The call of the unknowns
A buddy promised me an afternoon in Hà Nội wearing shorts and imbibing bia hơi.
Dear friends,
My cousin told me she would attend boarding school in Connecticut this Fall.
Despite the close bloodline, our girlhoods are pretty much separated. She is a Saigonese at heart – born at Từ Dũ Maternity Hospital and studying at the country’s oldest lycée.
Her decision to leave Vietnam for a foreign education came without surprise to me. What fascinated me the most was how grand the plan was laid out for her at the tender age of 15 where boarding school means the beginning of emigration.
For a couple months, news of friends processing to settle down in other countries has come in like a flood. Once in a while, I would receive a message from a close one announcing they had obtained a permanent residence or citizenship of a First World nation.
People, business partners and acquaintances, have also started asking when I would come back to the States and got surprised knowing that intention had never been in my mind.
Although I have been content with the thought of building my life, my career in this very tropical country, I can’t help starting to feel like I'm missing out on something.
It is a dilemma.
Nietzsche said: “For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”
Which is more dangerous – to manifest a life for one’s own out of a place where one was born into with a commitment to its terror and beauty or to throw oneself to the new environment with all the unknowns?
Let us move away from the cliché manifesto of coming back to accelerate the motherland’s growth. One of the most famous students of our generation has just left his position in a prestigious lab in the UK for a teaching job at Huế University.
“To me, there is no place in the world that can compare to Huế. During scorching summers, we can chill by Hương River or swim at Thuận An Beach. In winter, have a run, life’s good.”
I have a limited pool of options which make the decision to stay in Việt Nam obvious – my parents never want to leave that small town.
Late July two years ago, I moved out of the East Village apartment – full of furniture left by my roommate and previous tenant.
A Russian couple appeared at my door one morning to pick up a bed, a table, chairs and cutlery. I gave the wife a vanity mirror and their son a box of Monopoly, for free.
With broken English and the help of Google Translate, the husband said sorry for making me wait.
“We borrowed the truck and drove it all the way from Coney Island.”
They just came to the NYC two weeks before and it would be the first night they slept on a bed since the arrival.
Five months before, Russia invaded Ukraine.
As they left, I closed the door thinking of nothing except for a tiny penguin on his polo. I thrifted the same Munsingwear shirt for my dad before I left Việt Nam.
Till next time,
T.
P/S: Forgot I have this form for your responses. Please write me some words then!
This week’s top picks
Can you please forgive me?
Having been dealing with manuscripts lately for a personal project and remembering this movie. (Again) recommended by my favorite person on earth.
Yale: History of An Art School
https://www.amazon.com/Yale-History-School-Marta-Kuzma/dp/3753300055
Got this book at a bookstore in a warehouse in Saigon. Very impressed with their selection though prices they set are so high.
A poster found in the book:
Things I’ll Never Say – Avril Lavigne