born to run

Grazing Closer to My Own Ideas

2009-01-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Today, I went through two panel interviews for a fellowship. I'd assumed that I was immune to further self-discovery at this point. After all, I've lived through several different philosophical experiences, and this was just two 20-minute interviews. But there were new learnings about myself. Much of the learning did not occur during the interviews themselves but surfaced to me afterward, simmering in my mind as I sat outside the interview rooms, drove back to downtown LA, and now sit reading old blog entries. I feel things starting to resurface.

Over the past three years, I have become more polished, professional, adult. Banking made me driven and capable in presenting myself. Today, I realized that this has also shoved other parts of my history to the back. Not in an intentional repressive way, but just subconsciously pared away for the sake of sales pitch "presentation".

Here is the story that I subconsciously pared away and failed to tell, but that I am now piecing together.

As a young girl growing up in Vietnam, I had a sturdy sense of identity. Country, family, Uncle Ho - these three things were taught to me each day, and in everyday life at school and at home, they were my identity, lodged deep in my sense of self like fish belonged in the sea. When I came to the U.S., these things began to fall apart. My parents whom I looked up to suddenly seemed afraid of society and obsequious to others. Uncle Ho and nationalist Vietnamese pride turned upside down as I witnessed Vietnamese American politics confuse the heck out of me, and learned that my father had been in a "re-education" camp because he was on the "wrong" side of the war. Vietnamese identity itself disintegrated at school, where I saw that the most stinging forms of hatred were the ones Vietnamese refugees held for each other. The exclusion among my Vietnamese peers was primarily about class - because I was poor, wore uncool clothes, had a funny haircut. Enveloping all this, American teenage society did not help. When classmates chatted about N'Sync or the latest movies, I could only sit in silence, neither understanding nor having actual money to go see such things. In this environment, my natural self-consciousness and timidity ballooned into silence. I felt alone, confused, and ashamed of myself, my memories and my family. And as a semi-smart person, I knew that this line of thought was wrong. Watching television after school, I saw Oprah declaring that it was wrong to be ashamed of yourself, though my daily life had no real living examples for this. So my self-hatred was double - I hated myself, and hated myself for hating myself.

Funny, I have forgotten how to share this set of experience with a personal voice. All my writings have released the issues, Social Studies has given me analytical terms to describe the social world, and banking has taught me to "professionalize" my personal story. I have processed the daylight out of my immigrant teenager experience, and now sum it up in a few short sentences (to fit into admissions essays): "I learned to synthesize different worlds", "I overcame societal boundaries", "I wrote a thesis that broke apart Vietnamese American identity". But they asked me, "Why? Why? Why?" I tried to explain with my sociological words and my professional commitment, but they didn't quite get it. There was, missing, the personal narrative that carries the story above, the very peculiar and devastating solitude of those years.

At the same time, I must say that part of me resists delving directly into this personal realm because when I talk to white Americans, it seems that the stories they most want to hear about are my [sob] hardships as an immigrant and how I miraculously overcame those hardships to pursue my dreams. But I resist this simple narrative. My immigrant experience is not just about this overcoming, scaling American barriers on the way to American success. The story I want to tell does include those things, but it begins and ends with something deeper.

Because I was an immigrant, I learned what it was like for a child to whole-heartedly believe in an identity and then have that identity taken away, and worse, self-disintegrate in front of her. The label that I had thought was right, just, loving, was turned upside-down. I thought I knew what being Vietnamese meant, but it turned out that that identity had been constructed as well.

At ten years old, I was happy and whole in my community, and leaving was an act against my will. Six years later, reading The Grapes of Wrath, I saw the Joads in myself and realized that what I'd left behind was my very soul. I wept, realizing the magnitude of this loss. At twenty, Harvard gave me the chance to build that soul and community again. But somewhere along the way, I realized that the soul rebuilt was actually different from the one that I had. It looked the same on the surface - there was acceptance, community, solidarity. But the currents ran deeper. Over the next few legs of my life (New York, Chicago, LA), I learned that soul is something that lives deep within you; it is not confined in but runs underneath country, language, class, gender, profession, politics. Somehow, this freed me. I became comfortable with knowing my community, personal identity and consciousness all as constructed outside and even inside of myself. This is why I work for Latinos and African-Americans like they are my Vietnamese brethren, and empathize with investment bankers as if they were organizing friends.

Once, I felt with a child's faith what it was to be Vietnamese. Since then, life has repeatedly taught me the illusory nature of reality. Still, having experienced that faith (and holding to my Vietnamese experience), I know the strength of identity and solidarity. I seek this in life and have found it in many different communities. It comes to me not in one particular place, but more like recognizing old friends in a crowd - the crowd may be Paris, Buenos Aires, a trading floor, a housing project, but always one would know that face. This is the immigrant story that I want to tell. It is not only about climbing the walls that men build to move from outside to inside, excluded to included (a simplistic notion of success). Rather, it is about an outsider digging beneath the ground, tunneling clear through to the other side and reaching many other places in the process. When you are an outsider everywhere, you actually have an extraordinary opportunity to be an insider to all of the world.

So it sounds empty for me to say to a panel of white people, "Being an immigrant is about compassion". But now, hopefully, you know all that I mean. And hopefully, I get another chance to explain it to them.

Remember 18?

2008-10-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

While sifting through old writings, I found the following. It was created right after high school ended. Sigh...looks like I was a lot more original back then.

I was six when I declared
To conquer all knowledge in this lair.
And all the while, scanning these books
Saw human possibilities in each look.
I became an engineer, an artist, a tennis playa
A little girl with many intellectual flavas.
I don’t like sodas, I’d rather take the tap,
Or throw my head back and freely laugh.
I sing in the shower, and on a strange day, might rap.
Just kidding – I’ve got no rhythm
Can’t freestyle when I think about existentialism.
Philosophy is right down my alley
But I like to do things, get my hands dirty,
Planting trees, making toys out of trash
Internal pleasure always beats the cash.
It's in the beat, the meaning of words
In Dickinson, Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf.
I wield the pen, I wield the shovel, I wield the spunk
Into the world and bring out da funk.

Buenos Aires

2008-07-07T20:09:00.001-07:00

In Buenos Aires, the streets wrap their nights around
As you walk somewhere
Cobblestone paths punctuated with old lampposts and
A gnarled set of railroad tracks turning up dust in faded fluorescent light, to remind that this is an old city of industry, gasoline, smog. And deeper into the neighborhoods, further into the streets you find Palermo's boutiques, with whimsical designer goods encased behind glass storefronts, a young woman wearing a blue scarf tending the shop within, her secret laboratory.
I pass, running, getting lost, being found
in the night around me.

In Buenos Aires, they smile when they speak, even if it is just to say, "Here we digitalize music scores for the library". How simple it is to just inch up a smile while speaking, and what relief it blows into the air,
lighting the space between strangers.
I am charmed secretly by this easy joy.

In Buenos Aires, I traded unknown secrets with strangers, unbeknownst to them. As we boarded the Subte, as we traversed Avenida Corrientes, ebbing and flowing to the City's breathing, I gave and was given.
A smile, a wind, an identity
to push me to write. It was a fabric, a pattern, a dance. It was not the most beautiful, richest, poorest, most trendy, loudest, or saddest, but somehow it was all of these as I rounded street corners day and night, going to sites but really looking for people, lives, routines, all the while not noticing these things and all the while
remembering them all.

I woke up in Los Angeles and immediately missed Buenos Aires. There is nothing more specific, just a feeling of something torn apart, left behind,
Like a secret I didn't even know I had.

The Music Stopped

2008-05-04T22:57:00.000-07:00

It is 7pm on a Sunday evening. I am having dinner with my parents, before driving back to LA for the week. Mom puts on one of her favorite CD's, the singer Ha Thanh, who has an extremely clear, light and airy voice. I have grown to love this singer's voice as well, as it floats into the air some of my favorite of the old songs, bringing me a sense of familiar home and memories, as well as exquisite beauty within each note. To hear Mom describe Ha Thanh's voice is to see real passion. Mom does not use fancy vocabulary or metaphors to describe, but rather, draws out her normal words and emphasizes with tone, "It's sooo light and each time I hear, it becomes so GOOD and so BEAUTIFUL! Mẹ thấy hay ơơơơơơi là hay, hay QUÁ!".

I ask Mom why I had never heard Ha Thanh among her cassettes when we were still living in Vietnam. Mom says that after 1975, Ha Thanh only sang certain songs that she was allowed to sing, and those were not the songs that Mom loved. Of course, the concept of censorship is not new to me, especially after years of studying and following social movements. But this time, censorship put side by side with Mom's expressive love for this music and its romance, and my own appreciation, it hit me personally. Briefly, I had to imagine how it could be that one day, the music stopped. All the songs you grew up with, fell in love over, cried over, was inspired by, one day they all just stopped. You were not allowed to hear them any more. In the streets, flames were engulfing cassette tapes and books in huge piles. Then what happened? Who were you, and who could you become?

Then, I got in my car and drove off to LA for the week.

