Dear Danang,
I am here, on your sand, staring out into the vast horizon. It has been so long. The sun is sinking, streaking the clouds orange. soon it will be dark.
I am watching the waves licking the shore. I am watching the wind blow the sand on and off my bare feet. I'm listening to you, listening to you sigh.
the lights from the resort are coming to life one by one. they cast orange patches on the sand. It is dark. Time and space seem to have condensed into one infinite moment. there is no one around except me and you, and the night guard. i can sense he is looking at my back, wondering. I wrap my arms around my knees and let you cradle me. it is my dream Danang, to be in your arms like this. to have this intimate moment with you, when you speak to me and me alone. but it doesn't feel right Danang. it doesn't feel quite right.
Two weeks from now I will be walking towards you, just that you are nowhere in sight. the green fence run along the road for kms. What used to take my aunt and uncle but 5 minutes' walk to touch your sand now takes us 20 minutes. and I can't help worrying that what little that's left of the beach will be walled up too.
What is going on Danang? Why are you becoming a coastal city where its people cannot even see the coast? What are they doing to you?
I am angry Danang. I'm angry that they sold you out so completely, that they made an expensive whore out of you. and I'm angry at my own hypocrisy, because when I sat on your white sand in my bikini and sunglasses I really didn't give a damn. i loved it. that you were so clean and spacious. that you were entirely for me for the time being, while I could still afford the 4-star bill.
But those people out there, who grew up breathing the salt in your wind, and woke up to the sound of your waves, when will they earn enough to be able to touch you again? And the people whose houses are demolished, who I will witness holding out with the little that's left as their surroundings disappear and their neighborhoods are mowed down to make space for 5-star resorts. What are they moving for?
Vớt Trăng
Mỗi lần nước triều lên cả bãi cát ngập lút đầu gối. Con ông Đồng không hiểu mắc chứng gì mà cứ đến rằm là lại vác gậy, vác lưới ra bãi biển vớt trăng. Nó thức cả đêm cứ lội cho đến khi nước đến cổ đến cằm không lội được nữa mới thôi. Cứ chọc rồi vớt, chọc rồi vớt. Trăng tan ra từng mảnh, chảy lai láng theo sóng dạt vào bờ.
Khi trăng lên cao và ra xa bờ thằng nhỏ cứ đứng nhìn. Lội không nổi nữa nhưng nó không nỡ về. Cứ đứng nhìn trăng tan thành bọt sóng rồi lại hợp. Tháng nào cũng như tháng nào, có cái ngày như vậy. Vợ chồng ông Đồng đến rằm là lại tất tả lo cúng vái, trong lòng nơm nớp sơ thằng nhỏ bị sóng cuốn ra khơi. Chăng hiểu sao nó lại thế. Ngày thường nó vẫn sinh hoạt nói năng bình thường. Chỉ có ngày rằm là lại ngẩn ra, tay cầm lưới, tay cầm gậy, cười khanh khách chạy theo trăng trên mặt nước. Ai ngăn cũng không được. Ai theo thì bị nó đuổi. Hồi trước ông bà lo quá ngủ không được, cứ đứng từ xa ngóng con. Nhưng riết rồi 5 năm, 10 năm, nó thành cái lệ, ông bà cũng chịu. Thờ cúng thắp nhang vái lạy cầu trời khấn Phật, chỉ biết thế thôi.
Thằng con ông Đồng lội ra giữa nước triều, đến lúc chỉ còn nó, nước, bóng trăng và màn tối của đêm mỏng dính trên vai. Nó nhìn trăng nhoẻn miệng cười, đập mặt nước cho trăng vỡ ra từng mảnh, giơ tay vớt từng miếng xát lên da thấy mùi mặn của muối. Nó chà nghĩ là làm vậy để làm gì, chỉ bổng thấy người nhẹ tênh, lơ lửng lơ lửng. Cứ thế nó vùng vẫy dưới trăng, tắm trong muối và bạc, cảm giác nhẹ lửng lơ. Cái cõi đêm lăng im chứa bao nhiêu thứ mà cái đầu nó không lý giải được. Chỉ thấy sao no cả người, cả dạ, cà hồn. Đập cho trăng tan thành từng mảnh bắn lên mặt lên cổ. Đập thỏa chí. Vớt rồi lại xát mạnh vào da. Mát lạnh. Cứ thế cho hết đêm.
