n-squared home training

so i recently sent out our family groundrules for VL to my immediate family since we have our set of values that may or may not be shared and the holidays (prime gift giving season) are approaching. our primary value is protecting our daughter from materialism/commodification and toxins. nothing controversial, no comment on religion or politics, no judgement on other families' rules.

the reactions i got were kinda funny. my ma sez "Sorry dear, your daughter will be so sad with no funs for the first 5 year in her life." which i think is hilarious because like my ma's own childhood in rural VN did not have any of the things we ban from our house and i'm sure she had funs (weo after doing her chores that is). and she herself pointed out to me that all the food she grew up on was organic because pesticides (and agent orange and napalm) hadn't been introduced yet. and for the first five years of his life and the first three years of my sis' in central VN, my siblings played with family, household objects and objects in nature with little detrimental impact on their imaginations or body burden unlike the toys & material objects of today's modern household.

my step dad who would be chief offender on all counts (especially candy, red dye and princess stuff) said nothing. he doesn't ever check his email except for once a year when he has me un-close his email account or set up a new email for him when i come visit for the holidays. to be fair, he also generously gives us lots of cash to buy clothes and savings bonds for school and helps us with travel money too.

my bro who might be potentially a giver of the battery-operated, plastic kind (like Whack-A-Mole which would be so cool if they made a wood version) didn't respond either. it's cool. as an uncle, i fully expect him to pass along his gourmand predilections to the child with full appreciation for the ways he's introduced me to good food all my life (first caviar, first truffles, first crab cakes, first clam dip, first sake bombers, first gourmet meals, first fine champagne... and the list goes on.).

my sis who gives very thoughtful and wonderfully handcrafted gifts sez "It's truly more blessed to give than receive." sure, at the same time, i guess i'm more pragmatic when it comes to gifts, why waste other people's money on things i don't want or we don't allow? we didn't register for wedding gifts, we went the traditional route (and by this i mean vinamese tradition) and got cash gifts which paid for the reception; for the baby registry i asked people to get stuff used from craigslist and asked for cloth diapering supplies mostly and most folks gave cash with which we were very grateful to purchase all the stuff we needed, some new, alot of it used. registries themselves are wishlists of things you want, which practice i find eminently practical, but it's only socially acceptable to have registries on major social rites of passage rather than events like holidays & birthdays. and sometimes, people buy you things off registry anyways which can result in something delightful that you wouldn't have bought for yourself (like a digital labeller! awesome!) and sometimes results in something that makes you go huh? (like the talking Stewie doll. you do realize one, i'm like in my 30s and don't collect dolls from animated TV shows. and two, i didn't have a TV for most of the nineties & 00s, right bro? i didn't even ever watch the family guy or the simpsons.)

i don't care for the social ballet of receiving gifts with one hand with genuine appreciation for the gift giver's intention of course, and some white lie nicety about using it, and passing it behind my back and with the other hand returning or recycling it.

my ma frequently gives me new & used clothes, shoes & avon products (she's an avon lady) and while i love her care & thoughtfulness, i always have to return them to her because it doesn't fit (i have a very different body type from my ma--i take after my paternal grandmother--and a different style sensibility because i'm in my 30s, not my 50s nor what she projects 30s ought dress like [um, ma, i don't go clubbing anymore and certainly not while i was pregnant. weo, only once and it was really just a bar and it was really no fun hanging out with smoking, emeryville quasi-hipsters at Kitty's, and anyways, i don't wear sheer blue leopard print chiffon because no one needs to see my big belly, navel & stretch marks. but then, in her 30s ma was a clubbin' disco queen and i have the photos to prove it!] and she thinks i'm bigger than i am or my feet are smaller than they are.) and i'm allergic to the cheap synthetic toxic chemicals in avon products. for some years i took the gifts and re-distributed them to friends, but nowadays, i don't have room in my luggage nor space in my house nor time to do that. so i thank you ma, and i can't use this because... happily, my ma isn't neurotic (in that way at least) and doesn't take it personal.

of course, our choices are political and spiritual in essence especially because what we want for our daughter and how we choose to go about getting there runs counter to dominant popular culture (and unfortunately what constitutes popular culture is corporate marketing). my cousins have nicknamed the baby "Moonbeam" for a reason. shrug. we love each other; we don't have to love each other's parenting choices. (and funnily enough i had considered naming the baby Moon something in vinamese Nga or Nguyet, but the english transliteration would really butcher the cadence of it. and we ended up choosing a historical name rather than a poetic one.) so this is how we do it in the n2 household:

• no princess stuff
• all natural materials like cotton, wool or wood are preferred
• no plastic toys, no battery-operated toys. toys should be educational or stimulate the imagination
• no corporate logos on the clothes (example: anything that has Disney on it, Tommy, Polo, Old Navy, etc). she's a baby not an advertising billboard
• no commercialized product tie-ins. no Disney, no Pixar, no Hello Kitty/Sanrio or TV cartoon characters like Dora or Sponge Bob. no hypersexualized toys like trampy Barbie or hooker Bratz dolls.
  
• no TV until she is 5 yo
• gently used, second-hand & hand-me-downs in good condition are great. what's important is the sentiment and utility, not the cost
• no princess stuff
• no dairy (this means no butter or milk or ice cream), no candy or artificial dyes in food (especially red)
• homemade is lovely too
• oh, and no princess stuff.

postscript: actually, it is socially acceptable to have "wishlists" so we started one for VL on alternativegiftregistry.org.

magic powers

so i hung out with my mom and Bà Tiến yesterday who my mom tricked into going up to North County and having dinner with my sister for the whole afternoon and evening. Like most Vinamese people, she prefers the xe máy|moped to the xe hơi|auto as a form of transportation. at least she doesn't get sooo carsick that she's vomiting all the time like most Vinamese people. she's here visiting my Bà Ngoại from Thử Đức, outside Sài Gòn. she has the same country accent as Bà Ngoại; says an emphatic không with that voiceless nasal release at the end that makes many people think that most vinamese words end in a p/b because the lips come together and the sound is unvoiced, and retroflexes all her voiced alveolar fricatives. so dì|maternal aunty sounds almost like rì and dễ thương|cute, loveable sounds like rễ thương.

so in addition to Bà Tiến giving me a nickname based on my condition Bầu (the equivalent of calling me "Preggie". oh, this is where i get that reductive nickname tendency from!*) she also said i have healing powers. so vinamese folks believe a first-time pregnant mom has the ability to heal people by massaging or squeezing or pressing the painful area according to how many vitalities they have (men have 7; women have 9). so she had me acupressure a spot at the top of her head where she had previously given herself a goose-egg/concussion. what could i do but comply. i don't know if her head pain has gone. my mom and dad who don't "believe" nevertheless had me squeeze their painful elbow, wrist as well as Bà Ngoại's more paralyzed right arm. who knows if it'll work. i mean if i can generate Life cell-by-cell, then it stands to reason. what can't i do?

i have healing powers. cool.

oh, and how happy am i that Henry's (the local more natural grocery store now operated by Wild Oats) has bulk mexican candies? i can have my tejocote and be lead-free... mom is under strict orders to memorize the location & serpentina candy appearance so she can keep me well-supplied. i'm already running out and am awaiting my next shipment along with my maternity áo dài.