Uncle Six

2008-05-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

I have seen one picture of Uncle Six. He is a little boy, around eight years old, he looks cute and smart. He is squatting on the ground (to my recollection). I know that Uncle Six died when he was a boy.

Uncle Six was born with a disease. His bones grew faster than his muscles, so that he could not walk very well. Uncle Six only went to first grade. After that, he could not move well enough to walk anymore so he couldn't go to school with the other kids. He stayed home. In the mornings, his mom or sisters carried him out to the living room, where he could sit and watch the neighbors passing by, and listen to the radio. Uncle Six was a smart boy. He read a lot, maybe because he couldn't do anything else, books and newspapers. He would sit there and read. And he drew pictures, just like the ones he saw in the newspaper comics, pictures of people speaking with little speech bubbles, pictures of objects emitting light through lines blasting off their radiance, Uncle Six sat there and drew and drew and drew. When he was eight years old, Uncle Six had surgery. He went to the hospital and they opened up both of his legs and pulled his muscles. He was in the hospital for a year, just eight years old. His Mom moved into the hospital to live with and take care of him. Uncle Six eventually came back home. He wore a metal brace and it helped him to practice walking. He would walk around the house, front to back, back to front. But his legs never recovered and eventually, he could not move anymore. Uncle Six lied in one place, all day, every day. Just lying in one place, his sense of hearing developed into something amazing. Hearing footsteps, he could tell exactly who was coming over to visit. If any object in the house fell out of place, Uncle Six knew where it happened. If something dropped and rolled under the bed, Uncle Six would say, "It's under the bed, in that corner over there", and there they found it. Everyone loved your Uncle Six.

Eventually, his immune system gave up fighting. Uncle Six died on the 29th of December in the Lunar Year, right before Tet, in 1968. It was fortunate that he died that day because we could bury him. The next day, on the 30th, the Communists fought their way all the way into Saigon, and all the roads were shut. In fact, right before that, our neighbor had gone back to his village to visit his mother. There, the communists ambushed that house and shot him. They thought he was someone else, someone in the Southern government that they were looking for, and shot him. Then they said, "No, it isn't him" and sent his body back home to our neighbor's house, right next door. I still remember the neighbor had to do something with the body, but they couldn't bury it. They broke down the front door to their house, and put his body on it, and carried it off on the door to somewhere else.

Deciding

2008-05-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

There was a recurring hesitance that could be attributed to fear. It was safer to hold on to the existing, or at least, to passively allow it to exist by simply not speaking the counterfact that if spoken, would immediately and irreversibly change reality. She was in that place. The space that allowed itself to exist, where to use a trite but entirely applicable phrase, "it was easy". She felt like a runner who had rounded the track so many times. The turns were second nature, and putting one foot in front of another was an act as natural as breathing. Now, the thought occurred to stop, a serious thought. But her legs continued to carry her, one in front of the other. She wanted to stop, but also didn't want to stop, wanted to run, but also didn't want to run. Until it became indecipherable exactly what "want" was.

The decision was entirely in her hands. But it was like a heavy rock on the road, it would not fade away or melt away or change shape on its own or through anyone else's energy. No, it required conscious exertion on her part to move. There was no other course of action. Which was, of course, the difficult part. Most difficult because she would be moving it while not knowing what other boulders lay ahead, while only knowing that today, it must be moved. And what about tomorrow? There was no way to figure that out, and the thinking about it continued without reaching conclusions.

But, today, she knows that the rock must move. It will not do to sit idle in the same position for another 365 days, she thought. Her mind and body know.

How terrible would it be to write for 365 days, to self-structure her entire life, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Perhaps it will be terrible. Perhaps it will be wonderful. She could gather herself, spread her mind out in the garden and trace its life, connect its webs, spin to the light something that was only hovering in darkness this whole time. She could hike under the sun, have habits, make investments, read the morning paper, ride her bicycle. The challenge is that all of it will have to be self directed, self created. It will ask her to be not only smart, but also a free and responsible human being, more so than she has ever been.

She did not reach a conclusion. The writing comforted her.

Oh, Now I Get What's Missing

2007-05-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

I'm just looking to be inspired. Somebody, something! Wahoo!!

"Works Well With Others"

2007-03-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

A friend lamented to me about how in the real world, we work with anal superiors who rather than appreciate our hard work for the firm, choose to have contact with us only through the phrase, "Where is that work I asked you to do?" This is also on my mind because recently, I received my mid-year review where it was noted that despite an ability to get work done and deliver what I promise, I often 1) try to figure out too much by myself and don't ask for help early on enough, and 2) don't communicate enough with others about my progress in projects, therein making them nervous.

This reminded me of senior year in college and my first steps into the world of labor-just-for-pay. This was a foreign concept to me so the whole thing was kind of a farce, best encapsulated in my cover letter writing experience. I remember trying to list and discuss my skills (or more accurately, the skills I read in other people's resumes since I couldn't think of any skills that I had). Among my few skills, of course, was the ridiculously generic "works well with others". Even then, I thought this was dumb. I mean, if you are a remotely nice person who can empathize with other people, then it follows that you work well with others. As a college student, I thought the ability to work well with others was based on how nice you were, how empathetic and open-minded. My instincts told me that I had this "skill". I'd lived in a vastly different country, been an immigrant on welfare, travelled, met the upper echelons of America at Harvard, and taught refugee kids in Dorchester. In short, I've been around and seen many different ways to live and to look at life, and reflected on the contradictions therein. I know better than most people what it means to be open-minded. I can get along and work well with others.

In the work world, I now understand this idea differently. The world of the university encourages self-discovery and reflection. You feast on the possibility of your own personhood. If you see something new, try it, incorporate it into yourself. Then share that experience with someone and build a community through that sharing. In this world, how well you "get along" with others directly spawns from how much you can see them in yourself - you are curious about their interests, moved by their deftness with a violin, they connect to your immigrant story as their past, your urges as their creative energy. Everyone gravitates towards some similarity, superficial or primeval. The guy next door (at least in my idealistic vision) is trying to do the same thing. We each try to become more of ourselves, to absorb more of the world into us. The two progressions are one and the same, inseparable. That is our labor.

The work world has a very different basis and hence operates differently. In this world, the labor setting is structured such that everyone is specialized and segregated from each other through both hierarchy and duty. Here, the ability to "work well with others" is not so much grounded in absorbing different experiences into yourself and therein being self-sufficient. In fact, it is the opposite. It's the recognition of how non-self-sufficient you are, of how much you must rely on other people to literally get anything done. Take a macro example - If you want to successfully persuade bond issuers to give you underwriting business, you must rely on the syndicate desk for market color and investor relations. You cannot do that part. You are decidedly not of that part and so you do not know it intimately, but you must get results from it. What you do is holler to the guy on the other side, "What do you know about this? Can you help me out?" Because he is the expert in that field and you are not. So in this strict division of labor, "works well with others" doesn't come from your empathetic and encompassing worldview. It is not an indeterminate urge towards reflection, but a very concrete ability to put in a phone call and satisfy the guy three cubes away. The real world is so big and made of so many pieces, so you are constantly at the boundary of your knowledge. At these boundaries, you need to communicate ignorance. Knowledge as you know it ends and for the job to complete, communications takes over. Now I understand "works wells with others" in a different way. It may not be as deep or metaphysical as a curiosity to absorb the world, but it is, in fact, a skill.

Hence, it is helpful to communicate your status with others even though you yourself know that status quite well.

Somehow, I also understand this as a process of growing up. When you are young, you assume that the world is centered on you. Your communication style focuses on your needs - you cry when you're hungry, you ask questions when you're curious. But as an adult, you have to become better at grasping the situation as someone else would see it. Communications can no longer driven only by what you know or don't know, it also has to be dictated by what others know or don't know. With your own eyes, you have to see various social situations decentralize away from you. Things becomes less internal and subjective, and the world becomes possible entirely outside yourself. Of course, how much of this I enjoy or support is a more complex story.

I "grew up" in college a Marxist, but more and more, I see the world operating as a Durkheimian modernity.

Chicago + Banking

2007-02-23T02:12:00.000-08:00

I feel like I've aged a couple of years since I last blogged, even though it's been perhaps 6 months. This is due to two factors: 1) I've been working very long hours which is exhausting and I'm sure sped up my physical depreciation, and 2) As would be the case if I was a 30-year old writing this, all the features of my life are completely different from what they used to be.

I should forewarn the reader that at this moment, I am in sunny climate on vacation, vegging out in front of a computer and writing a blog entry. I have not experienced even one of these three things since half a year ago. Which means I am a little biased and I have a few things to get off my chest. And that is the purpose of this blog entry - to rant. Moderation, constructiveness, and thoughtfulness . . . I'll deal with those later.

You know, when I started this new job, I was excited. At last, I was heading in a direction I wanted to. Through serendipity that I felt resulted from my own ability and risk-taking, I landed in a place that would teach me the skills I needed and desired. The training period confirmed this reality. My eyes were opened to a whole new world. From the nitty gritty of modeling financial transactions to being exposed first hand to high level corporate meetings, I felt again the stimulation I once felt at college. It was the sensation of blossoming awareness, numerous "lightbulb" moments where I connected, things came together, jargon made sense, the world was offered on a plate. Like a sailor riding a good wind, I felt the rush of forward momentum. Even the first few months of real work were exciting. Everything was new, and I continued to learn and push myself in self-education. We won new deals, and I met new horizons in understanding products and transaction execution.

