Bleeding out our Reflections

I wake up to my own soothing and maybe seething heartbeat. I crack out of my desert slumber and try to hydrate myself with water. The air conditioner’s on. It’s been on all night. My blanket is therefore a sanctuary, and so is the coffee shop I stumble over to two hours after staring into my computer (whilst fumbling with the virtual world i.e. large forest fires, third-world protests, a growing Web 2.0, and intercultural-national chatting). My computer is my cultural sanctuary. My blanket is my body’s sanctuary. Where is my mind’s sanctuary?

Cafe Thu Ha is absolutely my favourite coffee shop in Long Xuyen, An Giang. It isn’t until I get on my bike and pedal out onto the street that I remember what this place really means to me in this moment of my life. Thu Ha serves absolutely the best eggs I’ve ever had. At first, slightly fried green onions, topped with two sunny-side (slightly runny but juicy) eggs and cilantro basking on top. Secondly, on the side, a small dish of salt-pepper-MSG (probably) concoction, a quarter of a lemon and a smaller dish of soy sauce with diced chilis. I’m left to pour all that shit on and make do. A small baguette on a newspaper sits to my left, ready to be cracked open and into the medley.

The food though, ain’t the only attraction, it’s actually this streetside that I get to glimpse while I enjoy some good ‘ol “eggs of avian”. This street is quieter than most because it runs through a small market, but nevertheless it is not without its charming intricacies. Every ten minutes a woman (old and young) walks by with a handful of lottery tickets (a government program to take care of the poor). I usually buy two tickets (5,000 Dong each) to fulfill my daily quota (20% of my paycheck). I’m thinking about increasing the number, but I’m not sure if I’d survive with my middle-class background. Nevertheless, I’m not telling you about the lottery vendors because it’s morally amusing, but rather to introduce a particular character that I find charming here. To be honest, personally, I’m not necessarily interested in saving the masses from their burdens. I’m more interested in watching Viet Nam play itself out.

Anyway, I digress. I’ve developed a good relationship with the various owners of this place: a family of three women and an older man. Most of the women are older than my mother, one woman is as old as my grandmother. The man fascinates me most because he frequents the front of the shop the most. He’s also the main person cooking my breakfast. The ladies are usually running the coffee part of the coffee shop whereas he’s usually doin’ the eggs. Of course, once in awhile, one of the ladies leaves to grab some extra baguettes.

It’s his interactions with these lottery vendors that is so fascinating. He seems to know all of them. I think I’ve heard some of them call him by name. Today, he sat on someone else’s motorbike (something unacceptable in America; to sit on some “bro’s” AUTOmobile) and just lounged with a newspaper. A female vendor came up, she almost knew he wouldn’t buy one, but the way she looked at him gave the feeling that she knew him as a brother. I guess that’s common ’cause Vietnamese people use the words “Anh”, “Chi”, etc. so frequently as if we’re all family. At least colloquially. But I guess it wasn’t too startling for me to see that almost knowing look in her face because just a few days ago I had seen him talk to another vendor with a smile, and then warmly grab her by the hand and lead her to the back part of the cafe. I didn’t look back to see what he was giving her, partly because I knew it was a genuine moment, but also because I felt also familial, like “of course this is happening”…well, more like…”of course uncle is doing that”.

But, you know, I think at least everybody in Viet Nam is aware of the dire situation of poverty etc. I mean, I recently made all of my Intercultural Communication students do reports on various important aspects of their culture (a lot of “ISM’s). And such questions as “How do we deal with our poor people?” “How do we progress but also preserve the best of our culture?” “How do we avoid the more detrimental parts of American culture that is being transferred to our country but still gain economically?” So yah, people here, at least my students, consider these questions important. I guess this leads me to the conclusion that people are all aware of the state of Viet Nam on some level, I mean, it’s hard to miss. And since it’s seeped to some degree into their skins, their consciousnesses, it comes out with a certain natural affection. This is something I don’t usually see in California, where good-doing sometimes comes out as do-gooding.

My judgments aside, this small cafe certainly evokes a lot. Especially when I just sit here watching the road text messaging my friends on my cellphone.

