Meaning Is Local

As published at SubStack, 5/11/23:

 

[L’ancien café in Pakse, 5/10/23

Yesterday, I paid for ten more days at Lankham Hotel, so that’s 30 days in Pakse, at least. Next week, I’ll get my second visa extension. If a country doesn’t control its borders, the concept is meaningless.

Since the 27 Schengen countries ignore their mutual borders, the autonomy and integrity of each are weakened. If a boat person reaches Lampedusa, an island just off Africa, he’ll be taken to mainland Italy. From there, he can work his way into France and Austria, then Spain or Germany, etc.

In just two months, Cyprus will join Schengen. Anticipating this, rich Vietnamese have established residency in Cyprus.

Content, I ain’t dreaming about going nowhere. (If I was still an author at Seven Stories Press, some ditzy copy editor, working for chickpeas just to get a toehold in Manhattan, would try to clean up my Philly grammar. Though Black Lives Mattered to the max, she ain’t never had ghetto gaw mien or parked her pretty pink ass in some ear drum blasting lounge, where you must be frisked pornographically to enter.)

There are no major attractions in Pakse. Its oldest temple dates only to the mid 19th century. In this part of the world, that’s, like, five minutes ago. I don’t visit foreign places to gawk at anything spectacular, though. Always seeking the most ordinary, I’m grateful and happy when allowed to mingle. It was sweet when the lady at Coffee Saigon said, “Where did you go? You haven’t been around?”

How she said it, though, was also interesting, “Đi mô?” instead of “Đi đâu?” That’s how people in Huế say, “Where did you go?” So what, you mumble, but the more you can read into anything, the more fascinating each second of your life.

This morning, for example, I had bánh cuốn, which the French call ravioli vietnamien. Although rice noodle rolls can be found all over East Asia, each version is radically different. Distinctive populations do everything differently. Even within the same country, variations abound. A cheesesteak in Wilmington, so close to South Philly, is already suspect, if not blasphemous, but only to South Philly assholes, me included.

The skin of bánh cuốn should be super thin and nearly translucent, to reveal the ground pork and Judas’ or Jew’s ear, finely chopped, inside. Of such skin, Vũ Bằng (1913-1984) waxes:

Regrettably, such deliciousness is as elusive as that of the skin and flesh of a beautiful woman who has just shampooed with coriander-scented water; disoriented one asks oneself does that fragrance come from the bath water or skin and flesh? So fleeting that fragrance, then it’s lost, only to reappear, so no one knows which framework to use to arrest such a fragrance, to break it down.

[Tức một nỗi là cái ngon đó nó thoang thoảng như da thịt của một người đàn bà đẹp vừa gội đầu bằng nước nấu lá mùi; người ta hoang mang tự hỏi không biết mùi thơm đó từ đâu ra, từ hương nước tắm hay từ da thịt? Hương đó thoáng qua, rồi mất đi, rồi hiện lại, không ai còn biết lấy gì làm chuẩn đích để níu cái hương đó lại và phân tách xem sao.]

Written in 1952, it’s from the 3,156-word chapter on bánh cuốn, in Vũ Bằng’s Hanoi Delicacies [Miếng ngon Hà Nội]. In it, he immortalizes a very old hunchbacked itinerant seller of bánh cuốn, which she carried in a bamboo basket on her head. This made the tiny woman even more hunchbacked. That bánh cuốn load was her cross. Imperiously, she would prevent customers from sprinkling too much crushed chili pepper into the dipping sauce, for it would kill the taste of her sublime creations.

[bánh cuốn in Pakse, 5/10/23]

Though each of us deserves a biography of at least a thousand pages, even the briefest sketch or glancing mention can be fascinating, provided it’s deftly drawn and, more importantly, the reader isn’t a misanthrope or pitifully incurious.

Traveling is a privilege. It’s remarkable that Shakespeare never left England and Whitman only made it to Canada, once. Though we now have even teenagers globetrotting alone, this brief anomaly is already winding down. The vast majority still have no meaningful experiences of any alien culture. Still, many think they have a general grasp of just about any place, thanks to movies, TV, YouTube and TikTok. It’s a gross illusion.

A week ago, “catdompa” strayed into my SubStack to bitch. Though America has introduced me to air conditioning and refrigerators, I wasn’t being grateful enough, he said. Very presumptuous, this Unzian. Worse, I even dared to insult Angry White Pussies like him while writing about “eating rotten food in some third world country.” Though it’s clear his notions of Vietnam were entirely based on movies like Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter and Rambo, with Vietnam just a vast jungle teeming with savages, I still tried to engage this man. Predictably, it was a total waste of time.

Nations rise and fall. At their peak from the 11th to the 13th century, the Khmers built the miraculous Angkor Wat. Now, they’re inferior to Thais and Vietnamese. Artistically, Vietnamese may have peaked 2,500 years ago, with their bronze drums. The stone jars in northern Laos are so inexplicable, giants must have carved them, some believe.

Today, Laos is one of the poorest and weakest nations in Asia, but Laos haven’t lost their distinctiveness. Quietly proud, they maintain their traditions. Each morning, they kneel on roads to give food to monks. Restored or newly built, their temples are in great shape.

In the UK, churches have been converted into cafes or bookstores, or left empty. In the US, thousands of churches crumble because those who built them have fled, due to black crime. In Philadelphia, traditionally Irish Kensington and Greys Ferry have turned into hellscapes for the same reason, as has Polish Port Richmond.

