page 1 (written longhand)
Fourteen Days in Hoi An Viet Nam without a XPTR
(digitally augmented after the fact)
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original manuscript available for a price
3 Feb 2020 Mon - Only someone with a history in technology would understand this title, but many could guess the XPTR refers to “computer”. I have in front of me on a glass table covered by a dirty tablecloth; a drawing board fashioned in Oaxaca Mexico; a glass with the remnants of my 2nd Larue beer & whiskey. It has now been infused with another dollop of whiskey and is filled to near the brim with an anti-cancer thrice x 2 brewed expectorant of my own design: some marijuana, some raw sliced turmeric, some raw sliced ginger, 3 Thai red chilies and some black paper. In addition, the table holds a cheap digital time piece bought as an alarm for early call visa runs and a nutritional concoction of my own conceit: home made black beans, panfried vegetables over red rice - my staple diet.
I was not nearly this calm of spirit when 3 months ago my logic board declined to charge my XPTR rendering me offline and mute for the same 2 week time period. At that time, i was attempting to purge my deaf ear of seawater from a Near Death Experience (NDE), simultaneously with a change in prescription lenses - effectively making me within a span of 4 days deaf, dumb and blind. At this same time i also learned that my vision is no longer correctable to 20/20, which from where i now sit is an invaluable lesson for my future. What i was left with when re-united with my good buddy Mr. XPTR was a deep sense of loss. The 2 weeks i spent relearning a world of concrete and emotion devoid of digital prompts from the “information super highway”. This period of time was more liberating than i expected. The two most persistent feelings of loss were for the time of day and music on demand. There is more substance in a relationship with alcohol than the holograms i cultivate in my fictional sangha, mediated by the digital overlords - “you dance with who they tell you to, or you don’t dance at all” - Bob Dylan
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4 Feb 2020 Tue - Yesterday afternoon i watched a woman commit suicide by swimming into the South China Sea, though witnesses with me on the beach would, and did say otherwise. Upon my return from Da Nang i ate my bowl of vegetables and decided if i am to relocate to Peru, i’d need better stamina than my indolent youtube movie addiction afforded me and set out on the An Bang - Cua Dai Beach circuit. Cua Dai was where i’d had my NDE 3 months earlier rendering my chronically marginal right ear waterlogged and deaf. When i arrived, the ocean was surprisingly calm, but the swells were deceptively powerful. I know this from when they almost killed me, so i was surprised by the recklessness of the youngish couple entering the surf just down the shore to my left; more so when the woman wearing a flower print chemise split off from her man and began to swim outside the breakers. “For calm swimming waters,” i told myself; i’d done the same thing myself the day i almost died. Once in calmer water she began to swim South, right directly across my field of vision (such as it is). I kept thinking to myself, “foolish woman”, knowing how dangerous the conditions could be. However, she was with a companion, so i continued contemplating the upheaval of what a move to yet another culture would mean. She progressed far enough to my right that i knew, unless she was a practiced swimmer, she’d be getting tired. Just at this time a young asian fellow garbed all in white with peroxided hair crossed immediately behind me on the sandbag bulwark and proceeded to peer into the same vicinity i’d last tracked our intrepid swimmer nearly at the limits of my vision.
I had been switching from watching her companion who had remained close to shore where they had entered the water, and her perilous progress; he seemed to scan for her in the surf, but she was on one side of the breakers and he the other. I could not understand why he did not share my concern. As he excited the surf the young blondie crossed directly in front of me, and when i returned my gaze to the swimmer she was no where in sight. I was preparing to raise the alarm with others on the shore, when a woman just over my left shoulder where the blondie had past and began pointing in the direction of the companion who had excited the water.
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She kept trying to convince me using sign language that the man’s companion had exited the water with him. I had made no overt indication of my alarm for the lost swimmer and didn’t entirely understand how this woman could be so adamant about convincing me of anything, pointing in the direction of the exited companion, and repeating - “there she is, can’t you see her¿” - i did not. The last i saw of the swimming woman was far to my right where the young blond man had been scanning the sea moments earlier. He and the woman kept pointing to the companion far to my left saying “can’t you see her”, still i could not. I’m not even sure how the two would have known of my concern about a possible drowning for i’d made no overt indications to anyone and had been sitting alone.
