The construction is coming to an end. Tomorrow they tile the floor.
The workers, their clothes hang from make-shift lines on both balconies. There're 2 women and a baby among the crew. Mother and child and grandchild. The girl's only 22 and her baby's a few months old. He sleeps soundly despite all the noise. I'd never once seen him cry.
The older woman looked at me and observed Girls your age, they're all married and with kids already. I laughed and shook my head. She helps around with light works such as scrubbing and cleaning, or painting the window frames. and along with her daughter, with a small electric stove in one corner of the room upstairs, they feed the crew
The older woman, she has 5 daughters, the oldest is 28 and the youngest 19. Four of them are married and one is a divorcee. She said it's more comfortable being by herself. She can go wherever she wants whenever, do whatever. We have interested suitors but she no longer wants to live with a man...
The crew sleep on the floor, side by side with the dismantled doors and glass panels. The baby sleeps in a hammock in the small room. His mother by his side on the floor, singing him songs. People scattered on the floor and clothes flapping on the line outside the windows. A boy's name embroidered above the right pocket of a white shirt, a shirt from secondary school maybe, burned red under the neon street light.
The girl once asked me will it be just you staying here? I blushed and mumbled no, my friends as well...
It's so big, she smiled and looked around the room, eyes wide.
and I blushed.
ahhh life.
When I woke up at 6 this morning it was pouring. it continued raining until after lunch, and even after it stopped the sky and the air and the houses, everything looked gray.
i dropped by the house in the afternoon. They'd finished raising the floor 30cms. I will be safe from the waters from the street for the next year or two. until they raise the street and the cycle repeats. That area--the streets flood every time it pours, and even when it doesn't pour the streets still flood from the river's rising tide...
They were painting the walls when I entered. For some reason they were painting my bedroom pinkish purple when I'm certain I chose brownish orange. i'm not quite sure how I feel about purple and pink...
purple and pink...
pink and purple.......
oh my.
i dropped by the house in the afternoon. They'd finished raising the floor 30cms. I will be safe from the waters from the street for the next year or two. until they raise the street and the cycle repeats. That area--the streets flood every time it pours, and even when it doesn't pour the streets still flood from the river's rising tide...
They were painting the walls when I entered. For some reason they were painting my bedroom pinkish purple when I'm certain I chose brownish orange. i'm not quite sure how I feel about purple and pink...
purple and pink...
pink and purple.......
oh my.
i really hate it when you're forced to say what you feel and when you finally said it it doesn't sound quite true or right. because in the end you don't really know for sure what it is that you feel about them. there is the outer layer of feeling, the inner in-between layers, then the hidden layers deep deep inside. and as you ransack through the whole pile all you get is confusion. but no, they want an answer. and now that they have one neither side is happy...
when it doesn't rain i like to climb on the roof and let be. on the rooftop you can watch the lights in the neighborhood gradually seep into darkness and the lights from the broadcasting station in the distance blink on and off. you hear the sounds of occasional motorbikes roar from the street. and you smell the wind and see the shadows of the tree in the neighbor's house bow at you from the opposite wall, bobbing up and down.
someone's forgotten laundry billows on the line.
on the rooftop you sit and watch and wait for nothing. your mind concentrates solely on the small details illuminated in the night. and suddenly the sky is all around you and you are floating.
waiting for nothing.
when it doesn't rain i like to climb on the roof and let be. on the rooftop you can watch the lights in the neighborhood gradually seep into darkness and the lights from the broadcasting station in the distance blink on and off. you hear the sounds of occasional motorbikes roar from the street. and you smell the wind and see the shadows of the tree in the neighbor's house bow at you from the opposite wall, bobbing up and down.
someone's forgotten laundry billows on the line.
on the rooftop you sit and watch and wait for nothing. your mind concentrates solely on the small details illuminated in the night. and suddenly the sky is all around you and you are floating.
waiting for nothing.
My brother killed a cockroach and left it at the doorway. dead. we have not been talking for several days it seems. and even though i said i don't care perhaps i do.
yesterday, while cooking i dropped a glass bowl and it shattered into a hundred pieces. or maybe a hundred and one. all over. while pink floyd played comfortably numbed in the background. and for the first time i understood what it meant--to be comfortably numbed.
It is easy to see how people gradually give up and just take the convenient way out.
i read and watch a movie each day to fill up the emptiness. i'm scared of losing myself. of forgetting. of becoming them. not that i'm much different. but you can never be too careful. people are conditioned to change and adapt. but too much adaptation becomes conformation or indifference.
