It starts today
It was a bad night, last night. Again the urge to bug out.
It doesn't come often anymore, the darkness, the times when the essential nature of the universe seems hostile. When it does, it's as if someone has turned a switch from "Good" to "Bad," and the needle of the meter drops back below the zero tick.
Just little events; restaurants rejected me. I searched for a fancy place to get me some of that Vietnamese cuisine; finally found some big open places with tables spilling onto the sidewalk, perfect, but one place just ignored me, and when I asked the second place for a menu the girl looked at me with an unflattering eye and shook her head. Now I twigged that these places were for drinks, not food. Cafes. So I foraged for evidence of food, and found a place with photos of food on the wall, and an 8-year-old girl in a blue dress working hard to be professional, ushering me in with that bowing sweeping gesture. Too young for English, so I said, struggling to remember and pronounce, "Toi muoc an thuc an." I have to repeat it. At this point her big brother enters stage right; she says to her bro, "thức ăn," correcting my accent from "took" to "tuck." The young guy comes at me with a lot of Vietnamese, though I'm obviously incapable, and they seem to be laughing at me; at any rate, they didn't move in the direction of taking an order and getting me some thức ăn, so I go away.
At last a place with a sign reading "restaurant," and those pictures of food on the wall. I entered, and asked in VN and english for a menu. The guy, about 25, kind of scowl/sneered at me and just said "no." He turned away, I went away.
That was that hit on my mood, plus I'd observed that the pants guys and another cabbie had both overcharged me a lot. And I let them.
And it is so clear that my Vietnamese studies will never amount to more than a game played to ingratiate myself with the locals.
The natives don't seem so friendly any more, the place has a sinister lens over it.
Then there were the expats. Keith and John, Peter, Paul, Tom and his Asian wife who never says anything. For good reason, her husband talks over everybody all the time.
Okay, in these is Peter, an Aussie who seems to have the most time in country, Keith, a Vietnam Vet (27th Marines, '68), his big, strong looking buddy John - they met working in Alaska, travel together to various continents - an airforce guy who knew Hoa in the war; and tall Tom. There's a surfer dude, a French kid, and more coming and going.
Tom annoys me; whenever anyone says anything to him he grabs the conversation at the first pause and shoehorns his own story into it. But he's gregarious, he welcomes everyone into his world, he is a warm place to go. And in contrast I feel like a sour snotty snob. The others too, all friendly, always greeting me by name and pulling me into their circle. Keith gave me a little lump of 420, Paul a rolling paper.
And Thuy, my would-have-been hostess, emailed me inviting me to dinner tonight at a restaurant in downtown Da Nang. I know she's doing it because she feels she owes me for that canceled rez; she doesn't really want to spend her friday night with an old man. I can't ignore the certainty of that fact.
So now I'm a little in debt to the expats. Keith won't take payment. And I refuse Paul's invitation to join him and the French kid playing pool, and later Keith's invite to join them in his room for "a smoke." I just didn't have it in me to be other than alone. Every one of these things is a little hit on my store of good feeling. It's bleeding out, and my sense of myself is tanking because of these events. I don't like or admire myself.
Early on the surfer guy showed up, in his mid-fifties I'd guess, tall, long blond hair, wide shoulders and slim hips, flat belly. All the flat bellies around here, even the grown up Viets, slim and hard, and kids, their guts go in under their ribs, not out, they're what young men should be.
I've been ballooning for almost three years now and I hate it. I can't find a way out. Before, in the States, I lived on Slimfast drinks during the diet months, exactly 120 calories per; and the calorie count is printed on just about everything you buy there; I had a spreadsheet for the rest. I had weights, and worked out six days a week; and ran about four miles, too. Then I moved away from those things and lost control.
All this turned the dial to back below the zero point. I recognised that black smoke snaking around me from long ago. I don't want to go back there again.
Woke at 1:30 am, went downstairs for a connection (wifi was still not up in my room), dicked around on the web until after 3 am, came back up. Mosquitos kept strafing me. I got up, turned on the over-bright overhead lights, went hunting. Turned out there were two of them. Never got them, as far as I know, but they did desist after a while so I tried to sleep. Don't know if I did.
But come dawn, there is some of that "new day" thing, and I'm ready to consider choices. I have an inner list of things to do. The big one is:
No more. It ends here. Today I start working back to a 32" inch waist and don't stop until I'm there. How?
