Saturday Deliberations
By the time I publish this it will be Saturday. Now it’s Friday night and I felt like writing. Usually that’s all it takes is to feel like writing something. Then I just go. Maybe the thing doesn’t seem done later tonight or I feel like there’s some things I maybe want to include. Some random and rogue thoughts that seem to forever cross my path. I’ve felt living here lately that the daily journal was more home to them so I let them fester and grow there.
Last night I went out for beer and ended up sitting and watching people. And drinking. There’s no place around where we live to just go. Sitting out front with cans of beer just does nothing for me. I guess I am not socially inclined until I want to be. Often that’s with some beer. But it’s social at a distance. I want to sit at my table and peacefully watch tourists and expats and Khmer people do their odd and funny things whilst I do mine. Does that seem strange?
When someone does show up. The conversation seems forced. Not enjoyable. Like this expat J showed up and asked me things. Innocent things about life. I asked him the same. But I wondered,
When the fuck is this guy gonna leave?
Horrible to sit through a forced social interaction and just wish him gone. Soon enough though the conversation sputters. The words get slower. He mutters some goodbye. Hops his bicycle and goes.
I guess that’s like many social interactions with barang people. I don’t think they really want to do the thing. Somehow though it’s the social thing to do.
I’ll let this simmer and percolate. That means I will write more on Saturday.
Saturday morning
Earlier than I wanted and with less good sleep which seems to be a hallmark of these days for me. Coffee and music and Saturday all come together. Nothing stops me though from the walk to come and finding something out there that’s better or different even if I’ve seen it a thousand times. Lately I admit to some nostalgia and wanting Vietnam back. It’s a haunting and less than good feeling to want something and watch others do it easily and yet we cannot. It has never been for us money or time. I just let my wife really decide the course of things and it has not worked well for some things.
So of course I find some photo of some Vietnam at some time. Perhaps in 2023. My last time going to Hanoi there. It was during the Tet holiday then. Life was cast with different valuable metals. This was a day spent at Hoan Kiem Lake.
Walking the path I had done so many times. Yet like I had written beautiful and different and then this unique feeling that I had finally found my way back after some years. I left in 2021 and the world was dark then. I ended up back in the US and traveling for months on Amtrak and then off to Mexico.
Yep. My deliberations. My Saturday. See you again when I come back for the first time.