The Vietnam Chronicles
CHAPTERS
FEROCITY AS A GAIT
FUCK A STRAIGHT LINE
MERMAIDS AND ARMADILLOS
FUCK A STRAIGHT LINE
MERMAIDS AND ARMADILLOS
FEROCITY AS A GAIT
I walked the streets envisioning I was _______ from Kill Bill. The sword I carried must protrude from my eyes and demeanor. I am walking with a don't-even-think-of-messing-wth-me kind of gait.
And then I see a cute store with waving porcelain kitties and kids playing cards on the curb and my shit-gaze quickly turns into a beaming smile. Reminding myself it's a practice, I refrain from my squirrel! distraction and carry on with my upper lip curl and puffed up shoulders.
TO BE CONTINUED....
And then I see a cute store with waving porcelain kitties and kids playing cards on the curb and my shit-gaze quickly turns into a beaming smile. Reminding myself it's a practice, I refrain from my squirrel! distraction and carry on with my upper lip curl and puffed up shoulders.
TO BE CONTINUED....
FUCK A STRAIGHT LINE
I sipped and siphoned every last drop of her noodle soup, devouring it like a starving child. She patted the dirt floor inviting me to rest. I put one of my packs down as a pillow but what where my head landed was her awaiting lap.
She had seen me pushing my cart up the Hai Van Mountain pass, a sixteen hundred foot incline. As I approached the crest, she stood in the street in her classic Vietnamese bamboo hat and encouraged me with vocal cheering, applause and eventually grabbing my cart and walking a few feet till she parked it in front of her tin shack.
We didn’t speak a word of each other’s language. I still said thank you as she nodded in understanding and began to run her fingers through my hair. She massaged my temples, my forehead and ears. The tears running from my cheeks quelled me into a sleep for fourteen hours.
That night, sleeping in a tin shack on the shell of a tortoises back, looking out over another planet made of moss, mist and oceans, it would seem like I was a character in The NeverEnding Story, that it was all magical and perfect. And it was. Even though it was the night I contracted Dengue.
Now besides the fact that the headache associated with Dengue feels like your brain is playing a drunken game of Twister, there’s little room for thoughts and even less for feelings, unless of course, it’s the physical sensation of your bones petitioning for a sudden growth spurt.
I was lucky enough to have reached a Nha Nghi (Guesthouse) in Hue the night the fever set in. I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag and spent four days unable to move.
Loneliness cuddled me through the first night. But what happened in that dark room was something unexpected for me. Rather than trying to crab-crawl out of my skin to avoid the sensations, I willingly stayed with the pain while I followed my thoughts into deeper crevices of my mind. And what kept coloring my attention was my route.
When I was planning my route it was all about efficiency. The criterion was that it had to be direct and quick passages through the landscapes, Visa-friendly countries and if possible, routes that other walkers, runners or cyclists had used before. Because I had little experience myself, my motto was if they could do it, I could do it. Plus, there was a lot more information available on routes from people who had “been there, done that.”
It all mapped out to be a straight line around a very spherical shape. My global trail was planned months before I took my first step.
Vietnam is the one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited and in a country that was devastated by the hands of many Americans, they welcome us with open hearts and arms. The presence here is one of forgiveness and curiosity. It is alive with welcoming tomorrow unconditionally and letting go of yesterday. It is a mysterious place but one that I no longer wish to walk across.
I am committed. And I am stubborn.
While my brain continued with Twister, right hand on green, a voice echoed through the down of my sleeping bag, what’s the difference between the two?
And then a conversational memory, one with a close friend who shared many encouraging cups of coffee with me in the beginning stages of planning my walk, “So, is your map based on all the places you’ve always wanted to visit?” her eyes wide with excitement.
My reply was calculated because I had been asked this many times before. “No, it’s not a holiday. If I were to only go where I want to go, I’d be zigzagging all over the planet.”
Her deep brown eyes just stared at me. She knew I wasn’t interested in setting or breaking any record but yet my parameters were identical to someone who was.
She coolly smiled, “Zigzagging. Sounds like fun to me.”
It’s important to have a plan. One doesn’t go walking in a thick forest without a map or trail to follow, unless they’re making a Youtube tutorial on wilderness survival skills and navigating using the stars, which I have watched, and none have given me the courage to try it.
If heat and sickness could cause me to waiver in my commitment to this walk, I would have surrendered in the Outback. But what I was discovering is that my heart wasn’t in SE Asia.
I yearned for the Steppes of Mongolia and the Eagle-dense forest of the Altai Mountains. I was craving more nature and solitude. My proposed route was going to take me through the most populated areas of the planet.
The dengue wasn’t a problem, just an irritating setback and a catalyst for me to find my own inner compass.
Wasn’t the entire basis of my walk to follow my heart? To listen to where I’m being guided?
The difference between commitment and stubbornness is that commitment has the ability to compromise.
If commitment is the chariot, She, the soul of my heart, is the charioteer.
