Hàng Ngày

Throughout my college career I faced the challenge of having to defend my college against he onslaught of those who believed it to be superfluous.

“Why do you need to go to a girls’ school in this day and age? Isn’t it like reverse discrimination? Women are totally equal in society these days, so why would you want to go to an all girls’ school for college.”

My reactions were as varied as San Francisco weather in April: some days I responded with an angry tirade of expletives about the questioner’s naivete regarding the progress women have made over the past century; other days I offered a polite and measured rebuttal to their claims; and sometimes I just responded to the questions with a smile that told the listener: “I just know something you will never know.”

I knew that Barnard was special from the first time I visited, the blustery February day turning my nostrils to icicles and my cheeks a bright shade of flush from the biting New York wind. I couldn’t tell you why. It was just a feeling.

During my four years at Barnard I was repeatedly asked the question, “Why Barnard” and I devised a few clever answers, my favorite being: “Most colleges prepare you to graduate as educated people. Barnard prepares its graduates to be educated women. They’re different because in our gendered, biased, unequal society, people are male by default. Barnard is different.” This usually shut people up. It sounds smart, right? I do believe it’s true. But that’s not really all of it, because that intellectual retort doesn’t capture the feeling of Barnard that I find difficult to articulate in anything less than an expression or a mood. Words are certainly not enough.

Tonight I found myself in the living room of one of VIA’s Board members among a group of soon-to-be Strong, Beautiful Barnard women. These graduating high school seniors had gathered to hear remarks from the Dean of First-Year students about course offerings, matriculation, orientation, and other opportunities for first-years at Barnard. I threw in my own two-cents now and again, but mainly just stood in a corner and watched the energy dance around the room. Even before they have embarked upon their Barnard paths, each these women evoked a unique sense of passion and spunk that I rarely find in such large doses.

Two weeks ago I attended Barnard’s commencement ceremony with two friends from my Barnard class. The commencement address, delivered by one famous Secretary, encouraged Barnard seniors to take their Barnard experiences out into the world and share them with women who are less privileged. A useful message, and quite politically savvy. The most impressive speech to me, however, was delivered by the president of Barnard Student Government Association, and spoke to the uncertainty of the current career climate and the fact that the graduating class would have to make tough choices. What she advised her classmates to do was maintain connections with the Barnard women around them so as to live their different paths vicariously through shared memories and experiences. What an amazing message! I felt instantly reconnected sitting there, arms linked with my former classmates.

I felt equally reconnected this evening when speaking with this new generation of Barnard women, encouraging them to break rules, to ask important questions and to follow their dreams. Sure, maybe I would have done all of those things without Barnard. I probably would have become strong and self-confident even if I hadn’t gone to Barnard. That’s what coming of age is all about, right? But the point is, I did go to Barnard. And I owe Barnard and the people who surrounded me in class, on campus and in New York City for four years more than a small amount of credit for what I am, and am becoming in the world.

Maybe I haven’t articulated it any better here on this blog than I have in past attempts. *Sigh*

But really, the old cliche that “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds true for this example. I don’t have a digital copy of my high school senior year picture to post here, but I wish I did as a comparison. Wait! I was just tagged in this photo on facebook: a picture from my high school graduation. See the person’s back turned with curly hair? The skinny one? Yeah, that’s me!

Another thing that someone talked about at Barnard’s commencement was that Barnard women are not afraid to be fully present, to be loud, to go against the crowd, and to take up space. If you compare that senior year picture to a picture of me now, almost ten years later–damn, I take up a lot more space. And that’s why Barnard exists. Sure, I probably could have learned to take up space somewhere else. But I didn’t. I learned it at Barnard.

California. Ha. Just kidding.

So I wrote a post about a week ago. Then I didn’t publish it. This is why I could probably never make a living with my writing if I tried. I wanted to write because of an email my mom sent me telling me she missed my writing. I wrote a few paragraphs and they came out all wrong. Or maybe all write (pun intended, I think), but in any case they were unpublishable. Perhaps this post will turn out the same way…

So I’ve been thinking about moving. Not to a new city. Just to a new place within the city. This neighborhood is too quiet, too safe and too predictable for a white girl from St. Louis. It’s also pretty far from where I work, considering I ride my bike downtown (and back up) every day, rain or shine, wind or fog, early morning or late evening after a long day’s work.

