Dark Vision

Dark Vision

 Today is Friday. The third day of the new year à la Gregorian Calendar. The weather is gorgeous where you are. Blue sky, fresh, cool, invigorating air and windless in an early Winter afternoon on high plateau somewhere in North America. She's bitching and bitching incessantly. On the beautiful day like this! She doesn't know how to live. In fact, she's dying, slowly, of boredom and discontent. Ignorance is perilous to one's existence. You should know. You were ignorant for a long time. It was a miracle that you survived. On the other hand, what saved you was that you were endowed with a sixth sense. No, not the same kind st. of sense in the movie starring Bruce Willis in 1999. You didn't see dead people. Rather, you saw the death in living people.  And you saw through people and the bullshit they possessed. You're not saying that you're a profound kind of guy or something like that. You just happen to have a big mouth and a lack of inhibitions to go with it.

On New Year's Eve, at a party, some dude pontificated that beauty in a woman wasn't everything. He would rather have an ugly, but virtuous woman for a wife. Other dudes and all the women chimed in and expressed their agreement. You were the only guy at the party who remarked that what the dude said was hogwash. An ugly woman would be unlikely to arouse a man, hence she would contribute to the matrimonial malaise. In sexual matters, virtue is not a necessity. Beauty is only skin deep, but deep enough for you. Yes, you're a shallow kind of guy. And opinionated. Like sex, religion and politics are full of lies and myths, in your biased, subjective, shallow points of view. Take the issue of God. You think God is a concept made up by Man. He is conceived in the image of Man, not the other way around. And those who disagree with you are imbeciles and idiots, at least in metaphysics. You think politics attracts mostly liars and power-hungry scumbags. You chuckle (inwardly, of course. You are vain, but not very stupid and rude. You normally don't laugh at people's opinions, no matter how unfounded and stupid they are) whenever a white dude angrily voices his conviction that Barack Obama is a lying, incompetent communist Muslim who's bent on destroying America. You don't really know for sure if Obama is incompetent and communist. But you think he is surely a socialist and is bent to redress some social inequalities in America. All politicians lie in order to obtain power. But some (like Obama) are motivated to help the poor who don't really have a voice in the political process except their votes. Admittedly these politicians help themselves more in the process, but it is a win-win scenario. The rich need no help in fighting for their interests. You despise those motherfuckers who scream hatred and obscenity at Obama but open their hands to accept government help when they are out of job. Real political convictions must be translated in actions. Talk is cheap. Yes, you voted for Obama, twice and were proud of that. You agree with his social programs. At heart, you are a socialist. 

Okay, you are not a politically correct guy. You don't really give a fuck about what scumbags and assholes think of you. If you had a means, you know what you would do with them. You don't even consider them as humans. Anyway, your words hit them in the polar plexus, and leave them gasping for air, like fish stranded on land. Your words are unrestrained, affecting, raw and honest, designed to shock and awe with their particular pitch of pain, suffering, and private truth. You are a magus with words, at least that's what you call yourself in moments of unbridled vanity.

The other day, somebody asked me what the meaning of life was! I looked at him as if he came from Mars:

"Seriously, dude, what's the fuck? Life is life, you know. We just live, lie through our teeth every fucking day without having any sense of shame, then one say, we get sick and die or we get run over by a bus or hit by lightning and die. That's what life means to all the scumbags and assholes in this world. More developed humans get a rush from life by being war correspondents, risking their limbs and lives to get the truth out. And others toil to help out their loved ones, friends, and even strangers. Life is whatever we do to make us feel good about ourselves. I do wonder may times, however, if scumbags and assholes do feel good about themselves or if they are like me, they do possess a conscience and their conscience torment and torture them, especially late at night. I am not a perfect guy. Far from it. Now and then I do stupid things that I am not proud of. My conscience lets me know that I ought to be ashamed of myself and I am. But I am not a scumbag or an asshole. I am not into denial or evil like them. 

I tend to fall in love quite easily. Love is the meeting place of truth and understanding or is it fantasy and delusion? I think in my case, it is too often the case of fantasy and delusion. 

I am ashamed to admit that I grieved more when my first love walked out on me than when my parents passed away. Somehow the hurt was more intense. And then the world collapsed on me when Harriette collapsed in my arms and died of a heart attack. Since her death, I've been numb. Grief is the manifestation that you really feel sorry for yourself. I am beyond self-pity. I am stunned and stunted by bad luck. 