*it could also be that she finds my Hawaiian name a pain to pronounce since its three syllables. remember its a monosyllabic language.

rất là ngon!

i've been waiting, patiently (more because i don't have a choice than desire), for food to be delicious during this pregnancy. it's been okay. but, there's always a but; it's too béo|fatty-oily, too bland, too repetitive, too not fresh, too unexciting, always something missing. i thought, maybe i'm just missing home cooking (i can't say mom's cooking, because dad does most of the cooking) because even vinamese food leaves me unenthusiastic whether homemade or restaurant (too much MSG!). so i came home with loads of requests.

last night at dinner, i was a wee disappointed with my dad's hủ tiếu. i added chanh|lemon and thought maybe if i added nước mấm, that might fix it (to my dad's horror; i realized when i was finishing for second dinner how salty it was as a result.) so i resignedly thought maybe food was just going to be blah for the rest of the pregnancy. so sad.

then, mama took the leftovers and made the secret sauce dad forgot to make last night (probably because i was HUNGRY! and he wanted to feed me right away). and there, it was for breakfast--hủ tiếu Bà Năm Sà Đẹc. now if you've been fortunate enough to venture out of phở territory (but please don't do it at a phở restaurant. phở is their specialty, don't wander to the other 25 items on the menu. it won't be good and won't do your tastebuds or the dish justice) most likely in San Jo unless you've been to a friend's mom's house, you may be acquainted with hủ tiếu|pork & seafood noodle soup. i lack words to describe the difference now; prolly the foodbuzz kickin in. look here for more verbiage later XXXX. (um, mom just cursed me and my ancestors|tiên sư mày because i'm back in here typing instead of eating. but i'm full already and am saving the rest for later. i do small meals. if i eat too much, i get indigestion and i look like i'm 7 months pregnant because my stomach & intestines are all topside.)

hủ tiếu Bà Năm Sà Đẹc is a specialty dish created by Bà Năm|Mrs. Five (chinese numbering influence here) of the town Sà Đẹc in the Mê-Kông Đelta. yes, it was so damn good, the dish is hereafter named after her. it's still pork & seafood. it's still glass noodles *except* it's served dry with the secret sauce and the pork broth on the side. the secret sauce is what makes the dish. i had heretofore thought that the sauce was a form of riêu (crab or shrimp roe blended with spices and used to make bún riêu). but it's not. it's dried shrimp--the dense flavorful meaty vinamese kind. accept no substitutes--soaked, strained, pan fried (no oil) to re-dry, finely minced with shallots, garlic & tomato paste. it's better than ketchup, and that's saying alot. this was exactly what was missing last night! dollops of the Bà Năm Sà Đẹc sauce, a little chanh. my tastebuds rejoice! even though 2 times in a row is my max for any dish, i may have to eat more for second breakfast.

ah, and some freshly homemade sửa đậu nành lá dứa|soybean juice flavored with pandan. life is good.

in the words of my friend Tuyền, rất là ngon!

where's the silent majority?

hmm... i was watching Sai-Gon TV earlier today and saw that there was yet another anti-comm!e protest in OC. this time outside the office of OC vinamese periodical VietWeekly. Vinamese newspapers are rarely controversial given the high rate of mortality for Vinamese American journalists--Chauncey Bailey's assasinat!on is not an uncommon occurrence in Viettown; it's an occupational hazard of journalism in our community--so, this is noteworthy and commonplace all at the same time.

i don't have anything substantial to blog. as yet. (mom is reminding me not to sit in front of computer too long since i did work from home on my vacation all pm so... it's almost time for second dinner. hủ tiếu|pork & seafood glass noodle soup. mmm. i pity those whose only experience of vinamese noodle soup is phở. so let's do a san jose trip & revive our eat-around-the-world monthly dates.)

here are the articles:

A History of Violence: A brief history of anti-comm!e attacks
Red scare in Lil Sai-Gon
Waiting with red-baited breath

this is the kind of black-and-white manichean binary as Fanon outs it, that we still have yet to evolve from and that keeps locked in a cycle of violence on a global scale. it's all to easy to deny your opposition/opponent/adversary/competitor their humanity and cast them as the (plug in a derogatory fearmongering -ist adjective of choice: commie, capitalist, socialst, racist, separatist etc.) enemy and to employ the same dirty tactics as you accuse the other side of engaging in.

is freedom of speech really only an ideological tool of the Nation-State that only upper-/middle-class white americans purport to enjoy?

DIY baby hammock

who invented hammocks? no one knows for sure, but it was folks in the tropics, caribbean, latin america. all i know is that it is ingenious.

in VN, there is just about a hammock for every adult. every household has at least 4 steel screw hooks bolted into the studs for an instant midday siesta. even government offices close down to beat the tropical heat for lunch & a siesta. though i wonder if they too have hammock hooks tucked in the back. socialist bureaucrats need to snooze off the heat too. indeed the modern vinamese american household has an ancestral altar, a large flat screen TV, karaoke, and a made-in-vietnam steel-framed hammock (and usually some elder firmly ensconced while watchin the newest Pa-Ri Bai Nai|Paris By Night variety show spectacle or phim chưởng|chinese period serial martial art soap opera or cải lương|southern vinamese melodic storytelling). growing up in honolulu, i was lulled to sleep in hammocks from the time i was born. and i was so glad when my mom *finally* found the hammock she got for me in VN in 2001 buried in the depths of the garage which the two older kids use as free storage. (and before you siblings protest the unfairness of that generalization, all i know is that all my stuff was in the shed that exploded and burned down in dad's "shed incident." the only stuff i have in the garage is what mom has been stockpiling for years in the anticipation of another grandchild.) we lugged that hammock shit up from SanD posthaste. and believe me, it wasn't easy.

now that t&i are at that procreating time, we're trying to evade the consumer mentality manufactured by the billion dollar baby product industry, and society at large. looking to expand its market and profit margin and led by multi-culty parents, the baby product industry is beginning to embrace and commodify the "natural" ways the rest of the non-industrial world has raised billions of babies. co-sleeping, baby carriers/slings, attachment parenting, elimination communication, practices & crafts/artifacts the world over are are making their way in the mainstream, being trademarked, branded and packaged as a westernized consumer product.

i'm predicting that hammocks are the next big baby thing. there is one american brand complete with a frame and padded hammock. aussie & kiwi's are getting in it too. why? because hammocks mimic the natural rhythm of in utero, they ergonomically conform to the baby's shape (unlike stiff flat mattresses), they are self-propelled (amazingly, a baby soothing product that doesn't require batteries. yet.) and, most importantly, unlike cribs they don't cost an arm and a leg. in the global context, it's important to remember that hammocks are safe to use because the baby is never left alone. there is always a caretaker whether parent, grandparent, extended family within ear's reach and unlike america, no one anywhere else in the world ignores a baby's cry believing that promotes independence rather than abandonment issues and SIDS.

when i was a kid i used to sit and draw blueprints for playhouses. really detailed blueprint of a playhouse with sunroof, down to the lumber sizes, number of nails, reinforcing beams, crossbeam supported foundation, weather-proofing, etc. i get this from ông ngoại|maternal grandfather who as a self-sufficient peasant could grow rice & produce, raise & train waterbuffalo, make bánh tết & banh chưng|new years sticky rice, pork & mung bean cake and kẹo mè|sesame candy from scratch, build a house from scrap lumber & palm tree fronds, and invent a flapping angel-wing harness for the christmas pageant. nowadays they call a person like him a "renaissance man"--though i'm fairly certain self-sufficiency pre-exists the renaissance & capitalism--i just call him ông ngoại.

so rather than pay $200 for some bourgie plastic & polyester version manufactured in some sweatshop in China that will offgas neural disrupters horribly and break apart or be recalled due to shoddy workmanship, i decide to DIY and make my own. who knows maybe i will make a business plan out of this. may as well make some money off of this. maybe i can market it as phong thuỷ|feng shui hammocks. no one has niche marketed oriental metaphysicism and baby products yet.

disclaimer: this is still under product development, so experiment at your own risk.

PORTABLE BABY HAMMOCK
can be installed anywhere there is a door frame or lintel

• begin with 2 iron industrial C-clamps (6-8 in width) these have a carrying load of 1200 lbs+ each so it can handle a baby no worries.

• circular rubber or silicon pads (glue to the clamp faces to prevent damage to the surface)

• 2.5-3 yards of heavy cotton, 8mm+ habotai silk (also called parachute silk because it is used for parachutes and also for portable hammocks. load of up to 400 lbs.) or sling suitable fabric (36-48 width). the bonus with using natural materials is that they wick away moisture and regulate temperature.
  

• folded up baby blanket or towel approx the size of the baby.
  

on both ends of the fabric, hem the fabric with a double or triple seam (can also interlock) leaving about 1-1.5" hem loop. thread each end of the looped hem over each of the C-clamps.

clamp the padded C-clamps above the door frame about 1.5' - 2' apart. this will give you a loose parabola.

place the folded baby blanket parallel to the 48" width of the fabric at the vertex of the parabola. this is very important! the baby will lay on top of the blanket. babies should not be placed in this hammock the way an adult would lay for this particular hammock. the legs of the parabola (which are around 48" wide) will prevent the baby from rolling out of the hammock.

lay a bunch of pillows & padding underneath the hammock just in case and test it with some phonebooks (or cats as the case may be) before putting your baby in.

as in all things, use common sense.

PERMANENT INSTALLATION (under construction)

1 steel heavy duty eye screw or screw hook (carrying load of 400+ lbs each)
2' dowel
whipping rope technique
carbiner or quick link
2.5-3 yards

..to be continued...

i started this on 7.5.07 but waited to post so i wouldn't let the cat out of the bag. will finish at some other date.

p.s. the C-Clamps don't work over the lintel. Back to the drawing board. Am considering the Miyo clamp but it's $50 and I'd have to import it from NZ...

asian women and asian men

while diggin through some of my archives, i came across this angry letter i wrote to Nhà magazine. While they refused to respond or even publish it, i shared it on the VietNam Womens Forum listserv and it was later published in VietWeekly in OC in spring 2004. i had just quit grad school as you could see in my vocabulary, i mean uh, discourse.

Dear Nhà,

Your magazine (www.nhamagazine.com) fills a small and valuable niche for bilingual and monolingual Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans in the US and as such represents an important effort in the oeuvre of Vietnamese periodicals along with Viet Home and the now defunct Viet Now/V magazine. Your magazine represents the Vietnamese diaspora community in the US and as such has a tremendous responsibility to its readership and the community at large. Therefore as a concerned Vietnamese woman, I wanted to write in about the article "Breadsticks vs. Baguette: Does size matter?" (Sept/Oct 2003) which compares Asian penises to breadsticks and to the penises of white, Latino and Black men and to comment how offensive, degrading and dehumanizing it was to our community, and to all Asian men and women. I realize that this letter is rather overdue, but better late than never. And given larger social trends with regards to Asian masculinity, better now. Make no mistake, I am not puritanical; I believe that we should develop healthy attitudes towards our sexuality as individuals, as a community and as a society, and celebrate the range of its expressions and orientations. However this article did not take that route by any means.

Firstly, the author, “The Wayward Wench,” chose to use questionable and prurient methodology by one, speculating from self-professed ignorance of the topic and two, using uncited anthropometric genital measurements which have long been debunked in scientific and anthropological circles as being eugenicist—that would be the same racist biological ideology the Nazis used to rationalize their genocide of Jews. (For critiques of anthropometry and eugenicism, refer to essays by Dr. Stephen Jay Gould).

More importantly in terms of content, the author degrades Asian male sexuality by unfavorably comparing their penises to food products and men of other races. The author clearly recognized that this was derogatory as she “refrained from comparing [her non-Asian husband's penis] to a food product”. One would expect that it should be self-explanatory and blatant how disrespectful this article is, however given that it is not so apparent and that we are supposed to find humor in hurtful dehumanization, I shall also give a parallel example of why this is an offensive, degrading and plain wrong. Were Nhà to publish an article comparing Asian women’s genitals to African American or Latina or white women’s genitals and likening their respective vulvas to food products and considering whose genitalia are “better” for sexual pleasure, the outcry would have been immediate; it would have been absolutely unacceptable and easily recognized as being dehumanizing, racist, sexist and misogynist. Shamefully, there is a larger societal double standard operating that an article emasculating Asian male sexuality in the same way would not be held to the same standard, and speaks to an emerging norm where it is acceptable to degrade Asian men where one would not degrade Asian women.

