Reflections on Making Art, Meditation, and What Is(?)

The more we do this work, the performance and the meditation work, the less I believe in or place value on the idea of talent or skill, as so much as I believe in learning how to “tap into” the moment. Tap into the wind flapping the sparkling, sunlit, yellow leaves on the autumn trees. Tap into the curling floor pattern that my classmate just made with her tip-toeing feet. Tap into the mica glinting in the black rocks at the bus stop. Tap into the story of grief or love that emerges from a simple turn of a hand and focus of the eye. Tap into that story falling away, giving birth to a new purely physical movement or a new relationship or a different story. Tap into the otherworldly quality of a voice, raw and dancing with brave emotional honesty.

The phrase “tap into” seems to imply a kind of ease. That one could achieve this mindfulness simply, and that it exists inherently as a part of the universe… that it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the ordinary reality of non-mindfulness. Yet even more pleasing, it suggests that perhaps we could also tap in enough to be present in our daily lives, that non-mindfulness could be replaced with mindfulness. This all very well may be true, but it also requires Work and Practice, maybe a lifetime’s worth and maybe even multiple lifetimes. I still like this phrase, even if it’s a little weird, because it also implies that our attention is not “locked in,” which would leave little room for change.  I also prefer it to the word “listening,” because we often listen from a bias or through the filter of our Self (ego). I think “tap into” is more neutral and could refer to something larger than, or beyond, oneself. Yeah, let’s go with that for now.

While we’re / I’m / you’re / they’re still here, this other energy is channeling through and expressing beauty, or authenticity of the moment (which isn’t always aesthetically beautiful). This phrase also leaves enough space for everyone, which I think is important. Art, unfortunately, has enough of a flavor of elitism, so it’s refreshing to think of it as something that anyone could possibly access, with practice. As one professor said, “Things and people are inherently extraordinary.” Just like recognizing all of our “basic goodness,” we all contain with ourselves, and with each other, infinite potential.

We can all access our ability to tap into whatever it is that provides inspiration. What is this exactly? Sometimes I think it’s energy, or maybe the gods, or artistic enlightenment, or our ancestors, or the first story ever told, or the ghosts of Goya and Shakespeare’s past, or ? I don’t know. Other times, I think this is exactly a kind of neutral mindfulness that we’re tapping into… a quality of being aware of how things are. Then we, as artists, translate it into The Visceral as a way of sharing and expressing our impressions of “what is” in order to help others see their impressions of “what is,” all which in turn end up toward clearer understandings of “what really is.”

Meditation is, according to practitioners, an excellent way to cultivate more mindfulness. It’s like we’re practicing more of what we practice, or we’re applying what it is to make more of what it is. Whatever it is, it seems to find us if we’re open to it.

Ultimately, since the substance of it can’t be defined, it’s the feeling of it that we can investigate. It’s very likely different, but maybe similar, for us all. For me, it’s getting out of the way of myself. It’s listening and feeling as though I’m a part of the entirety of the Universe, like while gazing jaw-dropped at the Milky Way. It’s letting sound pour of me like my guts are falling out and knowing that this is preferable to keeping them tight and held. It’s Breathing. It’s poetry or song that sounds like “someone else did that.” It’s synchronicity on stage, when the moment is all there is. It’s being able to truly share intimacy and eye contact, to love someone. It’s letting go. It’s forgiving. It’s also not knowing how. It’s the questions. It’s all those things as a human being and as a performer that make me ask, “Why?” It’s wanting to know more questions. It’s wanting to cure myself of the persistent and narrow chasm of narcissism that causes so much destruction, vapidity, and confusion in the Western consumption machine culture. It’s sensing that there’s more to the West than just that. It’s sensing the way things are and then sensing with even more detail. Sensing beyond myself. Sensing that I’ll never know fully the answer to anything, and that this is preferable to believing that I know the answer to anything.

