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[Billy Boy's]



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[Billy Boy's]



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Billy Boy's, my favorite bar in the Philadelphia area.



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[Nickels']



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[Nickels']



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[Prospector's Steakhouse & Saloon]



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[Prospector's Steakhouse & Saloon]



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SPIRITUAL WARFARE FOR THE END TIMES' back cover:

How to Overcome the Evil of These Dark Days

As the time approaches for Jesus' return, the spiritual battle between good and evil is heating up. Evidence is all around: corruption, shootings, genocide, civil wars, false prophets, increased persecution. The enemy is on the move.

Yet God is on the move, too, in powerful ways--and we can join Him in His work. The Bible says that we overcome evil with good. With piercing insight and practical application, Derek Prince will help you understand not only the intensified warfare environment in which we live, but also how you can help unleash God's goodness in the world. You'll learn how to re-equip and wield the weapons God has given you and how to walk in your authority in Jesus Christ.

For "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." It's time to stand up and fight, to bring hope and light to these turbulent days and join Jesus in the triumph of good over evil.



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[GESTOPOLICE]



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[Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement]



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[Fatsos]



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[Erin in Fatsos]



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[Erin in Fatsos]



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An email from Costa Rica:

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Geez, you are leaving the U.S. and I never had a chance to take you up on your kind offer to visit and do a walking tour of Philly. I myself am also planning to wrap things up in the U.S. this year, I return from Costa Rica to the U.S. on July 10. Will be there about two months. Will you be gone? I would like to give you a couple of pounds of my coffee if you are still in Philly.

I am devoting a lot of energy to improving my farm and my house. My coffee crop should be very good this year. Harvest starts in September. The two thousand plus trees I have planted over 13 years are looking like real, big trees! I have created a small forest! The other side of the coin is how lonely and isolated I am here. Went to Ecuador again this year to check out moving there. Planned to stay 3 months but my friend and neighbor Richard died and as I had left my 4x4 diesel pickup at his house, I had to return pronto, before it disappeared or was stripped. . He was a very right wing watcher of Fox news but we managed to get along and just talk about things we had a common interest in, like the collapse of the dollar, the weather, local gossip, how bad the roads are, etc. He was 74, had diabetes and a heart condition but could not stop smoking even after a pacemaker was put in (I accompanied him in the ambulance to do translation that time) He was also a heavy abuser of sugar and coffee. Of course he hated Obama and loved Trump- We managed to talk about the things we had in common where we both liked Trump. I liked Trump because, comparatively, he was the “Peace Candidate” and wanted friendly relations with Russia and no more invasive aggressive U.S. wars of choice in Middle East. Joke was on me. And on Paul Craig Roberts. More likely Trump was forced to change by the manufactured Russiagate hysteria. But he sure chose a weird crew to enact his alleged agenda: people who publically had a very different agenda. Jesus, he probably chose Bolton because Bolton got a lot of time on Fox news, which is where Trump gets his ideas and reality from. Spare us!

Re the Pine Barrens:I grew up on the edge of it, first in Bayville and then in Toms River. Family legend had it that my great grandmother on my mother´s side went crazy and ran out the door into the Pine Barrens , never to be seen again. Maybe the Jersey Devil got her. John McPhee wrote a book on the Pine Barrens. I think I got my Dad to read McPhee´s COMING INTO THE COUNTRY on Alaska, but when I gave or loaned him the Pine Barrens book, he didn´t like it and didn´t finish it. My take was that he could not stand to see anything good written about the Pine Barrens, that it might be a place of interest, to him it was an unmodern decadent backward place to be shunned , a place where you rolled your windows up and locked your doors when you drove through it. No middle class in the old Pine Barrens.

Glad to see you sometimes upgrade from Yuengling´s to Guinness Stout.