Somehow, things turned when I came to Chicago. Some of the reasons are perhaps not appropriate to elaborate on this blog, but most are. Perhaps it was that the tasks became a bit more mundane through repetition and curiosity lost its edge. Perhaps it was that I was the only analyst from my team in the Chicago office, and suddenly was bereft of the social bearings I used to have in New York with my team and the firm as well as a few good friends. Perhaps I continue to feel like a stranger in the midwest, working on accounts I not only don't know of but also, not having been from the midwest or gone to college there like my office peers, have no regional or emotional connection to (until recently, I didn't even know whether Missouri is east or south of Illinois). If I were working on California community colleges, for example, I would feel more connected, contextualized, and less in a vacuum. As an adolescent I played tennis at Cypress College, both my parents went to Cypress and graduated from there, I took a dance class at Fullerton College, I took a speech course at Mt. San Antonio College. All of these things give me a memory trail, a mental image, so that the client's name or at least the locale strikes some chord in me.

Then too, I personally found myself in a new city, which necessitates going through the procedures of making new friends and familiarizing myself with the city through exploration and adventures. Having done my NYC year, I was ready for this. What I underestimated was the importance of time in this familiarization process, and how my work hours would impact that time. Working 9am to 10pm every night and at least one weekend day a week, I go home and am too tired to do anything else, and spend the rest of my weekend doing laundry, working out, paying bills, etc. This means many of the creative activities I used to enjoy are now non-existent, or squeezed between workdays in a far too structured manner rather than lazily slid into during the expanse of relaxing weekends. I no longer know how to write journal entries that think beyond dissecting my immediate work. My explorations of the city are few and far in between, usually confined to a single bus ride between work and home. I skim the Wall Street Journal rather than novels or poems. And music, that exercise of deliberate creation and joy, has become background noise for work. Even now, when I am more settled into the job and would like to ease up to let air into other parts of my life, work continues to be unrelenting. It is nearly impossible to have interests and hobbies. This makes for a boring and kind of insanity-inducing life.

Of course, such is the nature of the job, and I knew this coming into it. But there are two things I really did not expect which hit me upside the head and make this adjustment more difficult. One is the factor which I cannot discuss here, but it suffices to say this factor regularly multiples my stress while making me feel that my work is not going anywhere. The other is how awful Chicago weather really is. Prior to accepting the job, I researched temperature differences in Boston and Chicago, which showed Boston's maximum monthly temperature over the winter months was about 5 degrees lower than in Chicago (on average over the past 30 years). OK, so it's five degrees colder, I can handle that. But suddenly, in February I found myself in -30 degrees weather. My WeatherBug issued wind chill warnings of "potential hypothermia and death". And the worst, worst part, is that there is no snow in Chicago. You get all the pain and none of the benefits.

Finally, recent developments in my family have made me strongly rethink my frolicking nature and come home asap. Because if you've never done it before, let me spoil the surprise by telling you that it's unproductive and distracting to spend your free moments worrying about family obligations while half the country away.

So in the midst of all these frustrations, it is easy to lose sight of all the good things I've gained from this job: the concrete analytical skills, the extremely informative market understanding, the ability to blend and operate in high corporate culture, and above all, the confidence that I can do what I set my mind to. In fact, I pretty much did forget all about all these things, until I went back and revisited some conversations I had with friends prior to starting the job.

Still, I'm not sure if I can last another Chicago winter. We'll see what spring and summer will bring. Perhaps, as happened in NYC, those will be my seasons.

Thư Cho Bà Ngoại

2006-12-31T02:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Grandma,

I woke up this morning at 7am. Just like everyday, I showered and got dressed for work. When I checked my email, I saw a note that said you died yesterday, at 10am Vietnam time. The text of the message seemed so unreal, it stunned me to silence. The emails I get usually announce sales at LL Bean and Banana Republic, was I really hearing about your death through the same medium, on the same screen, with the same gmail graphic interface and font colors? I think I tried to hope it was just another advertisement . . .

Grandma, I cried on the bus on the way to work this morning. Usually I sit on the bus and read the Wall St. Journal, gleaning economic news across the world. Today I just held the paper in my hands and cried, like a little girl. I tried to tell myself that this was inappropriate, crying on a bus full of strangers going to work. It occurred to me that I was on a bus in Chicago, Illinois, in the middle of winter, surrounded by an ordinary day, by twenty-some Americans who thought it was an ordinary day. And that in one seat on this bus, there was a little girl weeping over the death of an old woman in Saigon. That just made me cry more.

At the corner of Clark and LaSalle, I thought about when I was young and you came to visit us. You never brought fancy gifts like other relatives who came who gave us chewing gum or chocolate or a teddy bear. You only brought these little sponge cakes shaped like clam shells, because I think they were all you could afford. I loved those little cakes. When we went to America and mom took me to the Vietnamese supermarket in Little Saigon, I saw those little cakes for 50 cents a pack. I told mom those were “bánh bà ngoại” and brought a whole bunch and didn’t even eat but two. I still don’t know what they’re really called, they’ll always be grandma cakes to me.

I remembered the second days of Tết at your house, how all of my mom’s side would come. You and my aunts made so much food, trays of bánh chưng, bánh tét, sweet cakes, half a dozen kinds of mứt, candies, watermelon, watermelon seeds. I remembered how the bowls at your house were different from the bowls at my dad’s house, they had blue stripes and were darker, with no gold lining and no bright red flowers and made with a thicker, cruder ceramic. Your chopsticks were wooden and not ivory like at my dad’s house. The loft at the top was dark and squeaky when we climbed it. We chuc Tet everyone, ate and told stories to each other. Dì Út would always tease me and my sisters. We laughed a lot. At lunch everyone went out to the little front yard and watched dượng Út light a strip of firecrackers. Pui and Thu and my sisters and I played hopscotch in the front yard. In the afternoon, we ran out to the head of the alleyway to buy a chunk of ice, that would get smashed up into little cubes, and everyone drank a cold glass of water. When it was time to leave, I was always so sad.

The bus was now at State and Washington St, almost at the office. I got off at Monroe and started crying again. “Stop this, stop it,” I rebuked myself, to be crying in the middle of the busy sidewalk, in Chicago, Illinois.

I know that you loved my mom so much, and that you took care of her whenever she was sad about her life. She told me the stories, that when she was sad and overworked and exhausted, you would be sad with her and you would say, “con về nhà má nghỉ nè con”. And when she came home, you took care of her. She could sleep and rest because in your house, she wasn’t a mother of three, a full-time teacher, a wife, a daughter-in-law. You gently protected her like only a mom could protect a daughter. Maybe people were with her when she was happy, but you were always there to endure the heartbreaks and exhaustion with her. You were her mom like she is a mom to me.

Mom often told me that “bà ngoại tội nghiệp lắm con ơi,” because you were a simple person who did not ask for a lot out of life. In the end, you never got the chance to see America, to sleep on a bed with a mattress, or to sit in an air-conditioned room. Instead, you lost one of your daughters to America, because she left with her husband’s family in order to give her children (me) something, and in the course of doing that, took herself, your daughter, away from you. In sunny Orange County, in Little Saigon, I see old Vietnamese men and women wandering the shops, drinking coffee, eating pho and playing chess. I know they have their heartbreaks too, but when I think of you in Vietnam, squatting on the ground washing pots in the kitchen, in the dark, my heart breaks a little more. Here in America, we ate 5-course meals at Chinese restaurants with white tablecloths and a wait staff, and told jokes over fortune cookies, paid the check and went home. I know you always made your own food because you were vegetarian, and you ate one dish, and washed the one pot you used to cook it in with your bare hands.

When I came to visit in 2004, it had been ten years and I was twenty year olds. You were older and weaker, but otherwise just as I remembered you. Your house looked identical to what it was ten years ago, even the wooden walls still had the same paint, and the tablecloth was the very same one that was there when I was nine years old. For two nights, I slept with you on the divan, you brought out blankets and put up the mosquito net, like you have been doing every night for so many years. I had fun doing that with you. I thought we could do it again, the next time I visit.

I didn’t write you very many letters when I was growing up in America, too busy fretting about adolescence and fitting in with American life. I didn’t talk about you much to anyone, my friends, and only some of them, just knew I had “a grandma in Vietnam”. You weren’t the most-discussed relative in our family. The only person I ever talked about you with was mom, but then she always seemed so sad when talking about you. So I never discussed, never thought about you at length. I guess some people would be surprised that I was so impacted by your passing. I’m not. My favorite memories of childhood, the deepest and most heartfelt ones were somehow related to you, or related to the things that you came to represent for me. By the standards of a developed, professionalized society like America, you would be insignificant. A woman who only attended the second grade, had no career to speak of, gave birth to six children, lived in a tiny house, was overprotective of her children to the extent that they became afraid of life, who did not forge ahead in livelihood, who was passive. But Grandma, to me, you had the most love and forgiveness of anyone. You were the most simple and accepting and around you, we all felt we would be loved. Now that you're gone, I'm scared that a part of me will die with you, the part that was 10 years old and believed in this love, in this kind of life, the part that holds on to something in Vietnam, because I didn't realize it, but that something was embodied in you.

