge, I had a blowout on my front right tire. Luckily for us, I was not even driving fast as I customarily would and the van didn't flip or veer into the adjacent lane. I screamed for my High Priestess who was sitting up front to push the emergency signal light on. She was hysterical and could not even find it meanwhile I was struggling to bring the van under control while bracing for a possible rear-end collision. Because the traffic was relatively light on account of the holidays, nobody hit us. I didn't tell anybody about, except the High Priestess, the blow-out after we got back. She was deathly pale after learning of the news. She immediately went to the altar and prayed earnestly for solid ten minutes. Up until that moment, I had held prayers and similar acts of entreaties as exercises in self-deception, but listening to her emotional and moving expressions of gratitude for divine intervention, I had a sudden illuminarion that heartfelt prayers were gestures of uplifting and transcending communication, ostensibly with God, but actually inspirational dialogues with ourselves. Ever since that experience, I have been less judgmental of praying. In fact, I have been into meditation cum praying myself, with intense feelings of gratitude of being alive for not taking the interstate on that particular day.

The point of all these ostensible openings of my heart was not really to brag about myself or to blast the assholes because bragging about myself and blasting assholes don't really solve anything. I am here. I write. In writing, I may get in touch with something grander than myself because when I write, I understand more of the human heart, especially my own. I have to live my life my own way because surely I will die my own death. And I do know this: the assholes had better pray that I don't really mad because if I do, they will be really sorry for having the stupidity to bait and to denigrate me with no cause than other than their colossal ignorance and envy. I am on a mission to fuck up their lives, given a slightest opportunity. The assholes don't really know me.

(to be continued)

Social graces

On a Christmas Day of this year, I knocked on the door of my psychotherapist's house, demanding that he see me, even though I didn't call ahead of time, and he already had company over for the dinner. He took one long look at me and said, "This had better be good, Roberto. You have an hour." I've seen Dr. Hammer on and off for ten years now. I'm reasonably sure that I helped pay for the fancy black Porsche he's driving. From the outset, he diagnosed my persistent flare-ups of depression as “Lack of awareness of self-impact" and “Diminished expression of ordinary social graces" after running me through a battery of questionnaires and puzzles and two weeks of probing questions. He didn't identify homicidal tendencies. I didn't tell him. He failed to ask me. The tests didn't reveal any.

On the way to his house, my mind was plagued with a question if and when the bodies would be found. I was not calm, cool, and collected in the aftermath as I had expected. I had an irresistible urge to see Hammer. He led me to his study after telling his dinner guests that he would be back after an hour. They looked at me with a barely concealed disgust and annoyance. I glared back. He closed the door, asked me to sit down and inquired if I needed a glass of water or something. I replied that a glass of water would be indeed appreciated.

He came back with two glasses, one for each of us, leaned back in his chair, and said, "What was wrong?"

And I told him, slowly, clinically, with all details I could remember. I could tell he was trying to remain impassive and professional, but flashes of anxiety and anger appeared on his intelligent, though lined face. After I was through, he asked me, "What do you expect me to do now?", instead of "Why? Why? Roberto! My goodness! What the fuck did you put yourself to?" as I had expected.

-I really don't know, Joshua (he and I were on first name basis. Hammer did care about me, despite his name and his ethnic background).
-You came here in full view of my friends. They must have guessed you were a patient of mine. And if the police know you were here, it would be hard for me to tell them that no, you never talked anything about two persons you had sent an exit tickets on Christmas Eve. I might be accused of hiding from them crucial information, even of aiding and abetting a criminal.
-But I won't tell them. I won't.
-You would just tell them that you were here on a social visit, that you missed your shrink, that you had nobody to talk to on a Christmas Day?
-Improbable, but not implausible reasons.
-Roberto, all these years I never thought you were capable of such stupid, useless act. You must have known killing in anger, and not in defense, didn't solve anything.
-Joshua, I did know that. But when I saw his piggy face, and the smug, arrogant expression on it, I flipped out.
-But why his wife also? Why her?
-She screamed and screamed. I couldn't stand the noise.
-Roberto, here is my advice. Run. Liquidate your assets fast. Change your identity. Change your appearance. Don't say anything to anybody. Don't confess. Deny everything. And hope they couldn't find you. Hope you will finally change for the better. Use your mind. Put it to good use. Go to Las Vegas or some big city where transients would not attract attention. Do let me know how you turn out, but be discreet. Don't get me into trouble. Now get the fuck out of here. Drive carefully. Be easy on the booze. Good luck to you.

Bao giờ

Bao giờ

Bằng bút chì đen
Tôi chép bài thơ
Trên tường vôi trắng

Bằng bút chì trắng
Tôi chép bài thơ
Trên lá lục hồng

Bằng cục than hồng
Tôi đốt bài thơ
Từng phút từng giờ

Tôi cười tôi khóc bâng quơ
Người nghe người khóc có ngờ chi không

Bui Giang

 If she ever wondered

With a black pencil
I copied the poem
On the white- washed wall

With a white pencil
I copied the poem
On the rosy green leaf 

With a piece of red-hot charcoal
I burned the poem 
Every minute on the hour

I laughed and I cried
Apparently with no reason
She heard me cry 
But did she ever wonder why 

Rough translation by Wissai
December 23, 2011

Áo xanh

Áo xanh

 mù sương, xuống mù sương
Bước xa bờ cỏ xa đường thương yêu
Tuổi thơ em có buồn nhiều
Thì xin cứ để bóng chiều đi qua
Biển dâu sực tỉnh giang hà
Còn sơ nguyên mộng sau tà áo xanh

Bui Giang

Green-Colored Blouse

Misty dews are getting together.
The farther you stay off the grassy path,
The more removed you are from the way to love.
If your youth is filled with melancholy,
don't let the evenings linger.
Things come and go,
But my reveries about your blouse of the green color
Stay forever 

Draft translation 
Wissai
December 23, 2011

Người con gái mặc quần

Người con gái mặc quần

Người con gái hôm nay mặc quần đỏ
vì hôm qua đã mặc chiếc quần đen
đen và đỏ là hai màu rồi đó
cũng như đời, đường hai nẻo xuống lên

Người con gái hôm nay mặc quần trắng
vì hôm qua đã mặc chiếc quần hồng
hồng và trắng là hai màu bẽn lẽn
cũng như núi và rừng đều rất mực chênh vênh

Người con gái hôm nay mặc quần tím
vì hôm qua đã mặc chiếc quần vàng
vàng và tím là hai màu mỉm miệng
mím môi cười và chúm chím nhe răng

Người con gái hôm nay mặc quần rách
vì hôm qua đã mặc chiếc quần lành
lành và rách đều vô cùng trong sạch
bởi vì là lành rách cũng long lanh

Bui Giang

The pants she put on

Today she put on a pair of red pants 
For yesterday her pants were black 
Red and black, the colors of contrasts,
Like life itself, up and down

Today she put on a pair of white pants
For yesterday her pants were pink
Pink and white were colors of shyness,
Like mountains and their tottering forests are rarely apart

Today she put on a pair of purple pants 
For yesterday her pants were yellow
Yellow and purple ưere colors  of imperceptible smiles,
Lips spreading and teeth barely showing

Today she put on a pair of torn pants 
For yesterday her pants were in good shape 
Torn or not, her pants were clean 
And she looked resplendent in either pants 

Draft translation
Wissai
December 23, 2011 

Phung Hien

Phụng Hiến

Con có nghĩ: ắt là phải thế
Một đôi lần con ghì siết hai tay
Nàng thơ đẹp của trần gian ứa lệ
Bảo con rằng: hãy nhớ lấy phút giây
B.G.