To think I know what it will look or feel like to get from point A to point B is a false sense of control. I had a plan. I had a straight line. And then it emancipated itself from my grip. The magic of the ineffable, delivered through the sword of a tiny insect, was a train derailing itself through my route.
EPILOGUE: I have since recovered from Dengue and burned all my maps. I have left SE Asia for Central Asia. I chose to walk across Mongolia. It turned out not to be such a big hassle, I only had to find a pair of snow boots.
She had seen me pushing my cart up the Hai Van Mountain pass, a sixteen hundred foot incline. As I approached the crest, she stood in the street in her classic Vietnamese bamboo hat and encouraged me with vocal cheering, applause and eventually grabbing my cart and walking a few feet till she parked it in front of her tin shack.
We didn’t speak a word of each other’s language. I still said thank you as she nodded in understanding and began to run her fingers through my hair. She massaged my temples, my forehead and ears. The tears running from my cheeks quelled me into a sleep for fourteen hours.
That night, sleeping in a tin shack on the shell of a tortoises back, looking out over another planet made of moss, mist and oceans, it would seem like I was a character in The NeverEnding Story, that it was all magical and perfect. And it was. Even though it was the night I contracted Dengue.
Now besides the fact that the headache associated with Dengue feels like your brain is playing a drunken game of Twister, there’s little room for thoughts and even less for feelings, unless of course, it’s the physical sensation of your bones petitioning for a sudden growth spurt.
I was lucky enough to have reached a Nha Nghi (Guesthouse) in Hue the night the fever set in. I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag and spent four days unable to move.
Loneliness cuddled me through the first night. But what happened in that dark room was something unexpected for me. Rather than trying to crab-crawl out of my skin to avoid the sensations, I willingly stayed with the pain while I followed my thoughts into deeper crevices of my mind. And what kept coloring my attention was my route.
When I was planning my route it was all about efficiency. The criterion was that it had to be direct and quick passages through the landscapes, Visa-friendly countries and if possible, routes that other walkers, runners or cyclists had used before. Because I had little experience myself, my motto was if they could do it, I could do it. Plus, there was a lot more information available on routes from people who had “been there, done that.”
It all mapped out to be a straight line around a very spherical shape. My global trail was planned months before I took my first step.
Vietnam is the one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited and in a country that was devastated by the hands of many Americans, they welcome us with open hearts and arms. The presence here is one of forgiveness and curiosity. It is alive with welcoming tomorrow unconditionally and letting go of yesterday. It is a mysterious place but one that I no longer wish to walk across.
I am committed. And I am stubborn.
While my brain continued with Twister, right hand on green, a voice echoed through the down of my sleeping bag, what’s the difference between the two?
And then a conversational memory, one with a close friend who shared many encouraging cups of coffee with me in the beginning stages of planning my walk, “So, is your map based on all the places you’ve always wanted to visit?” her eyes wide with excitement.
My reply was calculated because I had been asked this many times before. “No, it’s not a holiday. If I were to only go where I want to go, I’d be zigzagging all over the planet.”
Her deep brown eyes just stared at me. She knew I wasn’t interested in setting or breaking any record but yet my parameters were identical to someone who was.
She coolly smiled, “Zigzagging. Sounds like fun to me.”
It’s important to have a plan. One doesn’t go walking in a thick forest without a map or trail to follow, unless they’re making a Youtube tutorial on wilderness survival skills and navigating using the stars, which I have watched, and none have given me the courage to try it.
If heat and sickness could cause me to waiver in my commitment to this walk, I would have surrendered in the Outback. But what I was discovering is that my heart wasn’t in SE Asia.
I yearned for the Steppes of Mongolia and the Eagle-dense forest of the Altai Mountains. I was craving more nature and solitude. My proposed route was going to take me through the most populated areas of the planet.
The dengue wasn’t a problem, just an irritating setback and a catalyst for me to find my own inner compass.
Wasn’t the entire basis of my walk to follow my heart? To listen to where I’m being guided?
The difference between commitment and stubbornness is that commitment has the ability to compromise.
If commitment is the chariot, She, the soul of my heart, is the charioteer.
To think I know what it will look or feel like to get from point A to point B is a false sense of control. I had a plan. I had a straight line. And then it emancipated itself from my grip. The magic of the ineffable, delivered through the sword of a tiny insect, was a train derailing itself through my route.
EPILOGUE: I have since recovered from Dengue and burned all my maps. I have left SE Asia for Central Asia. I chose to walk across Mongolia. It turned out not to be such a big hassle, I only had to find a pair of snow boots.
MERMAIDS AND ARMADILLOS
Being a lover of bones, feathers and stones, her voice became a backdrop as I me came engrossed to the wall full of jars. Hundreds of jars. Filled with a gelatinous liquid and inside were different animal species. I slowly began to investigate at close range. A complete armadillo, a cobra floating perfectly as if in striking pose and a pair of black bear's feet. One jar was stuffed to the brim with the complete carcasses of Ravens.
TO BE CONTINUED...
TO BE CONTINUED...