Sáng ra nước rút nó tỉnh dậy trên cát, cái đầu cái thân lại nặng như gạch nung. Nhưng đưa bàn tay lên lật qua lật lại dưới nắng sớm sao vẫn còn lấp lánh ánh bạc.
Khi trăng lên cao và ra xa bờ thằng nhỏ cứ đứng nhìn. Lội không nổi nữa nhưng nó không nỡ về. Cứ đứng nhìn trăng tan thành bọt sóng rồi lại hợp. Tháng nào cũng như tháng nào, có cái ngày như vậy. Vợ chồng ông Đồng đến rằm là lại tất tả lo cúng vái, trong lòng nơm nớp sơ thằng nhỏ bị sóng cuốn ra khơi. Chăng hiểu sao nó lại thế. Ngày thường nó vẫn sinh hoạt nói năng bình thường. Chỉ có ngày rằm là lại ngẩn ra, tay cầm lưới, tay cầm gậy, cười khanh khách chạy theo trăng trên mặt nước. Ai ngăn cũng không được. Ai theo thì bị nó đuổi. Hồi trước ông bà lo quá ngủ không được, cứ đứng từ xa ngóng con. Nhưng riết rồi 5 năm, 10 năm, nó thành cái lệ, ông bà cũng chịu. Thờ cúng thắp nhang vái lạy cầu trời khấn Phật, chỉ biết thế thôi.
Thằng con ông Đồng lội ra giữa nước triều, đến lúc chỉ còn nó, nước, bóng trăng và màn tối của đêm mỏng dính trên vai. Nó nhìn trăng nhoẻn miệng cười, đập mặt nước cho trăng vỡ ra từng mảnh, giơ tay vớt từng miếng xát lên da thấy mùi mặn của muối. Nó chà nghĩ là làm vậy để làm gì, chỉ bổng thấy người nhẹ tênh, lơ lửng lơ lửng. Cứ thế nó vùng vẫy dưới trăng, tắm trong muối và bạc, cảm giác nhẹ lửng lơ. Cái cõi đêm lăng im chứa bao nhiêu thứ mà cái đầu nó không lý giải được. Chỉ thấy sao no cả người, cả dạ, cà hồn. Đập cho trăng tan thành từng mảnh bắn lên mặt lên cổ. Đập thỏa chí. Vớt rồi lại xát mạnh vào da. Mát lạnh. Cứ thế cho hết đêm.
Sáng ra nước rút nó tỉnh dậy trên cát, cái đầu cái thân lại nặng như gạch nung. Nhưng đưa bàn tay lên lật qua lật lại dưới nắng sớm sao vẫn còn lấp lánh ánh bạc.
September 21, 2008
We climb out the window
and perch on the sill,
giggling like high school delinquents.
The smoke rises and the vodka sinks
and the ship sways to the sound of the night
moon melting on the water.
And the shadows of the surrounding cliffs
cast over us
a soft indigo shade of security
of peace and happiness
and we're back in a space where we're content to be, to be happy
and self sufficient.
Where your company
wraps mine and mine embraces yours
and there is nothing to worry about
no other place we wish to be
no person from another time
who we wish had continued loving us.
Just you and me.
Though we know tomorrow
even if we hold hands and splash head first into the water
it will be once again your world
apart from mine
But tonight,
we melt with moonshine and fire water.
and perch on the sill,
giggling like high school delinquents.
The smoke rises and the vodka sinks
and the ship sways to the sound of the night
moon melting on the water.
And the shadows of the surrounding cliffs
cast over us
a soft indigo shade of security
of peace and happiness
and we're back in a space where we're content to be, to be happy
and self sufficient.
Where your company
wraps mine and mine embraces yours
and there is nothing to worry about
no other place we wish to be
no person from another time
who we wish had continued loving us.
Just you and me.
Though we know tomorrow
even if we hold hands and splash head first into the water
it will be once again your world
apart from mine
But tonight,
we melt with moonshine and fire water.
the dead between the living
Monday August 10th. We got to the burial ground on mom's side of the family a little before noon. The sun beat down on the sand and the heat rose up, and black grasshoppers sprung back and forth before our eyes, between the world of those beneath the earth and that of our own.
