Tran

Before going to Cambodia I lived in Vietnam for seven months. Five months in Hanoi and two months in Saigon. I first went to Vietnam at nineteen and spent a year with the 101st Airborne near Hue.

I put it in a memoir called ART – Adventure, Risk, Transformation. It was self-published in 2019.

I met Tran Van Minh at the 85th Medical Evacuation Hospital in Da Nang in 1970. I came down for hearing tests.

Bhaktapur, Nepal

I turned to the traveling tribe of seven storytellers. Tran from Vietnam, Rita from Cambodia, Leo from Tibet, two Zeynep’s from Turkey, Devina from Indonesia and Omar. Survivors. The Magnificent Seven. All of them have poems, stories, and dreams to finish they haven’t started yet.

Tran: I grew up in a village near Da Nang. There was a war in my country. I was five. One day I was playing near my home and stepped on a landmine. It exploded. Someone took me to the hospital. They saved me. I lost my right leg from the knee down. Now I have a plastic leg where my real leg used to be. It was a gift from a kind stranger. I’d like to thank them but I don’t know who they are or where they are. Maybe it was someone who came to the orphanage where I grew up after the war.

Anyway, it’s ok now. At the hospital they fixed me up and gave me crutches so I could get around. I lived on a ward with other Vietnamese kids. One day I was cruising down the hall and saw an American guy. He smiled at me. I smiled back.

He followed me to my ward and talked to a nurse. I’d like to be his friend. What is his name? Tran. Ask him if he’d like to be friends. She asked me and I said yes. Yes is one of my favorite English words. The man and I became friends for three days.

He said he had a hearing problem. I’ve met people with a listening problem.

Sometimes he carried me. It was great. We hung out together eating, watching movies on a big white sheet and playing on the beach. Then he gave me a big hug and left. He said he had to go back to his unit. He said he would always remember me.

I gave him my picture. I’m smiling, wearing blue hospital clothes and sitting on a bed with my missing leg wrapped in white bandages. I felt sad but I understood when he left. I lost my family in the war and I’m an orphan.

WE accept loss forever. That’s a good story, said Rita, I’m an orphan also. We have loss in common.

I met a happy child with courage. Tran was my teacher and connection with the real world. Be a child. We are one with the world around us. Tran survived with confidence, courage, strength and spirit. He taught me how precious life is. Tran is an essential storyteller because he is a survivor.

Tran - I am Bui Doi. This means children of the dust in Vietnamese. We shine shoes, beg, pickpocket and sell postcards and gum near tourist sites.

Bui Doi. Children of the dust.

Book of Amnesia, V1

The Play Begins

Attention Ladies & Gentlemen!

Civilization is sterilization - an agreement to avoid the abyss. You look into the abyss and the abyss looks back at you. 

History is the symptom and people are the disease.

This is a long dream sequence, said Zeynep, author of The Language Company. Mirrors are metaphors like Banlung, Cambodian nill gemstones of the Mind-At-Large. Keep a diamond in your mind, reflecting 10,000 points of light.

WE create myths and stories … We build sandcastles … We used to be someone else and we traded them in.

Hold a mirror to the sky reflecting Beauty. Hold a mirror to the ground reflecting a muddy path. Hello Truth. Hello Beauty. See all the beauty without hope or fear. Life is sad & beautiful.

It’s a long walk. Walking makes the road. Nothing more. Nothing less. Less is more.

We play with reality, impermanence and illusions of reality. We cultivate ambiguities, create imaginary identities and play with fact and fiction. We use lies to tell the truth. Fast, short and deadly. In the future more than five words is a run-on sentence. A life sentence ran away.

What’s the next question, said Grave Digger. I love good dirt. I know two things. Look at my hands.

I know the solution and wait for the problem, the opportunity, the big SURPRISE, said Leo, Chief of Cannibals. Can we know death, said Leo, Good question, said Z. One should die at least once to appreciate life. One must die before they live. Most people are born alive and slowly die.  

WE are born dead and come to life.

Kill the Buddha. Kill yourself. Suicide is an honorable Asian way of saying goodbye with honor, dignity and respect. Buddha said, I show you sorrow.

A blossoming voice has purity, love and truth. We know illusions of desire, anger, and ignorance. Pain, suffering, fear, loneliness and alienation kills the spirit, said Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung.

Alienation embraces uncertainty … Embrace the chaos.

A heartbeat contains a universe of infinite possibilities, said Zeynep, What is the difference between possibility and probability, asked Tran, polishing his prosthetic left leg.

We dissolve monkey mind thought clouds and fleeting sensations to enhance our awareness and potential, said Omar a blind Tuareg Ghostwriter.

What does it mean to be a human being? Are you a human being or a hungry ghost?

The reader completes the work of art.

Yes, said Devina, buy a ticket take the ride.

We are in exile with stealth and cunning.

Book of Amnesia, V1

Life is unbearable, said Poo. Farewell cruel world.

Chapter 15

Earth peoples, oceans wave,  celebrate life energy sex and harmonic forces, said Rita, What happened in the love hotel? Use your imagination.

