it’s true, you californians, asia IS holier than thou, so come on down.
i haven’t written on this blog in awhile. I figure that facebook is really the future of blogging, but you can’t really write a full “status update” on facebook, really. it’s really just pictures and snippets. Content is merely a symptom of facebook, rather than a goal or a result. So, at last, a new blog post makes its daring appearance.
I’ve been in Long Xuyen city, Vietnam country for about 2 years and 4 months now, and the story gets worse, I want to be here longer. I can’t put my finger on what made me fall in love with this place. Was it the innocent lazy nature of my students? The ongoing problem-solving related to all things termed improvement and development? The food that I get bored with every few weeks? The general hideaway from everything Californian and family? The escape from elections and the general doldrums of American politics? The all-night binge-drinking followed by incoherent singing followed by incoherent mornings followed by incoherent bureaucracy followed by a bombardment of incoherent Asian (with-a-Vietnamese-twist) hysteria? The appeal of a birth of cool in this country as opposed to the rebirth of post-post-modern hip in this American generation (which can only lead to the path of further boredom, or so i thought)? or maybe most of all…bragging rights?
What keeps me here is rather ineffable other than that it somehow will make a coherent appearance in my resume and shepherd me somehow to the next place. I’m sure everyone wonders what they would say to the self they were two years ago. I’d probably cuss myself out. “You fucking idiot, don’t fuck up! And fix your haircut! Why are you wearing a t-shirt? Are those flip-flops? Why haven’t you grown your mustache yet?” In two years from now, I’d probably say to the me that is now…”Why the fuck are you monologueing again? Don’t you have better things to do? You’re wearing a shirt with no tie? And why do you still have a mustache?”…Who knows?…Most of the time I’m not looking for much upward mobility or anything. Let alone peace of mind (which can be rather worrisome).
When it really comes down to it, I’d just as well clone myself, and have the guy do all the work. Make him get the Masters in Interaction Design for me, make him go out and meditate in the Nepali mountains for me, make him tell all the jokes at my stand-up comedy routine, and make him get all the praise for anything and everything that he might do. It’d be a load off my mind. I’d use the money that he embezzled to buy an island and watch his life from a satellite, and just feel oh-so-gleeful that I cooked up such a great scheme. . . But maybe that’s actually how I feel sometimes, except when I have to put in the effort.
Most of the time, I think that’s what I’m training myself most in, here in Vietnam. Effort. California had this real easy comfortable life that I just couldn’t stand after awhile. I mean, really, if I got that free pass to an unmarked island off the coast of Indonesia with no tsunamis in sight, I’d probably end up immolating myself out of some kind of gripping realization with the grating nature of life without causality. I may be the laziest person I know, but god forbid me to be a mere stapler.
No, I actually have nothing against Californians, per se. It’s the gold that is in California that I’ve got some issue with. California’s gold is America’s hipster dream gone liberally righteous, and I think for me, back three years ago, that meant that the entity or philosophy that is California itself missed a projected humility that I needed to learn about humanity’s role in the god-forsaken Universe. I think now, I’m rather okay with thinking that the state of California is merely another means to an end. So it’s not cynicism I subscribe to as much as a practicality that it’s in detention.
Ironically…quarantined pragmatism is what both Buddhism and Vietnam have taught me about life thus far. Making efforts and trying to get results out of some kind of samsaric bureaucratic catch-22. And on top of that, freedom is rather elusive and mysterious, which is actually just fine with me.
