New Star Page 6
I’m good at cracking shells, but I never get at the essence of anything. Life obscures the fleeting glimpses I have at the kernel. Its gray clouds part every once in a while, when none of my possible actions can change anything.
The Buddhists all say to live in the now and free ourselves of the ego. I say live anyway you can. At thirty years of age, all I’ve learned is that life never gets easier. Its shells renew, and crack them as I may, I never reach that point of awareness or any point of action.
I’m a passive passenger in my own life. Reality flows by like a film. I reach for it, but it turns to dust like old nitrate film.
If I could set that nitrate on fire — I would fan the flames, jump up and down and scream I live here on an insignificant celestial body that orbits a larger insignificant celestial body, which orbits the galactic center of the Milky Way.
But, I can’t scream. My voice has not arrived.
Live you say. Stop thinking. Let go of the ego.
But, the world does not allow that. The world only allows suffering.
The moment you are content is the moment it is over. You can only go down from that type of platitude, and down is where I dwell. If you set your compass for the lowest point on the horizon, then you can only go up, or that’s what I tell myself.
I know one day I’ll leave Hanoi and set my sights on something new, on another perceived better place, on another perceived romance and set on another temporary world of suffering.
It’s all we can do. We are temporary beings living in the three dimensions which our limited physical being has the ability to process.
Nothing short of a hallucination or a holographic image can take that away. It’s why we all flail away, trying to escape this limited reality we see. If only we could push through those barriers of time and space and put our being in a fourth or fifth dimension where pure beings of empathy and hope surround us with love, compassion and understanding.
Until then, I will crack peanut shells in my hand and ask questions that will never be answered. Until then, I will get up and go to work, knowing the answer is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
25
The tide goes out.
Black stripes recede.
Fishing boats —
dint lights on the horizon.
Sand on my feet.
A satellite passes in the sky.
I ash out my joint and continue looking at the multitude of stars radiating above Quan Lan Island. A few wild mustangs run along the white sand beach towards the large sand dunes behind me. The quiet rumble of gas-powered electric generators can be heard in the distance, supplying electricity to the town every night from five to ten o’clock.
To my right, the black silhouette of a mountain towers over the island. The oppressive heat of Hanoi has turned into a cool night breeze. With my notebook, I sit. Not a soul wanders outside of town. The white foam of the beach is all mine.
The craziness of life in Hanoi suspended for a weekend, I’m on the farthest eastern island in the archipelago — the next body of land Hainan Island has been disputed for centuries. As I am not one to get into disputes, I keep looking at the unpolluted sky.
A large pale arm of the Milky Way lies above, parallel to the sea. Its billions of stars represent the best chance we have to return to pure energy and stardust. And the pale blue dot I sit on offers us hope we can get out to the stars, where we belong.
All the trivialness, banality and inter-fighting of our species would be gone in that instant. That instant which says we are eternal space-farers. It’s difficult to imagine, I know, but it is the only hope we have, crossing the course of the galaxy and finding other civilizations.
Be they benevolent or be they malignant, we would have escaped the confines of our celestial neighborhood and embarked on a journey that will expand our consciousness and raise our awareness. Until then, we are a self-destructing species acting out the abundant apocalypses in our mythos.
Imaginary friends, imaginary boundaries and fossil fuels only allow our species to spin its proverbial wheels in a self-created cage. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the cage.
Forget about some outside species threatening humanity as that snake oil salesman Reagan said back in the eighties. Nothing can unite humanity other than itself. The thrill of a fiat currency has gone. Bankers raise interest rates and decrease interest rates in an ever-increasing con game to steal wealth from the masses.
The currency is ourselves and the casino is the universe. Nothing can stop us from realizing this, but we must see it and we must believe it. With no belief in humanity, we have no chance, and I have nothing left but to put my bet on humanity.
26
The journey back to Hanoi was filled with adventure on the open seas. I hopped a ride on a fishing boat with some locals back to the mainland for 30,000 đồng. The captain wanted to charge me double because I was not Vietnamese, but a short wiry grandpa figure with a white Fu Manchu mustache and straggly white hair spoke up on my behalf, saying he fought against the Americans for the freedom of the Vietnamese people and he would not stand for any double standard bullshit.
We had a beer together at a bia hơi on the mainland before I caught my bus back to Hanoi. Our species does have hope, and I tend to forget that in the listlessness that is my being.
Back at work, Drew has met another girl, Phoung, whom he fancies. He’s already talking about taking her on a trip up north to Sapa. Romance comes all the time to dreamers.
Murray has already dwindled the class size of the Vietnam Airlines class from sixteen to ten. And these students have to have a ninety percent attendance rate or they lose their jobs. Big Tom and Mark don’t seem to mind. They have a new karaoke ôm buddy.
Chris has found another chubby expatriate to play house with watching a Dutch diplomat’s home, while he is away on vacation. He’s also had some more clothes made in effort to look the part of a teacher and not a backpacker passing through. The adult students and children like him.