You make me reflect about my life. Material things and social climbing never seemed to matter that much to you. Maybe I’m romanticizing and maybe they did not matter because you didn’t have it in you to grab them. Still, the fact is you weren’t consumed by them. You just lived a simple life. When others looked down on you, you did not protest but just went on doing as you were. You were so kind, too kind, but still so very kind. You, and your passing, reminds me that life can be best lived without fancy cars, a big paycheck, a powerful position, but instead with quiet dignity. You remind me that life is full of heartbreaks, and that the human condition is made most poignant by these twisting pains. You teach me that chịu khổ is an essential, enlivening part of life. It makes for the most soulful bonds and a kinder existence.

It occurs to me that by many conventional standards, I don’t even know you that well. I don’t know your favorite food, places you would’ve wanted to visit, what your parents were like, where your home village is. I don’t know what your strongest longings were, what would have made you happy. Maybe grandkids are not supposed to know these things about their grandparents. Maybe no one ever asked you. I’d like to know because I want to know if you were happy in your final years. I’d like to know what you thought about when lying in bed those final months. I really want to know that you know you were loved, that someone held your hand, wiped your forehead with gentle care, and did their best to provide you with dignity when it was probably difficult for you to feel any. I guess it’s my way of saying that all these things mattered to me, but I forgot about them until it was too late.

Your passing made me realize that all we want for each other is to be happy. Where I am now, I see many lifepaths ridden with agendas, ambitions, drive. And I also see many misalignments of standards, arguments arising from contradictions between lives separated by continents, age, culture, place and generation. So we argue, we accuse, we try to provide and then we feel hurt when the effort isn’t appreciated as strongly as we expected. But maybe we should just ask. If I had just asked you what made you happy, I could try to give it to you instead of spending my time toiling for something I assume you would want, and then arguing about it. This is also me thinking about my parents. I persuaded myself into thinking I took this job partly for my parents, to make money to provide for them, to make them proud. But what do they want? They are old too, maybe what makes them happy, maybe all they really want, is for their children, for us, to be around. Maybe I took this job for selfish reasons, and I should admit that. Maybe I should realize that my parents’ time is short too, and that these are supposed to be their golden years.

I wish that you had been able to be with my family for just a week or a day. To meet your sons-in-law, to see the house we live in now, to know that your grandchildren are generally happy. Our family is just coming to the stage of its development where it begins to blossom, and I’m so sad that you never got to see that. I am also sad for my sisters to have never gotten the chance to see you since we left Vietnam.

It seems so stupid but I never thought you could die. You are my first experience with death, before you, I never knew that death was so final. I’m sorry I didn’t write you a letter, I’m sorry I didn’t call because I felt awkward. Now you’re gone and it’s forever. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I just wish I had the chance to say something to you, that I love you, “hello”, “goodbye”, anything.

Grandma, I cried at work today when I was typing a memo to a client, because I put on the same Vietnamese music I always listen to and somehow it made me think about you. I cried in the coffee room while microwaving my lunch, I wandered into a conference room and cried, I stared at a white wall and cried. I cried in the most random moments, without any filter or dam or control holding things back. I cried in the cab on the way home. I didn’t want to do any work, I just wanted to bolt out the door and run away, to where I didn’t know, but just to run until I could scream out my anger, my guilt, my sorrow and my grief over your leaving.

More than anything, I want you to be happy. What I fear the most is that you died thinking you had no one, that your life did not matter, that nobody cared about this old woman in a bed in a tiny flat in Saigon, tended to by her widowed, 70-year old daughter. I want you to feel that your life was important, and your suffering and sacrifices were not for nothing, they gave us our lives. I want you to know that I think about you a lot, and I try to remember the things you taught me, not through any words, but just by living your life. I want you to know that even though I never said it, Grandma, I love you.

McDonald's

2006-11-26T18:59:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, I'm reminded of just how ironic and topsy-turvy life has been and will probably continue to be . . .

I've just moved to Chicago. I landed after a 20-hour Amtrak ride from NYC Penn Station, and took a few days off before starting work to haul boxes, marvel at the vast amount of space here compared to NYC, and re-learn how to ride a bus.

There is an overwhelming wildness of visions and dreams that comes with moving to a new locale. Things no longer move in a straight line, and surprises in people, places and situations abound. But, to further complicate things, this is the fourth time I've gone through a major relocation. This means that the self-revisioning that comes with moving isn't striking or dramatic. Rather than being struck first by how "opposite" things are here than how they used to be, I swim in a lot of "obliqueness". You move the first time and it feels like everything turned up-side-down. You move the second or third time and all the axes of life begin to randomly cross, defying each other and themselves, to the point where there is no longer much truth left to proclaim. For this reason, it's hard to fluently express what's going on inside my head. So instead, I'll write about McDonald's. Apparently, despite all my moves across space and culture, McDonald's continues to be a steadfast star shining overhead.

1) My new work building is in the heart of the Loop. There is a McDonald's next door and I went there with some colleagues for lunch today. This may seem ordinary but I haven't done it in years, if only because in the circles of Boston and in NYC that I walked, fast food embodied bad taste, bad health, a cultural no man's land, political oppression of workers, and for stupid tourists only. McDonald's, like WalMart, is the devil. But Chicago seems to be without that judgment, and in fact, some of the McDonald's here are downright big, clean, high-tech and fancy. So my co-workers and I put on our coats, took the elevator down, went through the electronic turnstiles, left the office building and went into McDonald's. With our wool coats and crisp shirts and nice shoes, we looked a little different from the "regular crowd". It wasn't lost on me that this crowd is the one I would have been in prior to life at an investment bank. Over a Big'n'Tasty, I realized that apparently, I had climbed over some wall.

2) Five days ago, I got really mad at my dad. He was visiting from California to help me move and settle in. After a long day at work, I wanted to take him out for dinner. I haven't gone out to dinner with my dad in years. We walked around the Loop, me not yet knowing that Loop is the desert of good eating out. I was thinking some Italian trattoria or warmly atmosphered bars, wanting to show him something different from his usual suburban Orange County excursions. It was also to share a piece of my years away from home in a new world, a world where $30 for one dinner is ordinary, service is attentive, and it's not silly to pay extra for good atmosphere. Suddenly he said, "Why don't we just go to McDonald's?". I haven't had dinner out with the man in years. On this big ocassion, he wants McDonald's!!

3) This doesn't make sense and yet it does (and maybe that's why it drives me crazy). Once, when we were sitting in a park in Orange County, Dad told me about the Vietnamese kids he used to meet when he was a bilingual aid in Westminster. Part of his duties at the elementary school where he worked was to supervise students at recess, when they poured out of classrooms to play basketball, tetherball, dodgeball and handball, or go on the swings, monkey bars and slides in the big sandbox. He said,

"You know, that year, I met a lot of families who were sad - Cambodian, Vietnamese and Thai families. Those kids were so lonely. I remember that at the school, the teachers gave kids red tickets if they saw them do something good like putting garbage into the trashcan. They would tear the red ticket in half, give half to the kid, and put the other half in a big glass jar in the Main Office. At the end of the month, during the school assembly, they would bring out the jar and Mr. Hill (the principal) stuck his hand in and picked out a ticket. Whoever had that ticket got to go to McDonald's with Mr. Hill. It is such a small thing, but it's pretty exciting for a kid to win a prize and especially to go with Mr. Hill. I remember these three Vietnamese siblings who'd just come to the U.S. They didn't know how to play basketball or handball, and the other kids didn't invite them to play anyway, so they would just hang around me at recess. And while other kids were playing American games, they would walk around the schoolyard by themselves and pick up trash. Because they saw a boy get a prize at the assembly, and he got to go to McDonald's. They wanted to go to McDonald's, but their family was too poor to afford it. So they wanted to get the red ticket, and they knew that the more red tickets you get, the higher chance you have to win. So while all the other kids played handball and basketball, they just went around picking up trash until the bell rang and recess ended."

Occasionally, I'm reminded of just how ironic and topsy-turvy life has been and will probably continue to be . . .

Discrete

2006-11-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

She once thought that it should take a long time to write. When ideas came, she analyzed them out of habit, piece by piece, angle by angle, dug down to see where exactly they had come from. She wanted to get it "just right", so that whatever she wrote would be justified, perfect and invincible.

One day, she got tired because there were no results. Everything was swarming in her head but she couldn't see anything, couldn't touch anything, had produced nothing. At the same time, life occurred and visions continued to form. Images rushed past her from outside car windows on vacation, plane windows on work travel, bus windows in the chilly mornings, apartment windows on sunny and gray weekends alike. Late at night, numbers blinked at her from computer screens. There was too much information.