Ngày sẽ hết tôi sẽ không trở lại
Tôi sẽ đi và chưa biết đi đâu
Tôi sẽ tiếc thương trần gian mãi mãi
Vì nơi đây tôi sống đủ vui sầu

Cây và cối bầu trời và mặt đất
Đã nhìn tôi dưới sương sớm trăng khuya
Mở buồng phổi đón gió bay bát ngát
Dừng bên sông bến cát buổi chia lìa

Hoàng hôn xuống, bình minh lên nhịp nhịp
Ngàn sao xanh lùi bước trước vừng hồng
Ngày rực rỡ đêm êm đềm kế tiếp
Đón chào tôi chung cười khóc bao lần

Tôi đã gửi hồn tôi biết mấy bận
Cho mây xa cho tơ liễu ở gần
Tôi đã đặt trong bàn tay vạn vật
Quả tim mình nóng hối những chờ mong

Sông trắng quá bảo lòng tôi mở cửa
Trăng vàng sao giục cánh mộng tung ngần
Gió thổi dậy lùa mơ vào bốn phía
Ba phương trời chung gục khóc đêm giông

Những giòng lệ tuôn mấy lần khắc khoải
Những nụ cười tròn mấy bận hân hoan
Những ngoảnh mặt im lìm trong ái ngại
Những bắt tay xao động với muôn vàn

Những người bạn xem tôi như ruột thịt
Những người em dâng hết dạ cho tôi
Những người bạn xem tôi là cà gật
Những người em không vẹn nghĩa mất rồi

Trần gian hỡi! Tôi đã về đây sống
Tôi đã tìm đâu ý nghĩa lầm than
Tôi ngẩng mặt ngó ngàn mây cao rộng
Tôi cúi đầu nhìn mặt đất thắp đen

Tôi chấp thuận trăm lần trong thổn thức
Tôi bàng hoàng hốt hoảng những đêm đêm
Tôi xin chịu cuồng si để sáng suốt
Tôi đui mù cho thoả dạ yêu em

Tôi tự nguyện sẽ một lần chung thuỷ
Qua những lần buồn tủi giữa đảo điên
Thân xương máu đã đành là uỷ mị
Thì xin em cùng lên thác xuống ghềnh

Em đứng mũi anh chịu sào có vững
Bàn tay bưng đĩa muối có chấm gừng
Tôi đã nguyện yêu trần gian nguyên vẹn
Hết tâm hồn và hết cả da xương

Xin yêu mãi yêu và yêu nhau mãi
Trần gian ôi! cánh bướm cánh chuồn chuồn
Con kiến bé cùng hoa hoang cỏ dại
Con vi trùng cùng sâu bọ cũng yêu luôn

Còn ở lại một ngày còn yêu mãi
Còn một đêm còn thở dưới trăng sao
Thì cánh mộng còn tung lên không ngại
Níu trời xanh tay với kiễng chân cao

Nhưng em hỡi trần gian ôi ta biết
Sẽ rồi ra vĩnh biệt với ngươi thôi
Ta chết lặng bó tay đầu lắc
Đài xiêu ôi xuân sắp rụng mất rồi

Đêm ứa lệ phồng mi hai mắt
Bàn tay ta nhỏ như lá cây khô
Mình hoa rã đầm đìa sương theo móc
Đỡ làm sao những cánh tiếp nhau rơi

Ta gửi lại đây những lời ảo não
Những lời yêu thương phụng hiến cho em
Rồi ta gục đầu trên trang giấy hão
Em bảo rằng:

- Đừng tuyệt vọng nghe không
Còn trang thơ thắm lại với trời hồng.

Bui Giang

Offerings:

I once thought: it must be so
Twice I squeezed her hands tight
The Muse's tears welled up in her eyes
She told me: remember this encounter
BG

The day will come and I won't be back
But I don't know where I'll go
I will forever miss this world
Where I've tasted both joys and sorrows

The trees, the sky, and the land
Have beheld me to take in the fresh air in the moonlight
In the wee hours of the misty morn,  
And to bid farewell by the sandy riverside

The sun has gone down and the sun has risen
Rosy dawn has appeared and stars have beaten their retreat
Glorious days and gentle nights have taken their turns
In laughing and crying with me so many times

Occasionally I've sent my soul on a journey
To the distant clouds and the nearby willow tree
I've placed my steaming longing heart
In the hands of countless sentient beings

The gleaming river has urged me to open myself
The moon and the stars have hurried me to let my wings fly
The swirling winds have dispersed my dreams to four corners
Where rains fell down like midnight tears

At various times, the streams of tears have coursed in agony
The broad smiles have expanded into open elation
The silent turning asides of faces steeped in anxiety
The endless noisy shaking of hands

The friends who have considered me as their kinsman
And those who've been steadfastly devoted to me
The friends who have treated me as a buffoon
And those who didn't know the meaning of loyalty

Please hear me out! I came back in order to live
But I didn't understand the meaning of suffering
I looked at thousands of clouds in the sky up high
And at the dark ground down below

Over hundred times I sobbingly gave up
And I was in stunned panic night after night
I was willing to embrace madness in order to see
Just to love you, I didn't mind to go blind

I pledge to be faithful just once
In going through distressing sorrows
As the flesh is heir to all things sentimental
Please go with me through life's rapids and waterfalls

You and I together will steer through all obstacles
I'm offering you all my devotion:
I'm going to love you and this world
With all my body and soul

Please love forever and forever love one another
The butterflies and all the dragonflies in this world
The little ants, the weeds, the flowers,
The germs, the insects, and the worms

Continue loving, even if only one day is left
While breathing underneath the remaining night's moon and stars
Let go the wings of dream without hesitation
And reach for the sky while standing on tiptoe

But oh my dear, and this earthly realm also
I know I will have to say farewell
My heart sinks, my head and hands in gesture of resignation
Springtime is about to depart, oh tottering bastion

Night comes and my eyes are swelling up with tears
My little hands brittle like dry leaves
The flowers are laden with clinging dews
The helpless petals keep falling down

I'm leaving here with you my plaintive words,
Words of loving offerings to you
Then I will place my head on the vain pages
But you say:

"Please don't give up
Your poetic pages still tinge with the color of rosy sky"

prose and poetry

EM ĐỪNG HỎI

em đừng hỏi độ cao làn gió
đừng hỏi sao trời vắng ngẩn ngơ
dù hỏi lại lời không gặp gỡ
tựa môi em nụ khép như thơ 
 
em đừng hỏi một mai buồn nhớ
đừng hỏi bao giờ nắng vẩn mơ
bởi dáng vàng thu tuyền lá nhỏ
đổ rừng cao rực ánh bâng quơ
 
em đừng hỏi mỗi khi hoa nở
đừng hỏi thêm ngày tháng hững hờ
vì vĩnh cửu thời gian tột độ 
cũng vừa là giờ phút đơn sơ
 
em đừng hỏi tận cùng duyên nợ
một thoáng qua tình nghĩa sợi tơ
lòng chớm đẹp đêm huyền thấm sợ
cánh thời gian phủ kín thành mơ
 
em thầm hỏi tâm hồn dang mở
một kiếp thôi khẽ ngấm vận thơ
 
LND

PLEASE DON'T ASK

please don't ask how high the wind is blowing 
why the sky is lost and empty 
for you won't get a reply
same as your lips won't yield lines of poetry 

please don't ask if I will ever miss you
and if sunshine and dreams ever mixed up
for every fall golden-colored leaves 
sparkle tall in the woods

please don't ask when flowers blossom 
nor inquire after the passing of time 
for eternity is time 
and yet time is also ephemerality 

please don't ask if our love will ever last
or if our brief, intoxicating moments together 
in the middle of the night would suffice
while we are covered with reverie under the wings of time

still, you softly ask if your unfolding heart
could withstand a lifetime of cursed poetry

Rough draft translation by Wissai, 2011

11. NE DEMANDE PAS
 

ne demande pas la hauteur du vent
ni pourquoi le ciel semble si désolé
 la question n'aura pas de réponse
dormant à tes lèvres un poème à jamais
 
ne demande pas si déjà la tristesse s'en va
ni quand le soleil se pâmera de rêve
car l'automne aura ses feuilles d'or en myriades 
quittant les vỏtes hantées des forêts d'aurore     
 
ne demande pas quand viendra la saison des fleurs 
ni comment les jours et les mois nous quitteront
car l'éternité dans son parcours divers    
aura le même espace de l'instant éphémère
 
ne demande pas l'apogée de nos séjours karmiques
car un reflet seul suffit à éclairer notre joie unique
qui au sein des nuits enivrantes d'angoisse
nous couvre secrètement de rêves sous les ailes du temps
 
ne demande pas non plus en ton âme fervente    
pourquoi une vie humaine est si chargée d'amour  
 
Traduit par LND.

So I have demonstrated that I am equally at home with prose and poetry, and in a borrowed tongue no less. My words are out there for anybody who is bothered to get to know me. My words are the answer to the stupid and coarse Monkey who fancies that he has poetic sensibilities. To me, he is a stupid asshole cum ignorant Philistine who is not worthy of a lowly duty of wiping my ass after I take a dump in the morning. Assholes like him are dime a dozen in this crowded world.

Today the weather is gorgeous. The air is fresh; the temperature is hovering in the 50's. And I am being truculently horny and lonely. And that despite having sex just about everyday. Not only I am horny and lonely, I am also angry. Anger has been my nemesis. It has been quite a miracle that I am still alive or not incarcerated. I am going through a breathing exercise, supposedly designed to dissipate the anger, causing to disappear into thin air. The exercise is not working. I can tell you that. So I am resorting to what I usually do when I am angry: I write and I plagiarize. And my sentences are going to be like gleaming but dull axes which hurt and bruise, but won't cut you to pieces. You are going to survive, but you won't stay the same.

