Walking is my doing
We went for breakfast this morning to the new location of an old favorite place that used to be by the river. We really enjoyed the location by Siem Reap river. It had this essence I enjoyed. These views of the people, places, and things and it was easy to reach. I admit to enjoying sitting at the river for food, coffee. Walking by the river heading north often takes me to another street I can then consider. It is a momentary thing when I walk. This desire. Do I turn on the road? I know from some memory I have done that road before but it reminds me of this thought from Saigon years ago.
I was heading back to Saigon for a day or so and a friend remarked surely I had seen Saigon before after living and traveling through there countless times. I had reflected on it a moment and told her,
if I turn my head away from Saigon, when I look back it has all changed yet again.
I never did feel coming back I was going that direction. I felt I was “going to” Saigon instead. I had left Da Lat after over a month there with the wonderful cooler weather and my perennial favorite coffee shop there La Viet Coffee. I would do the walks there mornings from my hotel but I could see that the weather was changing. A Vietnamese person told me it would be raining more often soon. Then I received a message that I should go to Da Nang sooner than I thought. It was easy to just change things. I decided to leave a day early and let the hotel manager know. He was a kind soul and offered to reimburse me for the one night. I refused. After all he and his wife had bought food and beer for me too many times and we would talk.
So somehow all this wrangled around in my somewhat cramped space and the mental wikilinks fired and I realized that the choice of walking that road north along the river was not walking there again or going back. It was going to it.
Walking then becomes my doing. Not my remembering of some past place I had gone or a thing I had seen. Saigon seemed basically different. The trees and parks and coffee shops called me. I sat in the evening at this pub and had Saigon beers. Now I found the steps to take me to some new doing.
what all this means
Nothing really. If you look for meaning in all I write perhaps you are doomed or you find a link to a thing about us eating again at a favored coffee shop to walking elsewhere. The truth is though while I found steps in Saigon or the road in Siem Reap as a joy or a challenge, the restaurant was not. It was a disappointment. I think they made a mistake moving.
Then my wife let me know she got sick after eating there. She has a more fragile system and is just getting over other stuff. I realized when I got back walking home that I never wanted to go back again. Unlike my desire and passion to go find Saigon on a day; this was a negative feeling. The cafe had lost us. I won’t be going back. The passion I felt with Saigon or the walk was not a thing in the cafe.
Then I decided to walk home from there. It’s a nice distance so I stopped at Noi Cafe and happened to bump into Sean. A fellow expat living here. We spent time talking about his and my things. Life here.
and then...
Then I headed home. I walked these same roads but they never feel like going back to the cafe. There is no road I would not walk again with different feelings because I have this wonderful walking amnesia about what I would see. Unfortunately it does not extend to what could be inferior food at the cafe. So a few good things and a bad and more that let me link all the little pieces together and find a basic thing.
Walking is my doing. It gives me this sense of the doing. Not the counting or achieving but the doing. It is really not about reaching a place or leaving another. It is more about the going and doing. When I reached the road in Siem Reap there was my desire and I did what it was I wanted. Saigon gave me pause. I had lived there before. I felt I knew a little about the city but when I got off the bus there I felt like a new arrival. Saigon seemed to shine in some primitive light. People busy and moving. The perennial shove of thousands of motorcycles all wanting to go the same way or opposite. Sometimes on the wrong side of the road. It never mattered. There I was. Doing the doing.
Then there’s the cafe today. A thing I happily left behind and now I sit in the room thinking on the day. Writing a bit here and there. I told my wife when I got back, I would not be going back to the cafe ever. I don’t like what it has become and how I felt being there. This vague disappointment and dislike of what it became by moving. There is choice walking and eating breakfast and visiting Saigon.
I just partake of it all. That is the final part of my doing. I take it all and find it all different usually. Walking becomes discovery by doing.