My grandparents were born in the same village and grew up watching the same fishing boats leave and return each afternoon. They played on the same sand banks and walked the same narrow twisting dirt roads, and I am tempted to say they were childhood sweethearts, but they weren't. love in the traditional sense was something you learned after marriage and grew into. love came with responsibility, with knowing that your lives were tied to each other and there was little else but to make the most of it. it came with no guarantee and was often confused with the sheer convenience of being together, like two pieces of wood leaning on each other. talking one away will cause the other to fall.
I don't know when they started loving each other but in his old age my grandpa wrote poems to my grandma, etched with sentimentality and gratitude that she existed in his life. and when he died 5 years ago her heart broke. but she went on living, struggling with having to stand alone with the weight of 86 years on her shoulder. a weight so heavy it injured her spinal cord and confined her to bed.
After they got married my grandparents moved from town to town with the escalation of the war, chased by air-raids that ripped the sky and burst open the earth. Once a bomb shattered the ground and half buried my grandma. But she survived and perhaps when i was a child people still talked war but i never paid attention. the stories never seemed real, never seemed believable. How can words be enough.
Coming from the same village their families were buried in the same graveyard. And we stood, daughters and sons, grandsons and granddaughters, heads bowed in front of the main altar, 3 sticks of incense between our hands, shook them and prayed. The oldest tomb in the family dates back to pre-Tran, roughly 900 years ago. We go way back.
I had always considered this ritual a custom, a way of life but by now have to reassess it as a religion. People in Vietnam travel great distance back to the family burial ground and altar partly to pay respect, and partly to ask for protection and guidance. There is a firm belief that those who'd loved and protected you all their lives will continue doing so after death. Blood ties are stronger than steel rods, enough to penetrate the wall between life and death.
My uncle died from a car accident last year. My mom whispered that the fortune teller said his time was up many years ago but some great great aunt in the family held some high position in the other world and has protected him until then. I told her so even in the world of the dead there is still hierarchy? Life is never fair. neither is death. The Vietnamese sense of heaven and hell so closely resembles the system of a monarchy. There is a king for each world and different levels of aristocracies below.
My aunts and uncles brought fruit and flowers, and a lot of paper money, paper clothing, paper hats, paper suppliants for the dead. Paper so they can be burnt and transferred to the other world. But i kept wondering what makes them think live people can print money for the dead. and if the dead still need money to survive they're probably not doing too well. A lot of things we do are remnants of the past, done half out of tradition and half out of fear. What if it's true? that the dead need money? if we don't provide our ancestors with what we can then they will suffer... that kind of mentality.
There are the rich dead and the poor dead; the remembered and the forgotten; the released--those who cross safely to the other world, as well those who're left behind--who died on a bad day at a bad hour and missed the boat, condemned to eternal wanderings between the living and the not. These lost souls then returned to their families or villages to voice their bitterness. My paternal grandma talked of the woman in her village who returned to haunt her husband's new wife, entering the poor woman's body and commanded that the family keep things in order. shouting. screaming Do you know who I am?
I wonder if the dead bore nationalities like we do, even though the nation state is a modern concept. maybe they're regional instead. Perhaps when you die you become what's left of your imagination. and those who lacked it lacked ways out.
It started drizzling but the paper offerings continued to burn, until black ashes got stirred up by the wind and stuck to our clothes. We got back into the car and headed for the Nguyen family temple. I have a family temple on each side of the family - the Nguyen temple on mom's side, and the Bui temple on dad's side. The Vietnamese family follow the paternal system and thus, technically, I belong to the Bui temple. but we always visit both sides.
We swept through the Nguyen temple and placed our offerings of food and drink on the altar. Phoenix and dragons curved the walls in bright colorful paint strokes, and Chinese verses praising filial piety hung from the ceiling and along the columns of the building in pairs. People in the family who still live in the village take turns maintaining the place. A Rules and Regulations on Entering hung at the entrance with last February's lunar new year guarding shifts pinned next to it. On the last day of the old year and the first of the new the temple was to be attended to at all times.