Nowadays when I engage in my daily geriatric orgiastic pleasures, I can't help but think of her and all other women who have gone through my life. And I am struggling with a tentative but haunting conclusion that I was truly naive and stupidly romantic. If you read in the paper someday that I have committed an act of homicide, you would or should know that I just simply and finally acted on with my repressed feelings of vengeance and impotence.

Once I bragged : "Of all the people that you personally know, how many can wield the pen as I do? When I am truly inspired, I  can invoke magic and instill awe. I can also be annoyingly unforgettable.  Words are my friend and my lover. Words are all I have. I value them almost as much as money. Money helps me stay alive. Words assist me in feeling good about myself." Of course, these immoderate words were uttered when I was down in the the dumps. I was trying to revive my flagging spirit.

Perhaps sensing that my spirit needed boosting, a reader sent me the following:

" I love your words when they are not daggers that are drawn to strike or an iron fist that wallops the reader with hideous and unforeseen terminology. Your gentle stirring words are the ones that beckon. The words that come from deep within your soul are the ones that softly whisper: 'here I am, come find me, if you dare and care.'
 
My heart and soul have felt and been aware of your anger and disquietness since we first met and they are something I have always tried to help smother or at least diminish."

(to be continued)

White Night in Summer

ĐÊM TRẮNG HẠ
 
đêm trắng hạ mưa buồn như suối vỡ
tóc bạc tuyền khởi dòng chữ ngẩn ngơ
rừng lá vợi cành khô buông tay mở
nối phân vân vào gốc vắng hoang sơ

mưa thiêm thiếp ngủ vùi trong khát vọng
từng giọt sa thầm kín mắt huyền mong
em im lặng nửa đêm lay tiếng sóng
khóc mỗi lần giọt xót ứa trong lòng
 
vết dấu tạm thì thầm trong bóng tối
con đường dài mải miết nỗi chơi vơi
thời gian hoá siêu hình trong nắng vợi
bỗng đêm qua một nét ửng làn môi
 
em tới đó ngâm hồn vào biển cả
ngả về đâu hạt cát giữa phù sa
ta luồng gió lạnh như vùng xa lạ
vẫn bay ngang vực tối ẩn hồn hoa

LND
 
WHITE NIGHT IN SUMMER

 sad rain fell from the sky like waterfall in white summer night
cascading silver hair started a stream of words of wonder 
the shorn forest opened its arms
 in welcoming the wavering into deserted corners

the rain was sound asleep in its thirst
for the hidden tears in the longing dark eyes
you silently shook up the waves of pain in the middle of the night,
releasing the tears that welled up deep inside

fleeting memories jostled in darkness
the long road lost in its loneliness
night had passed and the sun came up,
bringing blush to your crimson lips

your soul dissolved in the vast ocean
like a grain of sand in the sediment 
I  was like a cold wind in strange terrain
blowing over an abyss of lost flowers

Rough draft translation by Wissai, 2011

 NUIT BLANCHE D'ÉTÉ
 
nuit blanche d'été d'absence et de tristesse
tes cheveux argentés se tressent de langueur
et la forêt se dévide de ses feuilles
renouant au regret les écarts de solitude
 
la pluie s'assoupit dans ton âme assoiffée
comme des larmes au tréfonds des yeux noirs
tu gardes le silence secoué de peines
et de vagues au coeur qui saigne
 
les souvenirs chuchotent dans les ténèbres
au parcours sans fin d'émerveillement
le temps passe et se métamorphose au soleil
et la nuit soudain à tes lèvres s'empourpre
 
tu t'immerges dans l'océan d'âme
comme le grain de sable au sein d'alluvion
je suis le vent venu des espaces lointains
survolant les fleurs de tes nuits sibyllines
 
Traduit par LND

HOW

LÀM SAO

làm sao quét sạch bụi trần
để chiều thanh thản đón ngần gió thu
để mưa trong vắt sương mù
để môi em đọng vị dư ngậm ngùi

làm sao hội đủ niềm vui
để làn sóng nhẹ lẩn vùi chân mây
để em ướp nắng tình đầy
để hoa rạo rực ngất ngây lần đầu

làm sao thăm hỏi từ đâu
để hồn cây ngả nhiệm mầu vào không
để thơ nhuộm ánh mênh mông
để em mới lạ vạn hồng hoa đăng

làm sao nghe kịp tiếng ngàn
để lời thành nhạc tim hoàng hôn em
để buồn dìu dịu chất men
để ta nhớ mãi mắt đêm ảo huyền

LND

HOW

How could I keep this world free of dust
So the easy evenings would be filled with clean flurries of winds in the fall,
And the misty rain  would be composed of limpid water, 
Leaving a sweet lingering taste on your lips?

How could I gather all the joys of the world
So a gentle wave would push all the clouds to the horizon,
And your overflowing love would bask in the sun,
Inflaming your passion at our very first encounter?

How could I say hello in such a manner
So the soul of my tree of love would reveal itself through empty foliage
And my poetry would shed its immense light,
Showing your splendor like thousands of rosy lamps?

How could I keep up with the cryptic voice
So the lyrics would become soulful notes of caressing music,
And my intoxicating melancholy would slowly faint away,
Leaving me with an undying yearning for your haunting, ghostly eyes?

Rough draft translation by Wissai, 2011

To grow up

To grow up

I recall once a kind friend pulled me aside and softly intoned, "Roberto, everyone gets old, but not everyone grows up. Please grow up!" Every since, I have tried to live up to my friend's advice, to no avail. Maturity and wisdom are beyond my reach. I thus find succor and sustenance in words where my hurts and disappointments are slowly massaged into oblivion. 

Everybody has an ego and everybody thinks they are better than they actually are. Throughout my life I have tried to avoid that trap, that cheap delusion. Recently an event belied my belief that I was not into Schadenfreude. Something foul had befallen to a lying, cowardly, cheap asshole who had irritated me beyond measure. Instead of feeling sorry for him for going through a misfortune, I felt a vast indifference. Worse still, an idea came to me that he somehow deserved the tragedy for he had been evil and nasty. And the tragedy was a way for him to learn about pain and suffering that he himself had inflicted on others throughout his long life. It would have been easy for me to pretend to others and to convince myself that I was a sensitive, caring chap, but I had too much self-honesty to engage in that exercise. Life is hard. Life is cruel. And there are many, many evil-minded human animals to populate this planet. I expect no pity from them, nor do I show them pity. Maybe that's why I think I have not grown up. Regardless, as I was driving home from the other day, a stupid yet inveterate sensation invaded my being after I listened to a Vietnamese song on the old cassette. I am trying recapture the sensation in English in the below, but I seriously doubt I am able to do it much justice.

I showed up for the first date we both looked forward to.
We had spent nights for weeks talking over the phone,
Opening our hearts to each other, hoping together
We would be lonely no longer.

You were all smiles when I arrived.
I shyly said hello.
You said, " Well, we meet at last
What do you think?"

My face turned red; my heart beat fast.
My eyes blinked.
Then you stepped forward and held me.
Instantly I felt both serenity and eternity.
I foolishly thought you would feel the same
I didn't know you later brought me nothing but shame
For being naive and stupid.

(to be continued)

Two Types of Tigone Flower

T.T.Kh: Hai Sắc Hoa Ti Gôn — Two Types of Tigone Flower
Roberto Wissai.NKBa 
December 10, 20110

Hai Sắc Hoa Ti Gôn

Một mùa thu trước, mỗi hoàng hôn
Nhặt cánh hoa rơi chẳng thấy buồn,
Nhuộm ánh nắng tà qua mái tóc,
Tôi chờ người đến với yêu đương.

Người ấy thường hay ngắm lạnh lùng
Dải đường xa vút bóng chiều phong,
Và phương trời thẳm mờ sương cát,
Tay vít dây hoa trắng cạnh lòng.

Người ấy thường hay vuốt tóc tôi,
Thở dài trong lúc thấy tôi vui,
Bảo rằng: “Hoa, dáng như tim vỡ,
Anh sợ tình ta cũng vỡ thôi!”

Thuở đó nào tôi đã hiểu gì
Cánh hoa tan tác của sinh ly,
Cho nên cười đáp: “Màu hoa trắng
Là chút lòng trong chẳng biến suy”.

Đâu biết lần đi một lỡ làng,
Dưới trời đau khổ chết yêu đương.
Người xa xăm quá! – Tôi buồn lắm,
Trong một ngày vui pháo nhuộm đường…

Từ đấy, thu rồi, thu lại thu,
Lòng tôi còn giá đến bao giờ?
Chồng tôi vẫn biết tôi thương nhớ…
Người ấy, cho nên vẫn hững hờ.