As for me, I take to the classroom on autopilot. I have no care for teaching, or a desire to help Vietnam speak better English. We English teachers serve no purpose other than to teach the local population enough English to communicate with their foreign exploiters.
The talk is of another investor. Mark and Big Tom have blown through Big Tom’s investment and the profits of an ever-expanding school.
Xian, the school’s accountant, has befriended Drew and me, treating us to dinner and drinks several times. My antenna says something is up. Nobody treats you to free meals and booze unless they want something.
I go along with it, for lack of anything else to do. Inertia leads the way, and I feign satisfaction with my life in Hanoi. Nothing I do will change anything. The earth will still rotate and orbit the sun, and I will wake up in the morning.
What else is there to say, as I find myself sitting next to Big Tom on a large red pleather sectional couch, beneath a tile mosaic that seems like one of those innocuous paintings that hang in furniture stores?
A few colored-in geometric shapes and a few random black lines try to give the random shapes some obtuse meaning. A bottle of Johnny Walker Black sits on the glass table, while a slew of scantily clad girls fill our glasses with ice and booze.
I’ve come to a dark place where the wheels turn slowly.
Big Tom is hooting and howling like a child, grabbing and pinching a couple of the girls’ asses.
“Look at the nice little tits on that one,” he bellows, handing the microphone to a long slender girl.
There always seems to be a downward spiral before I embark upon a change. I stare at my glass of whisky, my head full of wanderlust and escape.
“She’s going to sing a song for you!” he shouts.
Great. Just fucking great. Further down the abyss I fall. The girl starts to sing that stupid Celine Dion song from Titanic.
“Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you.” She slides across the re
d pleather couch onto my lap, kissing my neck between verses.
“Ain’t this a slice of heaven! These girls are stupid,” Big Tom shouts. “You can do anything you want to them! Whoo hoo!”
He grabs another two girls onto his lap.
“These girls are nothing but country girls. No education but to suck cock and fuck!”
The lights swirl around the dingy room full of Big Tom’s cigarette smoke. I down my whisky, hoping to drown out the evening.
“My wife always packs condoms in my suitcase when I leave Korea. She’s a good traditional Korean woman.” He continues grabbing the ass of another girl, flipping through the songbook.
Another girl pours me a new glass of whisky, and I slam it as my Celine Dion serenade comes to an end.
Then another girl sings a traditional Vietnamese song. Karaoke is always better when you’re not able to understand any of the lyrics.
And finding the drunken courage I need I ask the pious Christian next to me, “What about the seventh commandment, you know the sin of adultery?”
“They’re fucking farm girls,” he laughs. “Nothing but fucking stupid pagans. They don’t count. They’re going to go to hell, like all the convicts I used to chaplain in the penitentiary.”
27
Mark bobs up and down in the white plastic chair like a punch-drunk boxer who has absorbed too many self-inflicted blows to the head.
Beer, food and words go in and out of his mouth with no care other than to keep the illusion he holds of himself: pious Christian owner of an English school, helping Vietnam to succeed in a new century.
“Mate, everyone knows the Ice Age was caused by The Great Flood. Water seeped up through the earth and overwhelmed the land,” he says, looking at the ice cubes in his Bia Hanoi.
I try not to roll my eyes.
“Noah got all those animals onto his boat and set out to sea. He saved humanity and the animal kingdom, carrying two of every species.”
I look over at Drew, who is keeping his best poker face.
Fuck? Is this guy serious? Did he go to high school?
The Ice Age was caused by increased volcanic activity and fluctuating ocean currents. However, if Noah did exist, he was probably a Sumerian king called Ziusudra, who was warned of a great deluge by the god Enki. Or if The Flood did happen, what’s to say all those whack-jobs are wrong who believe the planet Niburi crossed paths with earth’s orbit and caused The Flood?
Or maybe Jesus rode a brontosaurus across the Hills of Galilee in search of keg parties, monster truck pulls and cheap whores. Maybe He even helped Mark lay a few bricks back in Brisbane. Maybe He even helped Mark con a group of Christians to give him start-up money for New Star, and helped Mark send his wife and children back to Australia, so Mark could boast about his sexual escapades.
I take a sip of beer. Drew lights a cigarette. Mark continues to drone on about Creationism.
I look out at the throng of motorbikes zooming by...there’s that moment, when it doesn’t matter what the other person is saying — their lips move, but your attention is elsewhere, watching a fly get swallowed whole by a gecko, or a person limping on crutches with a leg amputated below the knee.
Drew and I are here to ask for an extra day off, but we never get the chance. Mark has seized the opportunity to reify himself.
“I don’t know about you guys, but coming to Vietnam has been the best decision of my life. I was nothing but a cog in the wheels back in Australia. Here, I’m a god amongst peasants.”
Not knowing what to say, I shake my head. Again my attention shifts elsewhere, this time to waitresses delivering food and beer.
“I went from working on a construction crew to guiding my own life, and it’s Jesus’s doing. The Good Lord found a place for me, and I’m thankful.”
The spew continues. Drew excuses himself, heads for the bathroom. Left on my own, I have nothing to say.