I saw what i saw, and when i rose to my feet i began walking toward the dappled shade where the companion was now toweling himself off. I had no idea what i was going to say to him and when i got closer i could see he was with a woman in a black bathing suit. I decided if he wasn’t concerned and that there was a woman with him, it would be inappropriate to investigate further - though with grave reservation. All i could figure that had happened was 1) this had been an intentional suicide and i was and unexpected witness and 2) when the couple entered the water the woman had determined that her chemise was too unwieldy when she began swimming outside the breakers and discarded her chemise, and it was the chemise that i had watched floating across my field of vision - such as it is. All i know is that this was a weird as fuck series of events given how close i was to leaping into the surf to rescue what might have been discarded clothing, or a woman who did not want to be saved. I’ll go the beach this morning and light incense in either case ·
6:27 pm Feb 4th, cont’d. I just adjusted the tilt of a candle i hope to write by, so must be gentle of hand until the drippings seal the base to my too small candelabra. I am making a walking stick from local wood and am jazzed in a 65 year-old, shell-shocked kind of way. I’ve pan fried the too fancy baguette i’d bought at Dingo Deli on Cua Dai where after adding my incense at Cua Dai Beach to other incense already burning, i’d spent a pleasant morning reading more from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig . . .
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note: there are 14 sheets in the stack of paper i am using to track the 2 weeks, so page 4 must be some ratio of that time
This is my 2nd reading of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. The last time (“context of experience” is the sort of terminology the very sober narrative delights in but drives me wiggy . . .) sentence fragment - Consider this if you are trying to parse my meaning as a left-hander writing by candlelight (my damp hands just krinkled all fourteen sheets of the stack) my first word processor was a “Brother” apparatus - a suitcase sized XPTR precursor whose 3.5” disks contain the only copy of my first novel “Young and Certain”. A semi-autobiographical account of my cross country journeys LA-NYC art school, late 1970s debauchery/vision quest. I was to later learn the form was picaresque and its long suffering protagonist resembled “Tom Jones” in too many ways to be amusing. Now as my life’s end telescopes toward me at breakneck speed, i’m reduced to counting paper pages to track the date because i own no phone and my XPTR is offline · · · 13 days and counting. The point of sharing about my original writing machine is to contrast this very welcomed, however recalcitrant, longhand method of method of expression with the maniacal freedom of cut & pasting whole paragraphs i had found so exhilarating to begin with, but here now think maybe blunts the the keen edge that can only be found writing letter by letter; word by word and thought by thought.
6:50 am, 5 Feb - The sun rises later now and by paper count, i have this sheet and one other to be on track to fill 28 pages in 14 days. The word i was searching for to describe the effect of moisture on the edge of these sheets was crenelated and without the XPTR, instead used krinkled. When queried about leaving for Peru, the I Ching replied “Dispersion - crossing the great water and don’t do anything stupid, for you might suffer great loss as a lesson. The I Ching, i have found can be at times oblique, yet when asked whether “Dulcinea” is seeking my company, it answered simply - Abysmal - great danger
“be like water friend” - Bruce Lee
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I pity the children whose parents were not teachers who’d demand that the child “return items to their proper place; keep your mouth shut if you have nothing good to say.” Rather than being lost without the supreme taskmaster Mr. XPTR, i am fraught with many projects and a vast array of questions. For example, who is going to read this and why¿ When the I Ching says “across the great water”, is it describing my soul and the gulf between me and others, real or imagined; and when it goes on to say “look inside and cure personal defects” is it referring to smoking and drinking, or a habit of giving too much credence to the opinion of others? In psychology and philosophy my understanding is that the path to knowledge comes from knowing the self, yet in literature and fine art, it is the capacity to accurately describe others which distinguishes the mundane expression from the sublime . . .
1:47 pm, 5 Feb, cont’d - It is weird living without a XPTR and i like it; as though in some dystopian Sci-Fi novel where the bug is removed from one’s anatomy and the soul is cast adrift in space without direction. I’ve finished “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for the 2nd time; it was good to have read it again. I do not remember it as so tragic but feel the echoes of the insanity woven into the pages. It is unfortunate that this text does not find more traction in today’s society, for it would aid us in liberating ourselves from the tyranny of technology we have so willingly entered into. Even here in Hoi An where pockets of the agrarian life hold sway, one can almost hear the siren call to quiescence. Nor is Viet Nam alone, but children throughout the planet being tossed under the bus by well meaning parents believing somehow the “hopeless little screen” Leonard Cohen sang about will free them, rather than enslave the children as any “woke” person will know. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was published in 1974 and was not enough of a cautionary tale to stem the tide, rather i fear more like Orwell’s “1984” it became a roadmap for the unscrupulous to follow.
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I skipped writing on the back of sheet 3 and must now bear the ignominy of inelegance in my otherwise pristine organization, and if it can happen to me, whose to say it won’t happen to the minions of oppression and terror holding the reigns for now? I wasn’t supposed to make it this far in life having contracted pneumonia at 12 months old and only surviving due to the discovery of penicillin a scant 26 years prior. To what end?¿ NDEs seem to have become a pattern in my life; for example, i can remember vividly an event in NYC at age 20 where i had been engaged in a dynamic conversation as was the style at the time, but not having been raised in that metropolis lacked the requisite life skills to survive; as i turned to step off the curb my friend grabbed the the back of my shirt preventing me from stepping into the side of a Volkswagen Beetle doing about 50 mph. Were that that had been enough to learn me caution · What is the fine line between recklessness and courage? Why are humans so easily manipulated by the blood thirst of passion, yet the male little more than prey to the wiles of women¿ And here our species sits on the brink of its own destruction and its male warrior is unable, or unwilling amongst some 3.5 billion other men to swarm the castle gates of the less than 2,000 billionaires worldwide who are virtually responsible for the extermination of our species? I am no better; i will certainly vote for Bernie, and when i fall off the digital-free wagon, will hook up with other FB addicts and echo platitudes back and forth using snarky remarks about the corporate overlords but nothing on the scale Ho Chi Minh used to lead an entire nation to victory against the most well-funded war machine the world has ever known, which begs the question, how did he do it?
6:33 pm, Feb 5, cont’d - Rice and black beans, remarkable · about to commence one of the Stieg Larsson trilogy. I’ve read 2 out of 3 of the Millennium Trilogy, but had to buy two because i couldn’t remember which was the last of the 3 i’d read - not a complaint, for it is a truly naughty pleasure. I was transported by the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo having read it during Nyepi in Bali sometime in late 2000s ·
my walking stick is really neat ·
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6 Feb 2020, 12:17 pm - I am making the cane because i couldn’t find a suitable one here in this UNESCO world heritage site, as well as having something to occupy my time while i figure out workarounds to draw with my failing vision - something i’ve been doing since i was 1 year old (workarounds, not drawing), when they fitted me with a patch over one eye; it didn’t work, i’m still a crosseyed cyclops - just a little older now. The cane however is a horse of another color. Hard to say exactly when the imbalance required an aid for ambulation, but it seems to be a theme going back many years. The way i was raised, was to give no quarter to impediments. There was no alternative in a home with 6 hungry egos attempting to individuate during the turmoil of the 1960s ‘merica. Pop would relish my inventiveness of fashioning my own stick, while ma might quip, “what do you need that for?”. There are many small woodworking shops in this still largely self sufficient town. I had been told electricity to each home is a relatively new convenience, 1970-1980s, with the hoards of tourists arriving soon after. Still the kind carpenter was somewhat taken aback when yours truly split off from the cycling sightseers to beg a piece of wood “just so” as i mimed my lame gait. At some point from whatever surgical lesions formed after a number of intrusions during my late 50s, sciatica found its way into my sagging ass muscles to laugh at yet another misery. I’ve decided to laugh back and am in the process of fashioning a Giacometti-like cane replete with the ball and neck of the trochanter which pop broke and lived with during the last 10 months of his existence, assiduously setting his own broken leg by locking his legs in a constant crossover fashion such that he was able to take 22 steps with the aid of a walker before he died.
- yanked by light with 2 fishing poles i didn’t have before -
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7 Feb 2020, 5:50 pm - Ms. O_____ did not come to clean at 2:00, though she said she’d come 4 days from the 3rd; i hope she is okay, and not caught in some ego crossfire from Dame “Dulcinea”. Mounting candles is something best done in clear light with an empty bladder. The puzzle remains - why would i leave bicycle paradise, never mind that i toppled over because of motorbike congestion at the alley corner made tighter by construction workers whose only fault is to foretell in realtime the densification dilemma which the speculators occupying ancient Hoi An could give a rat’s ass about - ergo ramifications. Yet at 65 year’s old with an “at risk” lifestyle and x number of tumbles left to me, it is a reality - sort of like driving cabs; the more you are behind the wheel, the more collisions you will encounter, yours or others. Is this statistical fact of growth enough to dislodge me from bicycle heaven, or do i go down the road Pop ordained in his last breath. There is no perfect studio or compliant “model/muse/business partner adequate to the task of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again; so why would i by my presence de-facto shill for a community already choking in its own excess of tourist reservations. Dame Dulcinea will not acknowledge this dilemma, preferring the barbarian’s lucre. So the locals give a conflicted welcome, for any kind of welcome betrays the principles of solidarity and liberation grounded in mutual aid, respect, and self sacrifice - values that defeated the ‘merican war machine.
8 Feb 2020, 1:46 pm - I just found myself yanking my own chain about an arbitrary decision to fill both sides of each sheet because it seemed like a good idea at the time. What this observation is useful for is the irrational need to be “right” without necessarily remaining correct. The objective is to create interesting narrative that is useful to you and i.
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Without an outline, we’ll just have to navigate the stream of consciousness using the skiff of purpose available for us on this journey - that is, answer the existential question: “move from Hoi An, Vietnam to Peru, and why¿” Last night during the growing number of pee runs, i was struck by the stark contrast of how much of my life is behind me vs what what may be my future; nor was this a terrorizing thought, rather the kindly musings of the friend i’m becoming to myself. I like Hoi An for many good reasons and rue its gratuitous destruction for many good reasons. I’ve gotten better at recognizing likely landing sites during my travels, but there is no amount of research that will replace what my last wife described as “following one’s peef” - French colloquial for “schnoz, or nose”. And my objectives are changing as is my capacity to adapt, or at least see between what are my own cultural blunders and what are intransigent prejudice and pernicious misperception: MLK - “nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” 2:34 pm - Without knowing, but with good reason to believe, my sense is that Mr. O____ is in an awkward position because of my offer for work. I feel badly, not for making the offer, but for not recognizing the roadblocks that might arise; this is Viet Nam and they are a devoted people. As i see it, this devotion has been yoked to economic success as a bell weather of victory. This narrow vision undermines the tireless working people by measuring worth using capitalist values. I’m pretty sure that rather than the “canary in the coal mine” my anti-consumer squawk is seen as heretical by those who profit most - oh well. My dream of hooking up with cadre of humanists working lovingly together for the survival of the entire species will needs be perish as i continue my quest for community.
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8 or 9 Feb 2020 - I think my pristine record keeping meant to help me keep the dates straight without Mr. XPTR’s calendar or a friend to call my own has fallen on its sword and died on what i believed to be Feb 9 Sat, but which doesn’t track with 7 days from Feb 3 Mon to become Feb 10 Mon. Yesterday when i went to a former residence to check what might have happened to Ms. O_____, her primary employer, Dulcinea, was sullen and hostile - a not unusual behavior for this individual, but the only authority i can quote with any confidence is myself, and this after having sought collaboration and community within what can be best described as a cloistered ruling class pitstop. When i had originally arrived in July, i had been 4 days on the road, sleeping in 3 int’l airports. My fantasy at the time was to die in a country with moxie enough to defeat “the corporate states of ‘merica. Much has happened since the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. When i arrived i thought i’d heard Dulcinea state her birthday as 30 December, later i learned this to be 13th, but what’s a couple of days amongst friends (for those who have any) - i’m sure i have some, but like my family, they’ll never acknowledge that fact publicly. After some weeks, it became clear my astonished reverence for her existence had no residence in her world of inexhaustible opportunity and i began to reconcile i had once again confused my own heart at the alter of synchronicity.
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8 or 9 Feb 2020 cont’d - i believe what had taken place is Dulcinea, thru power or influence kept Ms. O_____ from earning the extra shekels i had proffered for the easy duty of cleaning my home - whether this is from mean-spiritedness or romantic remorse, i’m sure i’ll never know (keeping in mind i can barely keep the days straight) much less the mind of woman - Freud’s “dark continent.” I am still no closer to understanding whether Peru is a more correct location for me to die than where i sit writing this long exposition, but at least i’m trying. The single greatest reason i’d leave this bicycle paradise is the seeming denial of the entire Hoi An community to the calamity of our mutual extinction - a blindspot so dense one could almost cut through the bullshit with a machete. I once cut a rotten Peppertree stump in Santa Ana California into a love seat using a machete, so i have some notion of what can be cut and what it takes to make a machete work (yeah no angry imagery there), and yes i bear much responsibility for any communication breakdown: excessive deference, a complex self-image that refuses love from all corners - save that one alter in my heart which gives me permission to live. Please show me the error in my reasoning. Dulcinea demands without sharing - those i’d have common cause with with apparently cannot see past the balustrades of their own pecuniary empires and those for whom i may harbor affection i abandon from timidness.