But good writings and good movies, they take you out of your cramped and narrow little shell and give you space. they keep you wondering after the last page, after the credits have scrolled through. and you feel madly alive. madly depressed. delirious with joy. nauseated with excitement. all at once. because it was so beautiful told--all the happy and sad strands of life, and because it had touched something deep inside of you and for a moment filled up the void of existence.
And that dose of life this week was Kieslowski's Dekalog 1. And for that, i cheer to the pirated dvds industry in Vietnam. There are Kiesklowski, Hitchcock, Godard, Renoir, etc. complete collections available at affordable prices. The quality is of course not the best but the fact that they are available is good enough.
I am not religious in any sense and do not think much of the 10 commandments but that is not the point when watching Dekalog. First of all, it is amazing how every shot is so well framed. The colors and the music coil into one beautiful harmony in conveying the mood. and the characters--Kieslowski has a way of bringing out the subtlest details in their faces, their emotions underneath.
I can still see the man by the fire, staring coldly, so coldly outward.
yesterday, while cooking i dropped a glass bowl and it shattered into a hundred pieces. or maybe a hundred and one. all over. while pink floyd played comfortably numbed in the background. and for the first time i understood what it meant--to be comfortably numbed.
It is easy to see how people gradually give up and just take the convenient way out.
i read and watch a movie each day to fill up the emptiness. i'm scared of losing myself. of forgetting. of becoming them. not that i'm much different. but you can never be too careful. people are conditioned to change and adapt. but too much adaptation becomes conformation or indifference.
But good writings and good movies, they take you out of your cramped and narrow little shell and give you space. they keep you wondering after the last page, after the credits have scrolled through. and you feel madly alive. madly depressed. delirious with joy. nauseated with excitement. all at once. because it was so beautiful told--all the happy and sad strands of life, and because it had touched something deep inside of you and for a moment filled up the void of existence.
And that dose of life this week was Kieslowski's Dekalog 1. And for that, i cheer to the pirated dvds industry in Vietnam. There are Kiesklowski, Hitchcock, Godard, Renoir, etc. complete collections available at affordable prices. The quality is of course not the best but the fact that they are available is good enough.
I am not religious in any sense and do not think much of the 10 commandments but that is not the point when watching Dekalog. First of all, it is amazing how every shot is so well framed. The colors and the music coil into one beautiful harmony in conveying the mood. and the characters--Kieslowski has a way of bringing out the subtlest details in their faces, their emotions underneath.
I can still see the man by the fire, staring coldly, so coldly outward.
the day swirls
Life in Vietnam. Life within the family. Life hanging vegetables and cooking T-shirts. I serve everyone boiled rice for dinner and poached veggies for lunch. I patch up parts of different songs and sing them loud. Somewhere a rooster crows along in rhythm. and the dogs howl, out of rhythm. those dogs, they never have any sense of rhythm.
Tomorrow a group of nuns from a nearby temple move in next door. They wear gray and keep to themselves. They will see me swirl on the roof and shake their heads. Poor creature, she's losing it. but I'll keep right on swirling.
Tomorrow I will gather the raindrops and sow them into a long necklace. so long that it'll wind around my neck twice. and when it sparkles the nuns will burst into laughter.
Tomorrow I will line those scrambling cockroaches up and teach them how to march. and they will march in perfect lines when you come. You will be astonished.
Today I am wearing a spring dress. It billows under the fan and I feel like a fresh daffodil. You, you will be walking through the dried autumn leaves, and they will crunch my thoughts under your feet. but you wouldn't understand. you'd simply walk on.
Tomorrow a group of nuns from a nearby temple move in next door. They wear gray and keep to themselves. They will see me swirl on the roof and shake their heads. Poor creature, she's losing it. but I'll keep right on swirling.
Tomorrow I will gather the raindrops and sow them into a long necklace. so long that it'll wind around my neck twice. and when it sparkles the nuns will burst into laughter.
Tomorrow I will line those scrambling cockroaches up and teach them how to march. and they will march in perfect lines when you come. You will be astonished.
Today I am wearing a spring dress. It billows under the fan and I feel like a fresh daffodil. You, you will be walking through the dried autumn leaves, and they will crunch my thoughts under your feet. but you wouldn't understand. you'd simply walk on.
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