There was a park bench on a November morning. The parks are crowded in mornings, she thought. There are moving pieces everywhere, streams of people flowing in response to the directions of another. And horse carriages, and joggers, and suits flapping shiny black shoes on the ground as they paddle on to work. People come here as if following the wind, and they blow away. Nobody plans this. Nobody stops. What if I stayed to watch? Who would I see?

For some reason, she thought of him.

She went into the gift shop and bought a camera. This would be life. That was her craft, to capture things as they took even their first, most fledgling forms. It would not be chiseled or sharp, but rather frequently blurry and indeterminate. But that was the craft, to capture--not perfect--the pieces as they moved and morphed, and receded from her grasp. There would be feelings, memories unexpectedly arising at restaurant tables, on a park bench, while watching a film of a ruffled-hair boy drawing a name in the sand with his toes. In unforeseeable ways, the yearnings would be triggered. And maybe that was all that would be, a wind stirring about, opaque forms and images, a recognition arising purely from memory- from faith- that some synthesis has just occurred.

That would be life. Life is not a controlled experiment. Things happen outside, swarming around and disturbing things. Not everything we feel everyday is a discrete package of analysis, a report of observations, a chart showing definitive trends. There is no answer. At some point, the sense-making has to stop.

Train Me, I'm A Monkey

2006-07-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

I'm in corporate training. Some people have asked me how it's going so far. The training materials are very good and I'm learning a ton. As for the peers ... Well, let's just say I've yet to find one who is that perfect combination of "will talk to strangers" and "will not return all conversations to my sorrority/fraternity". Please note the AND in that last statement, as those two things seem mutually exclusive around here. Perhaps because this is my first time surrounded by the Tall and Socially Suave Frat Boys and Girls Society, I can't help but be surprised by their social codes. I mean, some people are so aloof and unwilling to carry on even a hint of conversation that you gotta wonder, "Dayng, who died and made you the reigning WASP princess?"

Brooklyn Fun

2006-04-24T19:26:00.000-07:00

I am at a Key Food supermarket, staring at a french baguette I know I should not get because I can't eat it faster than it hardens. Dang. Nearby is the deli. A black girl, around my age, walks up to the black guy, around our age, behind the counter:

Girl: Hey, I want to buy some ham.
Guy: Okay, which one you want?
Girl: Hmm...Where's that kind that...This...No...
Guy: ...
Girl: HMM.
Guy: Girl, they all good.
Girl: Okay, this one.
Guy: [sticks his hand in to grab it]
Girl: No, sorry, this one, I want this one.
Guy: Okay, do you know what you want?
Girl: I'm just tryin to get the right ham.
Guy: [grins] Well, don't go getting all confused and take me down with you.
Girl: [stares at him] Just cut y'all meat like y'all do.

Subway Fun

2006-04-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Here's my life in NYC. Last weekend I was trying to get home after a night out, but the subway service is completely whacko here on weekends. Some trains don't run, or run at only certain stretches, or only express in another stretch, or switch track altogether with another, totally unrelated train. So, here's me trying to figure out if I should gamble and take the 6 train downtown:

Me: Excuse me, does this train go all the way to Fulton St?
West Indian man at platform: Yes. Footeen St.
Me: Great! Oh wait, did you say Fourteenth?
Him: Yes, this train, Footeen.
Me: I meant Fulton St.
Him: Oh. Yeah yeah, Footeen St.
Me: No, [enunciating as much as possible] Fuuulton.
Him: Yes, this what I'm tellin you, Footeeeen!
Me: [Not sure if he is saying Fourteenth or Fulton, but wanting to believe Fulton because that's where I need to go] OK.
. . .
Me: Fulton right?
Him: Yeah Footeen St.
Me: No, Fulton. F-U-L-T-O-N.
Him: [apparently exasperated] Where you tryin' to goh?
Me: I need to change to the 2 train downtown.
Him: [looking dubious, points at the 6 train's tracks] This one, Footeen St.
Me: No, Fulton!
Him: Yes, Footeen!
Me: You're useless to me. [leaves]

The 6 train does not go to Fulton St. It stops at Brooklyn Bridge.

The Green Seas Stretch But They're Not Endless

2006-04-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

It was after midnight Saturday. I was on the second leg of making it crosstown, having climbed up Manhattan from Astor Place to Grand Central, all just to eventually get downtown again on the 2 train to go home. Thankfully the 7 was not subject to all those runarounds the MTA calls a weekend schedule. The platform held a few people. In that hour of the night, we were all anonymous. Tired inward eyes, slow circular pacing, faraway minds. To each his own. It was 1 a.m. Even the train sounded tired when it finally came. Blindly, we shuffled on. My eyes blankly swept across the car, mostly black faces, one young white couple. Some people were sleeping. In my lap the book fell open,

"M.I.A." --by Bao-Long Chu

When you come back,
don't bother to

go to Cho Lon.
I am not there
among mangoes

I once peddled.
I am here now:

America.
Yes, I wait still.
Still, as Buddha.

I wake early
daily to make

you lotus soup
you love, thinking
you will today

break down this house
when you come back

and find me, love
breaking, broken
into ashes.

The green seas stretch
but they're not end-

less. If you are
lost, please follow
my skin, my faith.

I burn nightly.

... Something in me crumbled. Perhaps it was due to the deep hour of the night, when serious questions arise but you are too tired to have defenses. Perhaps it was the lulling rocking of the subway car, rocking my mind to other places, letting me touch the mangos, witness faith, witness death, feel how at once urgent and hopeless love is. Whatever it was, I fell into the poem at that moment, in that way where you feel both found and lost at the same time. Somebody had lost someone in a war, but there was waiting, habits, continuity, faith. When you come back, your lotus soup, break down this house. Times have changed, I am no longer where I was but come find me, here is where I will be. Come.

The subway car rocked on. I watched my companions doze off on each other's shoulders. You will today break down this house when you come back. Come back.

I am no longer where I was.

The poetry soaked in my brain, yanking back cells previously occupied by age's worries. It had been a while since a poem so simply moved me. Sure, I had read other poems which had stopped me in my tracks, but my feeling toward them was usually of admiration. Such poems I clump into the category of, say, "Blackberry Picking" by Seamus Heaney. Poems whose topics are a foreign world to me (blackberry picking), with terms I know not how to make sense of and must blindly accept (pea tins, jam-pots, briars). You know, one of those "advanced" poems you learn to appreciate in college, especially if you study in New England. Certainly I appreciate "Blackberry Picking" in an analytical way, but to me that's as far as it could go. I do not know exactly what a jam-pot is, having never laid hands on one or carried one in August to fill with blackberries. Without this sense of memory, the poem cannot move me. Because that is not my life. I can only appreciate its rhythm, its color, its diction.

This other poem, however, gently undid my consciousness with simple words. Memories seeped through. Not particular memories of particular incidents, but just senses, emotions, the way it felt in another time, another place, ten years ago, yesterday, when I was someone else. As I grew from Saigon to southern California to Cambridge to NYC, from six year old to adolescence to ivy winters to employment and real life, each world has felt as if another continent, each home is a separate realm of thoughts and possibilities, each self a stranger to the previous. And yet I am also never quite able to forget that previous iteration, there is always a yearning to reconnect. This yearning can be hard to fulfill because if you learn to write in one setting, a new world can seem a lot to process. Possibly that world tells you your writing is not suitable for this life at all, that it is a remnant from your old life in that other place. Then the oceans feel immense, the task of making your self and your context comprehensible is daunting and endless. And you stop writing, there is too much.

But thankfully, what remains is your emotions, your capacity to respond unconsciously, pre-consciously to the things that move you. The right poem, at midnight, on the 2 train downtown.

"The green seas stretch
but they're not end-

less. If you are
lost, please follow
my skin, my faith."

To me that means so many things.

Politics

2006-03-08T17:23:00.000-08:00

Boy, was I dead wrong about my job not having interpretations.

It is now March, the month of winter's end. Some days spring practically oozes from the earth, breathing green leaves and pitter-patter rain. But mid-March is also a precarious time; just when you think you've turned a corner hell freezes over again. New England was this way too. It would warm to 60 degrees, frisbees and shorts came back out to the courtyard, one day you left the dorm, looked up and everything had turned a deep, breathtaking green. The next day there was freezing rain and you wore mittens.

March, in my most recent memory, is also the month of the senior thesis. I remembered this when cruising thefacebook.com. My friends describe their club as "thesis", or sometimes "@$#^ thesis". Their walls are covered with posts by fellow thesis-ers as well as cheerleaders from the outside world, profanity and encouragement side by side. Some people seem optimistic at the near finish line, others jaded with the intellectual journey, and still others make zany comments to ward off the pressure. Thesis is an intense and heady time, full of self-importance, mental instability, potential glory and incredible fear. I can feel those emotions like it was yesterday. Was it really a year ago? That March feels so far away as I sit in my office (after hours, mind you), maple desk, multi-line phone and all. It was an entirely different mental universe.