So, how do we cultivate more of this openness? Into what is Beyond the “Daily?” In Turning the Mind into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham talks about Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche being an artist through and through. His poetry, his clothing, his floral architecture, his speech, his reaching for his glass of water… All Art. Even though they’re not on television, poets and artists are not dead in this modern or post-modern or post-post-modern society; they do exist! Some of them are repressed or insecure, and some are not. Some of them make a comfortable living and so they’re just more in the mainstream and so harder to characterize as a movement. But I do think many other people, who would like to live as artists, feel disheartened because they don’t believe that what they’d truly love to do has value according to the principles we have, for better or worse, agreed upon as our Western values. A lot of people would like to be living this way instead of working away sixty hours a week to have their spirits consumed or left neglected, and their art never expressed.

Today, with the Ikea-ism and homogenization of our culture, furniture, food, spirituality, love, language (through text messages and email), knowledge (through wikipedia and google corporate-sponsored searches), the artists who are daring enough to be artists, and who most likely don’t care about money enough to stop being artists, could be some of our last refuges of authenticity and uniqueness. Not individualism, but uniqueness — the ability to tap into what is, which we all can do, if we choose to practice at it. The ability to truly hear, to listen to something other than our ipods and youtube videos. The ability to sense what is outside of what has already been created. How do we move beyond the mediocrity when it’s so pervasive? So far, from what I can tell, there are several ways, but are most likely unique for each person.

1.) Learning from Nature. Nature is real. It is not kind or idealistic or cruel or opinionated. It just is. And it always changes. From Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior: 

   ”When human beings have no sense of living with a wide open sky above and a lush green earth below, then it becomes very difficult for them to expand their vision. When we feel that heaven is an iron lid and that earth is a parched desert, then we want to hide away rather than extending ourselves to help others. Shambhala vision does not reject technology or simplistically advocate going ‘back to nature.’ But within the world that we live in, there is room to relax and appreciate ourselves and our heaven and our earth. We can afford to love ourselves, and we can afford to raise our head and shoulders to see the bright sun shining in the sky.”

Nature has an ability to humble and to authenticate us that little else in the human-made world does. It is impossible to remain steadfastly loyal to the ego when in the presence of a mountain capped with glowing snow. It is impossible not to feel in awe at the intrinsically destructive, majestic, peaceful, and delicate qualities of nature. Allowing ourselves to be moved by nature’s inherent neutrality, beauty, and potential ferociousness teaches us to be present in what the truth of reality is in this moment, to the reality of ourselves as human beings, and that it and we are also ever-changing. And that this change is not evil or godly, but that it just exists. Therefore, we see the inherent peace within every living entity and that we are all truly connected. We are affected by each other and we are all essentially made of the same stuff.

2.) Growing our mindfulness and awareness (Meditation). Sakyang Mipham wrote, “Obstacles are habitual patterns that keep our minds small, fixed, and solid.”

This is death to love, life, and art. If we forget the impermanence of everything, we have nothing. No change – no progress, no questions – no knowledge, no flexibility – no weathering the storms, no appreciation – no affection, no stillness or pause – no beginning. If we give in to the laziness of “the cocoon,” we will never be butterflies. We won’t even be able to see our butterfly nature! That we all have the potential to be Buddha, or butterfly, or to fly, or to feel what it is to flap our wings! In art and in life, all things are possible because nothing is already set. This moment, the present, is the only moment. As long as we are giving our attention and intention to the moment, the moment will not fail us. Instead, it provides us with everything we need.