They paid a woman 3,000,000 Yen through a slot in the door. She gave them a key. It unlocked Akiko’s chamber of secrets. The room featured an American wild-west motif with an Indian chief on a white horse. Very cute, said Akiko. They stripped each other down. They took a long hot herbal bath exploring geography with tender lust. They jumped each other’s bones. It was in-out dialogue, pure passion. Show doesn’t tell, said Z.

He toweled me down, said Akiko. I felt thick cotton noun fibers edge my thin shoulders, along my verb spine, weaving his fingers across my flat stomach, erasing, tracing water fingering my direct object jungle. Slow and easy baby, I sighed being his Shinto shrine as he gave me his offering. Their relationship ignored verbal language, said a blind Japanese masseuse in a love hotel.

What conflicts exist?

-Human vs. Human

-Human vs. Nature already mentioned.

-Human vs. ______><_______

-Human vs. self. Do I or don’t I? Is it safe?

-Nature vs. Nurture

Will someone playfully deconstruct the truth with literal facts to move the narrative along and get to the mind-at-large awareness of his or her experience, said Tran. I hope so, said Omar, A literary agent at a writer’s conference in Oregon said my writing was a word photograph jazz beat. She suggested throwing the narrative out.

She said and I quote, Pick one time or geographical place and flush out the narrative with more exposition. I would like to see character development and social and political realities in 60,000 words, Yeah, said Rita, What did you say? I told her some novelists do exactly the opposite of what they’re told because disobedience is freedom, Beware of book doctors and blood thirsty greedy dictatorial aliens with an agenda, said Rita.

Ok, said Tran, How’s this sound? Write everything in the first five pages. Grab the reader with a hook in every sentence, at the end of paragraphs and at the end of chapters, Yeah, said Grave Digger, WE need a hook, a big iron hook covered with dried blood hanging in the center of an empty Asian market reminding genocide survivors what happens to them if they fuck up. They get a big fat rejection hook in the neck or through their trembling beating pulsating heart.

Fear sells. Fear is a universal language.

Good idea, said Zeynep, Work fear, sex and growth into this. Readers need to keep turning pages. This work doesn’t flow from A 2 Z. It presents a form with a minimum of punctuation  ... punctuation is a nail. Is it an error or a mistake (part of a statement that is not correct) that’s a question for a linguist.

I love Linguini, said Devina, but he doesn’t love me. What else? Split the infinitive hairs. Infinity. Infinite. Finite. Dynamite. Kids know eternity adults are scared of it, said Death. It’s long, cold and black. Nothing ever happens again.

Well, it’s ok to be horrible, said Z. Some writers give up because they want it to be perfect. You need to be passionate and persistent about your art without become obsessive-compulsive about it. A sincere writer has grit and stamina. Do it because you love it. Make a mess. Clean it up and make another mess.

A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned, said Duchamp Ulysses Take Nothing For Granted. Kill your father. Marry your mother or versa visa. Push a stone up a hill. It rolls down. Push it up again.

We are all orphans sooner or later, said Rita, Speaking from my hard-lived sojourn, Experience is my teacher. The rest is just information, Editing is a form of censorship, said Leo Told Story, waving a pile of rejection letters from lame stream mainstream upstream.

Book of Amnesia V1

A flower has profound responsibility.

Vientiane Kid

Life Lesson #5

What is life, said Lucky.

I’m a big seven as in seven, said an omniscient reliable Lao narrator. Your life is not a test or a dress rehearsal. If it is an actual life your invisible friends protect you from desire, anger, ignorance and fear with courage.

My dad’s not very smart. It’s his DNA, a string theory of letters. Genetics. Gee. Net. Icks. 

Let me give you a kind-hearted example of his stupidity. It’s the rainy season. Slashing squalling delicious rain. Soft, cool, soothing. Like tears. Cry me a river.

It’s pouring like honey. What’s dear old dad do? He washes his silver passenger van in a downpour. Smart eh? Yeah, he’s trying to impress a dry writer polishing words by using his intelligent hose running wealthy water over rain. Cleaning. He gets a free shower.

He ignores me. I am a tool.

Grandmother sits on our austere 1924 colonial dark-brown balcony folding banana leaves for a ceremony. Every morning at dawn she walks to the muddy road near the Mekong offering Buddhist monks handfuls of rice. She burns incense at the family altar. She nurtures her shrinking garden after her son decided to plant a cement parking lot. What a clever little man.

My grandfather stares at rain, forming lakes.

Daddy’s very busy. He disappears for hours drinking beer with friends. Playing around with a secret squeeze in dark places. She’s starving for cash. A poor girl from a poor family in a poor country needs to make a living poor thing.

My mom’s also smart. What’s the difference between smart and clever? Maybe that’s the answer to your life quest-ion.

Survival with a capital S.

After the rain when it's dry and the smallest full moon of the year rises above the Mekong before a river festival filled with floating orange flowers and burning candles she incinerates plastic garbage. Yeah. Yeah. Burn baby burn. Light my fire.

It's a sweet smell let me tell you. Like when Duvall in Apocalypse Now said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. That smell. What's the word? Acrid. 