And now I'll tell you how I was dead wrong to judge the business/real world as having no room for interpretation. Recently I crossed a higher up person (not in my company) by asking her a question in a conference. It was unintentional, indeed my question was quite innocent, I just wanted to know how something worked and who was responsible for what part. Evidently this person took it as me questioning her authority. And instead of talking to me, she made her point by talking behind my back to some of our important partners that we count on to make the redevelopment successful. The story got around to my boss, and then to me. I was totally flabbergasted. How could my question have been so misinterpreted, and even if there is a disagreement, who would handle it in such a cowardly and underhanded way, especially when we are supposedly "a team in the effort to redevelop this neighborhood"? These two points had me incredibly angry and indignant. First, I would not have apologized for something that made no sense. Second, how could one even apologize for something without even knowing someone else was pissed. This was somebody else's megalomania, why I should concede to it? My colleagues supported me, but nevertheless apologized on behalf of me to this power-that-be, explaining that I was "just out of college". This made me mad too. I mean, wouldn't it make you?

I did wonder, after some cooling down time, whether I am overconfident with good intentions, having had eight years of idealism without consequences.

Epidemiology, Susan Sontag & Interpretations

2006-02-25T21:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I caught something in the most recent Harvard Magazine [which, after the initial horror at recognizing I was actually reading that thing--there's no denying alumna-hood now--wasn't so bad, really].

I read about public health professor and epidemiologist Nancy Krieger. I know nothing about epidemiology, I can barely spell the word (the study of disease, in case you wonder). But Prof. Krieger's theoretical premises intrigued me. She points out that under the norms of modern epidemiology, researchers study a population's patterns of health and disease as shaped by a complex "web" of risk and protective factors. Ooh, sounds like one of those respectable, academically complex ways of looking at things, yes? Krieger says "no", flips things on their heads. She points out that if this "web of causality" is the object of study, research ends up focusing on individuals, the shape and size of their webs and what they can do to improve those webs. But, what about the historically accrued economic, social and political structures that are spinning out these situations? Look up from the web for a second, Krieger says, and ask, "Has anyone seen the spider?" Oh snap. You have to admit, social musings like these are unorthodox for a scientist, especially one at a world class institution. But Krieger doesn't seem to mind. She makes remarks like: "We can embody those aspects of inequality or conversely embody those aspects of privilege. And then end up with biological manifestations, biologic expressions as it were in this case of race relations. So that while there may not be innate fundamental differences between, say African Americans and Whites, there may be still biologic differences that are acquired because of the fact of living in a racist society." Okay, really, a Ph.D. biochemist at Harvard is not supposed to know these words.

Reading Krieger reminded me of how a few weeks ago, I was at the Bluestockings Bookstore on the Lower East Side browsing cultural theory texts. The essay "Against Interpretation" by Susan Sontag caught my attention. In no time I was giggling, delighted with Sontag's acrid damnation of academic interpretation. With undisguised annoyance, Sontag blasts interpretation for smothering our ability to truly experience art, and by extension reality, and our lives. She bemoans the "armies of interpreters" that stand ready to attack and "ravish" Beckett, Kafka, Faulkner, etc. using hideous weapons of symbolism, allusions, mise-en-abime's and other cheap tricks of the hermeneutic magician.

I was reminded of my first tutorial in the Literature department, where I heard a pun referred to as "a work of literary violence". The author of the phrase looked so pleased with himself that I ran away screaming. I had been surrounded by so many stupid (sorry, is there a more politically correct word?) people in my previous surburban life. But Harvard was really the first place where I met supremely intelligent people who all seemed to focus on extremely idiotic things. Like avant-garde theater lighting, comic strip superheros or organic bananas. Having entered college with an extremely serious disposition, I found it all so trifling and a big joke. How could actual thinking people worship cartoons and churn out entire essays about them? From sensitive indy rockers to wool sweater-wearing poets, Harvard kids seemed universally more invested in how "cool" tacky 1950's ads of blonde children pouring baking soda were, instead of discussing The Grapes of Wrath as a tool for social change. What a waste, what a waste! I dumped all my exasperation onto literary and cultural interpretation. As Sontag describes and I scoffed then, "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art"!

But, how did Nancy Krieger and Susan Sontag enter the same train of thought for me? The thread, as I eventually worked out, is about interpretations. Yes, I do find it terribly desperate when someone tries to convince that X imagery of corn husks is really a symbol of say, Jesus Christ. However, in hating the interpreters who foul art with their semantic flimflam, in all my shared giggles with Susan Sontag, how shall I treat what Nancy Krieger is doing in epidemiology? Because isn't that also interpretation? It digs beneath, it looks beyond, it unearths meaning in phenomena that are supposedly scientific and by extension (for most people) ahistorically neutral. This struck a chord in me.

About a month ago, I reached a point in my professional life where I realized that I was becoming stupider. Sure, I had acquired a lot of professional knowledge about housing development, but on another front, I could no longer articulate social scientifically complex thoughts. In this moment I terribly missed the social theory classroom. In the business world we have to be so action-oriented, frequently to the point of sacrificing reflection. You don't stop to ponder the ripple effects of your actions, how you fit into a sector, or what could be done better. You just do, you execute, time is money. And it's not even that your desire to reflect is squashed in distinct moments, but that the span of the entire culture is unreflecting. Thinking about Nancy Krieger, I realized what I missed in my work was interpretation. Without interpretation, you are constantly doing but you don't really know why it is done this way or what you are really trying to achieve. Gradually, your vision dwindles down. Your reason for coming to work consist of immediate, quotidian statements like "working to raise my family" or "need to pay the bills". You don't really care what you're doing or how you're doing it, as long as the fact is you're doing it. You have no larger purpose, you are sitting squarely inside a box.

On the flip side, did this mean I was ready to go back to academia? I recalled the literary violence of puns... and realized that in that world, interpretation runs completely rampant and can become the mode of action. I am hesitant to surround myself with that again. Instead, there must be some balance, or even better, some combination of having an expansive, interpretive vision and being able to execute and make that vision manifest. There is no tradeoff, the tradeoff is a sham made up by people to affirm their own choices and positions.

So in the end, I made my peace with interpretation, sort of. Interpretation can be annoying but it is not evil as such. In many instances, such as with Nancy Krieger in epidemiology, interpretation can embolden our views and empower us. Susan Sontag, even in the midst of abhorring interpretation, recognizes this. She writes, "In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling." So the idea is not to recoil from or to indulge in interpretation in itself, but to see it as a tool that like all tools, is appropriate in select circumstances. May we always recognize those times and places.

What I Know of Dry Winter Mornings

2006-01-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

I woke up to a bare, chilly day in Brooklyn
The sun shone on gaunt, naked trees.
I have seen trees like this before, in one place--
Cambridge, dry winter mornings.
I missed Sever Hall, a lectern, a professor
Instructing on Rousseau to Foucault,
Students scribble notes,
Outside, the world holds its breath.

Middle-Aged Man

2006-01-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

The plane was packed. Evidently Orlando was a popular destination, perhaps even more so because of the sad grayness of winter in Pittsburgh. There was none of the to-Pittsburgh aircraft spirit I was used to, the solemnness of businessmen in pressed suits, leather attaches and laptops. Instead, a buzz that could be called genial, perhaps even festive, livened the aircraft. I thought, well this is going to be fun, flying down south to nice weather and surrounded by warm people for the journey.

Luck was not with me. It was not eventful, but the downward spiral went like this. I found my aisle seat. The window seat was empty, but the middle one was occupied by a middle-aged white man with a square head, the kind I always see on my trips to Pittsburgh. But this guy wasn't dressed in crisp business clothes, he wore jeans and a green oxford shirt which did a poor job of hiding the beer belly. We exchanged quick greetings. Since he offered no sign of being chatty, I sat down, unwrapped the sandwich I'd bought just before boarding and began eating, oblivious to the latecomers dragging their purses and children past me down the aisle. Minutes into my smoked turkey club, I bent down to take a bite and saw that a pair of feet had stopped at my row. I looked up. The feet belonged to a tall, thin man, also looking like he was in his early forties. He was dressed in camel khakis and another oxford shirt. There was no beer belly to hide but his hair was definitely thin. Beer Belly and I obligingly vacated our seats so thin man could get in.

Our steward began his "welcome to blah blah airlines" speech; thin man had barely made it in time. It was perhaps the relief of this that prompted him to think aloud about how lucky he was, the traffic he'd hit, his sprint from the parking lot. And unfortunately, this beginning salvo turned over Beer Belly's chatterbox for the rest of the flight. I had hoped to do some work or take a nap, since the evening planes I'd flown were usually dark and quiet. Instead, I was subjected to an incredibly asinine conversation that did not pause in the 2 hours from Pittsburgh to Orlando. For strangers, these two talked more than any women I had ever met. There was no escape, they were next to me, I was on an airplane, there was no music, no headsets, no other conversations to neutralize theirs into a harmless buzz. I know that sometimes in life, there are exchanges that seem interesting, when you wish and try to eavesdrop. This was the opposite of that, I couldn't stop listening even when I wanted to. And I could not believe the things these men said, the words they used, the tone of voice which betrayed a pathetic arrogance in being able to converse like that. So, you'll forgive my comments in [CAPS]; these were thoughts held back on the plane for the sake of good will and order, but on this blog I am restored to the enjoyment of having no filter between brain and mouth.