That said, meditation is not easy, which is why it may take, and has taken, a while to catch on in the West. We love our Band-Aids. We love our pharma-culture and quick fixes. We love our day-time talk show dramas that fix the problem in an hour. We (and I) know meditation is good for us (me), but we (I) sometimes hesitate because it doesn’t offer false promises, which is what we’re (I’m) used to. I have to say, however, that it feels so good to breathe. I continually go back to the breath, in whatever shape the breath is in, and it feels right and good, and it exists. We hold our breath so often in this culture. I wonder why we do that… Human beings need to breathe! So, even when I fall off the horse of the mind and it gallops away into discursive thought or emotion, the stability and sanity of going back to the breath has made this journey of learning how to meditate possible. It’s always there and I can return to it whenever I need. Even if I fail today, the next time I sit won’t be so difficult and my breath will be there for me. And when I die, my breath won’t be there. And that will be what it is.

There are other methods, which may vary according to each person. Some personal others are 3.) Slowing Down. Slowing down the way I eat, think, observe, react, plan, walk, and everything. Meditation helps cultivate space for slowing down. If we choose to, we may live in a world of distraction, speed, goal-desperation, competition, and fickleness. Slowing down and realizing the true pace of life helps steady me. After all, as a very dear friend used to say, “It takes a lifetime to live a life.”

4.) Asking Questions. Asking more questions. Asking questions after the questions and when I think I know the answer, I’ve probably just missed the real question. And, also “Yes, and…” instead of “No, but…”

I don’t have the answers and continue on this journey and ask, “What have I done with my life today?”

I ask today and ask again tomorrow.

A Night in Hell

When I was a kid, it seemed like no one ever died until one day. Most people remember their first encounter with the finiteness of life as a child, whether it was a first pet or an elderly relative. Still, the deaths I remember from childhood seem far apart in frequency and somehow peaceful. I was protected from seeing reality. The deaths in my early childhood were my two grandfathers. I remember fragments of their funerals.

For many reasons, last year was a long, sad, and difficult year. But I’ve come to realize that replacing sadness with gratitude for even having a life and being able to experience and witness the tremendous complexity, beauty, and heartache of this life helps a lot with healing. Many people all over the world are suffering who see or have no way to alleviate this suffering. I have a tremendous amount of blessings to be grateful for.

Sometimes we, the privileged sort, also create more suffering than we actually have in our lives. I use “privileged” in the sense that when our basic needs are taken care of – we are privileged. Yet, many of us become consumed with our wants and egos, and it’s easy to see things as over-whelming and stressful or to feel entitled to “always more” (it’s what I want and I deserve it – the curse of the I in Western culture), when relatively speaking, most of us are very fortunate. Thankfully though, some of how much we suffer in this regard really is up to us to choose.

Living abroad for nearly two years helped make me more aware that choice and loss sometimes go together and making a choice that involves loss is the most difficult kind to make. But also sometimes the most needed. Sometimes we don’t realize just how much we lose once we make a choice until after we’ve already made it. Sometimes we realize how much we’ve truly freed ourselves by making the hardest choice. The saddest losses, however, are maybe the kinds that happen in our lives when we haven’t realized that we’ve made any choice. It instead happens as a result of something unexpected. Something some people call fate is just change, which is all of life. Yet this change can sometimes feel tragic.

I thought about sharing or not sharing this story many times and questioned my reasoning for doing so. After much thought and editing, I’m sharing this story for one reason: to try to help raise awareness about fire safety. After this event happened, I taught fire safety to students in my classes and would encourage other ESL teachers to do the same. Before I leftVietnam, for example, with students aged 9 to 12, we talked about the lives of firefighters. Added into the lesson was information about what to do in a fire. We talked about and practiced covering our mouths with our shirts, staying below the smoke, how to leave the building (they liked this best), and “stop, drop, and roll.” The students were giggling, especially when their teacher started to roll around on the carpet, but hopefully learning as well.

A warning to readers: this is a sad story told in some amount of detail, but respectfully I hope. I’m telling this story in the only way I know how… not as some kind of all-knowing mythic god-being, but from only my limited perspective as a small yet compassionate human being living on this spinning planet. The warning is present because there are some details that you may find difficult if you are a sensitive person.

A Night in Hell.

This happened over a year ago in Hanoi.