To see where America’s going, just look at Philly, Chicago, St Louis, New Orleans or even Minneapolis. A UPenn student has just been raped by a black man. A black female cop in Chicago has just been murdered by four blacks. These are no aberrations, but fine, you can deny there’s a pattern.

Fox 32 Chicago, “The offenders are teens, 19-year-old Trevell Breeland, 19-year-old Joseph Brooks, 18-year-old Jakwon Buchanan and a 16-year-old male. Police say at least two of them shot at Officer Areanah Preston when she was returning home from work at 1:42AM Saturday. Police say the four offenders were traveling in a stolen red Kia, and they were looking for people to victimize. They allegedly committed multiple crimes before ambushing officer Preston.”

I doubt if any of them grew up with a father.

Just over a year ago, I spent five months in Namibia. There, I read about one Muyawi Matiro, who said, “I have a lot of children, about 76, with 17 women, and they have given me 202 grandchildren.” Notice the “about.” If he’s not even sure how many kids he has, he’s certainly not being a father to most, if any, of them. Just like in American ghettos, many black Africans breed without raising their children. This is not anyone’s opinion, but a fact.

In Namibia, I also met a married Angolan who went on about how gigantic his prick was. With such an advantage, he could bag so many Namibian chicks. All over Windhoek, there were fliers promising to enlarge your penis, and to make erections last longer. I saw no signs offering tutoring in math, chemistry or physics. You’ll have to go to Vietnam for that. Everyone does everything differently.

It’s not my business, though, to judge any society, so if Namibia is OK with a man having 76 kids with 17 women, and the USA only upset over any white on black murder, no matter how justified, with countless black on white murders and rapes just, you know, a part of life, then don’t change! Keep it going, you’re doing great!

It’s been so hot here, it’s hard to walk even a mile, but yesterday was cooler, so I wandered to L’ancien café, a stylish joint with live music at 8:30PM each night. TVs and radios from at least half a century ago were displayed in a glass case. There was an old neon sign, lit up, on a wall, and a map of the world in bare bricks, as chiseled from plaster. With taste rather than money, its decor impressed.

Thai rock was blaring. Though I listen to almost no recorded music for pleasure, I do pay attention to pop tunes for clues to what’s going on. Consider, for example, “Playful Irreverence” [“เล่นของสูง”] from the Thai band, BIGASS.

In the video, a young man rescues his girlfriend from a suffocating home, where she’s forced by her Hitler lookalike father to practice on the piano. This psycho even shoots at them as they flee in a vintage car. Pursuing them in a jeep with two goons, Thai Hitler gives the Nazi salute. They get away.

Having escaped, all they do is dress in the lamest punk clothing, dance goofily on a carnival stage, nearly touch hands while sitting on the car hood then enter a church where they have a symbolic wedding. At the end, all is well as Thai Hitler accepts boyfriend. There’s no kissing or any suggestion of sex.

Compare this to the South African Die Antwoord’s “Banana Brain,” where the girl escapes by dumping dozens of sleeping pills into her parents’ tea, surely enough to kill them if this was real. Delivering her poison, she walks past a crucifix on the stairs. Waiting in bed, her mother is embroidering, “Jesus is die Antwoord,” a blasphemous joke, since the band’s name is Afrikaans for “the answer.” A large cross hangs on the wall between her parents’ beds.

Unlike in the Thai video, oppression is not signified by Hitler but Christianity.

Free, she dolls up then escapes with her well tatted boyfriend in a funky car with a lit up crucifix dangling upside down from the rearview mirror. Arriving at a rowdy party, the boyfriend gets out to reveal he’s on prosthetic legs, a sick allusion to Oscar Pistorius, the South African Special Olympian who murdered his girlfriend.

Boyfriend sings:

Juicy, tushy, gushy, goo
Boobie one, boobie two
Bouncing like a Looney Tune
Booty booming, cookie juice
Gushing out your coochie, boo

When he’s momentarily distracted, she’s dragged away by a gorgeous woman. Entering a red lit room, they make out, but only after the lesbian seducer sticks out her tongue to show a tab of acid with an image of a peeled banana. Kissing her would be like fellatio, and sexual orientation can be switched instantly.

Reunited with her boyfriend, the girl undresses to show an upside down cross on her underwear, over her butt crack. As they’re about to get really real, she freaks out, runs into the bathroom and locks herself inside. This is a clear reference to Pistorius, who shot his girlfriend through his bathroom door.

Before making it as Die Antwoord, Ninja and Yolandi were much better as Max Normal. Fame hasn’t just corrupted them but introduced the Satanic into their music. In nearly every field, it’s the price you pay to succeed in America. Whether as a politician, lawyer, doctor, journalist or professor, you sell your soul.

Thankfully, BIGASS is still relatively innocent, and that’s a tribute to their society. Life is still sane in Southeast Asia.

Writing this, I haven’t eaten lunch, and it’s already 4:15PM, so I’m going to stop. Tonight, there’s a huge soccer match between Vietnam and Thailand. To the rest of the world, it’s nothing. Here in Pakse, it’s a very big deal, so I’ll go to Coffee Saigon to watch, but not before having a pasta dinner at Dok Mai Lao Trattoria Italiana.

Despite all their efforts, what’s most meaningful is fixed to a very specific place and time. Like just about everything else, Vũ Bằng’s prose was never meant for outsiders. Globalism is a charade and con. Meaning is local.