[Keep in mind, these men are strangers to each other, and they are sitting on an airplane next to a girl who is also a complete stranger to them.]

1. Beer Belly asks a series of questions, unperturbed by Thinning Hair's short answers. "So, you in business?" "What do you guys sell?" "So are you national?" "That's nice for you, buddy". [HMM, THIS GUY IS KIND OF ANNOYING.]

2. Beer Belly demonstrates his ability to carry a conversation. Thinning Hair points to a picture of a casino in the in-flight magazine. Beer Belly chuckles, latches on. "Yeah, I love gambling. That texas hold'em stuff, my wife and I play it aall the time, every weekend we play. Friend and I, drove out from Chicago to Wildwood once. Atlantic City's good too." [LAME. WHO TELLS A STRANGER THAT HE PLAYS TEXAS HOLD'EM WITH HIS WIFE EVERY WEEKEND? EVEN LAMER, WHO PLAYS TEXAS HOLD'EM WITH HIS WIFE EVERY WEEKEND?]

3. Thinning Hair points out, "I like Vegas." Beer Belly is effusive: "Oh yeah, Vegas. What's good about that place is it's clean. I mean, Atlantic City, I just don't like it that I go gamble and when I come out, there's a guy with no arms and no legs begging for my money. You know what I mean?" [EXCUSE ME?! MY GOD, IT'S NOT LIKE YOU'RE EVEN FLYING FIRST CLASS!]

4. Beer Belly changes topics and defies my stereotype of people who like to travel as interesting: "I like travelling, you like travelling? It's 'cause I love golf. My wife and me went to Arizona once, the Hyatt in Phoenix it's just beallteefull, the greens there are amazing." Thinning Hair expresses no enthusiasm but Beer Belly is unphased: "You ever been to Cleveland? Oh, that place is great. It used to be a shithole but now it's great. You can play 18 holes for 30 bucks, it's beallteefull." [THE CHICAGO ACCENT HAS NEVER BEEN SO ANNOYING TO ME BEFORE]

5. Thinning Hair turns the conversation to Orlando and his business trip. He has a meeting at 1pm and 4pm the next day, and wondered aloud what he should do in the down time. To which Beer Belly confidently suggested, as if no other possibility could be better, "Get some golfing in." [I SWALLOW MY TONGUE TO KEEP FROM LAUGHING]

6. Thinning Hair divulges that he will meet some friends for a beer this evening but has to turn in early because of a 7am breakfast meeting tomorrow. Beer Belly is sympathetic: "Geez. Well, me, this friend of mine works for an architecture firm, one of the big ones. Well, you'll find this funny. Martha Stewart and Katie Holmes are going into developing something together, and they're having a party tonight to meet some people. So my friend invited me. Yeah, so I'm gonna go hook up with Katie Holmes." [I SUDDENLY FEEL NAUSEOUS.]

7. Beer Belly: [acknowledging my presence for the first time] Excuse me, can I put this cup on your tray for a minute while I get something out from my bag, thanks. [turns to Thinning Hair] See here's a picture of my boy, he's got a heart of gold.

8. Fifteen minutes later, I request that BeerBelly remove the friggin cup from my tray. "Oh I'm sawry!" They continue talking about kids and wives, goft and poker. In an amazing gesture of friendliness, Thinning Hair buys Beer Belly a beer! [I AM DESPONDENT, NOW THE CONVERSATION HAS ENTERED ANOTHER REALM, IT COULD HAVE FIZZLED OUT BUT THE BEER WILL CREATE THIS SENSE OF BROTHERHOOD, NOW THEY WILL OWE EACH OTHER MORE INFORMATION, A NUMBER OF GOOD LAUGHS.]

9. As the beer is consumed, I finally manage to fall asleep. Only to be woken up when Beer Belly acknowledges me a second time, "Excuse me, sorry to wake you, I'd like to go use the restroom. Sorry." [WHY DID YOU DRINK THE BEER IF YOUR TINY BLADDER COULDN'T HANDLE IT, ASSHOLE?]

...And so it went, on and on. More than once, I expected to look over and see two teenage boys sitting next to me, wearing baggy jeans and baseball caps. But nope, there they were, Thinning Hair and Beer Belly, the most pathetic middle-aged man I have ever met. I drew two things from this experience. One: In a welcomed break from my apostasy, it was great to encounter someone who I would never ever want to be like; the thought alone made my hair stand on ends. Two: Mid-life crises are very scary, if you are a man having one, please do not come near me. I am not interested in your posturing, bragging as if you are a teenager again. It does not make me respect you or find you impressive in any way, except for the thought that you are a huge asshole who is extremely pathetic. But if that's the kind of reaction you're looking for, then, by all means, go ahead.

The Village Voice

2006-01-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

He picked The Village Voice up from his dining table, not minding that this revealed the tacky green surface beneath. It was post-workday, he'd thrown away his boots for bare feet. The evening breeze blew away his memories. Feeling liberated in a t-shirt and loose karate pants, he squatted on the cheap corkwood floor. He leaned against the wall. This was a good place to read. Down on the ground he could see the underside of the table, the bed. The view was different, and everything was bigger, like warm dark caves.

Flipping through the Voice he saw: 5 dance, theater, "assorted" shows on Monday, endless bars lining Tuesdays, dozens of eateries up and down Manhattan all around. The Village Voice is a village of insane people! Who the hell could do all this in one week? It's not even the fucking weekend yet!

So this was the City, he thought. You don't read the paper to find out what's happening this weekend so you can all go. You read the paper to find out all the stuff you can't go to. He liked this, he liked conquest but even better, a city that was unconquerable.

And on the back, an ad from the Virgin Megastore. CD's were on sale, nevermind that Virgin (he scowled) was the most expensive record store ever. You could buy Coldplay or Stg. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for $10. Not bad. The kicker, though, was John Coltrane & Thelonius Monk, also $10.

He grinned. Not that $10 was a steal for John Coltrane & Thelonius Monk; or maybe it was, he didn't actually know. But Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane featured in a full-page ad by the big-box hoarder, right next to Shakira's Oral Fixation. Why? Because they think it will sell, they think it has a market.

Well, he liked this market.

Prep

2005-12-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

It felt like reading about my own life. One minute I was 22 years old, sitting at a table, legs outstretched, reading a novel as dusk begins to hang outside my window. The next I was 14 again, watchful, defensive, laboring to pin down the surrounding personalities. Had it really been this simple? I wondered, thumbing the pages of the book. Had the characters of high school been so easy to read? A boy farted when giving his book report, a girl tried unsuccessfully to stifle her laughter, I knew then that she was someone I could be friends with. I guess back then, we all wore our deepest truths on our sleeves because none of us had acquired enough guile to be exacting or worldly. The awkward mumbling was sharp and sudden, the glancing at watches was obviously fake. None of us had an understanding or command of our limbs and what they might do, what secrets they might betray, at any moment. So it was easy to just watch and grab hold of people's cores. One gesture, and I knew then that I could be friends with her, I knew then that she was a prissy bitch.

But was it really so clear? I only wish I was the kind of teenager who understood this clarity, who trusted what I saw before my eyes as reliable proofs of people's personalities and knew, consequently, that some of them were not worth knowing. As it were, I martyred myself into giving second chances, listening, abandoning friends, even soothing the pains of enemies. There was a whole problem of empathy, namely, that I had too much of it. And suddenly, I saw a girl in adulthood vacillating between worldviews, lifestyles, careers, politics, also for this same problem of empathy. It feels so complex and undecidable now, but would the choices eventually emerge as clearly as high school personalities (something I could be friends with, a politics so shallow, a mindnumbing career)? If so, would this revelation make me trust what I see, could I give up my desire to keep all the eggs in the air, could I watch some of them fall to the ground and break? Maybe I will end up juggling the wrong two eggs for 5 years, maybe I was wrong about the prissy bitch. But here's the thing, at least I would know it's okay to let some eggs break. I would juggle but I wouldn't be zealous about it, I wouldn't think the game itself actually mattered.

Flipping through the playbill of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular in order to discard it and see space on my desk again. We saw the hokey Rockettes, their hundreds of legs kicking to music and in unison. Wait, turn back to the other page, the history of the show, detailed descriptions of each piece. Do I need to know these things? Oh, who cares. Suddenly driven by a desire to let it all go, I dumped the whole thing in the trash.

Persona

2005-12-19T19:26:00.000-08:00

In high school English class, the question I hated the most was, "What persona is the author projecting in this poem?" The question always hit me between the eyes. I thought, "Persona, are you kidding me?" Because persona, to me, was what happened when the cheerleaders squealed, "Yes, I LOVE you!" to the dorky boy when he let them copy his homework. Persona was what possessed all the girls at lunchtime, as they flocked around the table of football players and preened madly like golden-haired princesses lost in some forest. This was persona, it was affected, it hid the persons. I could be talking to a friend when it took over, churned up some intangible shift of the air, sliding a glass door shut and making me feel--in an instant--suddenly alone and far away. I worshipped literature because it seemed like the one place that did not tolerate persona. So, "What persona is the author projecting in this poem?" Really, the idea was so offensive.