Run. Six days a week.
Never eat 'til you're full. Small portions, no alcohol, roll the starch back.
Resume stretching (for the self respect), and working out. Pushups, sit ups, and knee bends I can do these without a bench. Keep it up in Peru.
I ran the beach; it is the best track in the world, or none better. Hard sand and beauty all around. Ran south, past the resorts, to where the citizens come down to net-fish in the surf. Pulled up above the tideline, coracles. Yes, those round boats the Irish used to...I don't know what they did with them, they seem like the silliest sea craft to try to steer, you'd just paddle in a circle? But there they were, maybe a dozen. Then there was no one. Fuh. A fine wide two-hundred-million dollar tropical beach and at seven in the morning no one on it but the fat old fuck. I try to keep running, not plodding, but have to remind myself over and over when I slow to think.
After a while, I'm going, "why am I not out of breath?" Well, really, why? I don't know. Keep an eye on it.
And while I ran, I thought, "you want to crumple up in a ball because the popular guys in 7th grade are mean to you? That's all it takes? They were mean for real once, me all alone in hostile country, and I left their stinking corpses on the battlefield and walked off licking my sword clean.
Can't pinpoint the turnaround I took, but guessing conservatively it was about 3.4 kilometers down.
I try the stretches. Ow ow ow. Be three weeks before I start to feel right.
But now, peeps, I have something worth doing while here. So I bought breakfast for the expats - got Hoa to not tell them until I had paid, and they, bless their hearts, didn't mention it to me. I know what to say to Thuy, the wifi finally reached my room, Hoa will let me stay until the 23rd - he closes for Tết - and he has agreed to rent me a Honda Wave 100 cc motorbike for a month, at VND 800,000. That's like $35. The pretty girl in the place in town was asking VND three million.
(Parenthetical: I just found Hoa quoted in a 2015 article of the Guardian newspaper; and the main character in the story was by here today.)
So this place is harder to take than Peru, not so easy to understand, to talk to people, to find what you want. Not so easy to feel tough here. But damn if I'm going to cut and run; I'll do my time in the world. And then go look for my cats.
I notice that you can't see the drone flitting around overhead if you full-screen the vid; only in the little version. You need that flying tech for the cargo cult reference.
It was a bad night, last night. Again the urge to bug out.
It doesn't come often anymore, the darkness, the times when the essential nature of the universe seems hostile. When it does, it's as if someone has turned a switch from "Good" to "Bad," and the needle of the meter drops back below the zero tick.
Just little events; restaurants rejected me. I searched for a fancy place to get me some of that Vietnamese cuisine; finally found some big open places with tables spilling onto the sidewalk, perfect, but one place just ignored me, and when I asked the second place for a menu the girl looked at me with an unflattering eye and shook her head. Now I twigged that these places were for drinks, not food. Cafes. So I foraged for evidence of food, and found a place with photos of food on the wall, and an 8-year-old girl in a blue dress working hard to be professional, ushering me in with that bowing sweeping gesture. Too young for English, so I said, struggling to remember and pronounce, "Toi muoc an thuc an." I have to repeat it. At this point her big brother enters stage right; she says to her bro, "thức ăn," correcting my accent from "took" to "tuck." The young guy comes at me with a lot of Vietnamese, though I'm obviously incapable, and they seem to be laughing at me; at any rate, they didn't move in the direction of taking an order and getting me some thức ăn, so I go away.
At last a place with a sign reading "restaurant," and those pictures of food on the wall. I entered, and asked in VN and english for a menu. The guy, about 25, kind of scowl/sneered at me and just said "no." He turned away, I went away.
That was that hit on my mood, plus I'd observed that the pants guys and another cabbie had both overcharged me a lot. And I let them.
And it is so clear that my Vietnamese studies will never amount to more than a game played to ingratiate myself with the locals.
The natives don't seem so friendly any more, the place has a sinister lens over it.
Then there were the expats. Keith and John, Peter, Paul, Tom and his Asian wife who never says anything. For good reason, her husband talks over everybody all the time.
Okay, in these is Peter, an Aussie who seems to have the most time in country, Keith, a Vietnam Vet (27th Marines, '68), his big, strong looking buddy John - they met working in Alaska, travel together to various continents - an airforce guy who knew Hoa in the war; and tall Tom. There's a surfer dude, a French kid, and more coming and going.
