You Cannot Choose the Roads that Take You Home

Chapter 1:

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.
I travel for travels sake.
The great affair is to move.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a feeling this will be my last blog written in Vietnam. Haven't been so good on the thought publicity or free-flowing creativity as of late. Inconsistencies seem to breed that. Inconsistencies of mood, routine, life in general. I'm finding it a struggle now, listening to Brett sing about pee-soaked benders in Minneapolis and babies ruining Good Will Hunting.

I went to the bank the other day and closed my Vietnamese bank account. Weird. Started making me think about expiration dates. I indirectly touched on this a while ago when Stu was giving me crap about all my writing lacking conclusions. I wrote that they're unnatural; nothing in life really ends concretely -- relationships fade, questions go unanswered, beliefs slowly morph. Having this concrete date marking the close of one book ('book' feels more appropriate; chapters can't stand on their own) and the opening of another seems...wrong. We walk around day to day not knowing when we're going to die, when our relationships will end, what cup of cocoa will be our last because the machine at our favorite cafe finally called it quits, etc. Hell, we can even ignore the dates in our refrigerator, and we do. If I wanted, I could count down the number of times I'll walk down work's halls, the number of times I'll sleep in my bed, the days left I have to butcher this language. I could take a gander at how many more times I'll see the people that have made up my entire life here, how many more times I'll be paid to sing. You'd think that would have some effect on my outlook, but most of the time, it doesn't. Our brains really don't let us consider too many things at once, do they?

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.
~ 'Curiosity', Alistair Reid

Chapter Two:

I have absolutely zero regrets about moving to Vietnam. Sure, there are plenty things I would've done differently or, more aptly, done at all, but all in all, win. I'm so grateful Charlie prodded me as much as he did and so grateful I shut off that fucking relentlessly pesky worrier in me and balls-ed up. While I'm consumed with the 'end' I'm facing right now, all of this was really the beginning. In my attempt to brighten up this blog post, I'm becoming cheesy. I could go for some gouda. I think I'm cheesy by nature and I just...I just got this image of me punching a girl in a cheese costume. It was pretty great, apart from the fact that both girls were me and the cheese one was on the cement about to apologize for whatever it is she had done, lips a-quivering.

I had a very intense Billy Joel period.

The wonders of a journey consist far more of such intangible experiences and unexpected situations than of factual things and events of material reality.

~ 'The Way of the White Cloud', Lama Anagarika Govinda

Chapter Three:

People talk about soulmates but people never talk about soulplaces. If soulmates exist, surely soulplaces do and vice versa. And since everyone probably agrees soulplaces don't, there you have it. We become someone we weren't around new people and we become someone we weren't in new places. Sometimes I feel like a fake here. I mean, I buy fucking soy milk now. I can't finish a beer to save my life. I yell at poor people when they're rude to me. I write existential blogs pretending to be intellectual and lightly depressed when really my mind is twenty feet away playing a rousing game of Bejeweled and loving it. Surely this is only a Jackie that exists in Vietnam. Sometimes I feel like I became someone else here for the purpose of fitting into the group I was kindly ushered into. Now I sit outside of bars preferring the sidewalk to the inside. I'll never know if what I see is an adaptation or a release. Yeah, I'm aware of how this entire paragraph (blog) is existential crap. It still manages to interest me, as if there are clues out there waiting to be found if I just think hard enough.

"You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn’t any brains.”

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching -

But can't you hear the Wild? - it's calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,

And the Wild is calling, calling...let us go.

~ 'The Call of the Wild', Robert Service

Chapter Four:

'From a certain point onwards there is no turning back.

That is the place that must be reached.'

I really don't want to have a car ever again. I don't really ever want to see snow. I don't want to work for anyone. I don't want to raise my children in a place where the neatest thing to see is a clock museum (that shit leads to drugs). I should move to Holland. Slight segue: my new favorite word? Apophasis -- the mentioning of something by saying it will not be mentioned. Reminds me of every time when someone says, "I have something seriously awesome I want to tell you, but I can't and/or won't." To which I reply, "I have something seriously awesome I want to do to your face, but I can't and/or won't." I hate that shit.

Take a Latin word and cut it off after the stress. If the last sound is an alveolar stop, turn it to 'dz'. 'Viaticum' -- 'viat' -- 'viadz' -- 'voyage'. Fuckin' bitchin'. Etymology makes me toes curl. Here's a neat video (if you're me). I really don't like how by chapter 3 it's already on Shakespeare -- the definition of the birth of Modern English. They cover Old and Middle in two chapters and dedicate an entire chapter to Internet Speak, or whatever it's called. It focuses far too much on the modern, IMHO (that just looks like IHOP to me), but it's still interesting:



Strong ending, no? I wonder if/when Chinglish will become a creole language. Shan't be long, methinks. ('creole' being any language that is spoken by a generation as their mother tongue. Pidgins become creoles with new babies. Not to be confused with 'Creole'. )

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

- The Men that Don't Fit In, Robert Service

Lately I've been seeing coconut carts wherever I go. And I've come to realize that it's things like that that I'm really going to miss. ...The exoticism of the coconut cart, you know? Maybe when I move to Holland I can replace the coconut cart in my mind with unreasonably tall women. At least in Holland I won't have to jump out of elevators to prove a mathematical, logical point.

Maybe I'll come back to Vietnam, who knows (I doubt it)? This place is a vacuum. Maybe I'll go see the pyramids and work at the McDonald's on the Nile. Maybe I'll go to South America and snort cocaine in the San Pedro prison and hone my amazing Spanish pronunciation skills. Maybe I'll move to Cedar Falls and get knocked up by a middle-aged John Deere worker. Worse things could happen,  I guess.

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.

~ The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell

Chapter ?:

Lastly, you who read; aye, you 

Who this very line may scan: 

Think of all you planned to do . . . 

Have you done the best you can? 

See! the tavern lights are low; 

Black's the night, and how you shrink! 

God! and is it time to go? 

Ah! the clock is always slow; 

It is later than you think; 

Sadly later than you think; 

Far, far later than you think.

- 'It is Later Than You Think', Robert Service