But tonight, on my way home, I was thinking about why I’m thankful for this ride. Maybe it was the wind biting my cheeks, the sun setting in front of me or John Mayer’s rendition of “free fallin’” strumming in my right ear (don’t worry mom, only in my right ear. My left ear is for traffic). These rides, particularly the rides that take longer because my legs don’t want to pedal up that hill, or the wind is forcing me to pedal hard downhill into the wind, are a good time to reflect on my day, my week, my life thus far, and the state of the world.

Tonight I had a heated debate with my former boss about the global “financial crisis,” the sustainability of the world, and the future of humanity. Yeah, I know. I miss working with this guy. But anyway, at some point he decided to sum up our entire discussion thus far by saying “basically it comes down to the fact that humans are first and foremost out for their own selfish interest, or the interest of their own families. People talk about communal uprising and collective revolution, but basically those people are all doing it for their own selfish reasons.” I’m probably misquoting him, but you get the point.

So ok, on my way home I was trying to reconcile this statement, which I consider to be true in so many ways, with the altruism, the self-sacrifice, the spirit of community that I see every day (more on that later). And what I started thinking about on the way home was that there are people who don’t only think of their own self-interest. But why? Why do they think of others? Why do we sometimes stop to give that guy a dollar on the street? Maybe that’s a bad example. Why do we hold the elevator? Why do we perform the random acts of kindness that help others and have absolutely nothing to do with our self-interest? We’re acting not in the interest of ourselves or our families, but in the interest of the human species. Some more than others. But ok, there is something that allows people to do this. It’s simple. They can. They have the privilege of having their own basic needs taken care of. They have the resources. They have the time. They have the money. They have the mental capacity, because their self-interest is already taken care of. Part of the problem (yes, it’s all about propaganda) is that some people’s standards for what is necessary to fulfill their own self-interest have risen to really unnecessary standards. The internet is necessary to fulfill my own self-interest (ha, I write on my blog), really? Really? Really? No, not really. But because my basic needs are met: I have food, I have shelter, I have work that engages my mind and my body on a regular basis (work defined very loosely), I have friends. I have family, therefore I have emotional content. My needs are filled. I am privileged enough to think beyond my own self-interest. Now. What if, what IF everyone’s basic needs were met so that we all could think beyond our own self-interest? Would we? It would be an interesting social experiment (I’m sure social scientists would laugh at this post, as the research has probably been replicated countless times throughout the course of social science history.) It might work on a small scale. But on a global scale? What would it take to get there? A revolution, yes. But what kind? Revolution is kind of outdated, in my opinion. What does revolution look like in the real-time, joomla!?, facebook era??

Segue.

This is really what I’ve been thinking about lately (the above ties in somehow). I hope that I’ve lost some readers by now. Because this is probably one of those things that I will regret publishing in the morning.

So I have found three new places to spend my time, and I have been spending most of my time over the last month or so in these places, and my time not physically in those places at least mentally in those places. I will start with the most predictable and finish with the most outlandish and earth-shattering.

About a month ago I went to a happy hour event for a non-profit focusing on Chinese microcredit projects called Wokai. For $10 we got an interesting introduction to the organization at a swankey bar in the financial district (I felt like I was back in Manhattan, sigh), plus a free one-month membership at Crunch gym downtown. My colleague and I have been going several times a week for a few weeks now. I forgot how much I like lifting weights, pumping iron, if you will. Especially with my broken foot issue that has kept me fairly imobile (for me) since October, it has been wonderful to exert myself and feel the day-by-day increase in physical strength that comes with pumping iron. Number one.

I have been looking for an independent music venue in San Francisco since I got here. I have been to several clubs, cafes, pubs, etc. and had yet to find a place where I felt I was supporting independent artists with real talent and potential. I found The Red Poppy Art House online. I read about several concerts, and the first even I attended was a lecture series entitled “MLK and Jazz.” We talked about history, about music, about philosophy and the human condition. During one of the lecture sessions I spoke with the artistic director of the Red Poppy who told me about their musical performances on Friday and Saturday nights. I already knew of the performances, but her endorsement encouraged me to make plans to come back on a Saturday evening. I went alone the first time. The next week I took my roommate and saw an amazing female singer-songwriter named Meklit Hadero. Amazing. Captivating. Her voice was mesmerizing. Hypnotic.

The atmosphere in the Red Poppy is unlike anything I’ve found elsewhere in SF. The crowd has been amazingly diverse, regardless of the type of event I attend. And they are excited about the music, and the art, and the space, and each other. It’s a community, a family, focused on creative and expression and exchange. So my social and cultural self has been engaged. Number two.

Ok. Those were easy.

A few weeks ago I joined a group of Japanese university students who were studying homelessness and poverty in the US for their spring break. On Saturday we went on a “street retreat” with an organization called Faithful Fools. We walked around the Tenderloin in downtown San Francisco and spoke with homeless people. That deserves its own post, but anyway…On Sunday I joined them for their tour of the city.

We began with a service at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. The celebration, as Glide calls it, included singing, hand-holding, hugging, praying, contemplation and rejuvenation. I was surprised at how much it moved me. There were a few moments during the songs when I almost grabbed for the tissues being distributed by the ushers.  No, I’m not kidding. I don’t know what it was that brought such emotion in me, but there was something that echoed in my chest and every fiber of my body the way that a perfectly harmonized chord rings in your ears.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. All week. And the next Saturday evening, I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll go to Glide tomorrow morning. Just to see what’s up. Just for the singing. That’s it.”

I have been going for a month now. I can not yet effectively describe what it does for me. A close friend asked me to articulate it. I’m not very good at it. I can not say with honesty that I have “found Jesus.” What I can say is that I have found a community of individuals who are focused on social justice, compassion and building mutual understnading among diverse groups and individuals. It happens to be a church. It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy. I have to slap myself every Sunday I stand in front of those pews and clap in time with the spirituals. I laugh at myself. I laugh more. There’s something going on with me spiritually that I can’t really articulate yet. Number three.

Although my life is in most respects removed from the current financial crisis thus far (I still have a job, I don’t have a mortgage, I am not relying on my stock dividends to pay for my retirement in the next few years) I have taking more of an interest in the issue as friends, family, colleagues, and perfect strangers discuss their concerns on the subject and ask my opinion.

At first I wasn’t really sure. I am hesitant to throw my hat into any circle before I know exactly what it is the circle entails in terms of values. I am still uncertain and still lack all of the necessary macroeconomic expertise to understand the problem intellectually, but this is America after all, and even those with no knowledge whatsoever of a given subject are entitled to their opinions.

So here’s mine (or the pieces I’ve cobbled together thus far). My initial ideas about this whole mess stem from my reaction to a New York Times article I read yesterday. (click here to see what I’m talking about). The scene opens in Japan and the story unfolds of families who have weathered difficult economic times and adjusted accordingly. From Mrs. Takigasaki and her cottage soup solution to the high price of fresh vegetables to college student Risa Masaki who just wants “a humble life” and doesn’t indulge in expensive cosmetics or fashion, Japanese families, according to the story, have performed what Mr. Obama has been asking of all Americans since before his innauguration: Sacrifice. They don’t spend beyond their means. They save what they earn and prepare for harder times. Novel concept.

The attitude of the NYT article struck me and prompted me to write this reaction. The article speaks of a rising fear of deflation in the US: a downward spiral of price and wage driven deeper into the ground by people’s inability or unwillingness to spend money. I agree that we don’t want to fall too deeply into such a spiral. However, what disappointed me about the NYT article and about most of this conversation in general is people’s inability to think outside of the current economic system for solutions to the problem.

The tone of the article conveys the opinion that it would be almost morally wrong to find ourselves in a situation here similar to that in Japan. People should be spending. Our economy is based on growth, constant growth, and I feel that perhaps what this economic crisis has taught me is that maybe that economic model is just not working. (OK, macroeconomists and communist/socialist haters, have at me, this is your signal). I don’t exactly know what the new economic model would look like. I’m not an economist and my two economics classes in college certainly don’t qualify me to draft any sort of macroeconomic policy for the world. I guess all I’m saying is that maybe the solution could be found if we are willing to sacrifice a little more. Sacrifice not only in the sense of personal sacrifices that many Americans and others around the world have been forced to make because of hard times. But sacrifice in the sense of letting go a little of the principle that constant economic growth and consumption is the most practical model for our economy in the 21st century.

That’s my 2,000 VND (now worth about 12 cents US.)

Applications came in today. I was told application deadline day was crazy. It was going to be a flood, a deluge, a torrent of applications flowing into “applications@viaprograms.org.” Indeed the programs overall did well, many more applications than last year. Can we blame this on the declining economy? The increased visibility of VIA due to new marketing tactics? A collective answer to Barack Obama’s call to service and sacrifice? Perhaps.

But somehow, Vietnam was forgotten in this call. I didn’t even receive enough applications to fill the number of spots I anticipate having open in 2009-10. I pray that all of my current volunteers choose to stay on with VIA as opposed to coming back to the wretched job market that is the United States (not just because of number but because they are awesome!) But I know many of them are looking to move on to new experiences and this is perfectly understandable: they have served their 1-2 years and it’s time for a new batch of Americans ready for a cultural experience that will be jarring beyond their wildest imagination.

I am trying not to let this mild disappointment spiral into disillusionment and despair. I tend to feel things like this quite personally, especially given the amount of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears (ok, not much blood and no tears) I put into the recruitment process this past fall. I am trying to keep in mind what this is all for, but honestly, it is hard when one day someone tells me that I have to figure out a way to cut my program budget and the next day a collective someone tells me “people aren’t really interested in what you have to offer.” Not even to mention that “what I have to offer,” the opportunity to a deeply, potentially life-changing cultural experience, may not be something that many people want.

I’ve been reading The Fountainhead again. I tend to read The Fountainhead once a year, or at least every other year, just to keep me grounded. This is not to say that I subscribe to Ayn Rand’s philosophy. (Let’s face it, I work in non-profit, and not just any non-profit but a non-profit focused on providing other people with the opportunity to serve. It is almost the antithesis of her philosophy in many ways…) But I find value in her philosophy. I find Howard Roark fascinating because I think in many ways I could never be him. I admire him and I loathe him (how cliché?) I want to be him and I want people like him to disappear from this earth because I cannot be him. But why not? Days like today, when I feel crushed by the fact that my efforts to change other people’s minds and convince them that what I think is important is important, have all been in vain…I wonder. I just wonder, “What do I really want to be doing with my life?”

An old friend asked me this question back in November, when I was thinking about giving thanks, appreciating life and family, friends and connections, and contemplating my past, my present, my future. We were in his new apartment, boxes strewn about the floor, dust on the doorstep and walls an almost glowing white in the soft bulb lighting. I was sitting on the wooden doorstep that led out to his balcony overlooking 8th Avenue in New York and he was standing in front of me in a ragged white t-shirt and athletic shorts.

“If you didn’t have to worry about making money, and you had no ambition, what would you do?”

It took me less than two seconds to look up at him from my seat on the doorstep and say, “I would write.”

Last night my roommate asked me the same question. We were sitting in our living room after a quick dinner, at opposite ends of our inherited wooden table, each of us with our feet up on the chairs on either side. A relaxed evening after yet another long and somewhat frustrating and discouraging day at work. She was talking about her reasons for pursuing nursing as a career.

“I don’t understand people who say you’ll get bored if you don’t have full-time work,” she began, “I would find so many things to do with my time. I would love it. I’d garden. No, I’d farm. I’d cook. I’d read. I’d go on long bike rides. I’d spend more time with my friends.”

And then the question, “What would you do if you didn’t have to work?”

And the answer, “I would write.”

I know my writing may not be that good, but that may also just be self-doubt.

But I began this post thinking the end would result in asking my volunteers for support: “Please VIA volunteers, tell me that what we are doing is not in vain! Please tell me that what we are doing is meaningful and important! Please tell me that I am not living for something that is outside of myself!”

And somehow I ended in the recognition, or maybe the re-recognition (a word?) that what I really should be spending my time on is something not at all dependent on others, but an expression of my own emotions and intellect portrayed as zeroes and ones in cyberspace and squiggles and lines on paper.