I suddenly remembered this last night, reading the opening passage of a novel that was clearly spoken through a persona. Two thoughts came to mind: I was a really nutty teenager, and, personas are okay in writing. In fact, the more I live "real life," the more I believe that growing up is all about acquiring personas but somehow being okay with it. For example, what is professionalism but a persona, knowing exactly how to posture, how much confusion you should show, how to curb your enthusiasm. And the same goes for the "we're keeping it real!" artists. As each of us emerges from the tumult of adolescence, we learn to write like adults, to remove ourselves and wax eloquence about macroeconomic policy or social movements instead. By adopting a persona or a unique voice, we can re-open the door to those things--what are they called? oh yes, feelings--and write more lightly, more deeply again.

Maybe. Or maybe I'm still tipsy from the Woodpecker Cider. Okay, one more glass of water!

Encounters of An (Annoyed,) Globetrotting Vietnamese

2005-12-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

If you are a Vietnamese American (or any immigrant/"other" subject) and you have moved through various social, national and intellectual circles, you eventually find a number of repeating phenomena. Below is a collection of those phenomena. Unfortunately, my clever and dead-on replies are invariably coined after the fact.

(1) So what do you think of the Vietnam War? [Half of the time, this is asked by white intellectuals who, after discussing the topic with another white intellectual, turns to me as the specimen of authentic truths. The other half of the time, it is asked by Vietnamese people wishing to "educate" me about what "really happened" in the War]

Me: Why are you asking me that question when the question you really want answered is, “So are you a Communist or not? Are you crazy or not?” (and that goes for both sides). Why should I give you information when you’re going to use it to tie me up in a little box and shut the lid? What do I think of the Vietnam War? I think it’s a tool you use to classify me.

(2) Vietnam, on a train

So you live in Orange County now? We hear that the Vietnamese Americans in Orange County are really crazy, right?

Well, some are and most are not, but the ones who are have loud voices. You know what's funny though, Vietnamese Americans in OC told me that you are all Communists over here. Do you think that’s true? Then why are you even asking me if all Vietnamese Americans in OC are fanatics? The number of fanatics there equals the number of Communists here.

(3) For those who are always eager to "school" me on Vietnamese ways because "I have lived in America for so long"

Why should you presume that it is I who has something to learn from you and that is the only way our “cultural exchange” goes? That is not exchange, it’s a one-way street where the playing field is unbalanced from the start, where I am asked to speak in Vietnamese which is a linguistic handicap like shooting foam bullets. From the start, you presume, you assume that I am the poor creature who “lost” her culture. I have culture, don’t you have something to learn from me too?

(4) For all the WASP-y backpackers out there

I think your developing country is so beautiful. I have been there and taken all these pictures. The people are beautiful. Here is me holding a plough in the rice fields, here is a path of just bamboo groves and gravel. It was so beautiful.

I think your developed country is really beautiful. I have been there and taken all these pictures. Here is me standing next to a car, can you believe it, a real Toyota. Here’s me standing next to a wall, we don’t have walls like this in Vietnam, so strong, so sturdy. I wish that my house had a concrete floor, it is smooth and cool during the summer, you can sweep it, you can bounce a ball on it, you can mop it.

(5) Well, I joined this club because I think Vietnamese culture is beautiful and I don’t want to lose my roots, brothers and sisters. So, like, why are we arguing about politics, I mean, this is a place where we educate each other about our Vietnamese culture, right? I think we should read more Vietnamese books and protect our heritage.

First, it’s not a pickle. And I do read Vietnamese, thank you very much. My roots are fine too, thanks. How about your head? Try to figure it out, my source of pride isn’t “being as Vietnamese as I can be,” but now I know what yours is.

(6) When (insert born-again VSA kid) insists on being “cultural” and therefore somehow innocent of politics. I have never come across a greater delusion than when people advocate against human trafficking in Vietnam and call it “preserving heritage” rather than the political act that it is. Your definition of politics is messed up, it only means certain things in certain times, to satisfy your self-righteous feelings about saving Vietnam, to skirt the issues and evade your fears of standing up to the “community” for what you believe in. If you’re too chicken to stand up and say, let’s have dialogue, then get out of my way because I’ll say it myself.

(7) Asian American girl in Sociology section: “Well, I have Filipino friends and their moms are all nurses”.

Why should this girl's Asian American “experience” give her any more right to have voice about immigration than the white guy from Kansas? All people have an equal opportunity to be stupid. It seems simple, but some people just don’t get that having one Filipino friend is not proof that you’re an expert on Filipinos, or anything else for that matter. So try to say something more intelligent next time.

(8) When “A bunch of us got together and thought hey wouldn’t it be super chill if we had an Asian American film festival?” I am torn between wanting to support this so badly and being embarrassed at the gigantic display of ditziness.

(9) Excuse me, why are we talking about “the Vietnamese immigrants” as if they’re all the same? Hello!!

(10) Pittsburgh, 10pm. Two black girls cry out to me across the street: Ching chong ching chong!
[I'm still thinking of a good reply to this one, besides my middle finger. Write your ideas in the "comments" section.]

(11) Finally, my favorite identity crisis question.
Question: So what percentage of you would you say is Vietnamese versus American, 40/60, 50/50?
Answer: 100/100

No Home To Go To

2005-12-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

I remember thinking towards the end of senior year that it was going to be impossible to go back and recapture all that had gone on in my life that year. So much had happened. From the intellectual backflips and contortions of writing a very personal thesis, to my worldview caught naked and unprepared in the bright lights of the real world, there had been many emotional and intellectual changes with no time to process. I was totally overstimulated, so much was just constantly happening.

So in planning out my post-graduate year, I decided to pursue a working fellowship--not a conventional job and not graduate school--so I could “take time off” from whatever it was I was living in, and reflect, and write, and “rediscover” myself. Instead of always running after someone else’s dream or wracking my brain to arrange complex social theory, my brain and I would have space for my own thoughts. Then I would be able to write again, to write--as I remember telling one of my professors--not “this social science stuff” but to really write like I used to do.

I am beginning to realize that this is not a year of rediscovery, but of continuing to change.

For the past few months, I have been continuously disappointed at not being able to arrive at this state of resolution and happiness which I had vested in my rediscovered self. My rediscovered self, I thought, would not have these confusions about life direction, my rediscovered self would be internally motivated and judging rather than externally impacted. With it, I believed I could return to that state of my life where I had been able to deflect and defy the world’s material desires. (I had been disarmed by the events of senior year, I had fallen out of my dreams, I had fallen out of myself.) If only I could get away from those Harvard kids with the suits on, I would return to my former self, could fit in and fill out my own skin again.

That has not happened, and I am finally grasping at why. There is no home to go to. My life has changed, and I could not help but change with it.

In the past I have always resisted this admission of change. For me, college has been a transformative experience, but I've always been frustrated by old friends or family’s accusation that I “had changed”. What did this mean? No, I insisted to my friends that although I went to Harvard I did not change. It was just that at college, my ideals discovered expression; the core of my person had always been there, the essential beliefs have never shifted. By the end of senior year in college, this desire for firmness and stability reached a new height. I could not wait to get out of Harvard and run home to suburbia to be surrounded not by yapping college students but by silent and impersonal cars. Slowly, subtly, my brain oriented itself towards one direction, to seek a return to my former self, to discover and stand again on those immutable grounds.

But (like many a sophomoric scholars), I had studied social science but failed to apply this training to my own transition from college to the "real" world. I'd failed to recognize that the socioeconomic structure surrounding me was changing. By this I do not mean the U.S. economy, but my personal socioeconomic situation of having to produce and provide the basic necessities of life for myself. I used to waltz into a dining hall and just eat whenever I pleased, now I make grocery lists, cook and wash dishes. I used to sleep in class, now I must stay awake at a job for 9 straight hours. My use of money used to be an occasional non-dining hall meal, now it has multiplied one hundredfold. All the daily practices of life have changed. And as you know, my friend, once what you do changes, what you think will follow suit.

This leads me, in a retrospective turn, to recognize that I was never defying the world in the first place. In those times, the world I lived in (no dishes to do, no rent to pay) was in fact what enabled me to commit to purely "ideal" thoughts and works. I wasn’t defying the world, I was folding right into it. Let us be clear, though, that this is not a matter of being "idealistic" then versus being "realistic" now; those words carry heavy connotations. Instead, it is simply a matter of what I knew. When you do not know an alternative, what you are and how you live feel genuine. When you do learn a different way to live, your life is suddenly exposed. You may wish you never learned that alternative but there it is, once you know you cannot un-know, you cannot return to the state where you did not know. At this point, the immutable emerges as temporary.

And it is not even that ignorance is bliss, but change is what life is, especially for those of us who insist on moving and seeing and knowing. And we accept this life, with all its imperfections and its fickle changes, "full weight".

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not your fault that you cannot go back there.