Somebody asked me the other day if I was uxorious. I told her to check that with my wife. She is in the best position to know. My life is a battleground between fiction and reality. "

(To be continued)

Drenched in sunlight

NẮNG ẮM

đứng vỉa hè nhìn nắng ấm
new orleans thân phận tiếng kèn
thanh âm nhẹ vút lên men
café du monde[1] như quen như đắng

con sông năm xưa ngây vắng
bão tố lòng người lẳng lặng ẩn xa 
sao cố quận mãi phủ nhoà
dù bài thơ lời lẽ toả hương hoa

đứng giữa trời đợi em qua
thấy hồn chất ngất tiên sa cát hồng

Lưu Nguyễn Đạt
New Orleans, December 27, 2013

ENSOLEILLÉ

À khôi, khoa, tráng, nam, hải, wissai

au bout du trottoir ensoleillé
new orleans se refait au son du saxophone
ses langueurs fruitées d’alcool s’immergent
au café du monde[1] intime et amer

la rivière d’antan figée de solitude
se déploie loin des tempêtes guerrières
pourtant la nation des hommes se meurtrit 
sans ma poésie de fleurs et de fragrance

là je t’attends au creux du ciel bleu
et mon âme sur tes ailes d’ange s’émeut de sable rose

Lưu Nguyễn Đạt
New Orleans, December 27, 2013

(1) 1] Le Café du Monde fut ouvert en 1862 à côté du French Market, New Orleans, Louisiana. Il témoigne de la tradition française qui a survécu depuis la période de la Louisiane française. Le café du Monde propose son fameux café au lait chaud mélangé de chicorée. Les beignets à la fabrication traditionelle française ont contribué la réputation à l’établissement [wikipedia].

i'm standing in a street corner in a New Orleans drenched in sunlight

and soaked with the sound of saxophone that's 

soaring with drunken music 

and awash with the wafting familiar, bitter aroma of café du monde

the river of yesteryear is freezing in solitude
while interior emotional tempests take place afar
in a nation soaked with tears
despite lines of poetry redolent with fragrance of flowers

i'm waiting in the middle of the sky for your passing by
while my soul staggers on the heavenly beach of rosy sand

Fighting against Relapse

LAS VEGAS — It’s the time of year for resolutions. Lose 20 pounds, get to the gym, eat healthier, be more productive, whatever. But in a few months, many people will let these goals fall by the wayside, to be revived again next year. I’m a member of a group who can’t afford to make pledges we don’t keep. I’m an addict.  

For addicts, discipline isn’t something to strive for each new year; it’s necessary for every moment. Though it might be surprising — considering all the craziness associated with the Mike Tyson persona — one of my best qualities is my unerring discipline, which my mentor and first trainer, Cus D’Amato, instilled in me. Cus and I worked hard so I could become the youngest heavyweight champ in history; I sacrificed most of my social life as a teenager and for years pushed my body to extremes every day, just to repeat the brutal regimen the next day. 

Cus died a year before I won my first belt, in 1986. With him gone, I had less of an incentive to stay disciplined, and I started drinking heavily and taking drugs. I finally retired from boxing in 2005. I didn’t want to insult the sport by coming in out of shape, just fighting for a payday. That’s when I became a full-on raging addict. Since then, I have struggled for sobriety, sometimes successfully, at other times not.  

Even though I possessed incredible discipline when it came to boxing, I didn’t have the tools to stop my slide into addiction. When I got a chance to get high — boom, I’d get high. I wouldn’t call my sponsor, wouldn’t call my therapist, wouldn’t call my sober companions.  

No, in order to kick it, I had to replace the cravings for drugs or alcohol with a craving to be a better person. 

I’ve learned that being sober is more than just avoiding drugs or alcohol. It’s a lifestyle focused on making moral choices and elevating the things that make life worth living to the forefront. Don’t get me wrong. If I craved drugs or alcohol, I’d still give in. I could never fight those cravings. But when I am focused on doing good and being good, and practice the day-to-day mechanics of a sober, healthy life, I don’t get those urges to do bad things to myself.  

Of course, I needed a developed conscience to back it up. Over the years, my conscience has saved me from descending into a life of total, selfish hedonistic abuse. Even when I was just an antisocial kid, stealing and jostling in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, my friends and I would question our behavior. At my lowest points, I’d still be somewhat outside myself, thinking of the effect my actions had on other people. 