“It would be most appropriate, I now think, to be killed in a place one has no business being at, and not as any sort of invader, but just a lost fool”

That almost happened to me in El Salvador during the war. I was a member of a Sister City delegation to a Sister City “Summit” meeting,of all U.S. Sister Cities, held at our sister city. For a few days we split up into two groups, mine went to Chalatenango Province, a very contested region, largely held by the FMLN guerrillas. At one point we visited a small town where we arranged to meet with the leaders of thetown. While they were being looked for, a photo opportunity arose: a small boy with a toy bandolier for bullets draped across his body. So we went around the small building where we were waiting so as to take his photo. Forgot to say that there was a skirmish, or battle, going on in the hills just outside of the town. That did not dawn on me til I heard a series of three bullets wiz past my head, inches away, I presume. Never heard the rifle fire, just the bullets going by. The others ran, I hit the dirt. A nearby campesina woman laughed and motioned me to come get behind her woodpile. I presume it was a Salvadoran Army sniper.

“Be confident that as you gain life and writing experiences, your thinking and writing will improve continually, and this ability to think better should be rewarding enough in itself.” Yes, isn´t that interesting the connection between writing, reading and the ability to think. John Michael Greer just wrote something about that. Very brave of you to choose to be a writer.

“What a Piece of Work is Man”, I believe Shakespeare wrote, according to my favorite book A SHORT HISTORY OF PROGRESS.

Seems to me that Derrick Jensen (or David Ray Griffin) already wrote the books I would have aspired to write had I dedicated myself to being a writer. And what effect did they have? About zero, I would say. I was an English major and, yes, harbored thoughts of writing the Great American Novel that would Change Everything. Just read somewhere that Ken Kesey died 17 years ago: Has timed marched on that much? I am 72. Now Tom Wolfe, who chronicled Kesey and Owsley and the Grateful Dead and their Acid tests has died too. I partook of the “punch” being passed out at one Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco in the late 60´s.

Here´s a funny story about a Grateful dead concert. A guy I knew who was a serious writer, (but very crazy, claimed he has seen through walls, and used this to shut you up if he disagreed with you or perceived that you were getting the upper hand in a discussion .”oh yeah, well I have SEEN THROUGH WALLS!” as in TAKE THAT MOTHERFUCKER!), usually in underground newspapers, he was a few years older, had been a regular journalist for a newspaper (perhaps before he took acid), he went to a Dead concert at the Fillmore West in SF. He was seated on the floor pretty near the front. As the night went on he was mesmerized by a beautiful woman dancing in front of him, Did I mention that she was completely naked? They made eye contact, they connected, he went home with her, or she with him. And she talked to him about Scientology all night. No sex.. Naked beautiful women are definitely good for recruiting new male members to a group or cult. Rajneesh in Northern California encouraged his female followers to have sex with men visiting the commune, he used to watch couples having sex.

“I've been to maybe 30 countries, and the only one that had the same level of vandalism and graffiti as the US was Germany”. Quito, Ecuador had a lot of graffiti. It’s a major city. When I saw all the graffiti I thought : “Ah, U.S. culture spreading throughout the world.” When I got to the remote mountain town which was my destination, it was quite pristine, until my first weekend there when spray painted graffiti appeared on buildings in one corner of town, It was the punks from the nearest city . People from that city come to the small town for the weekends. What a travesty to see this mostly adobe walled village be spray painted with graffiti. Now traitor Pres Moreno is going to let the U.S. military back in after ex-Pres Correa kicked them out.

“In the US, nearly all self-identified rebels only rebel in prescribed and heavily manipulated ways, which makes them pawns of the very people they think they’re rebelling against.” As far as I know, I could be wrong, but Amy Goodman and DEMOCRACY NOW as well as FAIR and founder Jeff Cohen have been supported forever by the Ford Foundation, infamous as a conduit of CIA money. Both of them produce a lot of good stuff, but…..they were selected by the Powers that Be to be the acceptable limits of independent left thought in the U.S., IMHO. Neither question 9/11. Nor does Noam Chomsky, who also put the kibosh on the Left questioning the official story on the JFK assassination. Not that he needs or accepts Ford Foundation funding.

And so other rebels leave the country and become small farmers in the tropics. Because they can´t get printed. Speaking of which: thank you so much for inviting me to contribute an article about my escape from the U.S.




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[Kensington]



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[Kensington]



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[Kensington]



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[Kensington]



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Walking a couple of miles through Kensington, I saw about 40 tents on three different streets, plus dirty mattresses with folks dozing on them. Most of the homeless were white and under 35. I saw junkies nodding on steps, and a young lady, all doped up, in a wheelchair.