The first house I lived in was a small traditional-style home. It was one of many inside a small courtyard, where many ex-pats lived. Across from my house lived the landlord, his wife, and their maid. They were an elderly couple, both interesting characters (I mean that with the utmost respect).

The old woman was stooped and small, but beautiful. She often invited me into the living room (which also served as their bedroom, TV room, and library) for tea and bananas. We would chat in broken English and Vietnamese about her children and their jobs and about my family and my job teaching.

The elderly man, “Ong,” was stingy with money and didn’t make small talk. He had small squinting eyes that only made contact in talks of a monetary nature. Honestly, his shady dealings with my rent exchange price were a bit annoying. On the other hand, of course I cannot imagine what he lived through in his many decades living there in that house in Hanoi. They lived there for many decades. I imagine he had to be stubborn and strong. Every morning and evening, he would walk back and forth from his house to the gate for exercise. He also did Tai Chi in the courtyard, just outside the window of my house.

The maid was patient and kind. She would often give us ex-pats who were living there Vietnamese vocabulary lessons. Her hands were weathered and older than her years from so much hard physical labor. Her eyes and smile remained soft.

Each building in the courtyard was stacked like a tall saltine box with three floors and steep, uneven staircases. In this concrete treehouse-esque abode, the bottom floor contained a small kitchen with propane stovetop, tiny bath/shower room, and living room area with bamboo furniture. The second floor was the bedroom and desk area, the bed dominating the room. The third floor was a study area with an attached balcony, which held an ancient ornamental tree.

In summer, I let the windows open to let a small and still hot breeze through. This meant the mosquitoes were in as well, but they were deterred by a bed net and mint-green metal ceiling fans that ran non-stop. Mold threatened to seep into every crevice in the place and was already teeming in many of my shoes and clothes. I could hear rats scraping behind the tiles in the bathroom, but at least they weren’t in the bathroom. Honestly, it wasn’t the most polished place to live, but after some painting, decorating, and loads of white vinegar, it felt like home.

This did change, as everything does, one night when I was awakened by something. I wore earplugs to drown out the traffic noises, but maybe it was the smell of the smoke. Out of my hazy stupor, I saw red patterns of dancing light on the window frame next my bed. I thought, that looks like fire. I propped up in bed and pressed my face against the mosquito net and looked down to the courtyard below. In the landlord’s house doorway, I could see it. Fire. It was fire.

What happened next was in slow motion, but it was probably actually five to ten minutes. Time moved in patterns of chaos and fear, not in any way connected to any daily reality.

Suddenly, the middle-aged couple that lived in the apartment above the landlord’s began screaming for help. Their window shutters burst open and they stuck their arms through the metal bars, waving for help. They yelled and coughed as I grabbed my headlamp from beside the bed, flew down the stairs, unlocked the door with the skeleton key, and ran to the doorway of the landlord’s house.

The fire was already fairly large and in multiple areas, mostly around the front of the room. Then I saw… something. Something I don’t remember completely. It sounds strange, but my mind literally blocked out most of what I saw. The next day, I couldn’t remember it at all. Now I remember but it is still fuzzy, confusing, and something I don’t want to acknowledge as having happened. I saw this – scene – and ran to the neighbor’s house, an English couple. After ringing the doorbell repeatedly, I ran back the doorway (the fire was slightly larger now), and back to the doorbell. The couple upstairs who had been waving had now made their way downstairs and into the courtyard. They were holding each other and trying to breathe. The English couple opened the door and I said barely in a whisper, “Fire. There’s a fire.”

All of that was in a foggy five to ten minutes at most, maybe less but not more. The rest of the night seemed too fast yet caught in a horrible Mobius strip. It was like time caught on to what was happening and, in a most unforgiving act, sped up its tempo, like a skip in a record playing the same sick song for hours.