Historically speaking, the racist mainstream American representation of Asians has always been a pernicious tangle of stereotypical racialized and sexualized images—from the cruel bewitching oriental dragon lady, the sexually-available (to white men) geisha to the misogynist Asian pimp and desexualized bucktoothed cross-eyed Asian male coolie. Whereas in the past, Asian communities resented and resisted this racist imagery, in this post-Amy Tan age of representation those self-same images have become to a certain extent acceptable, recuperated, glorified, and even celebrated and commercialized; the dragon lady is no longer a racist & sexist image but becomes a model of the liberated Asian woman (for instance, Lucy Liu’s character in Ally McBeal or the recent NAATA homage to Anna May Wong). What was once malingering representation is now shiny consumer products on the racks of Urban Outfitters and Abercrombie & Fitch. In the tradition of Long Duck Dong from “Sixteen Candles,” the William Hung minstrel show is but the latest re-enactment of the desexualized oriental coolie for the public’s mocking entertainment . And in the oeuvre of Asian American women’s literature, it has become the norm for Asian women writers to enact emasculating images that degrade, desexualize, demonize and dehumanize Asian men. While I am critical of sexism, I do not believe the solution is to degrade men. This does injustice to my beloved Vietnamese grandfathers, fathers, brothers, significant other, nephews, and yes to my future daughters & sons. This doesn't promote us as women and gets us nowhere as a community.

How have our Asian communities (or granted, the middle-class, college-educated, second-plus generation sectors of the Asian communities) come to internalize these racialized and (de)sexualized images as acceptable representations of Asian people?

It behooves us as a community to recognize the larger racialization/stereotyping of Asian men as well as that of Asian women. I would expect a magazine that represents the lifestyle, culture and identity of Vietnamese Americans to have sensitivity to the racialization and sexualization of Asian women and men and to promote positive models of Asian femininity and masculinity (and everything in between).

4 may, 2004

lessons from the french

i read the news daily. sometimes depending on my daily workplan, my deadlines and my desire to procrastinate, i skim up to seven newspapers. granted, it's mostly articles about eclectic things that interest me in the world like the destruction of culture & the extended family resulting from the Nation-State and its impact on elephants (though, could a quote from Fanon have hurt you? seems to me he discussed this in his clinical study "Colonial War and Mental Disorders" in Wretched of the Earth 1963. does anyone even read anymore?)

and then i see headlines like this Christian Science Monitor article that rile me: "How to fight insurgents? Lessons from the French" about the pentagonia using the Battle of Algiers as offering counter-insurgency lessons for the US occupation of Iraq. though the author gently implies that the french lessons from Algeria is the imperative of political support both in the occupier & occupied countries, this misses the larger lesson in history of occupation & occupied people's will-to-power. you cannot talk about french counterinsurgency tactics in isolation from the revolutionary independence struggle in Algeria and in France's other occupied territory Việt Nam.

that some pentagonian thought that french tactics in Algeria hermetically sealed from historical context could be a blueprint for Iraq, tells me this fool's favorite french movie about Việt Nam is that revisionist colonial belle epoque white man's burden mission civilatrice sentimental la-vie-en-rose drivel, Indochine, written-by-the-losers French film about this beneviolent creole rubber plantation owner (uuubiquitously French Catherine Deneuve) who inherits (ludicrous) an ingrate Vinamese princess (Linh Dan Pham) who not only steals her adoptive mother's boytoy French mercenary soldier lover (preposterous) but also dares to join the liberation movement to overthrow the French colonizers. along the way, homegirl gives up her eurasian baby to said adoptive mother to raise in France where he assimilates and rejects his Vinamese mother in favor of Deneuve after the Geneva Accords (incredulous). heavy on the histerical revision, pathos and metaphor. magnaminous French Mother rejected by the recalcitrant Vinamese Daughter. savais?|get it? like its calorie-free fiction-History loaded with corn syrup, hydrogenated fat, and chock full of preservatives and rose-tinted carcinogenic dyes. unlike most french arthouse movies though, there is no incest (unless you consider the sharing of the boytoy incestuous, in which case, then it does like all other french films involve some measure of incest).

it's pathetic when people get their history from movies. fictionalized history supplants what actually happened with romantic half-truths and out right lies, what i like to call Fictory (or Colbert would call truthiness) in the vein of Forrest Gump. about the only thing the movie got right was the Marie Antoinette gilded bubble of privileged ignorance and excess decadence of the French occupiers with their opium and congaie|mistresses, dehumanization of Vinamese, the callous murders by the French and the just rage for overthrowing French colonizer butchers.

(and while i'm on this tip, by the way, the Nguyễn dynasty sold us out to the French in the first place in addition to invading and conquering Laos, Kampuchea, and Champa. Gia Long was a ignominous traitor who turned to French missionary Pigneau de Behaine after the peasants got done being slaves, revolted in Tây Sơn and overthrew the decadent corrupt exploitative complacent dynasty. as we all know what colonizers bring to civilize the heathen savages, just flip the Cross and you get the Sword. missionaries & religious righteousness have historically been the pretext for military invasion and genocide in the name of the lord from the crusades on. now like any literate/literary person worth her salt, i've read the bible several times and i can't seem to find the commandment, parable, psalm, beatitude etc where god or jesus-the-prince-of-peace says "thou shalt kill in my name. blessed are the christians for they will dominate the earth. god hath given free will except for savages and heathens who art particularly dispensable when interfering with the machinations of capitalism. convert or die. peace." so, predictably, the imperial republic of France (liberté-egalité-fraternité!) invaded in 1858 to protect the catholics, persecute the buddhists, enlighten the savages with democracy, set up occupation shop for a couple hundred years, oh and turn a tidy profit in the process. religious righteousness & democracy are such convenient ideologies to rationalize invasion, domination, oppression, and exploitation. So all you Huế-imperial-superiority people can suck my little pinky toe. as my mama says lưỡi không xương|mealy mouthed fantacists. the last 150 years of Western violence in VN is your royal contribution to Vinamese history. thanks.)

Here's some fun life-under-the-french trivia for you:*

Rubber plantations were nicknamed nơi tàn sát|slaughterhouses because of their enslavement trickery of luring folks in with promises of wages and then starving, brutalizing , torturing and killing them in the process of extracting latex for Michelin among others. the Michelin man is morbidly bloated with depraved profit cannibalistically drained from the masticated marrow and blood of innocents. the only way to escape the rubber plantations was DEATH. or as it turns out, REBELLION--or what in today's doublethink parlance is dubbed "terror!sm" or "!nsurgency".

In the plantations, pregnant women--who had been raped & impregnated by the french overseers and owners--were ordered to dig a hole in the ground for their bellies before they were beaten for asking to use the bathroom. torture tactics borrowed from american slaveowners. in a sick parallel irony to today's article, the au courant news article in France at that time would have read "Comment pacifiions des coolies? Les leçons des américains|How to pacify coolies? Lessons from the Americans"

There was an excrutiating French tax on salt and alcohol to fatten the colonial coffers further. now you may dismiss this as no particular hardship after all, don't we pay an extra five cent "tax" on every bottle or aluminum can we buy (and recently plastic bags). so in the spirit of the Food Stamps Challenge take the seven day Colonizer Salt Challenge: go do some manual labor. alot of it. from dawn to dusk. then make your meal from thin rice gruel and jungle weeds and don't use any salt. not a drop of nước mắm to be had, nor soy sauce. not even the condensated saltine sweat from your own brow. then you'll understand what kind of suffering this is and why there are folksongs about the hardship of the salt tax. and on the upside, you'll lose some weight though you might have a heart attack in the process. there's a reason why gatorade is made with salt yo. salt is the foundation of civilization.