Tôi vẫn đi bên cạnh cuộc đời,
Ái ân lạt lẽo của chồng tôi,
Mà từng thu chết, từng thu chết,
Vẫn giấu trong tim bóng “một người”.

Buồn quá hôm nay xem tiểu thuyết
Thấy ai cũng ví cánh hoa xưa
Như hồng tựa trái tim tan vỡ.
Và đỏ như màu máu thắm pha!

Tôi nhớ lời người đã bảo tôi
Một mùa thu trước rất xa xôi…
Đến nay tôi hiểu thì tôi đã,
Làm lỡ tình duyên cũ mất rồi!

Tôi sợ chiều thu phớt nắng mờ,
Chiều thu, hoa đỏ rụng chiều thu
Gió về lạnh lẽo chân mây vắng,
Người ấy ngang sông đứng ngóng đò.

Nếu biết rằng tôi đã lấy chồng,
Trời ơi! Người ấy có buồn không?
Có thầm nghĩ tới loài hoa vỡ
Tựa trái tim phai, tựa máu hồng?

T.T.Kh




Two Types of Tigone Flower

During the fall of yore, as the sun was going down
And the fading sunlight blending into my hair
I insouciantly picked up the fallen tigone off the ground,
Pending the arrival of my beloved.

While tugging at a nearby vine of white flowers,
He would frostily gaze into the distance
Where the roads got lost in a windy late afternoon of struggling sunshine
And where the mist started settling on the sand.

He would pass his fingers through my hair
And sigh upon seeing me filled with joy.
He cautioned : “I am fearful our love would be like the shape of this flower:
A heart badly broken.”

I didn’t know then as I know now
The shape of the flower’s petals could stand for separation
So I laughingly replied: “The white color of the flower
Could only mean unchanging purity.”

I didn’t know once I couldn’t keep my word
Love would forever be in agony in this world
He was so far away! And I was so sad on my would-be happy day of wedding,
With celebrating crimson-colored, spent firecrackers strewing on the ground…

Ever since, fall has come and gone,
And how long this frigid heart of mine would go on?
My husband understands I still miss the man of the fall,
That’s why my indifference still lingers.

I still walk on by, in the sidewalk of life,
By the love and sex without passion of my husband.
With each fall season dying away, year after year,
Hides in my heart, the image of my man of yesteryear.

Today, I sought escape from sadness in a novel of romance.
I noted that everyone compared the petals of the flower of yore
With the rose color of a broken heart,
With the red color of blood freshly run!

I recalled what the man had told me
In the fall of long time ago…
Now I understood what I was told,
And the love I had betrayed!

Nowadays, I am fearful of the fading light of late afternoon in the fall,
Of late afternoons when red flowers start falling down on the ground,
Of winds gathering in the deserted horizon absent of clouds,
Where the man is waiting for a ferry at the edge of a river.

If he knows I am already married
Oh, my God! Would he be heart-broken?
Would he think of the flower of yore
Which looks like a fading broken heart, and is red like crimson-blood?

Translated by
Roberto Wissai/NKBá
November 8, 2011

Who is Roberto and what is going on?

Not out of lack of egotism is he referring to himself in the third person. He's no stranger to ego, brain, and arrogance. It is not the deficiency of fear and self-loathing either. It's more like an aversion of an all-out assault of misunderstanding and willful scorn. Anyway, here he goes again into this forbidden terrain of self-recognition.

1. Why is there a lamentable lack of self-restraint and a corresponding thumping of the nose against rules and regulations? For years, he has been fascinated with his undue attraction to self-destruction. It looks like he wants to find out who he really is.
2. He thinks he knows about love and its less than perfect manifestation: sex. He looked at her picture posted in the Internet, resting peacefully beside a bubbling brook. He remebered of an all night session of arguing with her as to why there was an inconsistency of her narrative of a very insignificant event. He marveled at her failure to understand why he insisted unambiguous, unconvoluted progression of the recounting of facts which led to her decision and why glossing over of details, no matter how insignificant they were to her, bothered him. Her propensity to tell small, instantaneous lies disturbs him. At any rate, he begins to understand why loneliness is a burden to most humans.
3. He attributed his verbal fluency to his struggle to overcome stuttering during his childhood and his sudden encounter with foreign languages at an early age. His brain must have received a jolt at such a tender age and has been busy to make adjustments ever since, especially after he decided to give it a challenge every few months.
4. He was abysmally poor at self-awareness and at how people viewed him. Now he begins to be more aware of the cognitive complexity when he interacts with other humans.
5. Today he ran into her at the grocery store. She looked good as ever. She looked at him. He looked back for about two seconds and then he looked away and then marched to the nearest aisle, away from her view. Ever since he couldn't help thinking of what could have been and of what could be. But actually in the final analysis, nobody would be that good, that deserving. Life is slowly grinding to a halt and then it's all over. He was sitting in the study room, at his desk, trying to concentrate on a difficult thought: why did people express some disrespect to him? The search for the answer is making him find taciturnity and duplicity attractive. He looked outside. The end of autumn was approaching. There was only a motley of few weather-beaten brown-reddish leaves hanging onto two branches of a maple tree in his backyard. The grass on the lawn already turned grey-yellowish. Beyond the iron fence, several scrawny cranes were fishing in the large drainage pond overgrown with weeds. He thought of her stupid, ignorant remarks of a few weeks ago. Once again, he found the wisdom in being silent and not revealing his thoughts. There was no advantage to let others what he really thought of them Most of them wouldn't have the courage to accept his judgments and assessments. He reminded himself that he must at all times be as cool, not as cucumber, but as a liar in the act of trying to talk himself out of a jam, and as placid as a pond in a windless early morning in the fall. Ever since he had a satori moment a few weeks ago when the stupid hag uttered some lying words about his character, he has tried to conduct himself with shibumi. Last night he had a horrific bad luck, but he kept his mouth shut and moved on. All his knowledge and understanding about life amounted to nothing if he couldn't take bad lucks with equanimity and understated elegance.
6. He looked at women with bemused detachment. He now understood why certain women of the past viewed him the way they did. It was not their fault. He was already near the end of his life. Wisdom came a bit late. Ambition and insouciance are embedded with youth. Youth thinks it invents the world. Maturity respects the world that it finds. He used to be a man of iron will, a veritable fortress of restraint and fidelity. Somehow he lost much of it along the way. Ironically in the twilight of his life, he tried to recapture the lost will and to rebuild the citadel of self-restraint while trying not to show contempt to the fucking cowards who put on a show of wise cynicism.
7. The morning was cold, way down frigid. Winter has finally arrived at this fucking desolate patch of land. He walked outside to inspect the backyard vegetable garden. Thin layer of frost was covering the ground. Foggy breaths emanated from his nostrils, temporarily hanging in the the crisp, wintry dry air and then just disappeared. The impermanence of appearances and the cycle of life. He felt somewhat unhinged. Love was not what he conceived it to be. It had more to do with ego and pride than true flutterings of the heart. Today there was a news report about a lonely Australian obstetrician-gynecologist being swindled out of 3.5 million because he was smitten for some Chinese-Australian woman. He felt nauseous after reading the news because a tsunami of repressed bitter memories washed over him. he was wiser now, but that didn't mean the desire to set things right was completely dead. There is no bigger fool than a fool in love. And there is no blacker list than that of a perpetually disillusioned lover. Love can be beautiful. And it can be way ugly. So many dastardly deeds performed and revolting language uttered in the name of love. Recently he said goodbye to two women. They both reacted violently and used extremely vulgar language when denouncing him. Of course, he didn't actually hear the foul gutter language. He didn't answer their calls. They left their filthy messages on the voicemail.
8.

(to be continued)

Poker and Day Trading

Poker and Stock Day Trading

There exists a myth concerning poker and stock day trading. Both activities are regarded as forms of gambling. But the fact of the matter is that while one can approach these activities as adventures and with an attitude of a gambler, thus exposing oneself to inordinate risks and possible financial ruin, one possibly makes a decent living by playing poker and trading stocks on a daily basis with a conservative, risk-controlled orientation.

The Factor of Chance (a.k.a. Luck)

Due to the presence of chance in poker, as in all forms of gambling, rank amateurs fail to realize that poker is essentially a game of skills (barring no cheating, thus, it is strongly recommended that you play the game in a casino where the cards are shuffled by a machine). Since skills can be acquiSred and improved by practice and learning (via books and tutors) theoretically you should defeat opponents with lesser skills as luck (good luck versus bad luck) would even out in the long run.

The elements of Greed and Fear

Greed and Fear are dominant emotions in most human activities, but they are especially predominant in poker and day trading because they involve expansion and survival. To be successful in the pursuits of poker and day trading, you must not be overly concerned with enhancement or preservation of wealth, but rather with optimal decision-making.