The temple head put on his silk ao dai and sounded the drum to call up the ancestors. Everyone got on their knees and bowed. the smell of incense filled the place.
The dead in Vietnam live among the living. so that if you're masturbating you can't help feeling that maybe your ancestor's standing at the foot of the bed disapproving. and if you're tempted to lie about your origin, not out of shame, simply just to lie, to imagine being anything else, you see your grandpa sit up in his grave and curse what have i done that you'd reject me? So on. But people not only fear the dead. they turn to them to consult all sorts of matters. There is the phenomenon of psychics who let the dead speak through their bodies, or who call up the dead and install them into family members so they can talk. And in the cases when the dead do speak through such manner, people whose words no one listened to when they were alive suddenly become precious teachings.
My mom has been to one of such psychic sessions and recalled with awe. i listened, neither agreeing or disagreeing. life is a big mystery. so sure, why not add a little more mystery. and the more dimensions we bring to it, perhaps the more interesting.
Ancestor worship, it's so deeply ingrained in the Vietnamese way of life. my friend's sister was baptized last year but she still prayed to the ancestors before each major examinations. today the moon is full, my grandma brought flowers and fruits for the altar and lit the incense. the smell permeates the house, making me wonder how long tradition will last. whether I will do the same each full moon like my parents and their parents and their grandparents used to do. i'd looked at the practice with interest but up until now the idea of carrying them out has never really occurred. but if i stop the tradition perhaps the ancestors will be lonely...
My grandparents were born in the same village and grew up watching the same fishing boats leave and return each afternoon. They played on the same sand banks and walked the same narrow twisting dirt roads, and I am tempted to say they were childhood sweethearts, but they weren't. love in the traditional sense was something you learned after marriage and grew into. love came with responsibility, with knowing that your lives were tied to each other and there was little else but to make the most of it. it came with no guarantee and was often confused with the sheer convenience of being together, like two pieces of wood leaning on each other. talking one away will cause the other to fall.
I don't know when they started loving each other but in his old age my grandpa wrote poems to my grandma, etched with sentimentality and gratitude that she existed in his life. and when he died 5 years ago her heart broke. but she went on living, struggling with having to stand alone with the weight of 86 years on her shoulder. a weight so heavy it injured her spinal cord and confined her to bed.
After they got married my grandparents moved from town to town with the escalation of the war, chased by air-raids that ripped the sky and burst open the earth. Once a bomb shattered the ground and half buried my grandma. But she survived and perhaps when i was a child people still talked war but i never paid attention. the stories never seemed real, never seemed believable. How can words be enough.
Coming from the same village their families were buried in the same graveyard. And we stood, daughters and sons, grandsons and granddaughters, heads bowed in front of the main altar, 3 sticks of incense between our hands, shook them and prayed. The oldest tomb in the family dates back to pre-Tran, roughly 900 years ago. We go way back.
I had always considered this ritual a custom, a way of life but by now have to reassess it as a religion. People in Vietnam travel great distance back to the family burial ground and altar partly to pay respect, and partly to ask for protection and guidance. There is a firm belief that those who'd loved and protected you all their lives will continue doing so after death. Blood ties are stronger than steel rods, enough to penetrate the wall between life and death.
My uncle died from a car accident last year. My mom whispered that the fortune teller said his time was up many years ago but some great great aunt in the family held some high position in the other world and has protected him until then. I told her so even in the world of the dead there is still hierarchy? Life is never fair. neither is death. The Vietnamese sense of heaven and hell so closely resembles the system of a monarchy. There is a king for each world and different levels of aristocracies below.
My aunts and uncles brought fruit and flowers, and a lot of paper money, paper clothing, paper hats, paper suppliants for the dead. Paper so they can be burnt and transferred to the other world. But i kept wondering what makes them think live people can print money for the dead. and if the dead still need money to survive they're probably not doing too well. A lot of things we do are remnants of the past, done half out of tradition and half out of fear. What if it's true? that the dead need money? if we don't provide our ancestors with what we can then they will suffer... that kind of mentality.
There are the rich dead and the poor dead; the remembered and the forgotten; the released--those who cross safely to the other world, as well those who're left behind--who died on a bad day at a bad hour and missed the boat, condemned to eternal wanderings between the living and the not. These lost souls then returned to their families or villages to voice their bitterness. My paternal grandma talked of the woman in her village who returned to haunt her husband's new wife, entering the poor woman's body and commanded that the family keep things in order. shouting. screaming Do you know who I am?