I raise my beer and try not to smirk. “To a brighter future.”
“It will be, mate. We’re getting more money for the school. Big Tom has a Korean friend who wants to invest in the school. We’re in the process of drawing up the paperwork. Soon, we will be expanding again.”
“Expanding what?” Drew asks, finally back, taking a seat, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
“Mark was saying Big Tom found a Korean investor to help the school,” I answer.
“Yeah. I’m sure you guys will like him. He speaks good English and likes to party.”
And, there you have it — the prerequisite for any new hire at New Star: “He likes to party.”
28
Without the teachers at New Star, would Mark and Big Tom have an audience or any validation for their “religious” beliefs and their shenanigans?
Large contracts from companies come in to the school’s coffers and continually go to boozing, partying and whores. Our paychecks this month were a week late. I’m beginning to suspect things are not as rosy as Mark paints them.
My sights are becoming set outside of Hanoi and Vietnam. Sure, it’s an easy life here, working eighteen hours a week, boozing and doing drugs with the occasional liaison with some uneducated girl from the countryside who sells herself in the big city to help the family farm. But, it creates a deadened space. My nerves, cells and thinking have become coated with a film of ennui, which tells me it’s time to run and never look back.
Molecules and atoms all break down to infinite subatomic particles that all interact with each other. You can separate two joined particles and send them to opposite ends of the universe, and they will still have a memory of each other, sending information across the universe to each other.
You can separate the bone from marrow, and there is still being. Our bodies will decompose and our cells will transform into new matter, which still has consciousness. Nothing can stop it from happening. We live on the edge of mortality every second we breathe.
The atmosphere of our planet and its electromagnetic field protects us from the radiation and gamma rays of deep space, but that is an incredibly thin layer, thinner than our skin in cosmic terms.
Would religion, booze, sex, politics and degradation exist if no one was there to observe them? Would we exist if there were no subatomic particles to observe each other?
The apocalyptic orgy we call life always leads to an end point. Humanity always fixates on outcomes — get a job, get married, procreate, retire and die. The shackles of society never tell us the journey is paramount. Sure, we have some emboldened prophets who come along and try to nudge humanity to a higher consciousness, but they end up being burned alive or riddled with bullets.
No matter how I attempt to numb myself from such profound thought, I end up at this point, smoking a bowl and staring at empty bottles of beer, wishing for something higher without all the anthropomorphic bullshit humanity has centered on the universe. Things have always been eternal. Every one of our cells came from something else before.
The rock we push up the hill is hollow, full of false beliefs and assumptions. Science is only as good as it is now. All it takes is one cosmic discovery or one discovery in an atomic collider to shift all existing paradigms and dogmas.
29
Xian sits at the white plastic table cracking the shells of steamed peanuts. His black-framed rectangular glasses rest below his gelled black hair, above his hollow cheeks. He smiles and looks at Drew and me.
Waitresses wearing black ponytails and tan shower sandals weave through clouds of cigarette smoke that rise up into the twilight and scurry past tables full of men drinking beer, collecting orders of ginger steamed fish from the kitchen. “I’m glad you guys came out with me tonight,” Xian says looking at Drew and me. “I’ve got a big idea for you to think about.”
Drew and I look at each other and take a sip of beer. There is always something suspicious when somebody invites you to an expensive dinner and has plans for you. Call me paranoid, but after living in Asia for over three years I have seen this a lot.
/> The scenario usually plays out like this: The “benefactor” invites you to a fancy restaurant, buys dinner and then pitches an insane idea to make money or offers to introduce you to people with more power who want to use you to make money. I take another sip of beer and dig into the delicious food — a feast for Drew and me bought and paid for by Xian.
The feeling of wanting to be elsewhere takes hold of me, but so does the curiosity of what is going to be pitched at me. Being a white native speaker of English in Asia is like being a walking income revenue. Unfortunately, the money rarely sees you unless you take control of your own destiny and teach private lessons. But, that is something I cannot stomach, walking into someone’s home, getting the customary glass of water or cup of tea while feigning to care about some kid’s English development.
I’d rather live a modest life and supply myself with drugs to numb this temporary existence. It’s much easier that way.
Drew and Xian gesticulate with their hands and arms engaged in conversation. I see their lips move, but like a character in a Luis Buñuel film, my attention is elsewhere, a crippled man missing his legs with arms coming out of his chest pushes himself on a homemade dolly, weaving his way through the tables, begging for money.
I drop a few dollars’ worth of đồng into his upturned olive pith helmet, while Drew and Xian keep talking. The vestiges of the American war — a large part of the population missing limbs with birth defects from Agent Orange — a symbol for the guilt I feel travelling the world with my American passport.
Doom, destruction and profits for Brown and Root, Bell Helicopters and any other corporations from the military industrial complex. Talk all you want about the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam or the countless Americans who have suffered the effects of Agent Orange. This country and its people were practically destroyed by fascists in Washington, D.C. testing out their new war toys, which enabled their bank accounts to add countless zeroes on the right side of the all the numbers.