The maid then appeared. She ran out of the house yelling, “Nuoc, nuoc!” which means “water” in Vietnamese. As we, ex-pats and the maid, dumped bucket of water after bucket of water from the well onto the fire inside the house, we sometimes whispered and sometimes shouted to each other, “Where is he? Where is she? Where are they?” begging yet terrified to know the whereabouts of the landlord and his wife. As we tried to put out the blaze, the heat of the fire blasting against our faces, we dreaded to know the answer.

Two men covered their faces and ran into the fire and then came out with Ong, the landlord. They placed him on the ground and held his head. He was badly burned and struggling to breathe. I had never seen a person in that state before. I am so sorry he had to suffer so badly. I will never forget him. We found out soon afterwards that he and his wife had had an argument earlier that day. She had left the house for the evening to stay with her son. This probably saved her life, but her guilt and sorrow at this was and is no doubt very deep.

For seemingly an eternity throughout all of this, we dunked plastic washing bins and buckets into the well and splashed water onto the fire, trying to put it out. Someone had called the fire department and ambulance. Later we found out the fire department had waited for ten minutes before calling back to ask, “Is this a joke or do you really need us?” Meanwhile, we dunked and splashed. The only sound I remember is the gulp of the bucket into the well, the flat slap of the water against what was left of the room, and the sizzling of the fire turning into smoke and ash.

After the fire was nearly out, with all of us in pajamas and bare feet and soaked, burned, and covered in soot, the firemen arrived. “Firemen” is actually a loose term. These men looked like boys, barely old enough to drive. They attached the hose to the truck and sprayed water here and there inside the house. They inspected the top floor and said everything seemed fine. Then they left. It wasn’t fine. They had left burning embers all over the house, which for several hours afterwards relit and created new fires. The neighbors, maid, and I continued to put out the fire into the morning. Efforts to save their belongings weren’t very successful, as the entire room was destroyed.

Until the ambulance came, one of the ex-pats held Ong’s burnt hand and we told him, “It’ll be all right.” After what seemed like forever, an ambulance came. Sadly, Ong passed away that morning at the hospital.

The next day the police came to inspect the cause of the fire. Blame was thrown around by the family – onto the ex-pats for not calling soon enough and much onto the maid for not rescuing the landlord. It was an awful, emotionally devastating, exhausting day for everyone – especially Ong’s family. They knew he would die someday, but they thought it would be of old age, not in this horridly tragic way. Not like this, they said. Not like this. Ong’s family wore black plastic badges on their chests for one year to represent their mourning.

The blame was finally assigned onto a new flat screen television they had bought a few months earlier. It was plugged into a lower voltage power strip with no fuse box. The plastic inside the power strip gradually melted until the wires were exposed to create a spark. This ignited and created an extremely hot, fast-moving fire. The result was an event which will no doubt haunt those who lived through it for the rest of our lives.

I ask questions of myself and the choices I made.

I ask why I didn’t take my cell and call for help. I remember quickly thinking it wouldn’t work because I didn’t get service in the courtyard. But I could have run down the street.

I ask why I didn’t run into the house as soon as I saw whatever it was I saw. Was I too scared? Why did I think, “Get help” instead of “Be help?” I can’t go back.

I ask myself all the things I could have done differently. It just feels like it shouldn’t have happened. It was such a strange thing to have happened. Something I never, for some reason, imagined happening. Something that sometimes still feels unreal. Something I will never forget.

The other ex-pats and I don’t really talk. Although we were involuntarily and intensely bonded that evening, we’re not close. This feels strange, too. I did move away from there. I couldn’t stay. Maybe that’s the reason.

At times I feel as though seeing one another was too unpleasant and even bordering on painful, as if the sight of each other propelled each of us out of the joy of the present into some dark past place where sorrows and wounds are too deeply cut to be mended.

Hardened memories provoked into hemorrhage again.

Perhaps when or if we breached the subject, we felt as though we created new injuries as well. Maybe some memories in life are better left to simply seep away instead of attempting to heal them, despite how uncomfortable the irreconciliation.