• now the alcohol tax was different. it was a gavage alcohol quota. each village was obligated to purchase alcohol and consume it or be punished with conscription in the coolie corps (those railroads & french colonial architecture got built somehow) or menfolk forced into the colonizer army or face imprisonment (aka the School of the Revolution). i guess the french were hoping to create a society of pacified alcoholics rather than belligerent drunks. lucky for vinamese people, our beer is weaker than Utahian beer. but our rượu đá|rice wine will burn a hole through your liver. in Eastern medicine, the liver is the seat of anger, so if your liver is looking like pâté de foie gras your concern is more likely to be your bequest than rebellion.
• Untold numbers of Vietnamese die under the beneviolent colonist regime (they didnt bother to count how many savages & heathens they threw in the mass graves). 2 million died of famine under the beneviolent Japanese (so much for "Asia for the Asians"). 1 million wounded, ½ million died resisting the beneviolent French back for seconds. over 2 million died under the beneviolent Americans, the number of wounded is still rolling exponentially as leftover landmines and agent orange continue to deploy three decades later. 25,000 died fighting the Khmer Rouge. 10,000 died resisting the 1979 Chinese invasion. not to mention how many perished in the re-education camps and as refugees. 5 wars in the space of 130 years. the price of liberation and independence. (though it begins to make sense why civil society would unravel...)

Revising history doesn't change that Việt Nam, Algeria, and all the other feral natives invaded, conquered, occupied and colonized by France got tired of being it's socio-political experiment under the doublethink banner of liberté-egalité-fraternité while being slaves to fund France's corpulent prosperity. we freed ourselves of the white man's burden and yes it was by any means necessary. Điện Biên Phú suckas. twas the shot heard round the colonized world. with all its la sale guerre|dirty war counterinsurgency tactics (or in today's doublethink "bringing Freedom & Democracy to other people"), its Sûreté|Secret Police, its army of African & Southeast Asian colonized peoples and its army of professional euro legionnaire mercenaries, France lost. badly.

France lost in Việt Nam. France lost in Algeria. major military and moral/political losses. and so then, it gave up the Empire lest it hemorrhage to its own death. people under occupation and domination will never give up the struggle for liberation and independence no matter what the counter-!nsurgency tactics. that's the real lesson from France. the Western world would do well to remember that lest they be condemned to repeat it...

*oooh, Book Learning about the French in VN. don't just take my word for it.

• Before the Revolution: Vietnamese Peasants under the French by Nguyen Vinh Long
• Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation by Tran Bu Binh

vinamese booklist

i was asked recently to assemble a list of VN books for a young brother incarcerated and hungry for knowledge. so this is the partially annotated list i generated with the help of tuyen and loan who *actually* read the books during grad school. i am in awe of their big brains.

• Gangster we are all looking for by Le thi Diem Thuy. fiction. refugee. plotless poignant vignettes kinda like House on Mango Street or Wild Bully Burgers

• Before the Revolution: Vietnamese Peasants under the French by Nguyen Vinh Long b/c i hate the french and think all viet people should reconsider their francophilia. i never think of salt or tires the same way after reading this.

• Watermark: Vietnamese American Prose & poetry edited by Monique Truong

• Dream Shattered: Vietnamese gangs in America by Patrick Du Phuoc Long a counselor's social/cultural take on why kids join gangs

• Even the women must fight: memories of war from north vietnam by Karen Turner

• Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh (memoirs from a VC)

• Novel Without A Name by ThuHuong Duong contemporary Vietnam writer, unromantic gritty look at war, got her censored

• Diary of Dr. Dang Thuy Tram will be publish in English in 2007, the "Anne Frank" of Viet Nam, entire vietnamese text is here

out of print but really great anti-war writing from the 1970s. well worth it if you can find it.

• We Promise One Another: Poems from an Asian War. 1971. comp. Jacqueline Chagnon & George Luce written by Vinamese folks from all sides during the war and translated into English by Chris Jenkins and chị Tuyết. her woodblock print on the dedication page is tattooed on my back.
  

• Lotus in a Sea of Fire by Thich Nhat Hanh buddhist opposition to the war

• Women and revolution in vietnam by Arlene Eisen

• Women of vietnam by Arlene Eisen Bergman these two books are almost interchangeable.
  

• Reflections from Captivity by Phan Bội Châu, Hồ Chí Minh, edited Tran Khanh Tuyet, Christopher Jenkins poetry from two famous anti-colonizer patriots
  

my disclaimer is that i havent read any of the below but they sound good:

• From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath edited by Philip Mahoney American & Vinamese i assume
  

• Viet Nam: Borderless histories edited by Nhung Tuyet Tran prolly more academicky, non nation-state look at VN history, prolly inspired by the geo-body analysis of Thongchai Winichakul in Siam Mapped
  

• Vietnam an illustrated history by Shelton Woods

• Voices of Vietnamese Boat People oral historys

• People's History of the Vietnam war by Jonathon Neale (Howard Zinn follower, member of ISO, typical white hippy Left take on VN war)

• The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964-1966 by Robert Topmiller looks at the nonaligned third force, buddhist self-immolation against VN war

• Patriots: the Vietnam War remembered from all sides by Christian Appy

• Radical origins of the Vietnamese revolution

• Communist Road to Power in Vietnam

• Four Hours in My Lai my lai massacre

• Vietnamese women at war: fighting for Ho Chi Minh & the revolution by Sandra Taylor

• A country, not a war: Vietnam impressions by Harold Turner, travel writing

etchings of Hà Nội and Hội An

Rain on Lo River

Trần Nguyên Hiếu

artist whose artwork my siblings and i discovered in the piles of original-prints-for-sale at the Museum of Fine Arts gift shop. he is one of the only artists in VN to employ the aesthetic and method of etching. we all loved it, dropped down most of our spending money (in dollars!) and got prints. according to his artist statement:

In this works, cold and desultory lines alone, like strands of hair, when knit together become a refine and velvety carpet woven into a poetic, profound and harmonious image. The hands of the etching-artist are the meticulous hands of a jeweller in work which would stifle vibrant artistic feelings. Nevertheless, the ancient streets of Hanoi and Hoi An and the age-old trees in the countryside of Tran Nguyen Hieu have brought us to an aesthetic ecstasy and to an everlasting dissolution.

