Tuesday, April 29, 2025
D+174/100
1970 US and South Vietnamese forces launched an incursion into Cambodia
1975 US began to evacuate its citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind in response to advancing North Vietnamese forces, bringing an end to the Vietnam War
1992 Jury acquitted Los Angeles Police Department officers on charges of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King; the decision sparked massive riots in the city
2022 World's longest glass-bottomed bridge, the Bach Long (White Dragon), 632m long, opened in Moc Chau Island mountain park and resort, Vietnam
In bed at 9, awake at 4:10, and up at 4:25. 65°, windy, temperature decreasing.
Prednisone, day 350; 2 mg., day 12/21; Kevzara, day 1/14; CGM, day 14/15; Trulicity, day 5/7. Prednisone at 5 a.m. Other meds at 7:40 a.m. Kevzara injection at 12:15 p.m.
Matthew 25:31-46. Geri visited her friend Elise yesterday. Elise has endured Parkinson's disease for years and is now in hospice care. It was a hard visit. Geri intends to return. She's a good woman and a good friend.
Yesterday afternoon, I watched Three Seasons, a 1999 film written and directed by Tony Bui, a Vietnamese-born American who studied at and now teaches at Loyola Marymount's film school. The film has won a number of significant awards. It stars several Vietnamese actors I am not familiar with and Harvey Keitel, who was also an executive producer. It's the story of Vietnam, or perhaps only of Ho Chi Minh City, after the American invasion, the victory of the Viet Minh and VC, the unsuccessful communist economy, and the country's adoption of Đổi Mới, or a market-driven, largely capitalist economy. The plot tells four stories. The first is that of "Woody," a boy of perhaps 12 years, a street peddler working for a "Fagan" character who mistreats him. He partners up with a girl even younger than him, who survives by collecting aluminum cans. The second story is about Lan, a prostitute, and Hai, a cyclo/rickshaw driver. The third is about Kien An, a young woman who reaps and street peddles white lotus flowers. She works for a reclusive owner of a lotus lagoon, who is afflicted by leprosy and is also a poet. The fourth story is about James Hager, played by Harvey Keitel. He served as a Marine during the American War and fathered a daughter by a Vietnamese woman. He returned to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City to find his daughter. The four stories are independent of one another in terms of plot development, but are all connected as narratives of loss. The overall story is one of the transition of Vietnam from a traditional society to a modern, capitalist, consumerist, and exploitative society. Kien An and Woody are street vendors. 'Woody' and his even younger female partner appear to be orphans in a society with no safety net for them. Kien An's work selling beautiful, fragrant white lotus flowers for about 30 cents a bunch is undercut by competitors selling plastic lotus flowers, artificially scented. Lan is exploited by wealthy capitalist businessmen visiting Ho Chi Minh City and staying at expensive, luxurious, high-rise, Western hotels, where Western businessmen stay while negotiating deals with Vietnamese businesses with low labor costs. One can hardly watch the film without thinking of Vietnam's "success" in becoming America's 7th-largest "trading partner." In 2023, Vietnam exported almost $100 billion in goods to the U.S. Harvey Keitel's character's (perhaps) daughter works as an escort of some sort in the bar/eatery or hotel.
The film does not paint a pretty picture of Vietnam, especially of Ho Chi Minh City. Some scenes stayed with me. One was of a large retail establishment, like a Best Buy, with many display shelves loaded with Samsung televisions, all tuned into a program showing American cartoons, with Woody and his little partner sitting on the ground watching, fascinated. Another was of the street, next to a railroad track, where Lan lived. When Hai, who loves her, came to visit her, she tried to drive him away, saying, "Can't you see who stands before you? I am a whore and you were just my cyclo driver." His love 'redeems' her, and the last we see of her is in an elegant, traditional, all white ao dai, like she wore before she turned to prostitution. I thought of all the young women in Vietnam, in Japan, on Okinawa, in Bangkok, and the Philippines, and wherever America's far-flung military is present. All the R&R venues during the war in Vietnam. There were also beautiful scenes, including the lagoon or lake filled with lotus flowers and women with their conical hats harvesting the flowers for sale. Also, the floating market, reminding me of my R&R visit to Bangkok in 1965 or 1966.
I noted the aloneness, the loneliness, and the alienation of most of the characters. 'Woody' and his little partner appeared to be homeless. Lan lived alone in a slum just a few feet away from an active train track. Hai seemed to live in his cyclo/rickshaw. The poetic owner of the lotus lagoon never left the old temple he lived in because of his leprosy-caused deformities. I thought of Heather Cox Richardson's book about America's Civil War: the North won the war, but the South won the peace. In Vietnam, the communists won the war, but soulless capitalism has won the peace.
Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty Physical Malfitness: Exercise hurts, as well it might, since by choice and for my pleasure, I didn't do it for eighty years. (Once in my 50s I walked four miles.) . . . Exercise is boring. Everything is boring that does not happen in a chair or bed. Sculptors and painters and musicians live longer than writers, who exercise only their fingers with a pen or on a keyboard. Sculptors chisel or weld or mold clay. Painters work standing up. They drink tons of cognac every night but return to physical activity the next morning. A tuba player holds a weighty object and breaths deeply. Even a harmonica requires more fitness than writing. People have tried to encourage my mobility. . . . I sit on my ass all day writing in longhand, which my helper types up. Sometimes in a car I would pass Pancake Road, two miles away, and see a man walking his collie, the dog stepping out on his forepaws, two wheels harnessed to his backside. These days I no longer drive past Pancake Road or anywhere. I push two wheels ahead of me instead of pulling two wheels behind me like the dog. With my forepaws holding the handles of my four-wheeled roller, my buckling hindquarters slowly shove my carcass forward. I drool as I walk, and now and then I sniff a tree. As I entered my mid-seventies, my legs weakened and it became treacherous to walk on uneven ground. [I hired a trainer.] Twice a week we walked together around a wooden track for cardio. We talked. Then for another 15 minutes I attempted fitness and balance. Balance was a major problem. [The trainer] showed me how to get up when I fall down.
Death: "It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away. Every day millions of people pass away -in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation,-mails to the corpse's friends -but people don't die. Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath . . . . At some point in my seventies, death stopped being interesting. . . In my eighties, crueltymy days have narrowed as they must. . . I try not to break my neck, I write letters, I take naps, I write essays. . . My goal in life is to make it to the bathroom.
This afternoon I watched another Vietnamese-American film, Journey From The Fall, written and directed by Ham Tran. It was a brutal experience watching the film, expecially the scenes in the first half or more, depicting the experiences of Long Nguyen, his wife Mai, their son, Lai, and Long's mother, Ba Noi. The film is the story of the "re-education camps" operated by the communist govenrment in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and the South Vietnamese government. It's also the story of the "boat people," who fled Vietnam to escape the communist takeover and of the separation of families after the fall. The film came out in 2006 and is 2 hours 15 minutes long written, I can't give a synopsis of the entire plot here but here is a glimpse. Long is an anti-communist patriot who is captured by the communists and sent to a re-education camp where he, along with thousands of other prisoners, is tortured, beaten, isolated, otherwise abused, and ultimately killed. His wife, son, and mother escape Vietnam on a fishing boat which is intercepted in the Guf of Thailand by pirates who rape and otherwise injure Mai. Mai, Lai, Ba Noi, and Nam, the boat's captain eventually settled in Orange County, California, where Mai works in an apparel sweatshop, Ba Noi collects aluminum cans from dumpsters, and Lao is bullied and otherwise struggles at school. The crisis of this part of the plot occurs when Mai discovers that Ba Noi has been encourageing Lai to write letters to his father which she secretly tucks away in a candy or cookie tin. When Mai confronts Ba Noi and Lai, Lai shouts that he hates her and Ba Noi accuses her of never 'being there', being a mother for Lai. She confesses that as his mother, she died in Vietnam when Long was imprisoned by the communists, and that she died again on the boat when she was raped and scalded by the pirates. There is ore to the plot that this, and it's not as melodramatic as my synopsis make it seem. There is much more to the film than when I have written here. In fact, watching t is a very powerful emotional experience. I had to hit the pause button midway through the film, get up, and do some work in the kitchen to relieve the stress I felt watching the scenes in the re-education camp and during Long's unsuccessful escape.
The film concludes with a dedication: DEDICATED TO THE MILLIONS OF BOAT PEOPLE AND VICTIMS OF THE RE-EDUCATION CAMPS. Throughout the film, I thought of my in-laws, the Hoang family, De and Bac Tuyet and their 6 children who fled Vietnam as boat people in 1975, went to a refugee camp in Thailand, then toe the Marine base at Camp Pendleton, California, before being sponsored by a Catholic parish in Appleton, Wisconsin where my daughter-in-law Anh was born. One of the characters in the film is named Binh Loc Hoang. One of my regrets in life is not asking De whether I could serve as his amanuensis for a emoir of his life, including movemnt south after the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam, their life in Danang when I was there, and thier flight as boat people. Another big regret.
I think too of my time in Vietnam, how little I understand what the stakes were for the Vietnamese people or for American, how long-lasting but futiel our efforts would be, how Vietnam has occupied space in my head, my heart, and my sould for nearly 60 years. Here I am half way through my 9th decade, still watching films about Vietnam, still thinking aout Vietna,, still mourning for Vietnam.
Julie Aquavia and Carl are coming over for dinner tonight.
My ball of nesting cotton is being regularly visited by at least one house sparrow. I'm still waiting for more visits by the goldfinches.
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