I decided to do something I should've done a long time ago: buy a notepad to catalogue my thoughts as they accrue, rather than trying to recall them when I finally have time to write a blog entry. We left for the Mekong Delta on Thursday, and suffice it to say I haven't had that good a time in quite a while. Most of that derived from my having a notepad to scribble in, occasionally producing blog-worthy material, but mostly stringing together words that sounded more complimentary than they actually were. So, rather than piecing a chronology, I've decided to go day-by-day and share a few entries from this already-notorious notepad. I also think it's worth mentioning that Thanh and I have watched Top Gun four times in the last six days. Okay fine, maybe not Thanh.
What you're about to read comes straight from the heart. I went out of my way not to correct myself while writing - just let it flow, whatever it may be. There were no corrections, no second thoughts. No caution for technical detail. No tomfoolery, no sarcasm. Genuine aspirations and emotions, catalogued through a series of words that sounded coherent when I wrote them. Enjoy.
Thursday, 4:00 PM: Hoa An Research Center
- "Navigating bureaucracy is a challenge. Funded entirely by local community - accounts for 20-30% of their income. Will benefit from tuition payments once the new university opens there."
- "Writing on the wooden edge of a ferry, wind blowing back against the brim, camera rattling on my lap. Boats drive by, headed for their destinations, out into the woods, as we drift calmly into the sun on a beautiful summer day. Watching white ridges peak and trough against a sea of shadows and murk. Absorbing strange colors as they come at me one by one. A boat with a red underlining; intricate architecture balancing against the lake, periodic glistening. Reflections of incongruity, randomness, glisten before me. Shallow depths form beneath our roaring ferry, moving closer and closer into the infinite lake. This is Mekong. Pushing out tracts of lake into itself, periodically checking my reflection in the camera. A man wades through searching for something I'm not sure. But I love the feeling of warm heat pressing against my body, challenged by oncoming gusts of winds then batting down once more. Leaves shaped like gloves catch shadows. No building matches another. It's like I'm in a blender, whipped up on a boat headed nowhere. Just into the horizon, into the infinite."
- "Morning and tired but energized and excited. Gonna buy some pineapples, at this floating market of sorts. Cross-cutting currents brush against my scalp, pushing back two months' worth of hair and a shirt that hasn't been washed in days. My legs cringe as a pinch of nature infiltrates the surface - rhyming in my head about the XO Club and all things considered. Running on empty - loving every second. My wallet shivers on my beige pantlet, as my hat sits mischievously atop my left knees. Birches and rickeys corrode placid sea, periodically jutting into cavernous acreages, polluting an otherwise serene shoreline. Where are the birds? I now hear chirping and search endlessly for something more. Wave to the locals, let them know that we're here and we're happy. Cutting through the ocean like a knife, serrating brown, torpid water with the force of Apollo. Eating crickets. Lounging backwards. And then more colors! Glorious ones, as we drift melancholy past a house big enough for 2 but suitable for 4. Rippling burgeoning promulgation. Setting something against the wistful morose. Becoming part of the culture. Serenading each wave with rhyme catatonic."
- "He celebrated our departure with the kind of youthful exuberance you can't find anywhere else. Ten thousand jolts of energy passed through his body as we waved goodbye, thanks for the fruit. G-d's land. Dark, savvy, but bright, stemming infinite blue water elevated. The shoreline punctures a rapidly flowing stream of black puddles of ovals moving through like pods as I navigate through the factory - walking inconsistently on ground unpaved. They sift through morsels of gold, decorating their hands with granules precious, flying towards me with the wind."
- "Breathened by a vengeful sun, raining down on its behooved, stirring towards perfection. Drip, drip, drip. Seconds move like fumbling stones drifting down a mountainside. Pineapple sugars permeate the deepest canals of my stomach, swimming through."
- "Man, I haven't been able to write all day. Liberation - glorious red flags shaded yellow as we rode through damper streets of black and white speckled marble flies amidst. Children following us as we paraded through their market, careful to stay far enough away to chide each other to say 'Hello!' before running away with an air of stigmatic precious. Baking in the hot sweltering sun, mind still racing to keep up with my feet. Wearing a woven blue shirt with a gator crawling across the top, stuck in a perpetual state of motionlessness. Reminiscing about the sweet cold of flan, surface penetrable by a wove of icy forks, nestled between mounds of ice, splintering against coffee-flavored sugardrums. Belying a sense of mystique while trepidating in my air of lush pilshire. Reflecting a staircase around round mollusks between."
No comments:
Post a Comment