Jumping Thunder

"Find whatever freedom it is that you need or whatever freedom from need that you seek" - a post on Hanoian from a writer in the Botanical Garden. Everyone lives in their personal garden, visible, secret, serene and portable.

Now then. From the notebook extolling recent Hue travel. On our first afternoon in Hue, Joe, Andi, Isabella and I walked to the Citadel. It sits along the Perfume River, long walled enclosures. It's huge with many exhibits, temples and rooms filled with photographs, art objects and paintings. Old images show an arena where they staged fights between elephants and tigers. 

It rains heavy and the girls disappear. Joe and I take shelter under a pagoda roof with a young couple.

She teaches poetry. Joe asks her to tell us a poem. Thunder. Lightning. She jumps. Rain pours on fields, old marbled stone stones, inside green. Initially she is shy, then she recites a poem. It is musical and mysterious. It is about love, about two people missing each other. Her voice is strong. She feels this poem through her, it is her life, history, all the stories and songs and poetry she learned growing up surrounded by friends and family.

She gets into it. Her voice is an angel. Her melody, rhythm and voice flow as the thundering rain and lightning flashes and dances.

We applaud her performance. She is retiring, relieved. Joe and I perform "Singing In The Rain," for them, circling around stone pillars, twirling with the words, feeling the music. Rain dance. They laugh.

The intensity of the rain slows down and we all walk through the drizzle. Say farewell.

The sun comes out, reflecting diamond light on stones inside shallow water pools. Deep dark blue skies fill the air above mountains. The sun drenched fields are an amazing brilliant shade of green.

We walk over the bridge, over the river.

Metta.

Ben & V

Travel long enough and far enough and you become a stranger to yourself.

The expatriated broken toothed junkie from Laos spent seven years as political prisoner. Or so he said one morning after dawn, walking through an Old Quarter looking for someone to talk to, a permanent change of address.

He was one of the lost ones. He was the star of his very own highly rated REALITY entertainment program. He talked a blue streak. He ranted. He raved. He had his hand out. Looking for salvation. An exit permit. An empty hand holds everything.

Now he lives on the street of dreams at noon o'clock where a dusty grand-father clock strikes 12. Bong-bong-bong-bong-echo. He jabbered his shadow away, past travel tour shops, bored girls waiting for tourists and motorcycle hustlers.

Lives of quiet desperation. Hustle to eat. Hustle to dream. Meal to meal. A cycle. Conversations love distractions.

Where are you from? asked a motorcycle guy down at the interesection of Yes, No, Maybe, hoping we'd establish a connection, bonding through need, want and desire.

I am from heaven.

He expected a familiar place name like Europe, America, Australia.

Heaven?

Yes.

Where is it?

I point toward the blue sky. There.

It's about trust here said a Frenchman. I know foreigners who have lived here 10 years and they still express reservations about who they can, do trust. It's a problem. Be careful.

In my neighborhood women do all the work. Selling vegetables, cleaning, giving birth, nurturing, sewing, cutting hair, cooking, serving, scrubbing pots, pans, chopsticks, knives.

Thuy is 47, and a teacher in a public middle school. She makes $250 a month. Her classes number 70. Reminds me of my China teaching days. Long bland cement rooms filled with faces.

She speaks good English. She is married with two daughters, Ben, a bright and lively 20 and V, 10. Her husband is an engineer at the largest paint company in Ha Noi. He speaks Russian. Ben studies Portuguese at Ha Noi University and will go to Portugal this October for 10 months.

V is learning how to ride her bike. She is scared of losing her balance and releasing her small fear.

The grace of a finger under a white ceramic bowl. This delicate love. What is essential is invisible.

Metta.

Directional Capabilities

After two weeks avoiding whizzing whirling dervish motorcycle drivers, with clear intentions I ventured forth to the train station before high noon. It is your basic long cement blocked projectile with a neon sign saying "Ha Noi Train Station."

On a Friday few people were there. Wait until it's time to leave. To the left was a room with counters selling tickets. I passed a window where a red sign read, "Brigade Leaders Collect Team Tickets Here."

The counter room is narrow with plastic seating and numbered glass windows. At the end of the room next to the W.C. is a huge mirror wearing a heavy brown lacquered frame. The illusion of space. Counter #2 is where foreigners get their tickets. There are a variety of trains and options; softsleeper, soft seat, hard seat and no seat.

I'm taking the SE1 overnight train from Ha Noi to Hue. Leaves at 1930, arrives at 0809. A great city on the Perfume River known for art and architecture. Resplendent.

From Hue I travel by bus to Hoi An.

"I would like a ticket to Hue please. One way."

A woman looked through her thick glasses. "Soft sleeper." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. She knows foreigners taking the night train want to sleep, have children to take care of them when they are old, cook over open fires while admiring the natural scenery before it's gobbled up by profit oriented companies as locals try to improve their standard of living dreaming a little dream.

"Tonight?" asked the woman. Sharply. "No, Sunday please."