Tom annoys me; whenever anyone says anything to him he grabs the conversation at the first pause and shoehorns his own story into it. But he's gregarious, he welcomes everyone into his world, he is a warm place to go. And in contrast I feel like a sour snotty snob. The others too, all friendly, always greeting me by name and pulling me into their circle. Keith gave me a little lump of 420, Paul a rolling paper.
And Thuy, my would-have-been hostess, emailed me inviting me to dinner tonight at a restaurant in downtown Da Nang. I know she's doing it because she feels she owes me for that canceled rez; she doesn't really want to spend her friday night with an old man. I can't ignore the certainty of that fact.
So now I'm a little in debt to the expats. Keith won't take payment. And I refuse Paul's invitation to join him and the French kid playing pool, and later Keith's invite to join them in his room for "a smoke." I just didn't have it in me to be other than alone. Every one of these things is a little hit on my store of good feeling. It's bleeding out, and my sense of myself is tanking because of these events. I don't like or admire myself.
Early on the surfer guy showed up, in his mid-fifties I'd guess, tall, long blond hair, wide shoulders and slim hips, flat belly. All the flat bellies around here, even the grown up Viets, slim and hard, and kids, their guts go in under their ribs, not out, they're what young men should be.
I've been ballooning for almost three years now and I hate it. I can't find a way out. Before, in the States, I lived on Slimfast drinks during the diet months, exactly 120 calories per; and the calorie count is printed on just about everything you buy there; I had a spreadsheet for the rest. I had weights, and worked out six days a week; and ran about four miles, too. Then I moved away from those things and lost control.
All this turned the dial to back below the zero point. I recognised that black smoke snaking around me from long ago. I don't want to go back there again.
Woke at 1:30 am, went downstairs for a connection (wifi was still not up in my room), dicked around on the web until after 3 am, came back up. Mosquitos kept strafing me. I got up, turned on the over-bright overhead lights, went hunting. Turned out there were two of them. Never got them, as far as I know, but they did desist after a while so I tried to sleep. Don't know if I did.
But come dawn, there is some of that "new day" thing, and I'm ready to consider choices. I have an inner list of things to do. The big one is:
No more. It ends here. Today I start working back to a 32" inch waist and don't stop until I'm there. How?
Run. Six days a week.
Never eat 'til you're full. Small portions, no alcohol, roll the starch back.
Resume stretching (for the self respect), and working out. Pushups, sit ups, and knee bends I can do these without a bench. Keep it up in Peru.
I ran the beach; it is the best track in the world, or none better. Hard sand and beauty all around. Ran south, past the resorts, to where the citizens come down to net-fish in the surf. Pulled up above the tideline, coracles. Yes, those round boats the Irish used to...I don't know what they did with them, they seem like the silliest sea craft to try to steer, you'd just paddle in a circle? But there they were, maybe a dozen. Then there was no one. Fuh. A fine wide two-hundred-million dollar tropical beach and at seven in the morning no one on it but the fat old fuck. I try to keep running, not plodding, but have to remind myself over and over when I slow to think.
After a while, I'm going, "why am I not out of breath?" Well, really, why? I don't know. Keep an eye on it.
And while I ran, I thought, "you want to crumple up in a ball because the popular guys in 7th grade are mean to you? That's all it takes? They were mean for real once, me all alone in hostile country, and I left their stinking corpses on the battlefield and walked off licking my sword clean.
I try the stretches. Ow ow ow. Be three weeks before I start to feel right.
But now, peeps, I have something worth doing while here. So I bought breakfast for the expats - got Hoa to not tell them until I had paid, and they, bless their hearts, didn't mention it to me. I know what to say to Thuy, the wifi finally reached my room, Hoa will let me stay until the 23rd - he closes for Tết - and he has agreed to rent me a Honda Wave 100 cc motorbike for a month, at VND 800,000. That's like $35. The pretty girl in the place in town was asking VND three million.
(Parenthetical: I just found Hoa quoted in a 2015 article of the Guardian newspaper; and the main character in the story was by here today.)
So this place is harder to take than Peru, not so easy to understand, to talk to people, to find what you want. Not so easy to feel tough here. But damn if I'm going to cut and run; I'll do my time in the world. And then go look for my cats.
Proof positive that cargo cults exist in modern Vietnam. And volcano virgins.
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