…

Fire alarms and fire extinguishers are next to non-existent in Hanoi (you can buy them, but they’re not widely accessible within most buildings). Buildings are not built to code. Electrical wires are draped through houses and streets as if they were harmless strands of yarn. The consequences (many more like the story above) are the result of, partly, problems in infrastructure and, mostly, a lack of education about what causes fires and what to do in the event of a fire.

Please: educate yourself about fire safety in your own home and in the homes of your loved ones, including your friends and students. Educate others about what you know and learn more about fire safety.

Fire Safety Information:

http://www.firesafety.gov/

Sparky the Fire Dog:

http://www.sparky.org/

Fire Safety Information in other Languages:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/InYourHome/FireSafety/DG_180886

*will hopefully have Vietnamese soon.

slowing down

New home. New life. New name. New friends. New knowledge. Many more new questions. New trees. New air. New place. New pace, slower and more intentional. New beginner baby steps that begin a new kind of Travelling. New Path, truly My Own yet Larger than my self. Everything New. The Past is still Present in my mind and heart, but it trembles both less often. In the Presence of all this New, I thought to change this blog. Delete it, re-name it, or some other thing to mark the beginning of everything being new (for now). Yet I am still old enough to remember. Many experiences, dreams, and events from the Past continue to swirl in both the forms of remembrance and scribbled pages. Stories that still need telling. I can’t imagine wrapping up that Time with a bow. And any attempt I’ve made (I’ve made several) to put any experience into a neat closed box has turned out to be a sure way to not honor it. So, the blog remains Open. To the Present and Past. Time is a circle. Time is a circle. Time is circling.

Some writings of  my time here so far:

vivid dreams as my sleep patterns return to near their original design. lungs re-growing alveoli in the bright clean wind. thunderstorm rains cleanse memory and electric movement prickles along my learning spine. suzuki, grotowski, hart, wolfsohn – the mothers, fathers, grandfathers, and grandmothers (the finders) of this work – whisper secret fires into the hearts, minds, and muscles of my dedicated classmates and i. as barbara dilley recommended, we begin again and again, and attempt to remember to allow our infant minds to be always open. beginner’s mind to all that is possible. beginner’s mind to seeing each other. beginner’s mind toward our bodies, as they reorganize into new shapes and build potential energies for even the smallest swirls of the wrists, twists of the toes, and honest gazes of the eyeballs. we learn, unlearn, and learn. question everything. each day feels deep and full and long: a thousand years in every moment.

…

A man passed me at the bus stop this morning with packed camping bags strapped on his back along with various water and coffee jugs tied together. Clinking and banging together with rhythm… sha-coo, sha-key, sha-coo, sha-key… as his small box radio burst fuzzy rock n roll from inside a bag attached to his hips. The music was from an era I couldn’t distinguish. Timeless, his brow seeped sweat in the early morning sun and we exchanged “how are you?s” I wonder how long he had been walking, clinking, whistling, dripping, and swinging with bags bursting to come round to meet me on a Saturday morning only to continue in divergent directions. We: as a temporary musically discordant unit while I stood humming, for his one-man orchestra grew louder and then fell away silent as we travelled apart, electric and vibrating in our unique undulations. We: unlikely to ever form melody again, however synchronized or not the potential.

Garuda on the Mountain

Look Mom, No Hands!

After a year and a half of living in Hanoi, I’ve finally done it. That which eluded, confused, and frightened the hell out of me, and befuddled all my barometers of logic and common sense… Yes; I’ve finally driven a motorbike in Vietnam.

