First, was a bulky murderer from Cape Town, who told me to get the fuck out of Vietnam. He was hammered, granted, but he looked at me square in the eyes and said, "you'll lose every dollar you brought, you won't be able to afford a ticket home, you'll shrivel up here and they'll take everything from you." But then I turned on a bit of Bob Dylan at the bar and he said he loved me. That we were buddies now. That I was gonna be fine and make it big somehow. Big drunk dudes are too easy to please.
About that time, a Chinese girl with a name that sounded suspiciously like "kangaroo" bit my arm so hard I have a welt. I don't think I deserved it, but I probably did.
Traveling is partly about experiencing local culture, drinking it like rusty well water, and partly about seeing how good things really are for you. Maybe it is partly to see how much better those same things could be if you gave them half a chance - but it is at least as much about the other people from around the world that have decided to do the same thing as you. Set forth. See the world. Figure some things out along the way.
I've met a lot of fascinating people, but tonight takes the cake. What is it about Vietnam that has wrapped up so many people? For me, a vague ache, tempered by a generation gap - guilt and rage and fear and self-loathing. For what we, America, have done here. For what we, America, have done again and again and again. Not to say that the Vietcong were angels - certainly there were atrocities on both sides, and now we've both decided to forget different portions of the story.
I talked at length to a punk from near Munich. He's heading home on Sunday. He sat and told his story, which was my story, to the point of nearly crying with each other. He was a troubled teenager, he sat all day and watched the perfect people on tv. He wondered for a long long time, 'What is wrong with me, what is wrong with me, what is wrong with me? Where is this perfect love? Where is my boundless happiness? Where is my god?'
He said, "I watch the people go to work. They live for the weekends, live for the pub, live for the quick and easy lay." This wise man, twenty years old, had already seen that this is simply bullshit. That for him, this is a life that leads nowhere good. So, he said, "I'm fucking off."
The last month, he explained, has been effortless. Before, he'd been crippled by this knowledge - that the world he lived in was vastly artifice. He couldn't smoke a joint, couldn't drink a beer, couldn't talk to anyone for fear that this artifice would dissolve. Perhaps a deeper fear, that he could be stranded in the endless flight of insanity. Or darker yet - that he already was. We've both seen doctors about these fears. They don't know any more than we do.
But here, he says, he found peace in a life lived minute to minute. He met new people, drank some beers without fear or guilt. He forgot the time, forgot the date, forgot his fucking schoolwork and his nine to five.
I asked him, do you believe in god? He shook his head, no. Then you agree it's a short time we live here? He nodded, yes. And it's already partly gone. Again, a nod. Then, do we spend it beholden to an ideal that makes no sense to us? Maybe you'll go home and things will be ok. Maybe you'll go home and you'll need to move away. Who knows? More importantly, right now, who fucking cares? If it needs to be done, it will be done. If not, what's the use of torturing yourself?
This kid lit up and I did too. Because as I said it I truly believed it. And because I needed to hear it at least as much as he did.
There were other stories today, but they were dwarfed by this small moment of clarity with this fine German who likes De La Soul and Motörhead, who will figure it all out if he finds a bit of patience - if he accepts the understanding that the life "they" live is fine for them, but it would kill him or me. It sounds like the easy way out, but it's not. It's just not. Maybe I'll learn these things too.
Goodbye Ho Chi Minh/Saigon. Tomorrow we press further north. Perhaps the tone will settle down again - and yet maybe not.
Who knows? For now, who fucking cares?
Auf wiedersein.
Location:Saigon, Vietnam
kangaroo who??? love you brotha.
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