M I N U T I A E
the little house at the corner of misapprehension & marvel
Jul 23, 2014
Apr 1, 2013
ON MY MIND : MONDAY
Feb 20, 2013
PERPETUAL LIFE
The sun disappears behind hills,
a white light still remains.
No pink or red or orange
with tight purple streaks,
through a white cloud.
I suddenly feel
we can never be destroyed,
but I know otherwise.
It's only a daydream
an overwhelming breeze
a constriction that I can't see
opening up in the heart
on a warm evening.
Joseph Ceravolo
Dec 27, 2012
Dec 26, 2012
CAVENDISH & HARVEY
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 14, 2012
Dec 6, 2012
Dec 4, 2012
5TH LIGHT POEM AND 2ND PIECE FOR GEORGE BRECHT TO PERFORM THO OTHERS MAY ALSO UNLESS HE DOESN'T WANT THEM TO -- 13 JUNE 1962 by Jackson Mac Low
Among the kinds of light that might be seen now
might be
arc-light
watch-light light
jump-spark igniter light
Aufklarung
lightning
rays of light
cold light
moonlight
naphtha-lamp light
noontide light
luminiferousness
almandite light
enameling-lamp light
a nimbus
meteor light
Jack-o'-lantern light
water lights
jack-light light
refracted light
altar light
Corona-cluster light
magic lantern light
ice-sky light
clear grey light
iridescence
natural light
infra-red light
Reichsanstalt's lamplight
exploding-starlight
Saturn light
Earthlight
actinism
sodium-vapor lamplight
cloud light
Coma-cluster light
alcohol lamplight
luster
light of day &/or
lamplight.
might be
arc-light
watch-light light
jump-spark igniter light
Aufklarung
lightning
rays of light
cold light
moonlight
naphtha-lamp light
noontide light
luminiferousness
almandite light
enameling-lamp light
a nimbus
meteor light
Jack-o'-lantern light
water lights
jack-light light
refracted light
altar light
Corona-cluster light
magic lantern light
ice-sky light
clear grey light
iridescence
natural light
infra-red light
Reichsanstalt's lamplight
exploding-starlight
Saturn light
Earthlight
actinism
sodium-vapor lamplight
cloud light
Coma-cluster light
alcohol lamplight
luster
light of day &/or
lamplight.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 2, 2012
Aug 8, 2012
Aug 6, 2012
Jul 31, 2012
"We carry / our spices / each time / we enter / new spaces / the feel / of newness / is ginger / between teeth" —Lakshmi Gill
There
are days when my mother will call me and ask if I’ve forgotten about her since
“it’s been days since I’ve heard from you” (she says). There is not a day that
goes by where I don't think of her. My parents emigrated to the
United States from Vietnam in the early 1980s on fishing boats packed with
hundreds of people who all had the same fear for the futurelessness of their
ravaged country and the unified hope of newness and freedoms unimaginable to
them then. Growing up, I have cherished the stories told between my mother and
father at the dining table—I would delight in their idiosyncratic childhood
memories, growing up in Vietnam before the war, opening up wonderful and
terrifying rooms of their past lives before I existed, so I could see, touch,
and taste the fabrics of another world I would never experience, but was
theirs. When my parents’ memories of what was lost would arise in the
conversation, I could feel the despair and hopelessness they and their families
once felt so potently as violence and injustice struck their nation in the
1970s. I was proud when my parents were proud of their accomplishments (it was
the look they’d get in their eyes); I was devastated by their stories of defeat
and disadvantages, but I would look at the life they’ve led and given me and
I’d realize how well they had made it past those difficult times.
Now that the years have passed and I no longer live with my parents, at times I continue to recall the stories I was told of their past—the reasons for leaving their home country with great anxiety and uncertainty; the courage that filled my mother and father to get into makeshift boats and tread across what seemed like endless, dark waters; the visions and hopes they had and made real for themselves, and for me.
So now, here I am, with a soft spot for storytelling; these relics fallen into my lap. My parents’ first-hand accounts of their post-war experiences offered me a glimpse into their world, and the world of other Vietnamese refugees. These stories I grew up with have enriched my life with a world so closely connected to me, yet I am alien to it. I am an American. Not only that, I don’t look American—being a Vietnamese American means I don’t quite belong to either world entirely. I am shared between both worlds, but my role in these two worlds are neither whole nor uncomplimentary. There is something that resists clarification of this displacement, but I have discovered literature (whether accidentally or coincidentally, one can’t be sure) and gained serious interest in art and poetry. My interests have led me to study poetry much closer in the last few years, but for what reason? It is as though the hunger for understanding one’s identity remains, and then one looks to art for clarification or empathy. Everyone comes from somewhere, and I know where I come from by way of hearing about my parents’ journey.
