Saigon Woman Metaphor

You are an object of fascination and speculation. A stranger among strangers is alive, happy singing a blues song about creative disorientation and the dynamic unfolding process. You are a ghost and survivors have seen millions of them before now and later. 

Survivors pray to soul spirits because they are afraid of ghosts.

Many sheep have an EI or Emotional Intelligence of -7. This simple truth or unpleasant fact is revealed through behavior, attitudes and verbal communication. It’s a lack of maturity, a generation’s reality.

Zero incentive, initiative and opportunities have nothing to do with chance, fate, destiny, luck, education or life social skills.

I witnessed this reality facilitating in Utopia, said Leo, a survivor of Gulag #101. Living and learning comes before teaching.

Everyone is a student where life’s lessons are small and magnificent, said Zeynep.

There are book smarts and street smarts, said Tran.

The Theatre of the Street is opening on Broadway and coming to a country near you, SRO, every performance is sold out for infinity. Its free for amputees and orphans in Asia where life is pure street theatre, hustler heaven on earth and I am pretending to be exactly who I am. My little story is filled with contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguities.

Discover a Metaphor, said Devina.

Ok, said Tran, Here’s one. Vietnam is a Saigon woman, 18, she costs $28 an hour, living in a room with other girls down a long series of narrow twisted dead end back alleys in Area 51 on the dark side of town. They are radioactive rural chickens. They have no identity cards. They are the living dead. It’s an in-out job.

The fat boss plays cards with friends. Neighbors chew the fat. A customer arrives on the back of a cycle. The boss tells his son to get three chickens.

They walk into view and stand silent. Which one do you want, asked the boss. He doesn’t care. They are a commodity with an exchange value. Human life is cheap.

The man looks at the girls picks one the others shrug and leave the man hands the boss money he unlocks a green metal door the man and girl go in the boss locks the door behind them you can never be too careful there are two dimly lit curtained areas with thin mattresses and a bathroom in the back shy she undresses with her back to the man she is supple they play around like greased monkeys getting warmed up for the big climatic scene they’ve forgotten their lines and ad lib their silent film in slow-motion her breasts are small points of light it isn’t about her pleasure she warms up big daddy applies a love sock climbs on for the ride takes control of the action priming the pump she majored in Vertical Mergers & Acquisitions at Quick & Easy U moving with the grace of a river reed caressed by warm sea air in suspended animation finished with the climatic action they wash dress knock on the door the boss unlocks it she returns to her room friends TV and boredom waiting for another curtain call the man rides into night smelling naked metaphors and the boss deals another hand. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Spirit Dream

Spirit dream rides clouds. Ancestor ghost eats incense. Feeling slow and clean in the temple zone.

Leo discovered new Chinese ink, stone and brushes. He remembered Mr. Li, his calligraphy teacher in Utopia.

How to stand.

How to hold the brush.

How to rub the ink stone inside the black oval with water.

How to caress the brush and black ink along an edge.

Create simple strokes.

Be the ink, be the brush, be the paper.

Museum

The Saigon Museum is filled with glorious death defying historical struggles: wars, artifacts, diagrams, maps, tanks, planes, final assault plans, old cars used to haul the dead dying wounded and ammunition, statues of men making pistols, old medical equipment, typewriters for propaganda material, flags, posters, pamphlets, a burning monk in 1963 as Kodachrome blazes his life, villages, corpses, soldiers, politicians, dog tags, gas masks, knives, guns, tools, radios, helmets, baskets, pots and pans, shoes, shirts and skeletons.

Papier mâché people exhort the masses, Independence or Death!

They’ve traded illusions of independence and freedom for a one-party Socialist state filled with greed, corruption, nepotism and economic opportunity.

Life - contradictions and paradoxes.

Where does the artificial end and the real begin, asked a blind beggar.

Thich Quang Duc

The Amputee  - Knife Sharpener

After eating noodles in a cold alley, a man, 60, remembering how wars and hard survival ages humans, sat sharpening a knife for a woman customer redefining steel. No left foot. He rested his curled leg stump on a boot.

In the afternoon he walks past with a shuffling gait. He’s wearing a green fatigue shirt, floppy hat, motorcycle helmet and carrying his worn red plastic bag of simple tools. I know his truth not his story. A landmine or a stray bullet?

His left boot is a discarded war object and split down the front.

It is brutally hot. The sun is behind him. How does he feel? Where is he going? Home for lunch and rest? Looking for more dull edges.

I am always walking, he said. I stop, find work, sit, sharpen an edge, get small money, put away my tools, put on my boot and walk. I eat noodles or rice on the street. 

I walk and work until dark. Then I go home. Home is where they have to take you in. I am a storyteller with tools for sharpening life’s dull imperfections.

I am surrounded by amputees, he said. They approach me on their crutches, their hands out. Without legs they wheel themselves down the street on little trolleys low to the ground truth.

____

A one-armed young man wears an old blue baseball hat. He sees local businessmen approaching. They wear fresh pressed white shirts, leather shoes, and pressed pants with shiny belt buckles.

He takes off his hat. Holds it out. It is empty. They ignore him. He puts it on his arm stump, runs his good hand through his black hair, puts on his hat and moves down the street.

I am in the army now, he said. An army of the legless armless physically and emotionally wounded forgotten humans. They know you and you know them. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Visions

Two Hanoi visions wearing crash helmets collided along the road to the airport.

A confident looking man walking near a lake tripped on cracked broken tile, didn't break stride, kept his eyes ahead, w/o losing face, stoic, passive, marching.

A young girl, 10, sat slumped against a blue stone crevice. She held a small box with something to sell. Her eyes contained world secrets. 

Is this suffering, being abandoned her destiny, an illusion for a Dream Sweeper?

Will she wither away and die here, lost, alone, forgotten?

She is one abandoned child among billions in the world, said Rita.

Saigon, Fall 2009 by Tran

Saigon or HCMC is short for Ho Chi Minh City. One door closes and one door opens.

The last time here I was leaving the war at twenty going on 100 to fly over the pond to The World meeting apathy and quiet rejection. I was transformed. I became a happy ghost. See ART.

Now I am out early drinking java in the Cholon marketplace, a throbbing mercantile zone near sewage, garbage, vegetable sellers, screaming motorcycles carrying precarious precious loads of food, towering stacks of plastic sandals, wholesalers, hustlers, beggars, thieves and market women who, after the initial suspicious glance thinking, What in the hell is that guy doing here, continued their daily business of haggling, selling, gossiping, cooking, scheming, dealing and living.

I wander down no-name streets to a Chinese pagoda, light incense, make offerings and meditate.

I enjoy Indian mutton curries at a mosque built in 1932. Serenity with repose and spirit.

At night in a park across the street is live music and a carnival as Saigon hosts the Asian Games. Iraqi and Chinese kick boxers practice in fractured darkness shielded by the moon. Gaping residents watch men and women punch and kick training partners.

I am in heart of darkness. Predators wear skintight translucent red dresses and black stiletto high heels. A woman must make a living.

Are you the hunter or the prey, said Tran.

Foreign tourist tribes move through on a quick three-day visit before swimming with alligators to Cambodia. They carry tattered guidebooks and wear rubber beach sandals. They are having an adventure. Traveling is hard work when you’re a stranger in a strange land.

Travel makes you.

Tourists collecting vague specifics of language and humid heat memories look distraught, lost, angry, hungry, confused and content like people they know and love and have forgotten in their eternal quest for an identity theory.

Old expats wear masks. After fifty you get the face you deserve. One step from the morgue. They struggle forward seeking food, water, emotional connections and meaning. There is NO EXIT.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged