Lost and Found in Vietnam, Chapter 3

Here is Chapter 3 of Lost and Found (work in process)

Chapter 3

How did three Americans find themselves living in southern Vietnam? (Not South Vietnam, that hasn’t existed since 1975 and the Communist victory in the civil war between the North and South. That’s how the Vietnamese in the South here referred to it. In the North, it is seen as the reunification of their divided country. A country divided by the western imperialists, first the French and then the Americans.)

A divorce catapulted me out of my simple upper middleclass American life. One day my wife came to me and said that she’s happy but she wants to be super happy. Could you find another place to live Sal?

I’d worked in the financial industry and had enough money put away so that in my mid-50’s I could take off and have a really good mid-life crisis. (50 being the new 40.)  If this were THE mid-50’s instead of MY mid-50’s I’d probably consider that my life was over. But it’s not. And I decided to start a new one.

So after putting my affairs in order, which meant quitting my job, talking to my daughters (who fortunately for me were in college), and hiring a divorce lawyer, I booked a flight to Thailand and began Sal’s life, part two.

After a few days in Bangkok checking out the Temples (I got conned out of $20 by a monk), two hour massages, and eating street food to my hearts content, I caught a train to Ko Phangan, a quiet island where the beaches were clear, clean, and mostly empty. The only interesting thing I did there was to try a mushroom tea that promised a hallucinogenic experience. It was mildly reminiscent of an LSD trip way back in my own college days and did a good  

job of scaring the shit out of me. I did like the fact that it did make time seem unreal, as did LSD years ago.

I quickly grew bored in Thailand and determined that sitting in the sand all day was no way to have a good psychological adjustment. I needed something more exciting. I wanted something to write home about.

So then I booked a flight to Cambodia, spent a day walking the ruins of Angor Wat, brushed aside lady-boys offering to massage my body, and decided that I needed a different kind of excitement.

On to Phnom Penh and a trip to the killing fields. Genocide. Mass graves. Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot’s war on anyone with an education or glasses. The Cambodian people were sweet as could be, but I wasn’t going to stay in that land-locked city for very long. Two days later I was on a fast boat down the Mekong River, on my way to Vietnam.

And that’s where this adventure begins. After the frightening experience of being met at the border by dour-looking soldiers with guns and having to give them our passports, I fell in love with the country. The rivers, the sea, the green landscape, and most of all the playful, welcoming, fun-loving people.

My first minute off the boat and I was greeted by a young guy on a motorbike offering to find me a hotel, a massage, a girl, and a place to eat and drink. I suggested we find the hotel and then a place to eat and drink.

The next day I bussed my way to Saigon, these days officially Ho Chi Minh City. Not liking cities I stayed a few days and then took another bus to Nha Trang, a choice that

 sounded interesting because the name was familiar from Vietnam War era news.

It was in Nha Trang that I fell in love with Vietnam and fell in love with more than one sweet, longhaired, short-legged, sexy, Asian woman. I loved the street food, the weather, and ocean views from just about everywhere. My traveling days were over. My troubles were not.

Lost and Found In Vietnam

When I went back to school to get my Ph.D. I did it so I would have credentials to become a writer. Off and on I write when I have something so say. The experience has always been rewarding and educational. I'm feeling the urge to write again. Hopefully I have something interesting to say. I am going to post chapters here for anyone interested in seeing. Any and all feedback and suggestions will be welcomed and considered.

The story is about two people one lost, one found, and what was learned along the way.

So, here is "Lost and Found in Vietnam"

 First page:
 

In the end, when all the searching is done, after a lifetime of seeking a meaning to my existence, I can go no farther than the famous physicist:

“I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.”

Albert Einstein

 

Chapter One

I received this email:

Dear Sal, I am writing this letter to let you know that our dear friend Brad has taken his life. Recently I went to visit him, as I had been lately. Upon reaching his apartment building, his neighbor Murray informed me that he had killed himself, something that he had long planned. I just thought that you would want to know, being his best friend and all.

The neighbors said they knew he was running out of money and they pitched in and collected a total of $50 so he could buy some food. (Which he probably spent on alcohol.) They even cleaned his apartment and tried to cheer him up.

The local police have taken for themselves anything of value from his apartment. His sister is flying to Vietnam next week to claim his body, but I think they are going to cremate him and leave some of the ashes here. Murray gave me the large set of dentist teaching teeth that he used for demonstrating proper pronunciation. I’m thinking you might like to keep them as a remembrance.

regards,

Matt

 

Chapter Two

Remembrance. Yeah, I remember the first time I saw Brad. It was those damn teeth. He had them hanging on the handlebars of his motorbike.

“What the hell?” I said.

“They’re used for teaching pronunciation,” said Bill. We were having lunch at our favorite greasy fish eatery. Both of us English teachers in Nha Trang, Vietnam. He knew what they were. A mouthful of teeth the size of a human head, they looked so spooky.

Brad parked his bike, walked into the restaurant, and Bill tells him he must be a teacher.

“Yup.”

“And you use those for teaching phonemes,” said Bill.

“The only teacher in all of Asia doing it right,” said Brad in his perfect Minnesota articulation.

I’m thinking this guy is so full of himself. Asshole.

“Really, I am the finest English teacher in Vietnam and China. Everyone else is doing it completely wrong,” Brad went on. I disliked him even more.

He was tall, silver hair, fairly handsome in a cute sort of way. He always wore jeans and a long sleeve button down shirt, sleeves rolled up. Not like the rest of us foreigners in Vietnam who wore shorts and tee-shirts.

 

“Join us if you like,” Bill offered.

Brad sat down with a crooked smile big as his ego. I just 

watched the two of them, figuring out who I disliked more. Bill, extremely overweight, bald, a few years older than me, was  a follower of the infamous Indian guru Rajneesh, now reborn, reincarnated, and reinvented, as Osho. He had been here in the early years of the war and came back to volunteer first in Hanoi and then at the University of Nha Trang. There was something about him that I strongly disliked. However, he was an American and a Red Sox fan, not many of those in this part of the world, so we were “friends.”

It should be noted that Bill did help save me from a disastrous relationship with a woman here that threatened to become abusive. On her part not mine. Every time I suggested we separate she suggested that we don’t …or she would jump off the 4^th floor balcony of the hotel we were living together in. (Eventually, coward that I am, I moved out on her one day when she went to the market. Bill encouraging me and easing my guilt over it.)

“Where are you teaching?” Bill asked.

“I’m mostly tutoring out of my house. Was working in Saigon, but friends of mine opened a school here in Nha Trang. I moved, the school never got off the ground, and I ended up with a few students to teach privately. Barely getting by.”

“Where are you living?” I asked.

“Out past the Tran Phu bridge. A fourth floor efficiency. Small, but with a big balcony overlooking the mouth of the river and the sea. Big enough to hold a class of 6 or 8 students.”

 

Somewhere in the conversation Brad told us how he hated his life, he was the most depressed person we would ever meet. And that if he had the courage he would kill himself. I didn’t take him seriously, he was too interesting and I’d never know anyone personally who seriously considered suicide.

I forget what else we talked about. We exchanged phone numbers and within a few weeks Brad and I were regularly getting together for dinner and serious conversation about teaching. Ok, the subject of women and his interest in only very young and very beautiful women, also came up.

I discovered that despite first appearances I actually liked him.

Afraid of Dying?

A month before my dad passed away I began waking up in the middle of the night with a sickening feeling of dread. Strong physical feelings of a fear of dying. I've never been afraid of death in my life. Experiences, many experiences, that I have had made me confident that there is a life after death. I know there is something magical going on beyond this physical world. So what happened?

Then in March my dad's wonderful life came to an end. (My mom had passed away a few years earlier.) Suddenly, I felt like a boat at sea whose anchor had been cut. I was adrift and I was scared of death. Why? Why now? Why after all these years of believing, knowing that there is something more after death, I couldn't feel it. Intellectually I still knew all the reasons for believing, but I couldn't feel it in my body. What happened?

Two things got me through the following months. One was a meditation practice that I had started not long before. That seemed to quiet my mind and bring a bit of peace. The other was to remind myself of all the things that happened to me over the years, that made me sense (or know) that there is something going on in the universe that goes way beyond what we see or feel or touch or count or measure. The material universe is not all there is.

As months passed I still experienced this fear now and then. The dread is mostly gone, but I still have this new "concern" that I never had before. It's always in the background of my life. Try as I might, the realization that at 63 years old death is getting closer than I like to think. I'm going to die...sometime. Actually, all of us are. We are all on death row, we just don't know the time and place.  But time is running out, and will eventually.

The truth is, no matter what we experience in our lives, we can never be 100% certain that there is a life after death. Someday you will too will go through what Christian mystics call the "dark night of the soul."

 So, what do we do? I don't care about trying to prove it one way or the other. That is more for intellectual entertainment. I want to know how to live with the uncertainty. How do we deal with the fear? It takes the fun out of life. Life is winding down. Our bodies are not getting stronger. Every year new parts break down.

Then one answer came to me today, and that is why I am writing this blog. Why am I afraid? It's simple but profound and it is the answer to most of our other problems in life.

The answer: Accept what is. Do not resist what life gives you. Embrace your mortality, humanity, your need to exit the stage of life and make room for others. We must accept and even embrace what is the reality of our being here.

The minute this thought came to me all fear melted away. Gone. Done. Do you want to loose the fear of death, without having to depend on religious belief? Accept it, embrace it, look forward to it. You are going to die. Okay, bring it on. I will live the most meaningful life I can until then... and then let's see what happens.

I know many people will read this and think it is too simple. Or that you have heard this all before. Me too. But, it needs reminding. It is the answer to all our fears. It is the most profound skill you can ever acquire! If you can accept your death, then, hey, you can accept anything!