A Window into Minds

Of all the numerous benefits of the Internet, the most interesting to me was that it provides a window to look into other minds. I said was because I do not find it interesting anymore.

I've always been curious about the experiences of other people and what's in their mind. However the opportunities to satisfy my curiosity had been very limited before the advent of the Internet. There are only so many people you can meet face to face, not all of them are inclined to talk, and when they do talk they tend to hold back some, out of discretion or consideration or whatever reason it may be.

The Internet has changed all that. A multitude of online forums have sprung up, allowing people to anonymously talk to strangers regardless of geography. Hiding behind a nickname people now can chat freely with someone next door or an ocean away, and boy oh boy do they talk - if you could find a way to translate the jabbering in cyberspace into real-world vocal conversations, the noise level would be quite a health hazard.

My initial excitement was quickly replaced by disappointment though. I had expected to see a multicolored, multifaceted, sparkling display of intelligence. Instead what I saw could be charitably described as pervasive inanity, which really left me agape.

Most people, I found out, have the problem of conceit, justifiable or not, whether they realize it or not. And it is this conceit that makes them woefully mulish. When we hear something new, we all measure it against our own knowledge and experience, which are inevitably limited. The trouble is when people hear something that doesn't quite fit in their scope of mind, instead of reaching out to see if they can learn anything new, they too readily dismiss it as baloney, being too cocksure of their own smarts. How these folks ever expand their horizons beats me, but it makes their jabbering such a bore.

So the window into minds is wide open, but mostly to reveal close-mindedness, which is really very uninteresting.

Beach

At the beach in Nha Trang I rented a chaise lounge to while away my last afternoon in town. Before my eyes were various shades of blue - the sky, the sea, and the distant islands in between. A strong wind was blowing inland, easing the heat of a sun-drenched day.

On the chair next to mine was an older white man whose tanned, rugged face and bleached blond hair indicated prolonged exposure to the outdoors. It turned out that he was from Miami, owned a boat, and had been traveling extensively. His name was TJ.

The boy who rented me the chair came to collect his money. In broken English he told TJ he couldn't find what the man had asked him to. TJ definitely did not look happy.

A youngish woman was approaching us. She was carrying two baskets, each attached to one end of the pole on her shoulder. She's slim, and her movement was quite graceful because of the load she was carrying, strange that might sound. She wanted us to buy seafood from her, which would be broiled on a red hot little coal stove in one of her baskets. After some half-hearted haggling I bought a lobster, so did TJ. The woman swiftly broiled our lobsters, peeled them and handed them to each of us on a plate complete with salt, black pepper and a slice of lime, all the time smiling broadly. While munching on the rich, delicious meat, I found out that she had six children, got up at four every morning, went to a fishing port to buy the freshly caught seafood that she would later peddle at the beach.

Another white man with long silvery hair came by to give us a flyer. It advertised a new laundry facility at a tourist neighborhood, operated by a Jean-Claude. What on earth did a Frenchman do here running a laundry business? "He's probably running from something," TJ offered his opinion.

The chair boy came again with tools and a piece of wood to fix the back of one of his chaise lounges. TJ had left somewhere, so I asked the boy what TJ wanted that he couldn't find. I didn't get an answer, just a polite evasive smile. The lobster lady had reappeared, busy selling to another group of tourists, her smile even broader than before. She was having a very good day indeed.

TJ came back, looking irritated. He wanted some marijuana but could not procure it, the chair boy couldn't help either. He complained that it was a lot more available in Phnom Penh and Saigon. Sorry, bud, can't help you there.

I dozed off, lulled by the wind and the sound of waves. It was already dusk when I woke up with a slight headache. If I had stayed on the beach well into the night, I would no doubt have seen a different set of activities. Unfortunately my bus was leaving in an hour, giving me just enough time for a quick dinner. Farewell then, beach of Nha Trang!

View of Nha Trang Bay

Early Ride to Manhattan

At exactly five-thirty in the morning I climbed into the van with Joe and Eddie. It was still dark, but my friends wanted to start early to avoid the morning rush traffic into New York City. Joe, with his customary ironic humor, told me that today I would see the illegal side of New York. Big deal, I shot back at him, but secretly I was as curious as twenty cats.

