Bouncing off the Walls (VN Diary No. 37)
This is my last day in Hanoi and the truth is I’m ready to go. I haven’t done much this last week except walk around the Old Quarter and buy presents for friends at home. Playing the tourist. It is of course very difficult if not impossible to get inside another place, another culture; but [...]
Note to Self (VN Diary No. 23)
Don’t drink espresso at four in the afternoon.
Poem
I hesitate to post this poem, written just this afternoon, fearing that it is insufficiently respectful; but whatever disrespect it exhibits is only an attempt to express a more profound respect. One never gets entirely outside the lecture room, of course; but one chafes. The seat is hard, the oscillating fan insufficient to ventilate the [...]
Naturally (VN Diary No. 17)
So, if you woke up with a head cold, what would be the first thing you would think to do? Well, naturally, you would go with your friend who is writing a language instruction book to a recording studio to help with the English on the accompanying CD. And after that, you would no doubt [...]
Language Notes (VN Diary No. 15)
There’s nothing like one’s first language lesson in eight years to drive home one’s almost complete ignorance of the language. It’s like a Renaissance map — not the complete Medieval fiction with Jerusalem at the center, some few regions have been filled in: a more or less accurate coast line for Portugal, say, but a [...]
Belief and Contingency (VN Diary No. 13)
It’s very hot today, in the nineties, and having gone out early for breakfast, I’m going to wait until late afternoon for an early dinner, then come back in.
Vietnam continues to exert this weird pressure on my psyche. It’s hard to describe, except to say that it has always, in each visit, forced me toward [...]
Chicken Soup and Tourist Art (VN Diary No. 11)
As I mentioned, Hanoi does not get up very early, the shops just beginning to open around eight o’clock. By then of course I’m in desperate need of coffe. The places that open earliest are just north of Hoan Kiem Lake, so I headed over there this morning to get some cafe nau (brown coffee), [...]
This Place (VN Diary No. 10)
I had two dreams about Thanksgiving — the American holiday — last night. I woke from each feeling profoundly happy. Neither had anything to do with Vietnam other than that fact that I am in Vietnam dreaming. I don’t remember anything but the feeling tone of the first dream, but in the second I was [...]
Had My Pocket Picked (VN Diary No. 8)
It was either the girl who wanted me to carry her shoulder pole — the kind that carry a pair of baskets, in this case filled with pineapples — and tried to put her hat on my head, or it was the hail-fellow-well-met who wanted to help me across the street, putting his arm around [...]
Morning in the Old Quarter (VN Diary No. 7)
Woke up early to the bells of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, which is right across the street from my hotel, and went out for a walk. Hanoi does not get up terribly early — things begin to open up between seven and eight — so I took a walk around Ho Hoan Kiem, the lake in [...]
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