I wonder if the dead bore nationalities like we do, even though the nation state is a modern concept. maybe they're regional instead. Perhaps when you die you become what's left of your imagination. and those who lacked it lacked ways out.
It started drizzling but the paper offerings continued to burn, until black ashes got stirred up by the wind and stuck to our clothes. We got back into the car and headed for the Nguyen family temple. I have a family temple on each side of the family - the Nguyen temple on mom's side, and the Bui temple on dad's side. The Vietnamese family follow the paternal system and thus, technically, I belong to the Bui temple. but we always visit both sides.
We swept through the Nguyen temple and placed our offerings of food and drink on the altar. Phoenix and dragons curved the walls in bright colorful paint strokes, and Chinese verses praising filial piety hung from the ceiling and along the columns of the building in pairs. People in the family who still live in the village take turns maintaining the place. A Rules and Regulations on Entering hung at the entrance with last February's lunar new year guarding shifts pinned next to it. On the last day of the old year and the first of the new the temple was to be attended to at all times.
The temple head put on his silk ao dai and sounded the drum to call up the ancestors. Everyone got on their knees and bowed. the smell of incense filled the place.
The dead in Vietnam live among the living. so that if you're masturbating you can't help feeling that maybe your ancestor's standing at the foot of the bed disapproving. and if you're tempted to lie about your origin, not out of shame, simply just to lie, to imagine being anything else, you see your grandpa sit up in his grave and curse what have i done that you'd reject me? So on. But people not only fear the dead. they turn to them to consult all sorts of matters. There is the phenomenon of psychics who let the dead speak through their bodies, or who call up the dead and install them into family members so they can talk. And in the cases when the dead do speak through such manner, people whose words no one listened to when they were alive suddenly become precious teachings.
My mom has been to one of such psychic sessions and recalled with awe. i listened, neither agreeing or disagreeing. life is a big mystery. so sure, why not add a little more mystery. and the more dimensions we bring to it, perhaps the more interesting.
Ancestor worship, it's so deeply ingrained in the Vietnamese way of life. my friend's sister was baptized last year but she still prayed to the ancestors before each major examinations. today the moon is full, my grandma brought flowers and fruits for the altar and lit the incense. the smell permeates the house, making me wonder how long tradition will last. whether I will do the same each full moon like my parents and their parents and their grandparents used to do. i'd looked at the practice with interest but up until now the idea of carrying them out has never really occurred. but if i stop the tradition perhaps the ancestors will be lonely...
Dislocation
Saigon rain. The very rain I had romanticized about in my writings 3 years ago seemed to sink my soul as I roamed the street, feeling incredibly lost between the lines and lines of motorbikes in this city. Everything seems to be happening behind a glass screen and I exist in a different sphere. Everything seems to be floating and perhaps when I have space I will hang my canvases up and draw floating circles because that is how I feel. Because all the lines that I tried to draw yesterday kept tangling up into a mess. And I find myself climbing back into bed, a heap of flesh and bones twisted out of shape and spirit. I act like a rejected lover, though without the comfort of romance.
When people tell me to go paint walls and portraits, the image of Aki smashing plates and walking on the shatters loop at the back of my head. I'd like to smash a few prejudices and preconceptions.
Ahh...there is no use complaining. I need to gather myself up and start rolling. There are still so many books to read, movies to see, people to find... I need to find people like Laura, whose excitement turns into rapid whispers, whose eyes gleam with fire when we talk life. and beauty. and art. and i mean art - a serious attempt at love and life, thoughts and feelings. not wall decorations.
When people tell me to go paint walls and portraits, the image of Aki smashing plates and walking on the shatters loop at the back of my head. I'd like to smash a few prejudices and preconceptions.
Ahh...there is no use complaining. I need to gather myself up and start rolling. There are still so many books to read, movies to see, people to find... I need to find people like Laura, whose excitement turns into rapid whispers, whose eyes gleam with fire when we talk life. and beauty. and art. and i mean art - a serious attempt at love and life, thoughts and feelings. not wall decorations.
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