“If sad were a drug, i would be high as fuck” was printed on the t-shirt of my friend Le the waitress from Circle Cafe who proudly displayed this metaphor in a selfie video on her fb page. You would have to know the quiet, painfully shy, but exquisitely beautiful young woman to fully appreciate how unexpected it was to find this quote - but there you have have it · VN in a nutshell. It will have been 2 1/2 years when i blast off from Saigon, most of my time spent in Hoi An, a boutique’y World Heritage site overrun by digital vagabonds, and foreigners - from the most venal and shallow to the most benign and high minded - all of us sharing one thing, we don’t belong. Though Hoi An is understood historically as Faifo - ‘friendly meeting place’ · the era of covid has rended the ancient fabric such that a painful delusion has risen like smoke from dirty wood that it is lost without the freebie income of the tourist. It breaks my heart to see this misconception anointed, propagated, and kowtowed to when there is so much left to do by the heart and soul of the town - its people.
I am sore like i’ve never been, yet healed in ways i wouldn’t have believed possible 2 years ago. I am mended not by magic, but by the simple product of superior reasoning. For example, some 7 years ago walking the gentle inclines of Montevideo, i developed a hitch in my step wherein i would falter as though someone had buckled my knee from behind. I couldn’t know at the time it was the convergence of a perfect storm of growing old, and being visited by past due accounts from ancient injuries. By the time i’d arrived in Hoi An, my condition manifested in agonizing sciatica - if only. Walking became unbearable and i was only able to exist through the friendly offices of my trusty steed, Xe đạp (bicycle). I resigned myself to an abbreviated future and the indignities of old age as an invalid, except . .. through happenstance and dumb luck i found myself in the hands of Doctor Tam an empathic physiotherapist who was able, based on a remarkable comprehension of the human anatomy commenced a regime of spine stretches, adjustments and manipulation of my short-leg, wherein i began to understand my rocklike spine of yore, was more like a piece of corrugated tin that had corkscrewed over time and pinched the pelvis such that pain was the only place i able to walk without mindfulness.
I now sit in a corporate coffee shop on the corner down from my hotel trying to organize the last details of my journey so i may remain mindful of the viral scourge devouring our planet lung by lung during the interminable waiting that air travel has become. The friends i am leaving in the small seaside town where i found safe haven weigh heavily on my mind, yet the certain knowledge they bid me bon voyage will make my journey more than tolerable. The feelings i have cannot be fathomed in a 6 paragraph essay, so i hope for the unrehearsed candor of speaking from the heart. I have not only been healed in my time here in Viet Nam, but i feel to have grown in ways i didn’t expect, not for lack of trying, just not converging with the proper elements that nurture growth. Nor do i know anymore what those elements are exactly. I do know that love is key; not the gobsmacking romantic variety which knocked me on my keister here, but the unremitting relentless ever present one-love that pulses through all the star dust of our planet. There is no other explanation for the transfiguration of my soul - i am not the same man that arrived 2 !/2 years ago; nor am i better or worse just different; different may be the wrong word - ‘more so’ better explains my feelings.
Just now, for example the Mocha that caused me to return to this ca phe shop where i finally met the woman who had originally been the reason for my journey to Viet Nam, lacked the one ingredient for which i had returned - chocolate. Rather than rail, i drank it. It is the same for being deported, as much as i had deemed here home - it did not deem me so. I have not failed, and the country is more than wise to diminish the foreign presence, not because that presence is inherently foul, but some plants need proper nutrients to flourish and the socialist culture bought and paid for with the righteous reasoning of Uncle Ho is worthy of better food than the contaminated fare proffered by a collapsing empire. Last night i had takeaway pizza that was execrable. On its face it sounded perfect, its glossy ad appeared lush, delicious even humanistic, but because all the establishment had for a business model was the conceit of its foreign investors, the experience failed from top to bottom: service, logistics, food, to follow up. Rather than being guided by the deep pockets of fatuous foreign influence, i would advocate the leaders of Viet Nam marshal home grown wherewithal and rally the native entrepreneurial spirit - that indomitable will which using bicycle power vanquished the most powerful military force known to the planet.
I can’t say whether i will ever return, but one thing is certain the ineffable and unknowable magic that aided me during my stay will never be lost as long as i draw breath. There is a fair likelihood that my departure will sound a death knell for my existence - a smoker running the international Covid gauntlet - so be it. I feel fulfilled and am at peace with my fate, as much as a man in my shoes can be. However, i feel the spirit of my life has been rekindled and i venture forth not as a hangdog acolyte seeking what is missing from my life but with curiosity to find what i have missed in my narrow focus life of ambition heretofore. I have no ambition but to delve deeper into what i don’t understand - just about everything; curiosity has returned to my being, or better, has been uncovered from its complacent lair. The birth family of my youth mimics conceit within which my culture has cloaked itself, even the act of inquiry for my ‘learned kin’ has become a desiccated social form adhered to like the latest fad or some arcane litany from a dead faith rather than the mystery and awe that deep love demands - a love that has been cruelly coopted by the well compensated Ad-Men adherents of Edward Bernays and his merry band of psychopathic sycophants fronting for Profit.Inc.
No doubt i could be just one more disaffected wanderer deep in his cups of sour grapes, for i certainly feel like the 9 year-old me who didn’t get picked for the noonday softball. Or it is that i am a wizened veteran from the culture wars rueing the short-sided plunge of a once noble nation chasing the chimera of ease which the digital wizards and their mercantile handmaidens have fashioned, from all but candor, about the shackles ‘like’ buttons and such actually are? I don’t know, nor do i much care, i’ve far exceeded my 10,000 requisite hours of studio time and now find myself with new sight that i didn’t realize i’d lost - it makes me kind of horny, but i’ve never been far from that dimension of our ineffable existence. For a time i toyed with the idea of traveling to Tieu Hieu Pagoda as a supplicant and beseeching one far wiser than i to live and die within the sangha of monastic life. I may never know if that was ‘the road not taken,’ or whether by some mystery in this universe of awe we are passing through that my spirit guides have provided a few more moments of discovery which i have invariably found through the act of interpreting our material plane using the filter of my physical being in the throes of a spiritual experience. Perhaps it is not for me to know, but to find out by remaining as open as i know how using the feeble senses with which i've been blessed; will keep you posted;
when i know, you’ll know.
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Cork in the Ocean - the sonnet ·
She asked me tonight “how was your day?”
what could i say “i'll be gone in three days?”
though just a text box, she didn’t say “stay,
we’ve so much to do, maybe write a few plays.”
I’d been asleep by then, shifting time zones;
but the place in my heart’s not given to moves
like my remains when all’s done will be bones -
a cross grain through the mason's carving grooves.
Some beers later, words appear aping love
that passed a shore torn away by time,
events, confusion from demands above.
I fooled them - leaving sentiment in rhyme,
though nothing will change that pulsing ocean -
feelings still coincide, now and again ·
jts 13/01/2022
http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
∞