When she’s not burning plastic trash she sweeps. Broom music. Stone cold. She cooks. She pretends to be busy. She’s a baby delivery service. What’s another mouth? She manages home, kids and cash. I’m worth $3,500 on the stolen kid market in China. My older sister would’ve been aborted. Bad luck for her.

Mom ignores me. I am a tool.

She’s super busy doing her gentle mother routine. Later, she squawks. She's a soft kind later.

Parents and teachers and millions of lazy humans here love to pretend to be busy. I guess it gives their short life value.

Milling around is an art form with style. Art transforms life.

Lao are soft and kind. We have a good heart. We are not as mercenary as the Vietnamese. We drift through your sensation, perception and consciousness with the grace of a cosmic Lepidoptera in a gentle breeze.

The trick is to tolerate with kindness and Patience, your great teacher, the empty-eyed star gazing starers and hustlers. Bored after five minutes they lose interest and leave you alone. Zap like a zigzag lightning bolt. Gone.

Vietnamese plant rice.

Cambodians watch it grow.

Laotians hear it grow.

Nature’s a great teacher. We are nature’s tools.

For cultural, historical, educational, environmental, emotional, intellectual and economic reasons milling around is a popular daily activity. This unpleasant fact cannot be denied or ignored or forgotten like a missing leg after discovering a landmine in paradise. 

Limited opportunities, unregulated population growth, substandard education, no medicine, no hope and inconclusive futures enhance Milling Around.

It kills time alleviating boredom a dreaded lethargic tedious disease.

Boredom is fear’s patience.

Milling around kills the human spirit. No initiative. Period. How sweet. How charming. It’ll take another generation to get a life and accept personal responsibility for choices and consequences.

Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam are alive with unexploded ordinance, amputees, superstition and ghosts.

Existence is one long perpetual distraction. Say what?

You may as well do what you love because you're going to spend most of your life doing it. We breed, work, get slaughtered and mill around. We are told to blend in to survive. My mom taught me this hard cruel life lesson. She reminds me every time I open my mouth to express an original free thinking idea. That’s what parents and teachers teach us by example and they have extensive Life Experience - another amazing teacher.

If you ask why they cut out your tongue.

I’m too young to know much. I know what I don’t know. Anyway, I need to finish my school paper on developing moral character with social intelligence, courage, self-control, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity.

How do you develop self-control and courage?

By failing. Fail better. There are two kinds of character.

What are they?

Moral character is fairness, generosity and integrity.

Performance character is effort, diligence and perseverance.

Kids need challenges to grow. Like hardships and deprivation. Life is trial and error and taking risks. Daring is not fatal.

Thanks for life lesson #5. You are the future of Laos.

You’re welcome. I have my junior philosopher’s badge.

Weaving A Life, V1

Practice

Make it new day by day, make it new, said Leo sitting under a Camellia tree in a green garden. It blossoms 10,000 pink flowers every spring  ... light shadows bamboo leaves  ... practice calligraphy  ... Be the brush be the paper be the ink  ... Zen.

Practice allows you to wake up.

Mandalay

*

After the orphanage Tran discovered a dingy roadside cafe along the Perfume River in Hue. He sat at a wooden table under a torn blue plastic awning protected from searing mid-day sun. He ate animal tongue with eel extract and monkey brains while savoring thick noodles mixed with spicy red peppers, spinach and broccoli. Green tea and snake blood.

He needs the antioxidants.

He hears melodious NOM dialects filled with 25,000 characters as men pole boats loaded with bananas and onions toward floating markets on a calm velvet surface. A girl in white silk rolls dough into noodles. She drops them in boiling water fired by wood in a red brick stove. Another girl chops vegetables and fish. They stare at him laughing and talking.

Keep staring, I might do a trick, said Tran.

Trucks, tractors and herds of water buffalo crowd the dirt road. Illiterate boys bank an eight ball in dust. An angry, frustrated, underpaid, undersexed overworked female Vietnamese teacher moonlighting as a Communist party stooge admonishes her pool shark students for breaking the cue ball off green bank walls.

Play the angles you idiots, she shouts, elevating her Marxist CONTROL stick, stabbing them, prodding them, driving them forward, accelerating them through educational fields filled with landmines.

She pounds her stick on a bamboo podium to get their attention. She releases her repressed anger and frustration, Your fate is to put up with me, she screams. Students cower behind rote memorization grammar rules in fear.

Famine survives in green paddies below heaven’s gateless gate as emaciated farmers work steaming white oxen past orphans selling bananas, trinkets and skin to lost scared alienated caffeinated satiated rich obese white tourists.   

Lovers sleep on teak furniture abandoned by Rohingya fleeing a genocide promoted by the Burmese Army. They stream across streams into Bangladesh where they languish forever.

Across from the restaurant behind a spaceship made of mud is an iridescent dirt playing field and elementary school. Curious disheveled smiling children stare as a stranger with one good leg squats over a holy toilet.

Tran shits fertilizer 7.5 miles into the center of the Earth creating earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan. Radioactive debris floods the Mississippi Delta singing the blues.

Book of Amnesia, V1