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Text: Keith Kirchner
christ card inc.
ho ho ho chi minh city
There are two things in my contract specified as unmentionable for teachers to students in the classroom by the Political Bureau that governs this country, one is politics and the other is religion.
There are plenty of people observing Christmas nonetheless and the ambiguous ubiquitous semi-theological figure of Mr. Claus is the safest to display this time of year in Saigon. Giant luminescent stars at the end of many streets with tiny Christmas scenes inside the center also strike the balance between the red star of the Party and the private observance of the holiday. I am working a couple hours on the 25th.
Of course knowing me is knowing that I am hardly one to assume a missionary position, and I'm not about to start proselytizing now. Or risking my job. New years on our calendar doesn't coincide with their lunar one either so with the exception of the 1st there's no time to relax until the Chinese version of New years which starts the third week of January. It lasts for two weeks, so I will imagine another cruel year has not passed and forced another plus one onto my already bloated age figure until then.
It takes me back to 1989 in frozen London, without public transport to remember a Christmas that I was so far removed from everybody, its been lonely and I have little news of the events going on in most of your lives at the moment. Maybe things just don't change that rapidly, and that's why the years roll by with such ferocity. My goal for the new year is to find out where I want to live for awhile. I have had a few opportunities here that I could take including a magazine again. But I'm not sure I want to start that again, dependent on so many factors. I really need to find more people who would be committed.
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Say what you will about Think, there was a commitment behind it, and an excitement in making it, at least til the chamber of Cz business horrors and attitudes eroded a chunk of my spirit. I am meant to be on the road, meant to be far from you all this year for some reason I will know later, I'm guessing. What I do know is that its not easy to find folks who can understand you as time goes on, and the more complicated you make it the more difficult it is to unravel the story. The essentials core is all we can use as beacons to bridge us over the years.
I have been a loyal friend but have fallen prey to petty resentments I have been passionate but have been disappointed by ephemeral things I have been in love but hesitant I have been Hard Working but I have stolen a couple of times I have been conscientious but lazy about giving myself We are in class, we are talking about the possibilities of medical science to cure all disease. Vocabulary leads us to categorize things as viral of hereditary, when a student asks about the kind of disease that comes from the use of agent orange.
Generally this manifests itself in physical deformities of all kinds. I don't even know enough to know if that means altering DNA can cure it or not. Its not an affront to me even if its meant to be, the war touched everyone here. There's an incredible baby boom here now, and something like 40 percent of the population is under 18. It provokes a feeling of how misguided we were just a quarter century ago. 8000 days.
All these decades of selling machine guns, mines and rocket launchers has had the effect of making any population into a reasonably effective guerilla army if the need be. Its just past the time of invasion and occupation. That's the absurdity of the Iraq situation. Hopefully they didn't use too many chemicals like they did here in Vietnam, but the equation is the same. There is no winning and losing an occupation, only time and an eventual withdrawal. I suspect this is the last time we see this kind of thing.
I think even the military personnel will resist this nonsense. The free market was supposed to be our Trojan horse of the 21st century. I guess if I was where I was, I would be doing all the things that I used to do and that would be dandy. I keep choosing to something different however. I wonder if I ever look bored to other people. I miss the conversation with all of you more than I can say here. I remember when I was at Santa Cruz, everyday was a wolves desperate search for a meaty conversation. And a day without one felt like an empty belly. It's not as easy as it was then, for whatever reason.
They say that aging is simply the increasing distances between the profound insights we make and take for granted as they came fast and furious in adolescence. I don't really think of those quiet spaces as anything, maybe the vines and moss' that accumulate in our minds becomes wisdom. In any case this Christmas I want us to honor the time that nothing new seems to be happening and the warmth of our minds' fulfilling obligation silently, perhaps in tedium.
Like the drawn out scenes in Jim Jarmusch's 'Stranger than Paradise' or thousands of French films I think of you during that downtime, and since its always so much of an event when we see each other...I cherish the downtime we've had together like the wisdom of comfort and love it has infected me with. (Thanks to Matt Johnson once again).
I've included the Thanksgiving message in an attachment. The internet was all screwed up here over that week and by the first of December it seemed to need an update to an update. Its equally murky. Happy holidays and warm wishes (they sound nice) to all
Peace from the K
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