i'm not sure about the dissolution or ecstasy part--though in his naked lady/japan erotica series (warning NSFW!) certainly i believe the O-word may be apropos. but in his architectural city-/land-scapes, i think what captured my eye is the (post)modern obsession with capturing details photographically, the asymmetric/skewed perspectives (without being all picasso), element of timeless nostalgia/historic weightiness, the juxtaposition of ghostly negative images with a suspended present, the multiplicity of historic/cultural moments that comprise the timeless present and the alienating indifference of the etching method in gothic gangrenous washes from generations of monsoons and humidity.

though we all bought the "warmer" digestable HN cityscape prints, i find the more conceptual pieces intriguing. like the Lo River print above of a fishing village on the a vast river, the dual perspective of off-center bird's-eye-view and the vertical rain is disconcerting, vertiginous enough that it's hard to find one's ground. on a cognitive, visual processing level, i float above the scene. there's a melancholy tone to it and it puts me in mind of the vinamese fisherfolk moored in the Gulf off of Biloxi lost to the ocean's swells during Hurricane Katrina.

we did not see any prints that were this vivid in color (and somehow it doesn't seem right), this is a contemporary snapshot of a street and in the borders around it (click on the photo for enlargement), you can see the faint etchings of historical memory that haunt this lane.





O Quan Chuong Street

Văn Miếu elephant

Temple of Literature, Ha Noi, ca. 11th Century

Hà Nội musings

viei have decided to eschew the linear chronicle of my travels in favor of my usual expansive contextual soliloquys (and this blog is gonna remain a monologue until someone decides to post an engaging comment.) as with the female perspective on sex, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

--------------------------------------

Mornings in Hà Nội were a gradual circadian arousal to the urban chorus of roadrunner motorbirds chirping "meep meep" as they zipped along and the incessant trilling of construction. the sun rises earlier in the East, i swear. i was unreasonably up at 4 or 5am every day in VN, drowsily conscious of the ombre saturation at the apex of the kelly green curtains.

traffic in VN is dominated by the moped. it is the primary vehicle for the family sedan, jimmyrigged commercial transport, crisscrossing the city weaving with an unwritten ethos of humanism--perhaps its the lack of insurance underwriting that impels everyone to avoid an accident. the right-of-way seems to be determined by who is boldest. as US road rules hold, wherein one drives on the right-hand side of the road, turning left is very much like playing chicken into oncoming traffic. little vehicles, mopeds have to accomodate the larger ones. etiquette is that everyone honks to let others know that they are approaching. road rage (as in exiting your vehicle with psychopathic intent) doesn't seem to exist in VN no matter how crazy the traffic, no matter how many times you get cut off.

i had forgotten how thrilling the density and organized chaos is for a pedestrian. or perhaps i've just gotten older and bây giờ biết sợ learned a healthy dose of self-preservation as i later told our youngest aunty when she recounted my crazy SG xe mấy adventures to Uyên. nowadays, i wouldn't deliberately ride the wrong way with a fierce grin into thick traffic on Hoàng Văn Thủ--the busy artery entering SG--in order to drift to the right side of the street (which is the quickest tactic to get oriented to your desired direction rather than trying to merge into traffic going opposite to the way you want, drift over to the center and pull a U-Turn when there are no medians and therefore you expose both flanks to collision. it's better to see potential danger/opportunities approaching); nor drunkenly scale buildings with exposed live electrical wires anymore. i've mellowed. crossing a busy street, i found myself clinging to my companions as we crossed the street with a feigned nonchalance and a hop & sigh to safety.

after my first taxi ride, i remembered that i should never look forward into traffic to witness all the heart palpitating gasp near-misses, but to detach and look sideways, breathing deeply, beyond the teeming mass of mopeds a breath away, to the cityscape. it was fair to assume we wouldn't crash into a building. Hoàng's video game-derived strategy was to cheer on the taxi driver like a real life version of ViNa Grand Theft Auto "yeah, just hit her. runover the old lady."

back 2 nam | day 1

begin at the beginning
the first time i went home to Việt Nam--for though i was born in honolulu, for diaspora vinamese, no matter where you scattered on this earth, VN is our mecca, our magnetic orientation, when you go, you đi về, go home, anything else is ungrammatical, inconceivable--it was the new millenium and the 30th anniversary of the fall/liberation of Sài Gòn--depending on your perspective.

The Importance of Being Nguyển
i was anxious jittery insomniac, by myself, on a southeast asian studies travel grant downing gin&tonics as fast as the stewardesses could bring them (hey, they were free and the quinine in tonic has anti-malarial properties and didnt induce psychosis like cipro, ya savvy) on my way to reunite with the family i had never met having left VN in the safest passage--in utero. relative strangers, strange relatives. in a fit of brooding energy, i had shorn all my hair and dyed it rambutan red a few weeks prior with the consequence that i (with my first world lanimoo milk growth proportions) was depressingly taken for korean or russian throughout my trip. mostly the former. sigh.

i had had a window seat so i could witness the ocean waters recede and the landmass swell along with my hushed tears. inexplicable to my seatmates neck bent to see around me who probably wondered why this drunken krean girl was crying during descent. fragments of inherited memories and wartime documentaries, the visual dissonance of steel wings over verdant tetris mosaic landscape bringing not burning death to my people, but me. and then being thrust in the middle of a story--disoriented, woolly and exhausted in the gritty urban cacophony cement grist of Sài Gòn and the urgent sticky hands of taxi drivers hustling for a fare and of family members trying to grasp my newly emerged reality of flesh and bone after 30 years of imagining me from womb to now. not my romanticized home of origin. not Sài Gòn. Sài Gòn where my younger aunties and uncles had relocated to start a third life, to seek refuge in urban anonymity, after escaping the re-education concentration camps where life was so harsh that bà nội in her drunken haze dulling the pain of losing another child, this one to war's aftermath, tried to rat-poison the family gruel rather than see them suffer a laborious death from commie education... but then, where pray tell is home to a nomad from a many times uprooted refugee family scarred by memory?

in Qui Nhơn, after a lifetime of not physiognomically belonging to my Phạm-ily, i found pieces of myself that didn't belong anywhere else for 30 years, lost in an interminable railway cloakroom without semblance, parts that i could now label and say, oh i have cô Cẩm's cheekbones, cô Dung was my baby twin, that's bà nội's eyes, lips, calves and feet, i'm not a water-buffalo, i have ông nội's face shape and nose, oh i must look like dad, and oh i'm not adopted. i'm normal. i belong. i belong to these people. in their faces, i see myself. my kin. flesh and blood. con ta, i am their child. i am Home. crying during descent.