Psychological Dimensions

Since your opponents are most likely human (except for computer-driven trading), it pays to understand the psychological make-up of yourself and of your opponents, and the factors behind each decision, yours and theirs.

Money Management

It does not really matter if you possess all the technical skills and psychological knowledge, you would not stay a winner for long if you don't know how to manage your money. The road to financial ruin is littered with once-successful players and traders who either took on undue risks or squandered their money on ego-enhancement or sensuous pleasures.

Taxes

This is the only area where poker is different from day trading. Unless you exclusively make money by playing poker tournaments, you can hide your winnings from the prying eyes of the IRS by playing only cash games in poker.

Conclusion

This brief article has touched only the most salient points of the games of poker and day trading. There is a voluminous literature on the subjects in the bookstores and in the cyberspace. You can be a winner in these endeavors if you have a rationalistic, unemotional disposition towards games and problem-solving because poker and day trading, like most games (love, sports, languages)  invented by humans, have certain rules you must follow religiously if you aspire to come out on top.

Wissai


Roberto Wissai/NKBa'

Life and Death Ad Nauseam

What can I say when I encounter lies, miserliness, self-righteousness, cowardice, and all the wonderful qualities that afflict most members of the human species? I have tried silence, sarcasm, and susurrous sermons; I have attempted thunderous denunciations; I have essayed sweet whisperings. Finally, I gave up and came back to my shell and now am attempting to bring a stone axe down on the frozen sea within me.

So, what the fuck I can say to myself, to my own private, isolated, shut-down, sheltered, completely alone self that the bitch who I thought loved me turned out just to be another nagging, motor mouth old hag with a baditude? That I was stupid and gullible and dumb and naive at the ripe old age of 62? That I have begun to beat an emotional retreat (the physical retreat will come later. I don't know when. I'm in no fucking hurry) and shut her off from the inner sanctum of my soul? Yes, I am doing all those and more. Life is full of surprises and there are no angels. Only bitches. Take my word. If you don't, you'll be in a fucking world full of hurt. Do I sound bitter and disappointed? You can bet your sweet ass that I do. Anyway, I have nobody but myself to blame for my predicament. That's what I got for ot playing the game of life right. I am getting wiser, I'm telling you, starting today. Now I know why people keep telling me that I am stupid and naive.

The weather of today has been quite gorgeous. The sky is blue; the ambient temperature hovers in the middle 50's with soft breezes blowing from the south. But I feel like I'm living in a twilight zone with a perpetual permafrost inside my heart. I feel gray and cold and cynical. I don't take any bitch's word at face value anymore. Apparently I am not the one who feels like that. This afternoon some chica intoned that she had been advised by her psychotherapist-cum-hair dresser that I was full of bs. When I expressed surprise and indignation at that faux, foolish, farty accusation, my interlocutor danced away from the outrageous characterization and clarified that the stupid and homemade and homely psychologist humbug said that the bs epithet was reserved for the whole class of Vietnamese men, and not my own puny little self. I rhetorically queried that how many Vietnamese men the stupid haircutter actually "knew". I really hate bitches who make broad, unsubstantiated categorizations and generalizations. Oops, a discerning reader probably would take me to a woodshed and spank the daylight out of me because I myself was guilty of a broad, unsavory allegation when I said earlier that life was full of surprises, at least to me, and that there were no angels, only bitches. Maybe the statistical sample (26 so far) of women that I encountered was not credible enough, but it was big enough a sample for me. And I am in no mood to "sample" any more women. You wouldn't either if you were in my shoes. Am I sounding misogynistic? Not really. Just wary and weary. A simple case of lassitude. Since I no longer adore myself nor women, nowadays I just adorn my house with books and my face with a perpetual sneer and an occasional snicker, especially when I see assholes pontificate and bitches wax poetic about how "nice" and "honest" and "high class" they are.

Predictably enough, some bitch who had nothing better to do in a Saturday evening surfed the Internet and somehow wandered into this blog of mine and had a hissy fit after reading this particular entry. The hussy a.k.a. the harridan registered ire and outrage at the tone of the language. By the way, she apparently couldn't tell advertising apart from pornography. Advertising gives beautiful names to ugly things while pornography lends ugly names to beautiful things. What I have written so far in this meandering narrative is a combination of advertising and poetry via psychotherapy. On the other hand, the narrative could be nothing but a combination of complacency, arrogance, ignorance, and petulance. I recently came to a realization that the world is a truly savage place and life in its essence is an unending contest for supremacy. While I still do try to find pabulum in higher aspirations, I now tell myself that in order to survive unscathed, I must deal with the savages in their own terms. In other words, I have to interact with them with a ferocious savagery when the circumstances call for such a conduct.

Yes, you are right if you think I am trying to infuse this blog of mine with an adrenaline-fueled, scorching, rip-roaring, unforgettable prose full of braggadocio and plain bullshit. Any reader who looks for soul-lifting verities had better look somewhere else. But if he is interested in some el cheapo verbal entertainment, he is at the right place. In fact, I would even say he has found a home. He would find out that, as I did, that when you're alone for a long time you have no choice but to confront yourself. You gain a self-knowledge if you don't break down first and go loco. Nietzsche was right. If you don't collapse and crumble, you will stand tall and strong. What didn't destroy you, will make you stronger. Your whole fucking being is like a muscle. It responds to stimuli and stress. If it can survive the challenge, it will be stronger. A simple case of experience and practice. Sounds sufficiently suffused with sagacity, right? Wrong! I just heard over the cassette some love songs of yore. And I just crumbled inside; my eyes moistened with long suppressed tears. Tears of sorrow, of a love gone horribly wrong. But what could I do now except soldiering on?

What makes me persist in asserting myself, in reminding myself that I am indelibly, undeniably Vietnamese despite all the pressures to conform to the mainstream and to forget where I was born? The language, the food, the music, I suppose. Of the three, the music is the most powerful . Certain songs trigger a tsunami of memories. They unmoor my mind. I see it drifting across space and time and I am back in Vietnam once more, the Vietnam of my youth. My body experiences a feeling, a sensation of memories of innocence and naïveté.

Somebody once told me about borders. Borders are more than just physical, he intoned. "They are often a state of mind. There are mental borders and there are moral borders. If you cross the first kind you can perhaps make the round trip. But if you cross the second, you are very unlikely to come back. Your return ticket is cancelled. You are a changed person. You are on your own. Very lonely. And very eager to justify yourself besides adopting a cynical, know-it-all persona."

I know all about borders, and not just physical kind. I crossed them, back and forth, at will. To be honest, I don't where I belong. I am a modern-day Hamlet with regard to morality. I only know I need to be more brutal and less indecisive. At any rate, one time long ago, circa 2001 right before the attack on the World Trade Center, my six-feet-two girlfriend asked me to tell her about Vietnam. Dreamily I told her "about golden beaches edged in emerald necklaces of jungle. About water so green and blue that only a stoned God could have dreamed up the colors. Told her about crazy, motley birds doing Charlie Parker riffs at the incitement of sunrise, about small-framed brownish-yellowish men and women with smiles as white and pure as winter and hearts to match. About sunsets of gentle fire, warm but not burning, satin black nights lit only by star shine."




(to be continued)

Wonderful Obituary

Rarely did an obituary strike me like a thunderbolt, stunning me with its power of eloquence and unforgettable beauty. The concatenation of its words left an indelible mark on my psyche and lulled me to a peaceful, trouble-free sleep.

From Sophie Dahl about her grandmother Patricia Neal, 84, an actress:

"She delighted in the simple: the depth of a sunflower, a doggy bag, a loud curse word, a filthy story. In the dearth of her memory, one was Darling, Divine One or Beauty, and anyone who was so addressed by her would know the honor that it carried. 

She  was regal in every inch of her being, even in the face of the cancer that ravaged her. She told my aunt Ophelia that she was "a little offended" she had cancer, and why shouldn't she be? She had been so close to death in her life, danced neatly away from him, and here he was again, darkening her door.

Mor-Mor, as she was known to me, my siblings, and cousins, died this summer, in her own bed, surrounded by her family. She told me she'd be gone before my baby was born, and she was right. The night before, she had dinner with her kids, kissed them each, raised a glass and told them she'd had "a lovely time."

Wissai

Courage and Meanings of Life

Some humans are cowards; others are heroes. Some humans behave like assholes and animals; others conduct themselves with grace and dignity. Why is there a difference? Why some humans lie shamelessly day in and day out while others assiduously adhere to facts and truths. Would any of you help me understand why humans don't behave the same way, why there is a marked variance in human behavior, and little in animal behavior, and why some humans are even worse than animals by virtue of their cowardice, constant lying, persistent showing off of pseudo-knowledge without an iota of substantiation, hunger for fame, and most despicable trait of all: lack of patriotism. Is that because humans allegedly have free will? Are virtues inborn or cultivated?


