Books

I invite them to Phu Bai. We stood in the shade of the old small faded airport building. It’s a clear memory of my arrival when I was a green nineteen. I needed to see and feel the area again.

I’ve carried a copy of Omar’s book, A Century Is Nothing from Turkey to Indonesia to Nam. I considered making a sacrifice in Nam. Burn it.

First thought, pure thought, said a Zen monk.

Together with Omar we used fire, crucible alchemical combinations, diversities, sweat, blood and tears to create it so I’d use fire to release it.

Save books, build a library.

Books are universes of ideas, experiences, feelings, visions and paths, destinations obliterated through discovery, reminding memory. They are worlds of dreams, stories, dramas, plays, songs, histories and guides into new visceral experiences.

Pages sing their laughter with wisdom, song, and poetry. Grow Your Soul.

Live forever with paper’s tactile sensation. Voices of reason, comedy and tragedy are skintight drum stories. They are oral transmissions recorded on parchment, vellum and illustrated manuscripts in Gaelic talking tongues, etched on Sumerian clay and painted on Asian scrolls.

I didn’t burn it. Down the road I gifted the brick to three Asian women passing through Saigon in late 2009. They had Chinese ancestry from Hong Kong and lived in Australia. I said a blind friend named Omar wrote it so I signed it laughing letting it go with them.

Thanks for the book.

You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it.

It took all three to carry it. They staggered up guesthouse stairs with the epic opus. After breaking down a wall they struggled to get it through an opening.

People need to break down before they break through.

They discarded cheap Vietnamese souvenirs to maneuver the monster into a bag. We’ll have to check this beast all the way to Sydney.

People use words to make walls, said Zeynep.

People use words to make bridges, said Rita.

Bridges over walls, said Devina. It’s a mind map.

Show someone a rectangle, said Z. Ask them is this a door or a wall?

When you build a wall think of all the things you leave outside, said Tran.

Yes, said Leo who knew a lot about dynasties and firewalls.

Some veterans return to Europe, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the South Pacific. Others remember to forget or forget to remember returning in their memories, dreams, reflections, flashbacks and nightmares. Some write it down and make sense of it later.

Don’t try. Do.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

– Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BCE)

Train to Hue

A friendly grandfather, grandmother and their g-daughter are on the train going to Saigon to visit friends and relatives. Born in Hanoi, she’s been studying in Czechoslovakia for seven years. Sprawling Hanoi is new for her.

We roll though night lulled by the rhythm of click-clack rail language. At 4 a.m. a bone white moon dances with clouds and silent stars over rice paddies, forests and black mountains.

I went to the dining car for java at dawn. I saw a Hobbit inside a dark blue hooded sweatshirt framing wisps of brown hair, angular face and perfection facing a woman.

Wow you are a beautiful elf, I said. She looked up, smiling. Thank you.

I join her and her mom. They were away from Switzerland for five weeks, doing the SE Asia circuit. Simone, 19, is sincere and direct with piercing green eyes. She will begin a Hotel & Tourism management school in Zurich in the fall. She’s been traveling the planet since the age of two.

Her mom is a journalist and businesswoman. No nonsense. World wise. She leaves to find her husband.

We talk about the hospitality business and attention to detail. It’s called MBWA, I said, Management by walking around. I worked in Hyatt, Shangri-La and Ramada International operations. It’s about guest service and marketing. Get out of your office and on the floor. Get a head in the bed.

I’m really excited to learn so much, she said. You will make an excellent General Manager. I hope so, if I do I will give you a meal and bed.

 

Her stepfather wanders in after dreaming. He’s a professional cellist, teacher, diver and photographer. We talk about music. The cello is closest to the human voice, he said. In an opera when the music drops in a romantic or high drama point it’s the cello you hear. He mentions Jackie Du Pre and her genius. She did it all at 42 yeah, it’s strange for me and other professional musicians, after the performance and all the applause it feels so strange to return to a hotel room alone.

We met by chance on purpose with destiny dancing in the wood paneled dining car, a memory of an era with slow meandering train travel.

Hue was the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. We walked to the Citadel near the Perfume River and across a bridge toward long walled interiors. It’s filled with exhibits, temples, rooms, black and white photographs, art objects and paintings. One image shows an arena where they staged fights between elephants and tigers.

