Ready for War

[Vung Tau, 3/18/24]

For several days, I couldn’t get out before six, but today, I was refreshed enough to have my first cup of coffee just after 5AM, at the cafe on General Uprising. Claiming my usual table, front, center and looking out, I was promptly served without ordering. Most of the other patrons were outside on the sidewalk. I recognized nearly all. Past 50, they were going on about high blood pressure and, with much amusement, cosmetic surgery.

In auburn pajamas with black polka dots, that chubby seller of lottery tickets laughingly said, “They say suction, but it’s really cutting out fat!”

Wrinkled thin man, “That’s right. It’s just like trimming fat from pork.”

Grave man, “Some need to have fat pumped in. Others to have it sucked out.”

Polka dots, “When I went back to my village, they asked if I had a face lift. Ha! Who has the money for that?!”

Wrinkles, “It’s good to have fat. The body needs fat.”

Polka dots, “Take whatever god gives you. The hell with it!”

Her utterance can’t be translated accurately, for Vietnamese don’t say god but sky, trời, or mister sky, ông trời. Their ancestors worshiped a sky god, as is attested also by the sun on ancient bronze drums.

Plus, polka dots didn’t say “give” but “give birth,” so this is more exact, “Whatever sky gives birth to, you take.”

“The hell” is also inaccurate, for she said, “kệ mẹ,” so “to hell with mother” is closer, but still not quite right.

Polka dots, “I’m just glad I don’t have high blood pressure. I walk around each day to sell lottery tickets.”

Wrinkles, “People pay to lose weight. You get paid to lose weight!”

Polka dots laughed.

Wrinkles, “She’s the richest one here! Look at how she counts her money!”

“Sometimes, my legs get tired.”

“When no one buys anything, you get tired.”

To my right was a fat guy who’s called, appropriately, fatso. Today he had on this shirt, “FUTURE IS NOW.” Used clothing from the West is sold in Vietnam as “SIDA,” meaning aids, but also the same as the disease. In Serbia, such stores usually call themselves “butik,” but with “second hand” added. English lends cachet. Though Serbs remember well the USA bombing them, they can’t avoid the need or seduction of English.

Only today did I notice a dirty throw rug with bits of French, “notre dame, cest [sic] La Vie, Bonjour, merci, tours eiffel, la TRÉS REMARQUABLE LIQUIDATION, TOUTES LES MERCHANDISES SONT VENDUES.” In the middle is an air balloon, so it’s not just France evoked, but les temps perdu, sort of. The exotic or out of reach is sexed up.

While in Albania in 2021, I was invited to a literary festival in Paris, but there was a catch. To enter France, I had to be Jewjabbed. Since Spain had no such requirement, my friend Tom suggested I fly to Barcelona. From his home in southern France, Tom would drive down to pick me up. Together, we could enter France via some backroad where there’s no border check. Though it sounded like a bad spy movie, I was all for it.

Leaping from the thickets, a Foreign Legionaire armed with a Heckler and Koch assault rifle shouts, “Arrêtez ou je tire!” Too deaf to hear him, Tom drives on, so we instantly become squirting emmental.

I was also looking forward to hanging out with Tom in Preixan. Some bethmale before death wouldn’t be bad. The festival fell apart, however, when a key guest couldn’t even leave his country. During Covid, we were conditioned to accept weird travel rules, such as wearing a mask on an airplane before and after a meal. When you’re eating or drinking, Covid disappeared.

About to leave, I heard Polka Dots mumble, “Have rice and rice gruel, crave phở.” It’s a variation on a proverb meaning nothing is ever enough. Half a block away, there was another lottery ticket seller, but she’s too old to even trudge a block. From roughly 6:30AM each day, she sits at the corner of Đồng Khởi and Lê Lai. Knowing her schedule, a young man at the eatery across the street always rushes over to lend her a low plastic stool. Seeing her impassive if not miserable, you might think she wouldn’t mind exiting as soon as possible, but short of the rashest act, we don’t get to decide when our lights are turned off.

My neighbor Dzuy’s mom suffered terribly her last two years, “Half her body was paralyzed, then finally, even her tongue, so she couldn’t eat!”

For some reason, many schoolkids wore military uniform today. Vietnam is always ready for a war. Unlike some people, Viets are almost never mercenaries, however. Only the insane are willing to be flown anywhere to massacre strangers.

Most Vietnamese streets are named after military heroes, so right near me, we have Trần Hưng Đạo (1228-1300), Lê Lợi (1385-1433), Lê Lai (1355-1419), Lý Thường Kiệt (1019-1105), Trưng Trắc (14-43) and Bà Triệu (226-248), with the last two women who died at just 28 and 21 years old, fighting the Chinese. Just steps from me is Hoàng Diệu. In charge of defending Hanoi, the 53-year-old committed suicide when it fell to the French.

I finish this piece at 7:33PM in Cóc Cóc Coffee. Across the street, there’s a second homeless person. Last night, I noticed him sleeping under a Mickey Mouse blanket. Just like that, the homeless population in my neighborhood has doubled! Still, I don’t expect Skid Row, Tenderloin or Kensington level of squalor and menace should it multiply by several hundreds even.

This month, there were shootings involving public buses on four straight days in Philly, with eight hit in the last. One boy got nine bullets. Three days ago, 25 shots were fired at the El’s Huntingdon Station. I know that stop well. Right near it is a Vietnamese restaurant, Thăng Long. Meaning rising dragon, it’s Hanoi’s old name.

There’s a little known etching by Edward Hopper called “Night on the El Train.” Made in 1918, it shows an elegantly dressed couple in a safe, comfortable car with cushioned seat. It’s hard to believe New York was ever like that.

In his 1982 autobiography, Lewis Mumford reflects:

There was a kind of moral stability and security in the city of my youth that has now vanished even in such urban models of law and order as London, where for long the police performed their duties without even the threat of a nightstick […] More than once lately in New York I have felt as Petrarch reports himself feeling in the fourteenth century, when he compared the desolate, wolfish, robber-infested Provence of his maturity, in the wake of the Black Plague, with the safe, prosperous region of his youth.

Everything is fine, many still insist. According to the US government, nearly all crime categories are seeing historic declines, with unemployment and inflation laughingly low. Bidenomics kicks ass!

Whatever, man. Compared to American cities, Oriental ones are much safer and livelier, with laughter often heard and kids playing unattended on sidewalks, but perhaps Hopper and Mumford were hallucinating, and I’m just lying. Trust Washington!