Thank you.

Wissai

Memory and Loss, My Version

I woke up late and tired, as usual. In fact, I woke up on account of rain. Bursts of rolling thunder and the splattering rain hitting the bedroom window panes woke me up. I opened my eyes. The struggling light managed to get through the Venetian blinds. I looked at the watch. I only slept for five hours. Not enough if I want to live long to collect my Social Security and Pension benefits. Last night, a melancholy piece written by a black Marine veteran about the memory and the collapse of his marriage shook me to the core. I knew about memory and loss. I knew about love. I was foolish and green and stupidly idealistic. And I was madly in love with Laura who dumped me for some guy who she thought was better than me. He in turned dumped her for a beautiful woman from Hue, the former imperial city of Vietnam. I met both him and his beautiful wife, (by chance. The earth is really small, believe me.) about five years after Laura brutally left me.

Anyway, I couldn't write as well as the ex-Marine. I couldn't recapture the pain and the hurt and oppressive weight of the memory of good times. But I could feel and empathize what he went through.

Many women have loved me. Many women have had sex with me. Yet, nobody really has been able to shake loose the memory of loss and pain associated with Laura. That's why I have concluded that the idea of romantic love is bullshit and dangerous. Don't you ever open wide your heart, otherwise you will get hurt, otherwise memory of loss and pain will stay with you for a long time. And nothing really can make it fade away, not even time. Time will make it tolerable, but time will not make it disappear.

I am 62 years of age now. I think I finally get wiser and really understand myself and women from all the years of wandering in the wilderness of love and money and power and status. I have finally graduated from the School of Hard Knocks. I have blown three-fourths of my wealth on gaining the experience of understanding the human heart. I am determined to hang on the quarter of that wealth in my old age. After years of flirting with self-destruction and reckless adventures, I now want to live until 100 years of age. I now speak less, eat less, and think and study more. I find life irresistible. I want to fully live, but without the unnecessary risks of my youth. As for Laura, she never left the recesses of my mind. She is there to remind me that love is just a four-letter word, a shortcut for a longer word: bullshit. Who says life is not meaningful without love? I am going to prove that that is a fucking (pun intended) myth. However, sex is something else altogether, but not without dangers and costs to the pocketbook, health, and careers. Look the damages it has brought to the the top echelons at Penn State University after it was revealed a football's defense coordinator sexually abused boys in his "charitable programs" on the school campus. Maybe I have a low sex drive, but I never understand why certain men and women risked everything and hurt themselves and those around them in order to satisfy the sexual urge even if they knew that urge was not of the normal and thus acceptable kind. Why can't they control it or at least find an outlet for it via imagination and sublimation. I have a lot of illogical and irrational dreams and wishes, but so far I have managed to have them under control. I have not killed anybody. And I have not done any acts of sexual impropriety. I am an intensely proud man and I do have a disdain and contempt for most humans. That's why I have refrained from doing anything to invite scorn and contempt upon myself. I have lived within the boundaries of decency and decorum. There is nothing more despicable than to lack self-control and commit sexual acts which are outside the norm. Man is not an animal. He has will-power. He can use his will-power to override his instincts and desires. I pity those who are the slaves of their sex urges. As the heading of today's meditation says, one must go through life with courage and one must find meaning and purpose in one's existence. We are humans, not a pebble or a piece of dry dog shit by the side of the road. We can sing, write poetry, build awesome buildings and monuments, and fight to the death to defend our family and our fatherland. We surely can find ways to control our unwholesome sexual urges or even wild, crazy romantic feelings.

Wissai



Wissai

Memory and Loss

Memory…  is nothing else than a certain concatenation of ideas…
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics


I.


All photographs courtesy of Maurice Decaul
The author with fellow Marines at the 2003 birthday ball.
A while ago, I was going through my files when I came across a cache of partly crumbled photographs. One was of me holding the sight box for the M252 mortar in Garden City, N.Y., parking lot. In another, I sat with Oum in the open hatch of a UH-1W at Camp White Horse, outside Nasiriyah, Iraq. There was another of me and the guys at the 2003 Marine Corps birthday ball. I looked like a boy in those photos. At the bottom of the stack I found one photo of us standing with First Sgt. Allen. I was wearing a set of borrowed Alphas; she wore a black evening gown, First Sergeant stood adorned in dress blues, everyone was smiling, teeth shining. I stared at it and whispered to myself, “very different times.”

I’d forgotten about these photos, until one night when I was at her house searching a shoebox and I came across the mangled photo album that had stored them for years. They were all there, near the letters we had sent each other while I was overseas. The photographs were wrinkled, crushed and forgotten like the discarded notions that had once been the impetus for “us.”

Very soon after, a sentiment of resentment splashed with a bit of melancholy began to rise within me so I gathered them and took them when I left.

The parking lot photo showed me standing gaunt and blank wearing woodland camouflage the afternoon I left Garden City for Camp Lejeune to prepare to go to Iraq. This was a picture of a young man who was anxious about war but too indoctrinated to acknowledge it. My photo was taken by the woman whom I had married months before, certain that we would grow old together. The day she took my photo she had worn indigo sweatpants, a canary yellow hooded sweatshirt and plain white Converses. Her hair only lightly grazed her shoulders. As I looked at myself in the photo, I began to remember that as the bus departed Garden City that evening, what she had been wearing that day would become my singular unaided recollection of her. From then, I would need a photograph to remind me of the contours of her face. I was puzzled why but time was too precious then to ponder such things. So I let the question slip, promising myself to ask again at another juncture.


II.

I had forgotten her facial features as soon as the bus started rolling. As much as I tried to recall her face, it was as if I had never stored it in the infinite expanse of my long-term memory. But this of course is not true. I recall her face with ease now and I would describe it as round, with high cheekbones and eyes brown and intensely intelligent. She was then and is now quite beautiful. But the evening I left, remembering such details became an exercise in both frustration and futility.


Garden City, N.Y., 2003.
As I began thinking about the answer to my question, I thought that it would be helpful to first define what memory is, so I consulted a text for an answer.

According to “Psychology,” a textbook by Schacter, Gilbert and Wegner, “memories are the residue of [those] events, the enduring changes that experience makes in our brains and leaves behind when it passes.” According to the authors, “if an experience passes without leaving a trace, it might just as well not have happened.”  In a sense, our memories define who we become.

Socrates describes memory “as a block of wax.”

Let us say that the tablet is a gift of memory, the mother of the muses; and that when we wish to remember anything which we have seen, or heard, or thought in our own minds, we hold the wax to the perceptions and thoughts, and in the material receive the impressions of them as from the seal of a ring; and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we forget and do not know.

While Aristotle, speaking on memory and recollection, notes:

      It is obvious, then, that memory belongs to that part of the souls to which imagination belongs; all things which are imaginable are essentially objects of memory and those which necessarily involve imagination are objects of memory incidentally.

      The lasting state of which we call memory- as a kind of picture; for the stimulus produced impresses a sort of likeness of the percept, just as when men seal with signet rings.

      Hence in some people, through disability or age, memory does not occur even under a strong stimulus, as though the stimulus or seal were applied to running water; while in others owing detrition like that of old walls in buildings, or to the hardness of the receiving surface, the impression does not penetrate. … 

      We must regard the mental picture within us as both an object of contemplation in itself and as a mental picture of something else.

But we did have experiences that left behind traces that I could recall easily. The trip we took around lower Manhattan on the Circle Line. The day we were married. Us walking to the subway to take the No. 2 train the afternoon of the West Indian Day parade in 2002.  These were all pleasant days that come to mind with out any retrieval cues and I believe that the idea of a pleasant day has much to do with why it was so difficult for me to remember her face that other day.

State dependent retrieval is defined by Schacter, Gilbert and Wegner as the tendency for information to be better recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and retrieval, or more simply when I tried to retrieve an image of her face from that day filled with uncertainty and angst, I found it hard to do so because for the most part, my most vivid memories of her face up until that point included some sort of cheerful experience. Certainly, that day my state of mind, and I suppose hers too, was not the same as the day we were married. Still eight years since, even as our relationship and marriage have collapsed, I find it hard to remember more than what she wore for my grand sendoff and maybe it is O.K. that that day an image of her face was not imprinted on my block of wax.


III.


Kuwait, 2003.
After the initial weeks of settling into Nasiriyah, the sergeants had devised a structure for the platoon’s day to day operations. One day of guard. One day spent patrolling. The third day spent as quick reaction force a k a, the rest day. This cycle was repeated until the morning that we left Iraq for Kuwait. That morning, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” streamed from our Humvees, moving us along like running cadence. That morning I smelled the smoke from our burn pit which rose from the desert like a date palm, for the final time and saw the men of the Italian carabinieri sitting in front of the compound without cover but not without cheerfulness. We waved to each other and I wondered how they would manage the monotony and defend against complacency.