Everybody does it. Well, almost everybody. Most people make it look easy. Skinny young women with fake eyelashes and diamond studded seven-inch high-heels shout loudly on their mobile phones as they drift into one lane and the other without watching or seeming to mind if they run somebody else off the road. Teenage boys speed through heavy traffic, their razory spiked emo haircuts cutting through the air as they lean hard right, left, and then right again, showing off their supposedly impressive driving. As reckless and definitely stupid as this is, they don’t seem to have the burden of self-responsibility. Rarely do they wear helmets. Other drivers look no more than fourteen years old. They drive wobbly and too fast in their pajamas as their younger sister or brother sit behind them and clutch the seat handle with tight fingers. Both squint their eyes fiercely, the driver, focused and perhaps not showing fear, and the passenger, afraid to be making their journey at the mercy of a such a novice. Jittery pre-teens aside, most drivers look cool as cucumber.

And it’s not just the young who drive motorbikes. I’ve seen grandmothers and grandpas in their seventies plodding along on a mini bike, gray wispy hair floating from the corners of their ears into the wind. Some of them even smile.

If it all looks so easy and fun, why, you may ask, did it take me so long to drive myself? Well, there are many answers. One is that I didn’t necessarily trust my own driving abilities. Back home, I enjoyed bicycling as my primary mode of transportation. However at a certain point in the year, in Vietnam it just gets too smoldering and sticky to ride a bicycle without hyperventilating. But I’d never driven a motorbike and honestly… I was scared.

The traffic in Hanoi is no joke. In fact, it’s notorious. Safety is on the mind of most drivers, but not all. Accidents happen and most expats have a story about someone they know who has been in a scrape or two. After seeing a few accidents myself, I decided it was best to avoid it. The problem is, if you want to go to work, eat, see friends, or do anything else in Hanoi, you need to get around the city. Until recently, my primary mode of travel was xe oms. Xe oms are fun. These hired motorbike drivers like to talk, they’re usually very polite, helpful, and funny, and the guys from my neighborhood have become sort-of uncle-type friends. However, travelling by xe om when you’re not near home can be troublesome. Some are – ok, many are drunk. Many drivers also do insane things more often than not (like zoom in front of a speeding bus to avoid waiting for a light to change). Most overcharge you. After a year and a half of xe oms, bicycling, and walking… it dawned on me like a Hanoi sunset… finally, I realized I had to drive. For the last month in Hanoi. For my own safety. For my confidence. Just to say that I did it. I really did it. Yes. I would do it.

Honda Super Cubs. The best motorbikes in the world. They’re slow, light, slow, easy to drive, slow, and, well… pretty. Mr. Viet fixed up the motorbike great and I was ready to rock and roll down the street in style (slowly). Yet, I was still hesitant. After a few weeks of wishy-washyness, my friend Marina said, “That’s it! You’re doing it!” and she gave me a quick yet very helpful lesson after work one evening in the alley outside my house. She also gave the moral support and cheering I needed. Thank you, Marina! I did it! I could do it! It was even… easy.

A few days later, it was time for my first journey into traffic. I knew it would be different with all the other drivers on the narrow streets, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so bizarre. Driving down Doi Can Street, going slowly but steadily and avoiding and braking and breathing, I realized that it was similar to being on the back of a xe om. Only, this time, I was sort-of in charge of the chaotic things that were happening because I could drive in the way that I wanted.

So, for example, when the man ahead was going five miles an hour because the waitress on the back was balancing a huge plate of trays, bowls, and glasses (all full of bun cha and beer with ice for the businessmen down the street), instead of speeding around them, I crept along behind them until they turned the corner. Luckily, I wasn’t in a hurry. I could drive around all the other drivers, or stop until they went away, or honk whenever I felt like it (just to test the horn, again). I could make it in the midst of it all, even among the men who walk their dogs by crawling at two miles an hour holding the leash from their big electric scooters, even the racers, even the families of five piled on one, even the drifters, even the delivery drivers toting bundles of bamboo, even the drunk. It was great! And it was only the first day!