On the train to Kensington, I saw a white guy with a cardboard sign that stated he was an Iraq War vet and homeless. No one gave him anything. On the train back, there was a white guy of about 42 who said, "I'm broke and a junkie. Some people come on the train and bs, but I'm not going to lie to you. My life is so unmanageable right now that I must humiliate myself to ask for help. I know some of you are going through a difficult time also, but if anybody could afford to help me at all, with a bit of change, anything, a token or food, I'd very much appreciate it." Everyone ignored him. Seconds after he got off to try a different car, a black guy of about 32 got on, walked around and said, "I'm broke, with no friends and family, so I'm asking for your help." He, too, was ignored.

In Kensington, there's a very busy soup kitchen that's used daily not just by the homeless, so no one is in danger of literally starving. If you're hooked on heroin, however, even a hundred bucks of "spare change" a day won't be enough.



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[Starboard Side Tavern in Fishtown]



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[Old Philadelphia Bar in Kensington]



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[Old Philadelphia Bar in Kensington]



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[Kensington]



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[Port Richmond]



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Donna’s Bar in a barely hanging-on Polish corner of Port Richmond. I had a plate of bigos, pierogi and Zywiec beer, and the people were lovely. If only life could be this sane all the time, everywhere.



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Dreamers, Opioids and Involuntary Celibates

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ben Niespodziany interviews me

at neonpajamas:

[photo taken in Vung Tau, Vietnam by Hai-Dang Phan, 2017]

From 1998 to 2010, Vietnamese American author Linh Dinh released six books of poetry, one translation, two collections of short stories, and a novel. It was a prolific twelve year span for the author, who has continued to type like a madman with an endless gallon of black coffee running through his bloodstream. His work is energized, debauched, hysterical, lonely, perverse, lovesick, critical, and adventurous. Whimsical and wild, without a filter, he keeps his chaos brief, blending prose poetry with microfiction.

With that being said, just last year, Linh Dinh released two of his largest bodies of work: the nonfiction journalistic Postcards from the End of America and the poetic and cultural A Mere Rica. Focusing on documenting and providing insight into the down and out underbelly of America, Linh Dinh's two most recent books almost act as U.S. closure for the author, who is currently in the process of moving back to Vietnam. As an intermission during the move, Linh Dinh stopped in Japan for a writing assignment where he answered some of my questions during his down time. He discussed his writing discipline, his views on higher education, and the best place to die.

As I just mentioned, in twelve years, you wrote nine books, translated another, and edited another. What was your daily writing regimen like during that time?

Observing, listening and reflecting are also parts of writing, so in that sense, I was writing all the time, but I had to work hard at those three activities, and I’m still practicing, daily. Like nearly everybody, I hardly know how to see and hear, much less think. I miss so much. As for the actual writing, I wasted a lot of time banging on a typewriter, since I didn’t know how to type, but the arrival of the computer saved my ass. To write, one should read very carefully, that’s all. See all the different ways Hemingway or Annie Proulx build a sentence, for example. Teachers and writing workshops aren’t just useless, for the most part, but likely harmful, for you’re prone to be learning from not just a failed writer but someone who’s hustling for a deeply corrupt and intellectually crippling institution, an American university. On top of that, you’ll receive idiotic inputs from your fellow students. Although people can learn directly from Celine, Paul Bowles and Whitman, etc., at minimal cost, many are still willing to go into suicidal debt to receive instructions from a cast of dishonest incompetents, and they do this because they’re much more interested in networking than writing.

How has your writing discipline / routine changed over the years?