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9 Feb 2020 Sun - It is Sunday the 9th; i know this because a couple told me when i importuned their walk on the coast road during my bicycle ride. Ms. O_____ showed up at 2:00 pm, and i’m still unsure whether or not to cut off relations at my former domicile. There is much i love about my life here in Viet Nam, and there are many unknowns about moving back to South America. My personality will not transform to warm and fuzzy, and i will likely continue to take great pains caring for strangers better than i do my own self. I have, however, devised a simple lifestyle that is largely portable and relatively sober. Mr. XPTR relations recede further from importance, language would not be such a barrier if i studied better - laziness and a distracted motivation on my part. I have yet to decouple from the delusion that what someone else thinks of me might be important; conversely the facade i have cultivated about myself as creative savant is continually assailed by diminished capacity be it vision, or elan. My forays into romance in VN remain perplexing. The language barrier doesn’t foster confidence in others, and i find my own efforts towards open warmheartedness still abut the greedy self-serving, sanctimonious aspects of my own dark recesses, so i am never sure whose evil i am recoiling from - And you fucking well know if one finds narrow-minded shallow people in Viet Nam, those same characters will turn up in South America. I do not relish more dislocation, even though the process invariably results in greater personal growth - as though growth is even possible, or all part of my indoctrination to become a useful member of the hive. I am conflicted about the level of respect that capitalists have been awarded in Viet Nam and find my zeal as an anti-consumer is pushing the rock uphill once again; but who’s to say that would not be the case and more so in South America¿
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Feb 10 Mon 4:30 pm - I am binge reading the 2nd of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy a 2nd time, working backward having finished the 3rd first - escapist fiction to be sure. As stated earlier, i’d read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” during Nyepi late 2000s. I was in Bali with the intent to stay forever until an event made clear exactly what my place was. My (friend) Pak N_____ had mentioned that he was to be rehearsing one afternoon on the patio where much communal time had been spent, so i thought nothing of inviting myself to that rehearsal which turned out to be a “ceremony”. My vision was stronger then, and i’d been drawing everything i could find. From the instant i had invited myself to come and draw, forward every courtesy i had enjoyed and all the warmth i had experienced in my journeys to Bali (3rd of 3) unraveled within hours of my request. It started with the outfit required which i did not possess and my friend Pak N_____ made increasingly clear was not mine to wear. Then the logistics of ferrying to the event 3 people on one scooter. After i was sullenly outfitted with a borrowed outfit in the family home - the first time i’d seen it after 3 trips to stay with my “family,” i was taken to the front of the temple to wait for Pak N______ and the eldest son.
I waited in a conspicuous place at the front of the temple, and waited - and waited. After the Gamelan music began inside, i grew concerned that something may have happened but slowly realized that the only thing that had happened is my friend, Pak N_______ had opted to sneak he and his son inside so he would not have to be seen bringing a “bule” into the temple. I now accept the arrogance as my own not fully understanding my non-place in the culture. Prior to this event, i had conceived myself as friend and family member to this man and his family, including the consideration of building a small dwelling at my expense at the outer reaches of his diminishing share of the rice paddies. The error was my own and the beginning of long lessons in cultural integration, as well as personal discovery of how much i have sublimated the pain of my own family’s toxic concept of relatedness; were that this 10 year old anecdote the end of such aberrant misperceptions, but alas . . .
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Feb 10 Mon; cont’d - it is now past 5:00 pm and the workers cutting down what had been a bamboo barricade between the field in front of my gate and the road through the rice paddy are gone for the day. I’d had a dream last night of a worker entering inside my gate and making for my door without nary a “by your leave” while i was sitting on the porch. This aggravated for me the process of thinning the thicket - chainsaw whine has never been a favorite sound of mine. I realize this was not to expose me to scrutiny, but to provide greater sunlight to the newly planted peanut crop. But after 7 months in Viet Nam with the constant assault from surreptitious bitterness and an understandable residual rancor from the atrocities my nation, and specifically my cohort from my nation one grows weary and good will more challenging - especially when it comes down to stripping privacy away. One advantage of coming from ‘merica’s surveillance society is that one learns to dial in quickly to who wants to see what and why. My strategy has been to ignore those lacking gumption to walk right up and say “who are you and what are you doing¿” What exacerbated the clearing of the bamboo were the catcalls from the workers, with the loudest of the lot dressing up the last day in all black Viet Cong garb - whaddya gonna do¿ Puerto Ricans in the Lower East Side of Manhattan behaved the same way 50 years ago when i invaded their neighborhood.