there and back again--san francisco to hà nội
i guess you could say that was The Hobbit trip of solitude, daring & bumbling outside my comfortable known world while the second was the Fellowship trip of companionship and adventure and ale. it's a stretch, i know. literary allusions are so tricksy.
this second trip at the onset of april, was hurried and decided upon only two weeks prior. the new year had brought us many sorrows--my husband's bà ngoại passed in january; after lunar new year, my niece died at birth and within mere days both my bà ngoại & bà nội had heart attacks, and my uncle-in-law was having ptsd post-VN war flashbacks triggered by a near-death experience. not the most auspicious of beginnings to the journey-of-a-lifetime.
so i was accompanied with my best friend spouse by my side. and we were to meet up with my best friends siblings Hoàng & Uyên in Hà Nội who arrived the day before. T's parents were our farewell entourage at SFO. so vinamee. except, where was the bánh mỳ ổ?
the flight was sober. having just returned from San Diego, abruptly deciding to do this, i had not pondered & obsessed. i did cut my hair just prior but in a proper fashion. i was considerably less agitated with existential angst than seven years ago. i slept obediently when i was supposed to though free movies are like crack to an occasional self-induced insomniac former latch-key-kid-TV-junkie. i am reformed in my 30s; the defiance my dad cultivated in me at a mellow ebb. though i can still hock a mean loogie. travel pillow and eyemask are my 30s travel must nowadays rather than gin&tonics. boring.

we left Sơn bay Nội Bài (airport) instant nouveau riche millionaires with đồng heating our waist belts and Bác Hồ smiling benignly on capitalism and third world depreciation. Nội Bài is located in the countryside 35km outside of HN. The taxi drive into HN is one of startling contrasts to a first worlder--modern highway flanked by lush ricefields being plowed by water buffaloes and farmers wearing nón lá as it was since time immemorial. concrete multi-level houses replaces the wood nostalgia of yesteryear. as we draw closer to the capitol, the billboards increase both in size and density. my favorite by far was the ginormous HONDA DREAM moped billboard with the little cartoon vinamese riding a xe máy with the bubble caption "I love Việt Nam".

the journey into HN had a beginning and an end. it had a story of economic development, privatization of state-owned lands, growing wealth disparities, and then expanding urbanization, unfolding for the eye/mind to take in and to ease the timezone spanning traveller into a semblance of presence.

we quickly checked in the Red Hotel just outside the central city and then met my siblings at the Vietnam Airlines office to purchase the next legs of our trip to QN and SG. i was heartgladdened to see them, both eyes brighter and somehow fresher for their temporary respite from reality--my bro emancipated from his wife and recently immigrated in-laws, and my sister on recess from her grieving. After the DMV number ticket game and musical chairs, we had our million-đồng tickets with third world tên lót glitch. there are a lot of Nguyểns in VN. bureaucrats are bureacrats the worldover. trivial details matter.

Second order of business: bún chả Hà Nội. it's just called bún chả while you are in HN. kinda like bún bò Huế. in Huế, i am told, it's just referred to as bún bò. duh. though i can normally eat only one or two pieces of deep fried anything before my gag reflex kicks in. i think i ate five. maybe more. somehow it was less greazy and the pork lighter. perhaps it was the freshness of locally raised morning slaughtered meat. yum.

though the imperial edict (Hoàng means emperor) was that the 4th & last day in HN shall be reserved for souvenir shopping, almost immediately, Hoàng and Uyên commenced haggling over lacquered chopstick sets. go figure. we got a good deal and a marble carved Đồng Sơn box. and then were suckers for having to drag them around all day. after admiring a sacred marvellous banyan tree, incongruously wedged between shops, within 30 seconds, my bro charms a street vendor into letting him borrow her yoke of fruit. pulls his vinamese abbey road stunt with the resulted in him having to buy the pineapples which tumbled from the baskets. mmm pineapples.

my sibs were creatures of habit and mindful of digestive constitution (we discussed our BMs alot) and so for the first two to three days, trung and i accompanied them to the same haunts. next in order, City View Cafe for our first delicious cà phê sữa đá (and even Trung who never drinks coffee enjoyed one every morning. metabolism runs different in VN) with a stunning panoramic view of Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, the heart of the city and watery home to the Golden Turtle who blessed VN with an Excalibur-like sword to deliver yet another liberatory victory against China in the 15th C. sense a historical theme and potential foreshadowing? yeah, keep in mind how iconic and sacred turtles are. they are one of the Tứ Linh/4 sacred animals--Rồng|dragon, Phương|phoenix, Rùa|turtle and Lân|unicorn. certainly not something you'd want o eat. but then boys will be boys.

i don't know if it was just the weather or the perpetual diesel fuelled smog over the city, but there were no sunsets or sunrises. just differentially lit grey.

in VN, palato-alveolar consonants identify a person's province (the general truism is that northerns have odd beginnings, centrallers have odd middles and southerners have odd ends. in a monosyllabic language that's the whole word in variation.) we ended the day with a seafood feast and giggly northern girl waitresses with sweet hummingbirdsong voices with their capitol-ist monopoly on being Northern that makes my ông bà ngoại's Nam Định dialect sound provincial--but then ông bà ngoại are rather proud of being country. overseas vinamese folks say the new HN accent is the coarse rural one from all those peasants who took power. bitter. its funny after growing up around southerners who fake a refined HN accent in elocution and our familial NĐ-QN mishmash, to hear the contemporary HN dialect and its soft and tinkly.

i could imagine how the West would get lulled into complacency by it and assume they could squash the spirit of a people who speak in the cadence of song, their cu li|coolies and congaïe*|con gái, le carte postale exotique du Indochine.

to them i say, Điện Biên Phủ suckah!


*anthro note: vinamese word for daughter or girl that the french corrupted to mean "a vietnamese concubine, mistress or wife". don't take my word for it, google that sh*t. my ông ngoại taught me the one word i needed to know--ghét with the most velar of fricatives that hocks a loogie.

Lessons in Vinamese Decisionmaking Process

SITUATION: how to make a vinamese plan of action for a decision involving more than one person.

WHO: anyone who is impacted, anyone with experience, guests, neighbors, third parties, anyone with an opinion (does not have to be present to participate).

WHAT/HOW:

1. engage in lengthy crosscutting discussions with all parties. weigh out all the options and variations conceivable with unstated assumptions based on self's reality and way of thinking. multiple onsite/offsite side conversations as well, sometimes via telephone or third parties. decisionmaking process is influenced by who is most experienced, most vocal, and/or high status/elder.*

2. come to understanding and consensus on plan of action with all parties.

3. all parties must them come to consensus about which party implements decision or which person(s) will delegate implementation of decision and who is ultimate implementor(s). implementor(s) does not have to be affiliated with decisionmaking process. additionally, other parties will take action on auxiliary actions needed to satisfactorily accomplish decision, usually involves significant quantities of food.