Routines have a way of creating the impression of security. But in Nasiriyah one had to be hypervigilant. One’s weapon had to remain serviced and accessible. One never left the compound without a helmet or an interceptor vest or an interpreter. One stayed on edge awaiting that rare skirmish.

To relieve stress and pass time we would often pontificate about how different life would be once we returned home. For inspiration most of us relied on pictures of wives or girlfriends to ignite recollections or to stimulate dreaming. I taped the picture of her I’d fished from my cargo pocket in Garden City to the roof of my Kevlar and over the months my sweat and the sun’s rays quickened its fading. The morning that we left Nasiriyah, I shared this photo with an Italian who shared with me his talisman, a picture of his small daughter. He asked whether I had children and I said no, but we still joked about how in the future my son would marry his daughter.

There was scuttlebutt about Britain’s Royal Marines habitually burning all traces of home before going into combat and I remember thinking how stoic of them, but I could never bring myself to do it. I correlated her fading image with my tenuous conception of home. I wanted to get home; therefore I wanted to get to her. The photo was my talisman. I sealed it inside a Ziploc bag to stave off continued deterioration and there it stayed until I lost it.

In October I saw on the news that a suicide bombing had occurred in Nasiriyah, not far from where we had been relieved by the Italians, and that the bombing had killed more than a dozen of them. Maybe the Brits had it right all along. What good is sentimentality in the face of circumstance? I had not learned that Italian’s name but that night I got on my knees and prayed for all of them and for him and his family. I haven’t spoken with God in a while but I truly hope that he heard that prayer.


IV.


The author and Oum, a fellow Marine, in Iraq, 2003.
The problem with writing from memory is the problem of truth.

There is a concern when writing nonfiction, autobiography, memoir etc…about truth and relating truth to one’s readers. Truth, of course, is paramount. The reader expects it and it is the writer’s obligation to remain truthful to experience and memory but this notion of truth is not truth with a capital T. It can never be.

In fact, the notion of what is true will be colored by the author’s experience, perception of that experience, his biases and his own fading memories. Stories regardless of genre should be read with these parameters in mind.  A piece of nonfiction can never be truly devoid of untruths. What is important is the author’s intention to relate the facts as he truthfully recalls them and the readers’ acceptance of the limitation imposed by nonfiction. Because our memories define who we become, when writing from memory subjectivity though not ideal will color the writing. How one perceives the self will undoubtedly inform how introspective a piece of writing culled from traces of experiences will be.


V.

Several days ago we sat at a diner to talk a few things over and she looked at me squarely and asked, “Did we not have good times?” As I spread jam on my toast, I thought back to the day we took the Circle Line, how at ease she had looked. I thought to myself, “Yes, sometimes.” When the bill came she insisted on paying her share, then we went our own ways.

The next day, I bent to scrub soap scum from my bathtub, half kneeling, half praying. I wanted to inter the unshaven face I regarded in the mirror. I turned the tap and water splattered about the sink and a few drops splashed haphazardly into the cup I was holding. Off.  Water from the cup rinsing the loosened soap scum was an earsplitting contrast to life’s insufferable silence.  If I succumb to the stillness, I thought… but there is not a soul to talk to in the house except, me.

It was late and the day had slipped unhurriedly by. I walked back into my bedroom and looked down at the chaos of papers and photos strewn across my bed and decided it was time to put it all away.


Maurice Decaul served in the Marine Corps for nearly five years. He deployed to Nasiriyah, Iraq, in 2003 as a squad leader with Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment. He lives in Brooklyn and is studying at Columbia University.

Language, Music, Consciousness, and the Brain

I took an IQ test today. I got a score of 30! That made me a very stupid idiot, considering anybody who scores 70 is considered an imbecile already. I don't know what happened to my brain. About seven years ago, I scored 135 twice with on the same test, taken two months apart. I am not worried about the deterioration of my brain. I know I am getting smarter albeit slower. I mean to say I think more deeply and more incisively. I use language more correctly. Better yet, I have more empathy, so I lie better, too. That made me realize I used to be very stupid and dumb. Anyway, I know I am quite special by virtue of my realization that not only I pay attention to language in general and nine languages (Vietnamese, English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, and Latin), I also contemplate on the nature of consciousness and music.

If I seem to be bragging of my mental prowess, it ain't so. I am just taking stock of where I am. So, now you know besides talking ad nauseam about lost loves and exploring the contours of grief, I spend my time thinking about language, consciousness, and music. Yes, I know they are related. Actually, all mental processes are related in some form.

I just watched a show on History channel, talking about 2012, supposedly about prophecies of the end of time, at least on this planet. I don't believe in prophecies and all this shit about apocalypse. All this fascination about the end reflects fear and a carryover of the pernicious effects of the superstitions in the Book, that compilation of pseudo-history and bullshit, replete of tales of supposed miracles. It was designed to fool infantile minds. Still, as I watched the program, I paid attention to the reactions of my own mind, the repository of awareness and lingering rationality. Then I suddenly remembered the incredible arrogance of the dude who tried to evince that he was superior to the rest of mankind for having supposedly come up with a new theory of linguistics, but he never specified what the fucking new theory was all about. He was just being coy and cryptic while being smug that he alone possessed the key to the portal of new knowledge about linguistics. His attitude reflected nothing but intellectual dishonesty and delusions.

My mind didn't just stop there. It made a leap into the mysteries of psychedelic drugs, the pain I went through at the hands of Laurence, the deviousness of certain bitches, and the incipient doubts I am having towards Harriet for her failure to keep her word. Of course, as my mind raced through all those unpleasant memories involving human duplicity, I felt alone, very much alone.

I always have good insights while taking a dump. I don't know why. Anyway, ten minutes ago when I was sitting on the toilet, I thought about the nature of true love. True love always, to me, involves a certain irrationality and pain and anger and mixed feelings from the one who loves and a tremendous amount of inspiration and contemplation from the love object. We love others for what we long to have and and we hate them for what we hate within ourselves. I strongly disagree with a reviewer (Cathleen Schine) of Joan Didion's Blue Nights, who wrote that "there can be no preparation for tragedy, no protection from it, and so, finally, no consolation." Cathleen, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. With a proper preparation for a certain mindset (Buddhist, for instance), you can deal with anything, including death. The world we inhabit is full of surprises, but at least there is one certainty, and that is our life is finite and there are moments of pain. We just have to learn to go with the flow and maintain equanimity. Pain usually comes from a having a sense of grievance and entitlement. You don't love me so I am sad and even angry at you for your stupidity of not seeing how much I love you. That's absurd! The proper response is okay, you don't appreciate who I am. That's okay, I will just have to move on. I don't know if I can ever forget you, but I will try. I once loved Laura for over 30 years because I thought she was good and kind and worthy of my love. One Sunday morning after a good night sleep, I woke up and looked outside the window. A solitary bird was streaking across the empty vast blue sky. I had my moment of satori. I was free. I stopped loving Laura because I suddenly saw her for what she was. As simple as that. Enlightenment came from understanding. Now I'm busy working on my health, my mind, and my financial well-being. I don't give a shit about love anymore. And yet, unexpectedly, women of all ages and stripes of political and religious persuasions are falling for me. I'm shunning them all. I tell myself, "where was the fuck you women were when I was blue and stupid, lonely and dumb?"

Yesterday, a casual woman friend called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to fuck. I said, "No thanks, what for? Not at my age. Besides, I hardly know you. Call me back six months later. By then, I might change my mind." She said, "Fuck you!" and clicked off the phone. Some people are so predictable. I am not. People think I am, but actually I am not.

Turning down an opportunity for a free sex just like that made me realize that I have arrived, that I have made it in the art of living. Now I just have to be equally good in the art of dying. I mean, everyday I have to be calm and unperturbed, disciplined and focused, while waiting for death. It sounds morbid, but in reality (my reality, anyway) it is a lot of fun. You should try it. You might like it. People have their blogs and write all kinds of political essays. They get famous. They feel gratified. Here I write in my blog all kinds of shit but not politics. No wonder I have two followers. One is about to drop out because she is tired of waiting. Waiting for what?I wonder. Everybody thinks they are charming and pretty and desirable. I said, " Please! Look at yourself in the mirror. Examine your bank statement. Look into your mind. Be honest with yourself." The other day Kim told me that I was easy to seduce. I countered, "Try me!" Shit, does anybody really understand me?