She pointed to a calendar on the counter. Number 19. Yes, I nodded. She punched in the numbers. She pulled out a pink ticket.

"That's 533 Dong." ($33) She showed me the number on her calculator. I paid. She handed me the ticket and dropped the crumpled extra bills on the counter like so many leaves fluttering from a tree. Boredom enveloped her.

"It leaves at 1930." "Thank you." I wandered away.

Excellent. My last train trip was from Hydarpasa in Istanbul to Ankara.

Metta.

Hue...read more

Hoi An...read more

Flood

My dear friend Sir Thomas, knighted by William Butler Yeats in Sligo, asked about floods here. Am I drowning?

I sang, row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, life is but a dream. When I say I am floating I don't mean in a boat, at least not yet. We've had some rain, often heavy. Cleans the air.

This is the rainy season and you know how the media likes to present disasters, epic dramas of humans battling the natural elements, battling themselves and so on.

I am floating in the clear sense of sitting, writing, reconfiguring this web site, aligning stars and exploding galaxies, nebulas and infinite diversity. I've been heretwo weeks tomorrow. A delightful respite from civilization and the abyss.

After working in the morning I wander through narrow twisted alleys to a side street clogged with motorcycles, women hawking fruit, veggies, meat, tofu, used clothing and babbling in their incomprehensible tongues. I covered a lot of Ha Noi ground the first two weeks so it feels good to sit down and organic stuff.

For example, I cleaned all the useless shit off my hard drive to free up space. Here's to free space, outer space and inner space!

I sit down off the curbing street on a red kinder garden chair at one of my usual eateries. The woman serves delicious freshly grilled spring rolls filled with veggies, cold white noodles and a plastic container of greens along with the bowl of chilies and sauce. Using your clean chopsticks you dip the noodles and spring rolls in the sauce. You smell, chew and swallow. It's cheap and filling. Great taste. It runs less than a buck. Some people stare at you. Others have seen you here before so they accept you. To them you are just a little stranger than yesterday.

She is busy - only doing lunch. She's gone before dusk when a woman selling fruit uses the stone space.

I wander up the choked street dodging speeding motorcycles, women lugging baskets balanced on bamboo staves past merchants selling merchandise out of their ground floor flats. Mechanics hammer metal fixing bikes and broken appliances, salon girls cut, wash and dry, old women sit and gossip about how the younger generation is wild and crazy, young boys haul bricks on a deranged pulley system up to a flat undergoing renewal, older men in their pajamas play GO slapping scarred wooden pieces on the board while drinking beer or tea with their friends, children scamper through the maze.

No one bothers you because they know you live nearby and no foreigners are crazy enough or lost enough to find this narrow area filled with families and life daily.

I sit down with a delicious thick iced coffee in a cafe where the owner smiles and watches family dramas about love, hope, deception and scheming hollow scripts on the box. Everyone has a box here. It's the BIG diversion, all entertainment. Loud and louder.

I return to my little cave and go up on the balcony with a chair, blue plastic table and two plants - one a flowering bougainvillea. I enjoy green tea, watch the clouds fly past, savor quick rain storms sharing whistle songs with birds, some free, others on distant balconies in sad cages.

Riding the rails south to Hue soon. Playing my blues harp.

Metta.

Week Three

Yes, it's always about starting over as I travel the planet.

"Make it new day by day, make it new," said a wandering Chinese monk sitting in a green garden as light shafted through bamboo leaves. Practicing calligraphy.

Winding down small gifts for Indonesians; orange, green, red, blue, and purple Tibetan silk khata scarves. Long, filled with eight auspicious symbols. Delicate and light.

I arrived three weeks ago on a thirty-day tourist visa. Stayed in an Old Quarter hotel for 2.5 weeks. Submitted my passport and $95 bones for a six-month visa extension. It came through this week.

I turned my attention to finding a room. The New Hanoian provides information on events, groups, classifieds, housing and jobs. Alyssa, a teacher friend from our China university days teaching in Nha Trang sent it along while I was in Indonesia. An excellent resource.

I'm in a new room in a new house in a new neighborhood near Lenin Park filled with your typical narrow twisted alleys, dead ends, byways, rusty gates, spilling bougainvillaea foliage, curious kids, workers pulling wheeled carts filled with discarded bricks and mud, slender looming homes (narrow for land tax reasons with 4-5 floors the max) of Ha Noi.

Sequestered inside intimate homes, palm trees, small ponds, it's a respite from the street, noise and gentle wind. A 4th floor balcony offers views of scattered red tiled and metal sheeted roofs, jumbled balconies, distant flashing red light towers, clouds and sky. New garden potentials. Delightful. It's an excellent base for my work, travels and future teaching opportunities.

Discovering new paths, the price of tomatoes and fresh greens. After showing up daily the women give me a fair price.

Two laid back roommates, a Frenchman working for a privately owned agricultural farm three hours north and a Vietnamese speaking Canadian teaching English and playing music with his band of wandering minstrels.

Metta.

Waterproofing a new bamboo hat for a customer.