Even with your conscience nagging at you, it’s extremely difficult to develop a sober and moral consciousness without a good support system. When I was in the prime of my career, I had a lousy support system. Greedy vultures were all around me, putting their hands in my pockets, using my status for their own self-aggrandizement. There was no way I could win with people like that in my corner. I am now very fortunate to have a wonderful wife and children surrounding me.  

In 2009, I vowed to get sober after the accidental death of my 4-year-old girl, Exodus. I was determined to live a better life for the sake of my family, but the pain was so bad that I went back on drugs. Recovery is a drawn-out process, and without the continued encouragement of my support system, it would be close to impossible.  

Strangely, times of success are most dangerous for me. When people tell me, “You’re great” or “Your comeback is amazing” or “You’re a god,” I could feed right into it and go get high. Hey, if my life is so good, how could smoking a joint be bad? How could a shot of Hennessy or a line of coke be so bad when everything else I’ve been doing is great — especially when there are beautiful, successful people feeding my ego and supplying the drugs?  

So I’ve learned that when people congratulate me, that’s when I focus on my flaws. That way I don’t allow my narcissism to fly sky-high and allow me to think that I can act out without any consequences.  

I had been sober for five years when I had a slip and started drinking again last August. I had just finished the manuscript of my book, my one-man show was about to air on HBO, and we had a reality series in the can for Fox Sports. I was not accustomed to all that success in an arena other than boxing.  

I have such a negative self-image that I just expect bad things to happen to me. And even though I hadn’t been using for five years, all that time I just didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. I was holding secrets from my loved ones, things that I had to get off my chest. That’s the worst feeling in the world, keeping things to yourself.  

When I resolved those issues, through therapy and by talking honestly with my family, I felt like a new man. When I relapsed in the past, I would keep getting high until I was in a car accident or got arrested. But this time, after drinking for two or three days, I came back. I didn’t wait for an intervention. I just got right back on the wagon. After years of therapy, I had learned not to beat up on myself. I remembered that relapse is a part of recovery. 

This is the best I’ve ever felt. I’m on the pathway to humility, fully aware that you can’t rule until you’ve served. I’m looking forward to a glorious 2014, when all of our best-intentioned resolutions become realities. 

  Mike Tyson,  a retired heavyweight champion, is the author, with Larry Sloman, of the memoir “Undisputed Truth.”  

Note:

Like me, Tyson reads philosophy. 

Why Is It not Cool to be Stoned?

For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships.  

But then we all sort of moved away from it. I don’t remember any big group decision that we should give up weed. It just sort of petered out, and, before long, we were scarcely using it.  

We didn’t give it up for the obvious health reasons: that it is addictive in about one in six teenagers; that smoking and driving is a good way to get yourself killed; that young people who smoke go on to suffer I.Q. loss and perform worse on other cognitive tests. 

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that’s basically the point). I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning. 

We gave it up, second, I think, because one member of our clique became a full-on stoner. He may have been the smartest of us, but something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into pothead life. 

Third, most of us developed higher pleasures. Smoking was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that smoking weed doesn’t really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this). We graduated to more satisfying pleasures. The deeper sources of happiness usually involve a state of going somewhere, becoming better at something, learning more about something, overcoming difficulty and experiencing a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. 

One close friend devoted himself to track. Others fell deeply in love and got thrills from the enlargements of the heart. A few developed passions for science or literature. 

Finally, I think we had a vague sense that smoking weed was not exactly something you were proud of yourself for. It’s not something people admire. We were in the stage, which I guess all of us are still in, of trying to become more integrated, coherent and responsible people. This process usually involves using the powers of reason, temperance and self-control — not qualities one associates with being high. 

I think we had a sense, which all people have, or should have, that the actions you take change you inside, making you a little more or a little less coherent. Not smoking, or only smoking sporadically, gave you a better shot at becoming a little more integrated and interesting. Smoking all the time seemed likely to cumulatively fragment a person’s deep center, or at least not do much to enhance it. 

So, like the vast majority of people who try drugs, we aged out. We left marijuana behind. I don’t have any problem with somebody who gets high from time to time, but I guess, on the whole, I think being stoned is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged.  