It rains heavy and the women disappear. Sam and I shelter under a pagoda roof with a young Vietnamese couple. She teaches poetry. Sam asked her to tell us a poem.

Thunder & Lightning. She jumps. Rain pours on fields, old marbled stones inside green.

Initially shy she recites a poem. It is musical and mysterious. It is about love and two people missing each other. Her voice is strong. She feels this poem through her, it is her life and history, all the creation stories and songs and poetry she learned growing up. Her voice is angelic. Her melody, rhythm and voice flows as rain thunders. Lightning flashes and dances. We applaud her performance. She is retiring, relieved.

Sam and I sing and perform Singing In The Rain for them, circling around stone pillars, twirling with the lyrics, feeling the music. Rain dance. They laugh.

The intensity of the rain slows. We walk through drizzle. The sun reflects diamonds off stones inside shallow water pools. Prussian blue skies decorate mountains. Sun drenched fields lie emerald green. A solitary gray elephant stands near a banyan tree anticipating a golden stalking tiger.

We walk over a bridge, over a river, over a world.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

V Train

At dusk I severed a Hanoi alley to a lake for fresh air and sky to sit at a motorcycle repair shop with iced java. Two females dressed to kill using their hot naked sex passed on a cycle negotiating potholes, dust, and rocks with SMS direct.

A woman burned paper money in an old can to celebrate her new house, prosperity, honor and respect for her ancestors. Your location cannot be determined, said SMS.

On the balcony with pink flowering bougainvillea I enjoy green tea and white yellow clouds with quick rainstorms sharing whistle songs with free raptors as others died on balconies in cages.

After two weeks avoiding whizzing whirling dervish motorcycles, I ventured to the train station before high noon. It is a long faded yellow French cement block. I passed a window with a red sign, Brigade Leaders Collect Team Tickets Here.

I am a leader without a brigade. The narrow room has bolted blue plastic seating and numbered glass windows. At the end of the room next to the W.C. a huge mirror in a heavy brown lacquered frame creates an illusion of surreal space.

Counter #2 is where foreigners get tickets. Options include soft sleeper, soft seat, hard seat and no seat. I’m taking the SE1 overnight train from Hanoi to Hue, the ancient capital on the Perfume River known for art and architecture. Resplendent.

Omar asked me to burn his book A Century is Nothing at Phu Bai south of Hue in a symbolic fire ceremony.

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

A woman behind thick glasses said, Soft sleeper.

It wasn’t a question it was a statement. She knows foreigners taking the night train want to sleep, have children take care of them when they are old and dying of loneliness while cooking over coal fires or forest shards admiring natural scenery before it’s gobbled up by corrupt companies as powerless locals improve their standard of living by hustling a little middle class economic dream.

Tonight, said the woman, sharply.

No, Sunday please.

She pointed to a calendar on the counter.

Number 19.

Yes.

She punched in the numbers. She pulled out a pink ticket.

That’s 533 Dong or $33. She showed me the number on her calculator. I paid. She handed me the ticket and dropped crumpled bills on the counter like leaves fluttering from a dying tree. Boredom enveloped her.

It leaves at 1930.

Thank you. Track #9 Car #1 Room 15/16.

Where are you from? said a Hanoi pedicab man.

I am a ghost from everywhere.

What is your country?

My country is my hand – see, five rivers.

How does it feel to be moving or sitting free and anonymous with laughter dancing down all the days? Excellent. Where do I park this empty vehicle?

*

Memory spoke: My mind is empty, said the sad old man in his small dusty Istanbul leather shop. My mother is 65. She has cancer. She has tried chemo and radiation therapy. I don’t know what to do. People come into my shop asking questions, What’s this price, How much is this, too many questions. How can I help them, what can I do?

Perhaps, said the stranger, You should just be with her. Give her the comfort she needs now. Give her water. Give her your love. Sit with her.

Yes, he said with sad deep eyes, It is difficult to be here now, gesturing around his shop crammed with shoes and bags and leather aroma.

*

A Turkish train chased moon, seawater and oil freighters. Two veiled lovers held hands at a station. Heavy green and purple grapes draped fences around barbwire stations. A sad long-faced man waiting for his life to unfold stared at the ground.