(note: it was not “thinning the thicket”, but the tearing out of an entire old growth bamboo strand at the behest of the new occupants of the just completed Villa - apparently for no better reason than getting FB photos of how close they live to the rice fields)
Such are the sad misgivings of a solitary traveler on the last legs of his life’s journey. It is an irony that i should live in the land of one of the few cultures to defeat the U.S. military in open combat - but to then witness the same culture selling its soul at the alter if profit during the last gasps of “Late Stage Capitalism”
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Feb 11 Tue 2020 - I’m not pleased they cut down the barrier at the edge of the field, but try to understand. This is the 2nd day in a row not bicycling, but it feels right to rest. If i’m not in the right frame of mind, i find it’s hard to be supportive to those i meet. Im not resolved about severing ties with Dulcinea at the inn and am loathe to admit to myself the self-serving convenience of telephone access may affect choices i make; the family i was raised in - every gesture of kindness came with a hook - thinking which runs counter to the direction in which i i wish to evolve. Living offline is a worthwhile experience · without the illusion of being connected because one engages a responsive screen, time has a different meaning. The “push technology” has become so ingrained that we barely notice the roll it plays in defining our lives - can’t be much different than the sea change the role of clocks played in scheduling one’s day.
I miss being absorbed into the cosmos by creative activity - not the romantic version popularized in song and story about the isolated creator coming out of some kind of trance days or weeks later to her/his self standing bleary eyed in front of a majestic masterpiece, but the innocent natural loss of “self” that is part of trying to see deeper into the world using art as a lens and creative materials as voice. The challenge of creating drawings, paintings or sculpture with changing vision has become more of a distraction than ever before. For example, the cane i am making includes the head at the neck of the Trochanter. The sphere is one of the most difficult forms to cut because if the curves do not align with each other you can continue to adjust until you have nothing left to cut. I am going back to the place of my youth where the outcome does not matter, but the pleasure it provides and the lessons one learns from the process is everything - i’m at a point where i can no longer use the word “everything” with a straight face.
I wonder about ma dying in pieces and if the additional years of life which wealth provides was a bargain given the sequestered vacuum in which she has been placed¿
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Feb 12 Wed 2020, 2:42 pm - Back at Dingo Deli. I have explored what it will take to fetch Mr. XPTR without the help of Dulcinea at the inn. Her behavior when we last spoke was hostile and abusive - traits i veer from strongly. However is is not that simple, and is exactly that simple. I have been strongly attracted to Dulcinea from the day we met. I took a run at her from as many different ways as i know, which at 65 covers a lot of ground. Eventually her position hardened, but her signals grew more ambiguous. The stake in the hear of whatever romance we might have had is a conspicuous lack of communication, and not. On the rare occasions we do connect it is lofty and rich - the main reason i’ve hung so long. The dilemma is fury seems to be the language she prefers, hers or mine - so long as one of us is angry. I care for her and greatly but not so much as to wade through fury as a regular channel or to allow her access to my beast who is best entertained peacefully in the caverns of my heart. So once again i am faced with extricating myself from an entanglement for the safety of myself and others.
This thread is intrinsically linked to the issue of whether i move away from Viet Nam, or to dig roots in a city doomed on the ocean shore, in a doomed country on a doomed planet - I D K ¿ I do know that i have many places, including my place at ma’s side as she lay dying, though i had told ma to her face i would not fight the siblings for my right to do so. Her remark when i stated this fact was, “thanks a lot.” - Lord g_d, i shall miss her wit, as she no doubt misses mine, much to her chagrin. To be honest, knowing her to be the “moon child” she may still be if alive, for she is 91, and i have been offline for a week + - she may be dead for all i know; my ignorance of her condition may have been part of her Grand Plan all along. Any irony in this discussion would have to be her umbrage at my unwillingness to surrender; and she did effectuate every cruelty and highhandedness to gain what i gave to her freely - my obeisance, the same i gave my father. I strongly believe she does not possess emotional framework enough to see that, so great were her wounds from growing up in the wilds of the Nevada desert. She knows fear, and i can only hope she expires in a haze of medicine and senility where she finds something more substantial than civilization’s induced old people fog - me too. I know intellectually there is nothing in Peru, i couldn’t find here in Hoi An, Viet Nam, including arrogant innkeepers hiding tenderness behind facades of “whatever you’re looking for, it’s not here.” However, i refuse to relinquish the fantasy initiated in my invalid crib by my too troubled parents that i am in fact worthy of love and not just susceptible to pity, but lord g_d it gets so confusing.
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According to the pretty dame sitting to my right, it is now 4:17 pm - “as his merry heart trots off once again feigning indifference”. Fucking crazy synchronistic world, for what i was to share next was one of ma’s last statements to me, “you are so obsequious” - her visitor, Chooch looked on awkwardly; i’m sure it ever occurred to her how he materialized at her side in the memory-challenged ward where she now lives.
Feb 13 Thu 2020; 2:37 pm Pat of “Pat & Chooch” had been a sorority sister with ma at Compton Junior College toward the end of WWII, but Pat will always be “Auntie Mame” to me. She and Chooch had lived on the top of Signal Hill in Long Beach CA - and had a sunken living room with a garage full of neat cars. Chooch was an inventor and devised an aircraft radio antenna that was aerodynamic - it revolutionized the industry and made Pat & Chooch more than well off. Once long before my driving days began, one of the “neat” cars on Signal Hill made its way into our garage on Baker Street - a loner to my older driving brother B_____ - he was P&C’s favorite. The car was a replica 1906 Oldsmobile - horseless carriage. This auto made B______ even more popular, if that is possible, so when the carriage broke down there was no real need to repair it; he was still popular, maybe just not so much. The cobbled together machine and its Briggs & Stratton 3 Hp, 2 cycle engine just sat and gathered dust. It was summer time and i got it in my head to make it work - if it worked once, why not again¿ besides, i hoped somehow that might convince my older brother hero to acknowledged my existence.
There are no training manuals for horseless carriages and my father’s idea of a tool chest was a hammer, saw, pipe wrench and two screwdrivers - Duct Tape hadn’t been invented, but still after weeks of disassembling, and re-assembling, the machine with maybe only a handful of extra parts, actually started back up. Well every young mechanic knows you cannot complete a job without a test drive. The block we lived on was the longest continuous block in Costa Mesa or seemed that way as a kid; we were lucky because the rule since we learned to ride bicycles was you can ride but you cannot cross a street - sacrosanct, much like “no balls in the house, or no hands out the car window.” So if this horseless carriage had 4 bicycle wheels for rolling - to my 12 year old thinking that rule should cover test drives for horseless carriages. Summer time back then was a largely unsupervised event, so J_____ whose brother N_____ was to toss a firecracker on my shoulder rupturing my eardrum and changing my life forever the very next unsupervised summer and i set off on a test drive around the longest block in Costa Mesa, or so it seemed. being conscientious as fuck to never leave the sidewalk. The test drive was successful and not so much; the machine did indeed run again, though the block being as long as it was with all those curious neighbors did little to obscure our travels. I caught hell on my return, and my older brother B_____ the hero was rewarded for my mechanical prowess by being tasked with driving the repaired horseless carriage back to Pat & Chooch’s house on the top of Signal Hill one fine fall day before it broke again - ain’t life grand ·
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Feb 13 Thu 2020; cont’d - It is quite still and quiet except for the sea air stirring the leaves in the courtyard of my “foreigner’s cottage” i occupy with my ceaseless remorse for faux pauxs past and present. In the XPTRless existence i now inhabit, it is the ready accessibility to music i miss most. What i hear throughout the day are the sporadic beeps of my infinitely programmable timepiece i bought for an alarm for the 4 am wake up calls on visa run days, that and the thrumming of the distant jackhammer dismantling old Hoi An, to make room for the not-quite infinitely more profitable densification of new Hoi An.
Feb 14 Fri 2020; 2:41 pm - If XPTR technology is such a great emancipator of human suffering and facilitator of communication, why is our species facing the 6th Mass Extinction while the population by and large is more interested in the latest version of ________ fill in the blank? Why are the hooked-up hipsterdoofustechnogeeks not asses and elbows at work figuring out how to point the digital microscope back up the food chain to learn who is creating all the havoc? Not 1 in 100 of my FB brethren will read this far into this narrative. A more likely scenario is the technology available to the digital ruling class will filter my sincere exploration of 14 days offline for seditious language and with a simple toggle, add an unsavory valence to the file and divert it forever after into some echo chamber cul de sac of low readership. Things have reached a point where “human discretion” is not even needed to mute any vice of dissension. The ruling class’s running dog “Art Intel” will simply intervene; unless people begin to learn that owning things is a hoax. Today the “keys to my kingdom”, such as it is, fell out of pocket while running errands. I did not discover this until i was back at my gate. I found my pocket empty and my backpack “vault” containing my identity inside my door, on the other side of the locks - for all intents and purposes i could not prove my existence - that is goofy. No one i know would ask a newborn infant for proof of existence, or an aged dying person to see their ticket to the other side of the veil - Yet in the in-between we tolerate a list of lies that render 1 person in 10,000 heroic and worthy of untold wealth
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and all other worthy or unworthy depending on the mood or whim of that “1 in 10,000” who just lucked out being in the right place at the right time accompanied by neither hear or soul. When you have no keys to your domicile, the illusion of control evaporates quickly, What if one happy day on humanity’s march to extinction, the ruling class lost their keys to the kingdom and your consumer addiction simply evaporated into thin air?