My curiosity and fascination with Vietnamese history and culture was introduced to me by my parents—in such an organic, authentic process of storytelling—leading me to find (and write) diasporic literature. However, my knowledge of all the above is fragmentary. The archives of documents and artifacts that exist or are to be in existence intrigue me, and I hope that through writing this down and sifting through texts, I can better grasp the situation of the Vietnamese “boat people,” their struggle and triumphs, to further my engagement with Vietnamese diaspora, now expanded with a historical lens.
Now that the years have passed and I no longer live with my parents, at times I continue to recall the stories I was told of their past—the reasons for leaving their home country with great anxiety and uncertainty; the courage that filled my mother and father to get into makeshift boats and tread across what seemed like endless, dark waters; the visions and hopes they had and made real for themselves, and for me.
So now, here I am, with a soft spot for storytelling; these relics fallen into my lap. My parents’ first-hand accounts of their post-war experiences offered me a glimpse into their world, and the world of other Vietnamese refugees. These stories I grew up with have enriched my life with a world so closely connected to me, yet I am alien to it. I am an American. Not only that, I don’t look American—being a Vietnamese American means I don’t quite belong to either world entirely. I am shared between both worlds, but my role in these two worlds are neither whole nor uncomplimentary. There is something that resists clarification of this displacement, but I have discovered literature (whether accidentally or coincidentally, one can’t be sure) and gained serious interest in art and poetry. My interests have led me to study poetry much closer in the last few years, but for what reason? It is as though the hunger for understanding one’s identity remains, and then one looks to art for clarification or empathy. Everyone comes from somewhere, and I know where I come from by way of hearing about my parents’ journey.
My curiosity and fascination with Vietnamese history and culture was introduced to me by my parents—in such an organic, authentic process of storytelling—leading me to find (and write) diasporic literature. However, my knowledge of all the above is fragmentary. The archives of documents and artifacts that exist or are to be in existence intrigue me, and I hope that through writing this down and sifting through texts, I can better grasp the situation of the Vietnamese “boat people,” their struggle and triumphs, to further my engagement with Vietnamese diaspora, now expanded with a historical lens.
+ + +
“We have a memory of water. Ankle deep, back
bent by the sun, verdant fields. Shallow basins, eyes sealed with tears, ornate
cathedrals. Salt water shrouds, lips cracked, silent flotilla. We have a memory
of water. A memory that is only sometimes our own.”[1]
The significance of water in the Vietnamese culture is associated with the
Vietnamese diaspora— escape by sea. The word for water, nước,
is also the word for homeland, country, nation, pronounced and spelled
the same way. Nước is used
to refer to liquids or bodily fluids, more specifically tears. “It is the
outward gloss, the water of a diamond, the complexion of skin. It is the pace of
a runner, the gait of a horse. It is the move on the chessboard or a way to
play your cards. Broadly, it is a step you take in order to reach some goal. It
is a pass you come to, and also a way out of the difficult spot.”[2] The connotation of water relates to life and death,
reflecting the reality of the Vietnamese refugee narrative—to be on a boat
surrounded by the water, by the idea of one’s homeland, the journey and a way
out of the difficult spot—a fish out of water. The multifarious and
monosyllabic word “reverberates with the deepest and farthest recesses of the
Vietnamese collective unconscious and stirs there the most potent feelings.”[3] This notion of water is not limited to or reserved
by the Vietnamese alone. Water manifests in various simulative and figurative
phrases—water satisfies thirst, is necessary for plants and animals, is for
washing, cleansing, purifying, “applied to what satisfies spiritual needs or
desires; cf. water of life.”[4]
+ + +
In April of 1975, the Hanoi government of North Vietnam took over the South and immediately the nation fell apart under the merciless policy against Southerners. It was a dangerous and destructive movement—introducing religious persecution, control of speech, and loss of means on several levels for the Southern Vietnamese. This bleak new reality led thousands of people to flee their homeland on rickety (mostly man-made) boats that sailed out onto the South China Sea. The voyages were grim and hard on the refugees who experienced severe starvation, thirst, desperation, and fear, at times encountering ship pirates, assaulters, amidst those other challenges of nature and chance. There was great uncertainty looming. For those who took the voyage, there was no knowledge or promise that they would get to land, wherever it may be, or when. And it all seemed to happen at once—Vietnam, a land of “shaded banks lined with coconut trees” and “soaring mountains in the west and white sandy beaches in the east”—the country’s loveliness converging head on with bitterness and anguish.[5] The refugees took very little to no possessions with them—but this seemed to be the only way out of the misery and desolation that ravaged the nation and freedom of the people since the Communist invasion. “We’ve got to leave this country because if we stay here, we will have nothing.”[6]
+ + +
Here I sit, reading through first-hand
accounts of Vietnamese refugees, and writing this self-consciously,
thinking, How fortunate am I to be here with this knowledge and distant
memory? The stories I read and hear of are very personal and
can be seen as individualistic, but each one of these narratives are a part of
building the oral history of Vietnamese people. How these stories feel
uncannily close to me, familiar and ingrained. “When you have been a refugee,
abandoned all your loves and belongings, your memories become your belongings.