He’s married to his mother and her tomato-based history of love, regret, unemployment and zero opportunities.

A commuter ferry sailed across the Bosporus in elemental light. Visions of a Blue Mosque, spires and silver domes sparkled as blue waves swelled hearing artists carve Churning The Sea of Milk at Angkor Wat in the 9th century.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Rain

A heavy rain mutes voices with refined elegance. Moisture softens edges where words slash and stab, committing heinous crimes inside the imagination of lovers stranded in the long sad misfortune of falling water.

The moisture is a blessing for farmers huddled below brown and yellow ponchos planting rice in geometric rows as shallow water stalks reeds.

Rice steams in cauldrons being stabbed by steel spatulas as university students stare at empty bowls.

Farmers don’t know them, see them or begin to imagine the spoiled ravishing eaters with heads bowed over chipped white rice bowls, not in gratitude but in hunger’s anger being never satisfied and talking with their mouths full spilling grunts of MORE.

The farmers plant rice. They walk along brown dirt dikes inspecting a precious state owned agrarian kingdom as pouring rain music bounces off the surface, slides down leaves, collating green feathers.

Twilight’s heavy mist collects in thick clouds rolling over green forested mountains caressing valleys, streams and rivers, layering fields where silent men and women plant rice stalks one by one becoming invisible.

It’s a poetic landscape painting, said Leo.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Ancestor Worship

Inside every family’s universal black hole is a main room and altar for dead relatives with candles, fresh fruit, burning incense spirit food and black and white or color images.

This reminded me of the village artist where I rode a mountain bike across green hills, up and down dirt roads, seeing butterflies mate in dust, old people threshing rice in fields, a woman lugging piles of white cauliflower to market in her rush-woven baskets suspended on a bamboo poles ...

sailing down long dirt paths past athletic shoe sweat shops - long brick room factories filled with morose sterile girls and one child mothers hunched over clacking Butterfly machines stitching uppers, lowers, tongues and seamless survival wages - until I reached a narrow street to enjoy excellent green tea with a seller.

I bought bags of Grade-A compressed leaves.

Uphill from tea man were small red wooden slat shops with faulty appliances, market stalls, cheap street food and butchers flaying meat and gristle.

In a small brick room was an artist. He drew dead people. A relative brought him a black and white image artifact The image was used for residence, work, and school. The three iron rice bowls.

A guaranteed living space, guaranteed work unit and guaranteed rice rations. It was a great deal. Everyone was treated the same, wore the same uniform, said the same thing and followed the leader like kids playing a game.

Stay in line, yelled a leader, and shut your face! 

The artist accepted a photo from a grieving relative and set up his easel. He used a magnifying glass to illuminate the face. A #2 pencil created an 8x10 portrait.

On the chipped plaster walls was his work. Farmers, aunts, uncles, husbands, and wives.

One for all and all for one.

Today he sketched an old stoic woman. She’d suffered at the hands of Emperors, Nationalists, Communists and new economic revolutionaries disguised as kind caring officials. She’d suffered the indignities of old age wearing a yoke called Fate.

A battered three-string musical instrument hung near abstract red streaks. A black fly on the artist’s left shoulder rubbed its feelers together.

Lord of the Flies said, Tasty. Let’s eat, said the spider to the fly.

We sat down. An old man with a skeleton face and paper-thin arms opened a bag of tea. He poured compressed leaves into his bony right hand before fluttering them into an old chipped stained blue pot. He added water from a red thermos. We shared tea watching the artist work. The tea was a blend of gentle hospitality. The portrait was exact.

These images decorate Asian family altars. They sleep on altars in city temples. Death and ancestor worship is a big deal. Survivors are afraid of hungry ghosts.

Do all the ancestors hear, understand and acknowledge humans yelling? Can ancestors request peace and quiet?

On anniversary death days they meet other ancestors inside the narrow maze of alleys where piss, drain water, used cooking oil, daily slop and language liquids flow down narrow passageways into small holes where voices become discordant echoes.

Revived, vilified and deified, the dead form a rubber stamp committee addressing this family community - Ha Noise.

It’s come to our attention dear comrades, beloved family and friends  ... that we have a communication volume issue here.

Silence! We command you. Shut your face. We are trying to sleep. The long peaceful and restful sleep of dreamers. Leave us be.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged