Doppelgangers

Similar niches get filled by what become -- through evolutionary processes – similar looking beings. This is an example of convergent evolution.

Something that leaves me with a modicum of optimism regarding my Tinh Viet acquisition is when the little ostensibly helpful things people tell me as I walk the street begin to register. The other day I managed to interpret it when someone told me when to cross the street, although the impulse the words left were slow to trickle down into the executive decision-making board chambers in my head. I also recently began to realize that there is a man who always tells me “rẽ trái” (or turn left), just before I turn left into the alley that leads to my home. I had been consistently turning left at the right time long prior to this discovery, but it’s good to know when I’m being spoken to I reckon. It is a bit like discovering I am not in fact an autonomous being – or perhaps that some are a wee skeptical of my autonomy; although the latter is old information really. Sorry gents. Xin loi.

Indeed, there were the same people in the U.S. where they were even less useful. Here I remain in a place of appreciation for people’s concern for my safety and livelihood so long as they are allowing me to move about freely. I’m more tolerant of certain things around here than I am in the U.S., including folks getting in my personal space -- and feel I need to be for several reasons, although of course I’d like people to respect my dignity and potential. In a land so new and a language not my own, it is nice to think I have thoughtful neighbors. Like I say, there are those people in the U.S. that give me unsolicited information about how I should move about. Usually the information is useless, plain and simple, but sometimes it can be downright dangerous – people telling me to cross a street when I know I shouldn’t for example. I am thinking it will be helpful to not hold the same disdain for these folks around here, especially as feelings of disdain should probably be kept to small portions for mental health reasons, and because I look like even more of an oddball than I do in the States. That is blind fellas dashing about town seem to be in smaller supply here abouts; plus, I’m mixed up in a surfeit of expats doing all the goofy things they do. One can get a bottle of Hanoi beer for less than $1 around here after all.   

All that said, I’m wondering if my choreography director friends here are similar in other respects. Perhaps in both Vietnam and the US, they share distinctions, like spots on the back, a tufted mane, a malar/moustachial stripe, etc. One doesn’t know what we really are after all. We’ll have to investigate. I’ve often thought of me as a slightly oversized sparrow with a cane in hand, walking down the street, interested watchers alit on powerlines with binoculars.

Indeed, I’ve not been entirely certain what to make of some of the folks that seem to speak to me on my walks home. Frequently I’m spoken to as I pass a small shop a stone’s throw from my door. I bought a bag of mutagen-laced salted sugar crunchies here after brushing against them with my shoulder one evening. I did so after first walking away empty handed, seeming to get some scornful words. I wanted to be a good neighbor and practice my purchasing powers. I don’t blame myself for that; and practicing my Vietnamese with new people feels a speck good, even after the messiest of interactions. The TESOL certificate classes I took online entreated us to encourage students to engage in these types of simple activity Afterall. The crunchy snacks, apparently with the most nutritionally depauperate of flour, was doused with substances designed to send one into a heavily refined spiral of sweet addiction and salty lethargic death without a dash of subtlety to trouble the mind. It might have been a bittersweet experience then if the bitter hadn’t been entirely swamped. I’d say it was worth it.

It’s that turn left guy though – maybe more than one -- who speaks other stuff to me I haven’t fully cogged. As I pass the shop, I hear him apparently address me in a tone that suggests “hey hoser! You gonna stop and buy some of my shit today or what? Turn left.”  

               I decided to humor my man again last evening by asking for some instant noodles. I’d consider it a success. I came away with noodles reasonably instantly, although I need to learn what the options were, and which one I actually settled on. I was slow to recognize it when the options were being actively listed by a woman, and pounced on the first I could repeat. I took two in fact, asserting my numerical Vietnamese abilities – better taste moderately satisfying. I am confident it will.

Some Reflection in the Mirror House

               Is it strange that I bethink myself a big sparrow walking around the city with a cane? When one is disabled, one isn’t allowed the privileges of being an adult human. Instead one is always a child in the world’s eye. At some point it is better to be a bird than a child. Either way, one is a free radical to be contained; something strange to be analyzed, then feared; and something to be disregarded in the congress of societal conception. Someone who has been disabled for a long time surely has evolved to eternalize this somehow, and that person’s behavior one way or another bares the mark of this reality. Even if there is abundant self-confidence, there is the reality of perpetual otherness and infantilization bestowed. One can see this in those in question in ways you mightn’t expect, including experienced reactions to the distinct treatment from the wider world – not reacting with violence to harassment and surprise grabbing for example. In such a world as this, as one navigates the mysterious voyage, the internal dialogue asks “how far have I crossed the line by assuming adulthood manors? Do I dare be so obdurate as to act the grown human bean? When should I take shelter?”

               Indeed, the world, art laissez-faire by design, does not intrinsically cater to the free radicle – the forced eternal infant. The disabled person thus feels like an uninvited guest everywhere. This commonly manifests in resolve, resilience, and adaptability of course – one is forced to shapeshift, shrug off, change colors, and grow stripes, spots, whiskers, and new tails, tail feathers and skin. These must always change as the child is constantly growing afresh. The traveling disabled person is a chameleon, but never the truly honored guest. Constantly in the lion’s den is the chameleon, who remains the chameleon with the clown nose and never really the lion. I’d rather have wings. It is hard to shrug off that child identity. I do notice I seem to have been around a long time. I don’t feel particularly young. In many respects I relate more to my adult colleagues than to my young students; but sometimes it is just the opposite. The crux is like that of the doll – the adult-form child among children.

               It is strange to be other, which is the exact crux. One is strange. “I am a strange loop” as Douglas Hofstadter says -- a strange froot – a strange froot loop. A strange loop is oneself -- a feedback loop generated by one’s ability to infinitely reflect upon one’s self everywhere, like in a house of mirrors. A strange froot loop though? Oddly, there are many such circular beings everywhere; and I’m not sure if I see my face in most of them. While we’re bouncing around – here’s a song.        

A quick bounce back to the beer thing I mentioned – it is a shame I’ve never been much of a beer guzzler -- at least not a gleeful one. Maybe I’ll understand the effectiveness of my messaging when Hanoi becomes flooded with Portlanders.

Xuan Dieu St. Muse

Oct 2, 2019

My snot-nosed news muse knows no noose.

               The Jewish High Holidays, and it is hard for me to get to a city less Jewish. I’m pretty sure parking your entire car, cloven tire treads and all, on a sidewalk isn’t kosher. In my first earshot exposure to an American dude in conversation here, I did get to catch one belting off Auschwitz and Holocaust denial shat next to me at a coffee shop last week. Of course that has to be the American feed I get. I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. His voice was the predominate one in volume and verbosity – surprise surprise. His premise must have been that this backwoods location near central Hanoi must be the perfect place to unleash those forbidden tidbits of knowledge he gleaned alongside millions of other disciples, from free-wheeling, renegade YouTube channels. The more unofficial the story, the better. And the more popular, the more effective. It’s political alt-pop. Not hard to get your hands on this crap if you’re interested.

Speaking of songs from the woodworks -- I’ve been listening to an old friend, Jethro Tull, much this past two weeks, including their phenomenal Minstrel in the Gallery album. Here’s a track. It breathes fire back into the musical aspect of the soul. Playing children’s songs, often as a dancing didactic music box, with three major chords on constant repeat, is a rather bounded universe. Luck be that I get an actual instrument to play, and no drum machines or brick-walling in my teaching. It’d be nice if I could pasteurize, say, a Living in the Past for the kidlums – a nice, up-beat song – and an opportunity to put my flute to work perhaps. Hmmm. I do “walk a” 1.6 km to “drink” their “water” no less. 

‘Kookaburra Sitting in the Old Gum Tree’ is a famous English language kids’ ditty from Australia I have almost no recollection of from my childhood. I can’t say if that’s me not growing up in a commonwealth country where kookaburra laughter is exchanged preferentially, alongside disaster aid and military policy compliance; or if it was drowned out in more memorable songs or what. It’s not a bad one, and it is about a bird, which suggests a gateway to things ornithological. I explained to the 4^th graders at my school how when they hear a monkey in a film or show, it is actually our new friend with feathers.  

This may be a coping mechanism for treating songs that don’t feel like they fit my style, but it helps to evoke the presence of a favorite musician when doing these kids numbers. It seems appropriate then to give ‘Kookaburra’ the voice of Ray Thomas, the recently late and already great co-vocalist and flutist of the Moody Blues, who after all regularly authored children-inspired tunes like “Another Morning” and “Nice to Be Here”, the Tim Leary themed “Legend of a Mind” and other impish diversions notwithstanding. Ray’s gentle, Westcountry-accented baritone bares some ease of access also. Nice to think I’m playing a Moodies number really. Hopefully the kids are getting something out of it besides laughs and pre-digested gumdrops.

Speaking of flute, music, and Jethro Tull, I had the good fortune to catch the great Ian Anderson perform in Portland a couple years ago. Sadly, his voice is nearly completely shot. The timbre sounded like it has for the past 30 years since he received throat surgery, which was fine; but his range was about a half an octave, and he struggled painfully to keep up with the vocal lines of most of his classic toons. Sad really. The demands of singing it all blow by blow on tour certainly mustn’t have helped. Of mixed results, though certainly preferable to hearing the old madman butcher things was the gimmick of piping in pre-recorded guest vocals accompanied by videos. What made the thing pleasurable was the combined fact of the guy’s legend, the inimitable genius of the songs, and that he’s still a fantastic musician, blistering on flute and acoustic guitar at will. His band, falling under his name in stead of Tull, meaning no Martin Barre, was un-slouchified as well, although Mr. Barre would’ve been nice. The tour rather than the band was given the Jethro Tull moniker.

Listening to Tull, I can’t help but draw an apparently unintuitive connection between them and Dire Straits. DS, in my mind, is closer bound with Americana, including J.J. Cale style country rock plus some Jazz touches. Tull on the other hand have been pegged with British symphonic and folk rock, although they’ve rarely shaken an urge to return to Cream-style blues/hard rock; thus, there are the shared Clapton influences. Touches of Jazz and country tiptoe their way into Tull music hither and thither, and there is Anderson’s and Barre’s duel guitar sound, including immaculate acoustic finger picking on the part of the madman I caught in concert. Indeed, DS’s Mark Nopfler has lavished praise on JT’s guitar work – surprise surprise. Anderson and Nopfler are also born Scotsman, with similar vocal aspects, at least in their prime – Anderson generally exhibits a more theatrical and gallant technique, but both use a sort of folksy, facetious undercurrent. We can bookend this by pointing out Mr. Nopfler’s Jewishness.   

P.S.        Things have gotten close to this vibe here in the 3^rd grade class, all be it not just under my watch. I was looking for a better Simpson’s clip though, like a longer one from this episode, or one from when Ned becomes principal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGSB7Ed9dQE .

               Any-who, the muse awakens a bit in my music mojo bag, though we’ll see where it gets me without a guitar.  

 

PPS, Happy belated Birthday to everyone, and see that I just posted something I wrote 11 days ago.

Walk and Talk

This bit is more than a week old, left for masticatory embellishment, which didn’t come to much – so here it be.

Sep 21, 2019

 

If you don’t walk, and you can, you should try it. It is one of my favorite things to do, but it is no passive sport for my likes – no walk in the park. This is true anywhere. It demands that I always be aware of my exact location, and who and what is there with me. Failure can mean going on the wrong path, but worse, and more commonly, it means triggering the deepest darkest fears of the sighted world. To see that a blind person is out on its own, and, oh so much worse, may lack certainty in its trajectory, is a nightmare worthy of the most piteous of wrath.

My inability to communicate extensively with local residents here doesn’t make it kilometers worse than the way things were in the Anglophony world. There I could expressively tell people to let go of me, and they would either ignore me, or swear at me before storming off. Here, I can’t do that beyond perhaps feebly attempting something that might sound like “no problem” … ok”, possibly making the situation worse.

So far, I’ve been mostly passive, with deference to the people that generally allowed me to go about my daily business, I’m happy to say. I suspect that many other blind people that have gathered the courage to assert themselves in life, also bare the cross of sensing that the world’s constant impulse is to have their pesky blind asses dragged off to where they can’t be seen. Surely an unblemished world full of truth, justice and equitability would proceed from there. Some day someone will have to make that tough but fair decision to lay down the law on these miss-folded, free-radicals of immortal sin.