4. because of culturally-based cosmological flexibility (i.e. the epistemological lack of Platonic diametric binaries, absolutist Cartesian logic common in simplistic Western way of thinking and capitalist cultural understanding of time whereas multiple truths and realities co-exist simultaenously layered with animist, ancestral, Daoist, Confucian, Buddhist beliefs in complex Vinamese way of thinking**), each individual walks away with entirely different interpretation of what consensus entailed based on own reality, preference & assumptions and who was the most vocal and influential vis-a-vis self.

IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS:
implementor can then take any or all of the following options:
a) implement own understanding of the decision based on own reality, interpretation, assumptions & preferences. if they were not affiliated with consensus process, they will implement own interpretation of delegator's own interpretation which will vary from original interpretative decision consensus.
b) be influenced into implementing variation of own interpretation of decision consensus--possibly, but not always, one previously discussed in the descionmaking process--by entirely unaffiliated opinionated people or circumstantial shifts or vagaries of Life, Supply, and Bureaucracy in Viet Nam.

RESULT:
once decision is implemented, regardless of outcome, have conversation rehashing, processing and sometimes arguing about decisionmaking process, any and all deviations from one's own interpretation of consensus decision until mutual understanding and satisfaction is reached. conversation can take place over extended spans of time and can involve any parties named above and occasionally, wholly irrelevant parties who will insert their opinions as to an alternative course of action.

CONCLUSIONS (or my trademark Choose-Your-Own-Moral™)

• it takes an extended family of at least 3 generations, plus kin (based on marriage alliances 3-4 generations removed), and give or take some community members, totalling approximately 42 people to get 15 people (4 Viet Kieu and 11 uncles, aunties & cousins) on a combi to go on a mini-vacation road trip 20 km away. the absolute number and who attends is subject to change given (un)affiliated opinionated people, circumstantial shifts or vagaries of Life, Supply, and Bureaucracy in Viet Nam.
• there is no absolute Truth or Reality. Reality and Truth are context based.
  
• linguistics & anthropology dual bachelor's degree and doctorate-track anthropology grad school are put to amusing if inconsequential use thereby justifying the incurred debt from student loans. use-per-wear theory of finance would indicate that this blog is worth $1 every time it is read.
  
• and that my friends, is how we won the wars...
  

anthropological notes
* an elder/high status person can exercise decisive authority and make an autocratic decision at any point in the process which nevertheless will be subject to vagaries of Life, Supply and Bureaucracy.
**a linguistic or grammatical analogy is the lack of universal definitive articles 'a' or 'the' in vinamese language. articles are context-based on the being of the noun and fluctuate ('con' animate, 'cai' inanimate, 'qua'/'o' form, 'cap'/'chiec' set) or be entirely omitted. pronouns are also based on kinship context and flux according to the reality/status of the person speaking and that of the indicated person and under certain contexts can be entirely omitted or personal names used in its stead.

Viet Nam | lessons in irreverence

things not to make merry about while in Viet Nam:

• Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum

  ...or your patriotic taxi driver might drop you off at the exit end of the gated 5 acre enclosure 10 minutes before closing

• family planning

  ...procreating is a serious matter that involves your goddesses, your ancestors, your kin, and the government (official VN policy is that women are sanctioned to have no more than two children, between the ages of 24-35.)

• innuendos (when around elders)

  ...elders are very, very, very earnest. bawdy humor is best left amongst vinamese peers.

• how many wives your uncle-in-law has

  ...particularly when he has two

• matchmaking

  ...funny for you, crushed expectations for your little stars & stripey-eyed cousin

• what ethnicity your beau is

  ...make one small joke to one person about 1/32nd and sheesh, seven years later all fourscore and seven of 'em think its gospel and every single detail is just confirmation

• what kind of meat you want for dinner

  mmm...mouse in point

recycled scribblings on Katrina

the nice thing about being self-published is that you can always plagiarize yourself with impunity.

December 2005

i mused on this as i flew homeward from volunteering in the Gulf Coast post-Hurricane Katrina.

i love flying at night. the clusters of lights like a galaxy, milky way, a whole universe twinkling in the inky black landscape. being with the community in New Orleans was so important to me, like coming home more so than even going to Viet Nam in some ways. that spiritual connection and well-being that i recognized as i was leaving nourishess my soul i hope for a very very long time to come. and like the constellations in the skies above, our kindred souls destinies--duyên chúng ta--are forever linked...

across the gulf (tentative title)

soaring through the infinite universe on silvery wings
Hằng Nga lim dim
reflecting on starlight galaxies of humanity below and
ancestors clustered in indigo heavens above.
true umbra depths where heaven and earth cleave
to bear divine witness to human oaths.
Trời Thẳm Đất Dày.
Trời Đất ơi.

luminescent diasporas,
myriad constellations...
what binds one to the other across the cosmos
what is written in the stars with gossamer and stardust
duyên hải duyên kiếp duyên nợ duyên cớ
immaterial webs of Destiny, Affinity, Imagination,
Desire, Intention, Definition, and Love.
the cosmic connection of Life in those moments.

********

here is something i wrote to Bao P. about the aftermath of Katrina just the other day.

how does one weigh human tragedy and measure one against the other? Katrina in NoLa was napalm and Katrina in Biloxi (and other parts of Mississippi) was nuclear. and as little as we hear about the vinamese in NoLa, we hear not even whispers about Biloxi and the rural areas.

yes i genuinely sorrow for the viet community in Nola. the pulled-up-by-the-slipperstrap 3000sf suburban homes and once shiny status with suffering marked by floodlines and black mold. the trinity of fathers sheperding only their scattered flock (and one marmalade cat) for the third lifetime (1954, 1975, 2005) in the timeworn rituals of divine loving patriarchy and new mantles of social justice (for our people at least). and i can rejoice in how community survives again and again.

and i mourn for what remains in biloxi, the small cottages and thirdhand outfitted fleet of fisherfolk, obliterated. quan am in all her mercy could not shield them from the storm's wrath. the Sea delivered them to this country, and after 3 decades of providing sustenance, demanded its payment in human life. self-sufficient and meager lives give way to exploitative neon flashy casino jobs and cynicism. the temple crushed in the shadow of ancient pine. a grey monk, concussed and alone tends to all in need of help with ascetic laissez-faire. the monseigneur preaches god helps only those who help themselves and he for one is helping himself first above all. there is nothing there to mark the passage of time and suffering, there is only beached driftwood as far as the eye can see and the ants only rebuild far flashier casinos to take tithe from all. there, time stopped and life has not yet resumed. community scattered to the winds, up the mississippi river in search of low wage jobs without anchor nor oar.

katrina is the other face of the mother goddess, creation and destruction.