Images of the past, snippets of old conversations, furnish the world within
your mind. When you have nothing left to guard, you guard your memories. You
guard them with silence.”[7] So
this is what my mother and father carried with them all the way from Saigon
through their journey that founded mine. Their memories become mine as well,
and those of the Vietnamese people that I come across are mine, too. I am
suddenly struck silent as I flip from page to page of the memories of
Vietnamese refugees, molded by their experience of diaspora, the impact of loss
and grief, memories guarded with silence tied to the departure and exodus.
Often, Vietnamese diasporic histories are fragmented or incomplete. Reading a
wide range of narratives demands a patient and inquisitive mind, which calls
for attending also to the lost or undocumented narratives that are inherently a
part of the tradition entirely.
The inevitably incomplete historiography of the
Vietnamese people provides us with a “postmodernist celebration of
fragmentation, in which identity becomes an infinite interplay of possibilities….culture
becomes a multicolored, free-floating mosaic, its pieces constantly in flux,
its boundaries infinitely porous….the continued hegemony of the center over the
margins.”[8] It
is within and without the marginal group who experiences exiles and diasporas
wherein lies the contemplation of identity, which is multiple and constantly
shifting around the center of cultural gravity. Diasporic identity seems
to travel back and forth, oscillating between past and present, home and
habitat. Imagination and immanence are at work in exploring
diasporas—discovering what it is to belong to a place and then to be displaced.
In the narratives I have been reading
by Vietnamese immigrants and descendants, this center is dismantled, appropriated,
then to be reconstructed—“as the margins resisted and decentered the center,
they also transformed themselves.”[9] Transformation
came with recognition, departure, arrival, and the eventual process of
acculturation of the Vietnamese in a new nation, embodying a new geography of
identity. Transformation came with building bridges among overlapping fragments
of identity, of placement, the yearning for authenticity and desire for the
real. But when authenticity and the real become murky in the midst of war,
exile, separation, and relocation, it is essential to hold onto the gritty moments experienced before. For the Vietnamese refugees of 1975 and
onward, they have collectively mapped a narrative terrain of nostalgia and
displacement that is necessary to their journey.
[1] Barbara Tran, Monique Truong, and
Luu Truong Khoi, “A Note to the Reader” in Watermark, 224.
[2] Huynh Sanh Thong, “Live by water,
die for water” in Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, ed.
Barbara Tran, Monique Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi (New York: Asian
American Writers’ Workshop, 1997), vi.
[3] Ibid., vii.
[4] Oxford English Dictionary Online,
s.v. “Water, n.”
[5] Ai-Van Do, “Simple Map, Small
Compass, Three Flashlights” in Voices of Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen
Narratives of Escape and Survival, ed. Mary Terrell Cargill and Jade Quang
Huynh. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 2000), 7.
[6] Lan Nguyen, “Gold Rings and Jeans”
in Voices of Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Narratives of Escape and
Survival, ed. Mary Terrell Cargill and Jade Quang Huynh. (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland and Co., 2000), 37.
[7] Roya Hakakian, Journey from the
Land of No (Sydney: Bantam, 2004), 14.
[8] Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg,
“Introduction” to Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 3.
[9] Ibid., 4.
Jun 14, 2012
Apr 26, 2012
In order to go to sleep, you must build a canoe. In order to go to sleep, you must put yourself in this canoe. You must launch from the shore and on this shore you must leave all objects and people behind. Sometimes one person can go in the canoe to help you along. Only one person is allowed. This person can never be a lover nor a child. As you get further from the edge, you will have to commit to cutting the string that binds you. You must resolve to let them go, or you will never be free. So remove the scissors from your dress and cut the line. Cut this line.
Apr 16, 2012
from PLEASE LIGHT UP
by Ted Powers
Because we are in love
I can know five or six things.
If the band plays inside the barn
and we stand outside the barn
we won’t need earplugs.
The next day the cows will moo
louder without realizing it.
Two down. You can probably
guess the final three or four:
the one about doubt,
the one about change,
the one about the void in people
and/or what the neighbors think.
Because we are in love
I can know five or six things.
If the band plays inside the barn
and we stand outside the barn
we won’t need earplugs.
The next day the cows will moo
louder without realizing it.
Two down. You can probably
guess the final three or four:
the one about doubt,
the one about change,
the one about the void in people
and/or what the neighbors think.
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