It was 9.30pm and I was driving home from rehearsal. I thought traffic would be lighter in the evening, but it proved to be the opposite. As I gently and calmly made my way along with some forty-odd other drivers, we stopped at a traffic light. (Well, most of us. Some immortal drivers knew it was safe for them to run the red light.) As I braked to a stop, the Cub stalled out.

Cubs are kick starts, which means you have to put the motorbike in neutral and start the engine by kicking down hard on a starter. I kick-started it and the bike roared to life. Yeah! I thought. I changed into first and then the bike wheezed, coughed, and expired. Again and again and again. After a cycle of red, green, red, the bike started up again. But after making it through the intersection, it groaned to a halt. This time in a bus lane. Oh no, I thought.

Buses are the most terrifying thing about driving in Vietnam. Most buses (instead of “buses” let’s call them “Capsules of Doom” – Thanks Michelle) careen down the street, change lanes without signaling, bark an ear-breaking honk again and again, hack out inky spouts of exhaust that coat your lungs like benzene cocoa powder. They’re King and they make it known, “Get out of my way, or else.” Rumor is… they get three free deaths before they get fired.

Shit, I think. This is not good. Kick-starting a bike is tough after the fifteenth time. All the while, I glance back in panic for buses barreling heedlessly down the street and try desperately to find neutral on a bike without a gear display. Cursing and yelling to myself, the bike still refuses to start. Finally, it clunks into neutral and I walk the bike forward to the safety of the sidewalk. I am drenched in sweat. After checking under the seat, it’s obvious. On my first day ever driving a motorbike, I have run out of gas.

To be fair, as well as having no gear indicators, the Cub doesn’t have the following: a gas gauge, which would have been helpful for knowing when the bike is running on fumes. Still, I felt pretty ridiculous and didn’t want to admit to being so ridiculous so I decided to wheel the bike to the nearest “gas street subsidiary.” Four blocks later my arms are numb. I call friends. Aaron kindly leaves home and finds me with an empty plastic bottle. We find the nearest guy selling gas on the street and the bike starts up easily. Driving home, I smile knowing that I’ve finally completed Day One, albeit a bit later than expected.

Friends always said that driving would open up a whole new Hanoi and that I’d love the independence, convenience, and freedom. So far, they’re absolutely correct. But they don’t mention some of the inherent risks until you have a story of your own.

After hearing about my gasoline debacle, my friend Ben said, “Well, at least a plastic bag didn’t fly into your face. That’s what happened my first day of driving. I couldn’t see a thing. Haven’t been on a bike since.”

poetism

I became coming and not coming

the essence of what all you he-nesses needed

dark pagan mistress staring thick smoke-squinty eyes

vintage pin up Egyptian with breasts exposed self-consciously

free and light-filled third-eye lady exalted in sash and flower pins

symbolizing peace while numerous fires scalded and blistered our bosoms

and their true desires became sooty and silent like that room.

 

have you ever spit something out

because you couldn’t stand the timing

an opportunity to travel stumbling

backwards through salt constellations

back til when we ate chocolate ice cream

and made music on pans

before we could speak

all of what we were feeling?

 

fingers and thumbs humming

brokenly strumming

strings never found

in the womb while

we

were

sleeping

missing possessing

memories of

never believing.

 

if everything happens for nothing but reason

than why are his legs missing and why is she bleeding?

lambs on the ceiling smiling and bleating to wonder

how hooks could provoke such screaming

 

nations are stealing while he’s quiet yet weeping

holding an arrow without a savior to let go

no golden heirloom to fold into railroad tracks

like the ribs of old mothers who waste time reeling

from the wine house and the barn loft whistling

somehow it’s early enough the dogs aren’t chained up

in that same skinny alleyway today.

 

up from a dream

happy and missing you

a time never happened

soon enough

for us to swim from our heart’s bones

yet i keep you with me

as a house keeps a ghost

and you stayed me

with a dream of you

so many nights alone

with only broken remnants via

speech spinets and harp strings

like Marie Antoinette

a long way from home.