“It is unpopular to say I know, but we are all thinking it” is what those sighted onlookers say. “I’m sorry honey, but we just can’t assist you every time your cane is about to touch the leg of a chair. I’m sure you’ll be much happier back where ever blind people come from.”

               When this one such caned person walks the street, thoughts often linger in the aftermath of having just been grabbed or pushed without warning. Round about here, it commonly happens with a particularly strong, unspeaking, and sometimes sharp-fingernailed hand. Coming down from this place is a principal challenge. So why do I say walking is one of my favorite things? I’m not totally certain, but there is the sense of accomplishment in the worst of times, and the urge to move against forces of stagnation.

Indeed, peace and calm should be a couple of the great merits of walking, and it doesn’t sound like they are for me, yes?

“So, explain yourself! Is it unnecessary torture?”

If I didn’t walk, you wouldn’t stop to ask. All the sights and sounds of the world at least conspire to make new experiences. I am on a journey to learn, so just as well. The alternative, to lock myself up, so as to not offend the simpler senses of reality bore by the great un-caned, is much more pitiful. I learned that in depths of depression in my life. They of the media also say that walking is healthy in ways that, if present only to help me fish for self-justification, make sense to me. Walking assists with the replenishment of neurons, memory, and calmness I read. I told you that 80 years ago, and you didn’t believe me, and I’ve been cuckoo as a pigeon since.

I do hope that I can encourage my fellow blind people in HN and VN to take the plunge, and walk about unassisted to the extent they can. It is one of those things that you lose if you don’t use. If no one sees a blind person walk outside, they will assume it can’t happen, and this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The busy streets are already not exactly red-carpets for any pedestrians, save for the lovely grand face of Hanoi around Hoan Kiem Lake. Tree plantings, lovely as they are, oddly consume the whole diameter of the other off-road walking spaces, obliging one to step onto the street to get around them. Where these aren’t present, surely in surplus are parked motorbikes, whole cars (nice parking job buddy), and seating areas belonging to the local eateries (luckily still often including the little Fisher Price-type plastic stools designed for one adult butt-cheek at a time). This is where “sidewalks” exist. On the nice streets where they abound, as near Ho Tay, or West Lake, regularly they terminate in an instance, replaced by salient buildings, descending stare-wells, or miscellaneous nothings. The pedestrian around here so often thus makes due with the shoulder of the street, where the honks and splashing of vehicles gives proof through the day and night they are not alone, much as an echolocating bat reminds a moth. It is not a first-class existence, but you manage. I’ve not been squished once, and I intend to preserve my 3-dimentionality as long as I’m around. People deserve to be able to move freely without vehicles everywhere on equal terms. I predict that at some point in the next couple decades Hanoi and many more major cities will go the way of other great tourist-ravaged urban centers like Barcelona, and greatly expand genuinely lovely pedestrian-exclusive, or car-free zones. There’s no better mutagen than tourism, as exemplified by the burger restaurants along the West Lake front near me, where aspiring pop-stars work their chops on soul-lite, Anglophony music, bereft of regional flavor or human provenance. It isn’t that bad really. Life goes on in a world where you are not squished. I am thankful for that life. Whatever keeps you out of a black hole can only keep you sane.

Actually, a pleasant facet of the sonic environment here is the infusion of certain lovely traditional instruments and melodies that locals continue to enjoy. The Dan Bao and Danh Thu for instance flourish in the melancholic tunes I hear coming through shop windows. The traditional instruments are slightly electrified, and sometimes placed on a synthesizer background, but they are alive and well. I’m thinking it’s not the Australians or Americans doing that. Those mates of ours are far from repenting for their demands that restaurants either play Justin Timberlake incessantly, or perfectly imitate him with another humanoid singing unit, and apparently to not take down the sign that says “Happy Wednesday!” Everyone around the world risks becoming a happy consumer of such things though, as they make their way on the shoulder of the Thorofare.

               Now to take on a week of teaching and learning. Hopefully I can find an uncaged bird or two singing along the way also. The trapping of wild songbirds remains an ish around here and in neighboring countries, extending beyond SE Asia. May we not be caged inside or squished on any surface.