Nine years ago, I made a conscious decision to spend less time inside my room, and more time on the streets. I also realized, once and for all, that I would rather hang out with anybody but writers or intellectuals. Even historical writers I deeply admire, I wouldn’t want to meet, for they’re already at their best in their writing. That said, I do have writer friends, just as I know people who are cooks, waiters, mechanics or domestic servants. In any case, since I couldn’t even finish college, I knew early on that I was no academic, but then universities started to invite me to teach, which forced me to interact with other professors, something I was not at all comfortable with, and this distaste is clearly mutual, for I haven’t had a teaching gig in a while. The last one was in Leipzig, which of course I welcomed, for it allowed me to stay five months in Germany. I’ve spent over 3 years in Europe, an exposure which has been so instructive in so many ways.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a collection of writing about foreign places, and I’ve covered 16 countries so far, with Germany, France, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia discussed in more than one essay. It’s basically Postcards from the End of the American Empire. I hope to do a lot more traveling for this book. I just finished a 2,900 word piece about Japan, after a too-brief visit, but I’ll return this October for the launch of the Japanese edition of my Postcards from the End of America. I will stay longer this next time. Last year in Toluca, Mexico, I met a young poet who said his ideal life would be one of constant moving, from hotel room to hotel room. Although already quite worn out at 54, I can understand the sentiment.

This fall, Chax Press will put out my collected poetry. Going through all of my poems, I revised a bunch and deleted some that should never have been published. This book, then, will present all the poems I’m willing to stand behind. Once it’s out, I can start on my posthumous collection. I certainly feel dead enough, especially today.

You're moving back to Vietnam, yes? Will this be your first time living there long term since your youth?

No, I spent 2 ½ years in Saigon from 1999 to 2001. Unlike nearly all of the Vietnamese-American writers, I speak the language well, and have even published quite a bit in Vietnamese. I also know many Vietnamese writers. Later today, I will down a few beers with poets Bui Chat and Ly Doi, for example. Some of my closest friends are here.

If it isn't too personal, what's the reason for moving back?

Money. At 54, I have nothing, no house, car or even job. By moving back to Vietnam, my wife can work for her sister, who’s a very successful businesswoman, and I can continue to write for PayPal donations. Ron Unz, for whom I write a column, also sends me a few thousand bucks a year. By writing so passionately about the US, I’ve been disowned by it, in effect. As my writing and thinking improve, the university reading gigs and book reviews disappear. Describing the down and nearly out, I’m also dispossessed, which is fine, actually, for it means I’m not a brown nose. In the US, nearly all self-identified rebels only rebel in prescribed and heavily manipulated ways, which makes them pawns of the very people they think they’re rebelling against. History will retch in disgust at the cowardly collusion of our “intellectuals.”

I was in Vietnam for three weeks last August/September and my favorite city (as well as my girlfriend's) was Ninh Binh, so when I started reading your work, I kept thinking of that city. Do you have a favorite place in Vietnam?

No, because I appreciate so many places everywhere. In fact, I’ve never disliked any place I’ve visited. In Vietnam, I’ve experienced many cities, towns and villages. I’ve slept in a wooden box and a grass hut with no toilet. I’ve eaten everything, much of it delicious but some truly awful, but if it was good enough for whomever I was with, then it was more than adequate for me. If I could choose a place to live, maybe it’s Vung Tau, a once popular seaside resort now turning sleepy, though convenient to Saigon via a fast passenger boat. My close friend, poet Nguyen Quoc Chanh, has relocated there.

I used to think I’d like to die in Hanoi, perhaps immediately, because that city had so much depth and resonance, but its oldest section is now a crass playground for tourists, and many other parts have been leveled to make way for highrise condos or office buildings. It would be most appropriate, I now think, to be killed in a place one has no business being at, and not as any sort of invader, but just a lost fool.

Along with your writing, you are also an editor and translator. Are these disciplines you're still pursuing?

Editing and translating helped me to develop as a writer, since it forced me to read very carefully many writers. Translating, I also had to ape many authors’ individual technique and syntax, thus allowing me to enlarge my repertoire when it came to my own writing. I’ve stopped editing and translating, however, for I can only do so much. Moreover, photography has become my secondary activity. Trained as a painter, I need my visual art fix. Yanking me onto the streets, photography hasn’t just conditioned me to see much better, but become more social. These enhanced skills have benefited my writing greatly.

While they contain many other elements, your poems and stories are often debauched, full of humor, and a bit on the wild side. Do you feel like these characters reflect your personality?

Language is used mostly to disguise and mislead, with whatever of any importance hardly ever addressed, much less probed. Although failing abjectly, of course, I’ve tried to give shape to these unmentionables. In Tokyo last month, I suggested after a reading that the first poem hasn’t been written, that “poets” are merely preparing the groundwork for a distant poetry, which of necessity must be unspeakably devastating. “We’re in the prehistory of poetry,” I said. “We’re cavemen.”

