Fear & Loathing in Saigon

Relentless traffic, hard stares, unforgiving intense energy that curls itself around your body and squeezes--this is Saigon. I don't feel unsafe. I feel uptight. I feel the weight of war and devastation and extreme poverty. There aren't many places here in the deep south of Vietnam where it isn't in your face. The doors to this country have only been open to US citizens since 1995. And from what I've seen and felt and experienced, I'm surprised they were opened at all.

You can turn a blind eye to it like you can most anything and find the charm and beauty behind the pain and tough exterior. The comforts of a soft bed in a cute city homestay. The picturesque charm of the villages throughout the Mekong Delta. The architecture of the tall, thin old buildings squished between new, shiny skyscrapers. The pieces of light escaping through the dark scars.

Within my first 24 hours in Saigon I got crazy lost, locked out of my homestay, and for the life of me, couldn't communicate with anyone--google translations as foreign as I was. And for the first time in my 2 years I've been in Southeast Asia, I actually felt like I was in Southeast Asia, a foreigner in a very foreign country. The Western world kept at an arms length distance hasn't infused its way into the culture here like it has in other places. Or it has, but not in a way that makes you all that comfortable. 

I stared at the pictures for a long time--real-life once-removed by a camera. Hanging on the walls of the War Museum are pictures of freelance photographers killed or long gone missing because they were chasing a passion for adventure not one of war. Romanticized characters filtered through the lenses of writers and film makers. That's all I know. That's all I can know. All roads lead back to literature.

None of these writers or visionaries paint a pretty picture of Vietnam so what is it that gets lost in translation from real life to page or film? Michael Herr's memoir reads more like a drug induced walk through the jungle than the story of a man caught in the throes of war. In the novel the Beach, Richard's obsession with Vietnam and war hinge on the delusional. Walking carelessly through an armed area of a Thai jungle Richard can only think: the only missing element was a Doors soundtrack. 

All roads lead back to literature. The horror, the horror. It doesn't seem to matter when you're so far removed from the horror. It becomes art. It becomes the source of light escaped through the dark scars. Richard never did get the reference the horror, but he reminds us at the end of his story that he's left with a thousand-yard stare and a lot of scars.

I think about the horrors I've witnessed and experienced in my life, and I often wonder how they will come across when I begin to write about them. Ultimately, you can't control how others will interpret your story though you can certainly try to manipulate how they will. Perhaps luring all the magic and miracles from the heart of darkness instead of the horror is simply how I've learned to deal with human life.

My last night in Saigon I stand on the corner at a busy intersection where the sheer volume of people and traffic and noise is dizzying, where homes and closed businesses hide behind cage-like gates and people watch you through the thick bars. I walk back to my homestay along the Saigon River and through narrow, winding alleyways that dead-end. Lost again. A woman steps out from the shadows of her home, and I show her my map. She smiles and points left, straight, left again, and I find my way back.

This post does not end in the horror, but in a peaceful walk along the river, the kindness of a stranger, and in a cozy homestay nestled in a narrow alleyway offset from the intensity that is Saigon.

How does art and literature skew your view of reality? Are you able to see the art, the light escaping through the darkness of the subject matter?