We now have a couple states — Colorado and Washington — that have gone into the business of effectively encouraging drug use. By making weed legal, they are creating a situation in which the price will drop substantially. One RAND study suggests that prices could plummet by up to 90 percent, before taxes and such. As prices drop and legal fears go away, usage is bound to increase. This is simple economics, and it is confirmed by much research. Colorado and Washington, in other words, are producing more users. 

The people who debate these policy changes usually cite the health risks users would face or the tax revenues the state might realize. Many people these days shy away from talk about the moral status of drug use because that would imply that one sort of life you might choose is better than another sort of life. 

But, of course, these are the core questions: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.  

In legalizing weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be. 

David Brooks, NYT Columnist

The Folly of Sarcasrm

True love for others is, by definition, outer directed. We care for the well being of others, sometimes at the expense of our own interests. The classic example of such love is parental love. Romantic love is often temporary because it is usually inner directed. We love the other because such a love is beneficial to us. That's why a true romantic love always has a parental, Freudian overtone. 

Do you find yourself lash out at your children, saying hurtful things or you often bite your tongue and stoically bear the annoyance and suffering because you care for your children more than you care for yourself?

I always had a powerful parental feeling towards the women I really loved. 

Sarcasm and selfishness from women turn me off at once. I can be sarcastic and selfish, like everybody else, but why should I, especially now that I have acquired some wisdom?

You never realize that sarcasm is deep in your make-up. It is a mechanism of your aggression. You use it from time to time to me. And I feel infuriated and murderous when you do so. 

Reality is it is what it is. Your employment of sarcasm does not endear yourself to me. It just alienates and enrages me. Do you really think that I am just an ordinary human who can take sarcasm calmly? I have told you time and again that I view most humans as beneath me. I am a real thinker, a poet, an artist with words. I am different from most of the human race. I don't really care if you don't share my self-perception. It's no idle adventure when I am making an effort to study the thoughts of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. These two men were not normal. And they spoke to me. They made me feel I am not alone.

Hello Out There Or Is It Hello to Myself?

Hello Out There Or Is It Hello Myself?

The year is 2014. I am turning 65. A true milestone in existence. I am living one year at a time. I used to write my annual letter and send it to the world. Then I discontinued the practice. So if you are reading this missive, consider yourself special and rare, even "good-natured". 

Let's start with the macro. So Assad is still hanging on meanwhile the Syrians suffer and die. Iran and the U.S. are getting back together at the expense of Saudi Arabia which gets understandably upset. China is getting to be a real asshole. I want it get into a shooting war with its neighbors, especially Japan, so its financial markets swoon and its economy suffers. The only problem with that scenario is that my stock portfolio will take a dive. I'm thinking of getting out of the financial market before things get really hairy. I don't feel like pontificating on world affairs. The human race sucks and I must remember that in planning for my "future".

Back on the micro front, I am trying hard to hold fading looks at bay. Money is still flowing in, although at a trickle. Women still want to go to bed with me and I still play hard to get. Sex is getting to be a chore while true love is no where to be found. Humans are selfish and women are looking for security, not love. I am learning to be taciturn, even under provocation. I am a man without love, without family, without country. I have several humans whom I consider as friends. They keep me on a tenuous connection with reality and humanity.

Suicide is violence directed within whereas homicide is violence directed without. Same process, but opposite directions. I used to contemplate both suicide and homicide, but not anymore. Nowadays, I just concentrate on making money, maintaining health, and improving my singing. And if I write, I only do so on my blog. Fuck the idea of sharing my writings with others. Humans are scumbags and assholes. 

Wissai

January 2, 2014

Ego and Silence

If I were a simple, mediocre man, dealing with me with ego or not would not be an issue. We conquer others more via our loving kindness than the force of our intellect, and never with sarcasm. Sarcasm is a form of cheap wit. Only fools use it as a weapon and a form of aggression. Strong folks use silence as a weapon or as a defense. My words are a form of self-hypnosis. Assholes and scumbags and fools stupidly mistake them as attempts of lecturing. Even if somebody says something that has a flavor of lecturing, a wise listener just keeps silent instead of protesting. When we protest, even if we rightfully perceive the interlocutor is lecturing, we are being rude and impolite. Two wrongs never make a right. Only fools want to appear clever. Deep down, they are stupid and full of inferiority complex and an inability and unwillingness to learn.