Dishonest, inept and cowardly, we echo other people’s lies, proudly produce more of our own, then preposterously call ourselves poets and writers. As for being “debauched, full of humor, and a bit on the wild side,” I’ve learnt a bit from the Rabelaisian strain of French literature. Kafka and Borges’ senses of humor have also been inspiring. As for how I’m in real life, I’m mostly a bore, honestly, and when trashed, I can be quite garrulous and maudlin, too. Knowing my flaws, I try to just shut up, observe and listen.

Some of your pieces are prose poems, while others form shapes, and others are traditionally lined. How do you approach a blank page?

As far as poetry, I’m fairly straightforward, actually. Nearly always, I indent left and capitalize the first letter of each line. If you get too cute with the layout, you can distract the reader from your poem’s best moments. In writing a prose poem, I remove enjambments as an option because I see them as distracting from what I’m trying to highlight, the juxtapositions of images and leaps between sentences.

Outside of your own work, who/what have you been reading recently?

Since I was thinking about Japan, I read Morris Berman’s book on the subject, Neurotic Beauty, then I read about Japan and China in David S. Landes’ The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. Thinking about war after a visit to Nghe An, a much bombed province during the Vietnam War, I read Norman Lewis’ Naples ’44. It’s so insightful, humane and beautifully written, I felt ashamed to call myself a writer. It’s crucial to be reminded, often, of one’s ignorance and clumsiness. As a young writer, I was embarrassed at my lack of life experience, so I saw the accumulation of that as a first order of business, but now beginner writers are demanding safe spaces and fleeing to writers’ retreats, which I find ridiculous. Born a coward, you must remedy this by walking onto every mental mine field possible.

For this ongoing author interview series, I'm asking for everyone to present a writing prompt. It can be one that you craft out of thin air, it can be one you created a while ago, or it can be one you adore from an outside source that was passed down to you.

Go where you don’t belong, observe and, if possible, talk to people you’re not supposed to talk to. If the richness of life isn’t enough to jolt you into writing, then you’re not a writer.

Do you have any advice for writers/poets working on their craft?

Use what you learn from even the most unpleasant labor to inform your writing. Money is time, and since you need as much time as possible to observe, think and write, you must cut out all unnecessary expenses. Since it’s hard enough to just live, much less live and write, you must be willing to sacrifice many creature comforts, and even emotional ones, in the pursuit of a craft that may, in the end, yield no success whatsoever. Be confident that as you gain life and writing experiences, your thinking and writing will improve continually, and this ability to think better should be rewarding enough in itself. Since you’re the most readily observable specimen, to yourself, dissect your sorry ass most mercilessly. Your moral failures will taint and stink up your writing, and life too, of course, so don’t be an asshole. Strive to see everything from everyone else’s perspective. Don’t get addicted to any electronic drug, especially canned noise, for it will prevent you from hearing your deepest and most articulate thoughts. Consider yourself a mere tool to appreciate and love, if only optically, such is our misery, everyone and everything else.

Any final thoughts / words of wisdom?

Always listen attentively and read slowly.




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The Future is Asia: Talk by Linh Dinh

June 1 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Linh Dinh will read and show photos from his recent essays on Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Japan. Though Americanized to various degrees, these societies are radically different from the US, and will be more resilient in the long run, he argues. Linh Dinh is the author of Postcards from the End of America, plus nine other books.



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[at JR's Place in Fishtown]


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[at JR's Place in Fishtown]



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[JR's Place in an ungentrified corner of Fishtown]



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[Dirty Frank's]



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On Philadelphia Municipal Services Building, facing Thomas Paine Plaza.



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On Philadelphia Municipal Services Building, facing Thomas Paine Plaza. "BIEN GIỚI," slightly mispelled, is "BORDER" in Vietnamese. "SOÑADOR" is "DREAMER" in Spanish.



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[Thomas Paine Plaza]



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[Thomas Paine Plaza]



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I've been to maybe 30 countries, and the only one that had the same level of vandalism and graffiti as the US was Germany.



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