Feb 15 Sat 2020; 1:20 pm - I’m reading a story wherein an elderly simpleton who could speak with cats was provoked to murder by a deranged sculptor who was fashioning a flute by capturing the souls of cats he had captured and eviscerated; consuming their still beating hearts and making a collection of their heads in his refrigerator. I guess it doesn’t matter much what i write down here. My family fancies itself high minded with terms like brutally honest used at times to describe one or another. From where i sit today, they are more neurotically sneaky much like myself, though i’d prefer to be known as brutally honest, much i imagine like they would as well. In the last of my many careers, i was a probate analyst for a private investigator. I learned that people are not very good at deception; in the end, through word or action people make themselves crystal clear. That is not to say we all don’t waltz to the tune of our separate or mutual delusions, but life and death being what it is does not wear much makeup. Time is nigh for me to return to an online fiction, but i can’t but help feel that i’m returning to some manner of industry in which one is for lack of a better description, “taken for a ride”, sort of like working on “Maggie’s Farm”. At another time in my life, the same 2-week period within the past year, i was on pins and needles feeling very strongly the ubiquitous prompt of “what am i missing?”
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Feb 15 Sat 2020; cont’d - This feeling is, however more insidious than an honest appeal to one’s natural curiosity. The social engineers are consumed by their evolving capacity to seize your focus rather than simply manipulating your fingers using click bait. To be clear, it is the contempt and disrespect for individual agency which these seemingly innocuous bells and whistles represent and to which i strenuously resist or more accurately - lovingly embrace. Like an half-squeezed earthworm on the sidewalk, anyone who is not an emotional cipher cannot but feel compassion at some level.
This morning i further distanced myself from a relationship that i had apparently fabricated in my head out of whole cloth. I was recently upbraided publicly for some unknown transgression, at least unknown to me. I realized in reflection this was not an example of Tom Jones’ Sofia improving Tom’s sincere but ignorant heart, but the delusions of a solitary man willing to deny his own better nature - a conviction of self-worth, worthy of the same kindness he struggles to manifest for everyone he meets - you included. I don’t believe myself to be mistaken about a sincerely loving gaze behind the coquettish charm, but after 3 marriages based on little more than a loving gaze, i realize very little and still feel deeply. It is just as easy to feel someone’s warmth and admiration as it is to feel another’s anguish and confusion, but without the courage to articulate those vulnerable feelings, i’ll just wander down the road happily returning the loving gaze of those dames with vision keen enough to perceive this loving lad stumbling his way toward a quiet death.
Feb 16 Sun 2020; 1:20 pm It is blowing like a motherfucker. I’ve been in rain storms here in Hoi An - thunder & lightning and torrents of rain. This wind is dry and more like the Santa Anas(devil wind) from where i grew up in SoCal. Sitting here a recent memory reinforces a general discomfort about wind, as elusive as it seems, it’s a mindful opportunity to interact with mama earth in regalia - sort of like the indelible beauty of a really fine woman who has trouble or an unwillingness to to curb her temper. My mother is one of those vituperative personalites. I am being generous to compare her quite ugly and often destructive fits of pique with a desert wind that blows hard and pure enough to cut stone.
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I am not anxious to resume my online presence, because it can never come close to the ancient twinkle in the serving lady’s look as she hands me my bowl. I only hope the glance contains the smile i’ve seen on other occasions when not obscured by the oh so necessary and practical mask. Like i don’t wear my mask all the time, even with those i feel closest to. Online exchanges do not begin to to approach the immediacy of face to face. i saw more humanity in the bleary look of an impatient guy behind me in line waiting to buy his first pack of cigarettes for the day, than a year’s worth of plaintive memes by the lovingest of hearts i know (online), and i know some pretty loving hearts. I had hoped to convey more in these past two weeks than what i imagine i’ll find when i transcribing this paper document online. There’s an irony - given we as a species are about to face conditions that make today’s monster blow seem like a quiet day in the park, and i will certainly take the steps necessary to make this available for wider distribution - but this document as written on paper may ultimately be read by more people than will read it online. A large portion of the past two weeks has been spent reading, as opposed to my normal youtube fare having convinced myself that watching old cowboy movies and film noire is an anthropological trail. This might explain how a handful of snooks could hijack a planet; murder a species AMD have us pay for the privilege. My walking stick has reached the stage where too much more cutting will render it delicate.
note: 1 week later the Corvid-19 loomed large, and within another 2 weeks killed 100,000 people. Had i not gotten my XPTR back, my circumstances without an XPTR may have been far more precarious than the severe danger i now face.
jts 03/02/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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