today i am an internet junkie who crisscrosses blogs and forums and wikis and chats feeling out the world. although it be a mite bit falsely ambitious. i am trying to catch up with the world in secret! it’s almost like i went into a dream sleep for the last five years awakening to buddhism and all the other namby-pamby santa cruz jargon bullshit acu-puncher hippiester, and while thoroughly waking up to all that along with my buddies (including yourself, tully, raoul birnbaum, jayson naona, dmitry trakovsky, sofia and danny) and its actual underpinnings i am now (not finally, but yah, finally) exploring the inner and outer reaches of what the net’s got. what the fuck is the internet?! web 2.0? folksonomy? etc. etc. it’s kinda fun. i must admit. i read half of the book “the world is flat” and i was a little stunned. as my mind harkened back to you introducing me to marshal mcluhan. i mean, for the last 4-5 years 90% of my thoughts have been involved in “mind and its discontents”…and contents. so now im using firefox tabbing to catch up as fast as i can to the world. it’s a farce you know. but it’s fun nevertheless. i get coffee, my heart flutters, and i sip tea and spend my time like a flighty nerd on the net wondering what the fuck a dns server is and am pleased when i get hints as to what it is. and i love that there ain’t no poetry here. hahah. some could argue otherwise for me, let them argue. i’m eating vegetarian food in vietnam on streetsides while i stare at motorbikes roll by and the eye candy is mainly well-figured women with straight black hair in either pajamas or shirt and pants and bras that hide their extremely timely tiny titties. my stomach is turning because two nights ago my friend eric (from ohio) and bich (vietnamese-german girl) and i decided to drink too much portugese red wine. whine about wine. but that’s beside the point. i feel international more than i feel my stomachache. and i’m not sure what that bodes for me two months from now. at this moment i’m wondering what the fuck is going on with you. last time i talked to you you were benchpressing thousands of pounds (the cumulative weight derived from an algorithm you yourself had designed which included sex, writing, ugliness, music, a big one nostril, herbs, glasses, custom nikes (or was it reeboks?) and a fully understood cloudy vision, among other secret-society-type fundamentals) i thoroughly cherished your message which i sat down three times to listen to. once in front of a piano, another on a couch and third in a car while driving. so, rest assured your message was at least heard. understanding, a different matter, ‘course. as for that and that and this. i’m cooped up in myself here and at large…teaching english classes for students exceeding 100 in number. at small…i hide in my living room reading surfing drinking vomiting and sleeping, and an intermittent plucking on various vietnamese banjo-esque’s and listening to the moans of post-rock every chance i get. one footnote, vietnamese are addicted to text messaging, and so i’ve gone along and i text people at least 10 times a day. pretty cool. and by the way, i haven’t lost my vigor for life, nor death.

I was amused when Marshall McLuhan and Norman Mailer debated. Mailer concluded that we MUST have a solution to the world’s globalizing forces, the madness of it, etc. and McLuhan noted that he dared not make an assertion “on that big of a scale”. He just wanted to understand what was going on, in a way. Mailer wanted to jump to what was moralistically/ethically correct. I had this thought the other day, the ’60s made everybody take sides…but i think the last few decades has seen the lines blur over more and more. No wonder Miyazaki whom people hail as an environmentalist for his films like “Princess Mononoke” etc. says that he just wants to “entertain”. What does that mean? people think…

I’m even more amused by the various interviews Bob Dylan has in the movie “Don’t Look Back”. Everybody expects of this great idol of the ’60s to have a solution for humanity. Or an “answer”. “What do you mean you don’t know why you write them?” “So what are your songs about?” etc. etc. They want something from him, out of a moralistic thirst or something. I’m not sure.

I like that idea that “the only thing i know is that i don’t know anything” or however it went. do i need to have all the answers to the questions in the world? and do i need to have some kind of solution for which to live my life from and to picture that godforsaken utopia before me? i don’t know. and i’m not sure if i need to know.

now, i started out this post in response to ’so-called sustainability’ that is touted around today in non-governmental organizations, liberal hotbeds, socialist European countries and the new growing American left. And it’s funny because if I were on any side I’d be on earth’s side (although to be honest I’m not sure if humanity surviving is necessarily a good or bad thing, especially when I look into pictures by the Hubble telescope and glimpse the insignificance, in a sense, of our existence, astronomically speaking). And obviously the evidence laid out against industrialization etc. is quite convincing. But I enjoy watching the world unfold itself before me over telling the world what it’s about. So this leads me to be utterly skeptical of any attempt at professing some kind of solution or conclusion concerning the state of the world. Nevertheless, let’s not end it there…

In a sense I am saying that the world is too big for us to make minuscule (relatively speaking) assertions concerning it, right? But if you let yourself end it there than I think you’ll have succumbed to finality. Let’s dance a little more. I mean, of course, we must get conscious about the earth-blah-blah-blah but is that the end of the story? I pose these questions because I am more fascinated by the weaving of international ideas with each other than I am by nations proposing solutions. But even more so, I am fascinated by things untouched and innocent, and even more so fascinated by learning to see things as all-innocent. It seems some people want to see the beginning, prior to civilization as a utopian time where man communed with nature, adam and eve, etc. Or “becoming one with nature” where you step into the field naked united. But I’m not totally sure about that. I’m not sure what the hell utopia is anyway. I’m more inclined to peruse my own silent library in the confines of my mind and read things here and there. I know it’s cheesy but utopia’s here, right? or something like that.

next up…adaptability…and sustainability