I was relaxing in the back seat while Joe was dexterously negotiating our way through the maze of highways between Philadelphia and suburban New Jersey. Eddie and Joe were chatting but I was only half-listening to their conversation, chiming in once in a while but mostly looking out of the window at the dark landscape dotted with white lights.

Contentment was my state of mind. Here I was with friends from a totally different walk of life. Everything about them was a far cry from the corporate world I'd been submerged in for so many years. I felt deliciously refreshed by their free and independent spirit. Not that my friends were wealthy - they earned their livelihood hawking cheap Chinese goods at flea markets, campgrounds and parties, which was the reason we were heading to Manhattan at this early hour to buy from some shady Chinese dealers.

The conversation up front shifted from gambling in Atlantic City to poverty in West Virginia, where Joe had spent some time. Joe was talking about a girl who had been telling his wife about a date she would have that evening with a man who would let her "spend all twenty dollars just on myself." The girl had been extremely impressed by the perceived generosity of her man, and had entertained some hope that a proposal of marriage would follow. I couldn't help laughing so hard at Joe's perfectly mimicked hillbilly accent, then I felt bad for having had fun at the poor girl's expense.

We arrived at 26th Street about twenty minutes before the stores opened and stopped by a deli for breakfast. Sitting at a small table, we old friends looked at each other and smiled, so delighted we were to be together after all these years, and after a cup of hazelnut-flavored coffee I knew I would immensely enjoy this day away from my regular days.

Palace in the Clouds

Time does scamper away from us, and I am not getting any younger for sure. My face is no longer so fresh, my skin no longer so smooth, and my body is starting to show a bit of embonpoint. Sometimes I look at younger men with their good looks and glowing health and feel a pang of regret, but then I think that they are most likely full of wrong ideas, wasting time and energy to chase after illusions. A couple of centuries ago some Frenchman -- how come it is always these darn Frenchmen who said wise things, in this case Victor Hugo if I'm not mistaken -- said that it was the young who had good looks and the old who had wisdom. I am right at the middle, neither young nor old, does that mean I'm both good-looking and wise? It could be the other way around though, meaning that I am not young enough to look good but still not old enough to possess wisdom. Quite a comforting thought.

Just the other day I was riding in my buddy Joe's SUV passing a racetrack in a suburb of Philadelphia, and he remarked to me, "I've wasted a lot of time at that racetrack." "But Joe," I protested, "you were young and you made mistakes, it just comes with being young." I wasn't entirely truthful to Joe, because in my younger days I'd rarely made that kind of mistakes, but then I'd also missed out all the fun and the opportunities to learn from life.

Which brings me back to last Saturday, most of which I spent at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. There was a set of paintings by a nineteenth century American artist named Thomas Cole, which is called "The Voyage of Life". This set has four parts, sequentially named "Childhood", "Youth", "Manhood" and "Old Age". In each part man is depicted being in a boat, but the interesting thing about "Youth" is the guy raising his arm as if in salute towards a magnificient palace hanging in the air.

That palace would come down in the "Manhood" painting, but of course the fresh-faced guy in "Youth" wouldn't know about that.

"Youth" by Thomas Cole (1842)

Misery in Da Nang

I was in Da Nang, visiting a city that had been home to my parents but a totally alien place to me. I had planned to stay at a hotel, but my relatives had insisted that I should stay with them, and I had yielded to them out of courtesy. That was always my problem, too much courtesy.

My room was on the third floor on one of the busiest streets of the city. The deafening din was too much to bear, and I was in an unflagging state of irritation. I longed to be relieved of the heat, the noise, and the tacky affluence of my cousins. As if punished for feeling miserable, I fell sick for two days, lying exhausted on a pink bed with matching pink pillows and blankets in a pink room complete with pink curtains, while the strident cacophony was constantly rolling in from the street below.

At last I recovered enough to continue my trip to Hanoi, where I had never set foot to. I could have flown there, but in a fit of adventurousness I decided to take a train. It was going to be my first train experience in Vietnam, and later on I would wonder if the novelty somehow could compensate for my discomfort. But then it was another story.