I am tired now. Writing all these words took a lot out of me. I need to repose. I'll be back, if you're still around. If you're not, I don't give a fuck. An asshole read my blog. He called me up and said, "Who do you think you are? Another Dostoevsky." "No", I replied. He waited for me to say something more, but I didn't. He then asked me why I wrote the way I did. I told him I didn't need to explain to him. If he had to ask, he would not be able to understand my answer. Then I clicked off the phone.



(to be continued)

Wonder Of Wonders. Gem Among Rocks

Wonder of Wonders, Gem among Rocks 

He got a letter from a vicious vixen the other might. He didn't know what prompted her to reach out for him after she had walked out in a huff and wandered into the wilderness of self-righteousness and the wilds of the frozen tundra of Alaska in the middle of winter. She begged him to reply to her. He obliged her:

"You would never really understand how I felt about you and thought of you. You viewed me from the lenses of practicality whereas I looked at you and life from "impossible dreams". You thought I was a greedy married man who wanted everything while in fact I was and am a lonely man trapped in a snare of my own weakness and sentimentality. My "farewell" letter was a test and your reactions showed deep down you cared more about your own self, your hurts, and your desire to hurt me back, than an investigation of what drove me to write such a letter. 

I have regained my peace. As I said, I would rather dwell on the beautiful, the kind, and the gentle sides of life while trying to block out from my mind your hurtful, harsh language. I am the type of person if once I address a woman in endearing terms, I cannot switch to terms of contempt even when I am angry. I would rather scream and yell to express my anger than to use contemptuous words because those words are ugly and have no place between a man and a woman, even if they are never romantically involved. Words have a way to tell the world who we really are. 

Believe it or not, deep inside me, I am a very gentle and soft person. The hard, clumsy exterior is just only my poorly adapted defense.

I hope you finally got some peace of your own. While it's highly unlikely our paths ever cross again (the magic was gone for good; your vicious side glistened and glimmered and shimmered in the sun), I always wish you the best of luck in the remainder of your solitary travel along the road called life. "

Of course, she wrote back to me and this time she signed her name instead of tersely putting down "me". I already deleted her annoying and self-righteous and stupid reply so I cannot reproduce here. I vaguely remember it left a sour taste in my mouth and an unexpected surprise at how ordinary and common her values were. She talked about her pride of being practical, her low opinion of my tendency to have dreams, and the justification of her display of contempt for me. After reading her reply, I asked myself how I, a person of learning and sensitivity, would and could ever be mixed up with a coarse midget of crass and crabby values. My only answer was that my loneliness blinded me of her crassness and crabbiness. On the other hand, I was glad that I didn't get in that deep a relationship with her. She taught me one thing: I didn't know shit about bitches!

So when my longtime, almost asphyxiated, fixated aficionado called me and inquired about my latest cardiac tests, I told him about her. He exploded, "How many times I told you to get rid of the fucking bitch, the stupid, impoverished, poverty-stricken dumb ass, good-for-nothing midget? Stop taking her calls. Don't text-message her back. Completely ignore her. She is scum. She is shit. She is just plainly no good. You hear me?" I meekly and softly sighed, "Yes, Victoria. I meant Victor." He slammed the phone on me. The asshole still uses an almost antique dialed land phone that he inherited from his mother. In this age of Internet and smart phones and tablets, he owns no computer and relies on a typewriter for formal written communications. I call him Dinosaur Victor.

Where am I ? How did I get here. Where's the "He" that started this meandering narrative, this thread of self-confrontation, this wild and crazy exploration and examination of the dark recesses of the human mind in looking for the forces of attraction and destruction.

I am 62 years old. A Spanish song is saying love kills. Please, I am saying to myself, tell me something I don't already know. Yes, love is a fucking funny thing, especially to a guy like me. And so is sex. 

I met a whiskey-soaked, starry-eyed girl in a bar in Tennessee
She later took me to a motel room for a ride
When it was over, I was black and blue and could hardly see
Ever since, I haven't been able to drink her off my mind

I once lay next to a  divorcée on the beach
I had to put up a fight for my life
When it was through, my sanity seemed to be out of reach
She not only blew me all over, but also blew away my mind

As I am lying in bed, alone, and depressed
I think of all the girls and women that have come and gone
I would have to tell you this: "Okay, I confess
I slept with them all, but no one made me moan and groan
Like the way I do with you, sweetie.
Don't you believe me? Go ahead, make me swear
Don't you see that I love you till eternity?
You're the only one that I really do care."


I once took a lad under my wings and counseled him the "Art of Love". I said, " Son, the Art of Love ain't no different from the Art of War. You must do unto others as you wish they do unto you, and that is, with passion and imagination. You have to weave a parachute out of words, sweet and tender words. You talk to them in a slow, soft, baritone voice, telling them not you want to say, but what they want to hear, while looking straight into their eyes, and acting all sincere and gentle. Remember the difference between a truth and a lie is as light as a feather. Don't rush things. Love is like sex and wine. The longer you get there, the more satisfying it gets." Guess what the lad said to me? "But, master, if you're so good with women, why you are always by yourself in the weekend, and I never see you with any woman?" I blushed, "Son, haven't you heard 'those who don't know love to teach'? Never mind." 

My voice trailed off and I stared into empty space which so resembles the void within me. I said goodbye to the young man and staggered home under the weight of loneliness. I opened the apartment's door and the emptiness of the room sucked me into its vortex. I plopped down on the sofa and instinctively reached for the remote on the coffee table. My cell phone rang. I looked at the number. A name went with it on the screen. It was the Midget. I said, "Hello." She asked, "Do you still love me?"

After a long silence, I sucked in the air and sighed, "Not really, not anymore." Then I clicked off the phone. I felt like shit, but I knew I had done the right thing. To ease off the pain of "conscience" that was tugging at my heart, I swallowed two Ambiens. I was drifting in a fog of forced sleep and unlocalized pain when the phone rang. "Did you tell the bitch Midget to get lost yet?". "Yes, I did, honey, just like I told you I would."

-You did the right thing. She was no good for you. Besides, she didn't know her place. She was stupid, vain, and thought so much of herself and not enough of you.
-Listen, Harriett, do we have to go through this again? I did that for you. I really didn't want to cause any pain and suffering to her or to anybody, no matter they desereve that or not. A loss is a loss. I knew what it felt like to be dumped. I was dumped once, maybe twice. I don't know. It was a long time ago. I finally got over the horrible memories, the terror of pain and uncommunicative shame. I know she asked for it, that I deserve better, that I deserve you. But I would rather close this chapter of my life for good. I don't want to talk about her anymore. I made a mistake. I was lonely. I thought she was a decent, caring, unselfish woman; I didn't know she was selfish, rude, and vengeful. Anyway, pain should not happen to anyone, but maybe we all learn from it. Love is not an easy thing to have. We must work hard for it. I think in the end only wise, kind, loving people really know what love is. Other people only experience the ersatz kind. That's probably why we have all kinds of separations and divorces. Love is like money. To get it, a lot of it, one must work hard, very hard, at it.
-Roberto, I love you.
-I love you, too. Now, I have to go back to sleep. I have a lot of things to do tomorrow.
-Such as?
-Honey, please, I need to go back to sleep. I'll call you tomorrow.



(to be continued)

Alarms and Red Flags

In talking to anybody, you need to pay attention to signs of inconsistency, selfishness, lies, and disdain. If you perceive signs and symptoms of any of these alarming red flags, proceed with caution and be ready to run away in a moment's notice. I think you would only love those who understand and show you care and respect, not those who show you disdain and contempt.

One Of These Nights

One of these nights 
                "Borrowed" from the original lyrics written by The Eagles

One of these nights
One of these crazy old nights 
You're gonna find out
Pretty mama 
What turns on your lights
What brings you smie
And who will be gonna make you cry 
With absolute delights

The full moon is shining
The fever is high 
And the wicked wind whispers and moans 

You got your demons 
You got desires 
Well, I got a few of my own 

Oo, someone to be kind to 
In between the dark and the light 
Oo, coming right behind you 
Swear I'm gonna find you 
One of these nights 

One of these dreams 
One of these wild and crazy dreams 
We're gonna have one 
One that really screams 

I've been searching for the daughter 
Of the devil himself 
I've been searching for an angel in white 
I've been waiting for a woman who's a little of both 
And I can feel her, but she's nowhere in sight 

Oo, loneliness will blind you
And you find yourself
In between the wrong and the right 
Oo, coming right behind you 
Swear I'm gonna find you 
One of these nights 

One of these nights 
In between the dark and the light 
You see nothing and nobody but me
Swear you will

Listen, imagine 
Life without music
No poetry
No you nor me
How dreary life would be

So, girl, make tonight the night
I have you 
You have me
Together we will make music
And write poetry
With our bodies
And what we feel inside

Roberto Wissai/NKBa'