I have ridden a lot of public transportation in my life. Caltrain is one of the cleanest most efficient, most orderly public transportation systems I have seen in the United States. Trains run on schedule. There are always enough seats. You can take your bike on Caltrain and there is a designated car for bikes with orderly racks for bikers to line up according to where they are disembarking. You can drink on Caltrain.

But the best thing about Caltrain is the commuters.

Californians are friendly. I may express frustration at the superficiality of Californians, but I have to give them points for initial friendliness. This goes not only for native Californians but transplants as well. Every time I am on Caltrain someone is making a new friend. I wonder how many couples have met on the Caltrain. It seems that Caltrain should start a matchmaking service. But I digress…

I don’t ride the Caltrain very often but occasionally my work brings me to our closet of an office on Stanford’s campus and I find myself among the community of regular and irregular commuters. Today was just such an occasion: recruiting events at Stanford all day and a dinner date with an old friend from college put me on the Caltrain platform at Palo Alto at 9:01 pm, hoisting my bicycle over my shoulder and heaving myself into the bike car at the front of the train.

After strapping in my bicycle I moved to the last seat in the car and hunched myself down next to the window to stare out into the expansive California suburbia. Before I arrived the entertainment had already begun. Two seats away from me was a group of four Santa Clara University students, their eyelashes heavy with mascara and their cleavage spilling out of their skin-tight tank tops. The young women were rolling their eyes and mocking a group of teenage boys, no older than 15, sitting on the second tier of seats across from them. The hormones were apparently too much for these young gentlemen and they showed immense control in their ability to keep their pants on.

Across from the young women, out of sight of the taunting teenagers sat a middle-aged white woman with thick blue eye shadow and drooping leathery cheek skin giving unsolicited advice and commentary to the young women about when she was a young woman (born and raised in San Francisco). At Menlo Park a middle-aged black man with graying hair took the seat across from the middle-aged white woman and the fun really began. I don’t know how it came up, but somehow within the first 40 seconds of the conversation I heard the woman’s voice rise above the flirtatious taunting of the teenage boys with the claim, “George Bush is a disgrace to humanity. A disgrace. He disgusts me. He should be wiped clean away from this earth.”

The black man tried to lend a voice of reason to the woman’s vehement hatred, saying that the American people were in fact responsible for electing him, and we all had to take responsibility for the way our country has deteriorated over the past eight years, and let’s see what happens with this new president coming in who will listen to everyone. The debate continued and soon the young women from Santa Clara University joined the discussion with their nasal, breathy, valley-girl voices, ignoring for the time being the somewhat annoying but obviously flattering attentions of the 15 year old boys.

At Redwood City a middle-aged heavyset white man with gansta rap blasting from his headphones joined the party and sat one seat ahead, between me and the gaggle of giggling college students. I shrunk into my seat and stared out the window with a slight smile on my face at the fascinating and comical scene unfolding before my eyes and ears.

The middle-aged folks and the college-aged women continued speaking about politics, and race, and the state of humanity, with the black man making statements like:

“Obama, he’s different and we don’t know what will happen with his presidency, but you know what, he’s changing the game.”

And the middle-aged white woman: “Bush is a dictator.”

And one of the black man: “You know, we may be different colors on the outside, but we all bleed red. You know, in the end we’re all just human.”

And one of the young women: “Yeah, I mean, everyone in South Africa is white.”

And the middle-aged white woman: “I was born and raised in San Francisco. Born and bred.”

And another young woman: “We don’t want to just care about ourselves anymore.”

And the gangsta rap in the background and the train pulling to a stop at Hayward Park and the teenagers banging on the glass of the young women’s window and making obscene gestures as the scurried away to their mothers and the train moved out of the station and the black man asked:

“Where are you girls from?”

Southern California. Connecticut.

The young woman said, “You Californians don’t know what cold is!”

And the middle-aged woman: “But when you’re from California born and bred, you have to understand…”

Texas.

“What part of texas?”

And the middle-aged woman: “George Bush is from Texas. Did you ever meet George Bush? He should be wiped clean from the earth. If I met him I’d kill him myself. They only kill the good ones.”

San Antonio.

And the rap music paused for the middle-aged white man to lean forward around the seat in front of him and say “San Antonio? I have a good friend who just moved there. He wants me and my wife and our six-year old daughter to move there too. His daughter and my daughter are best friends.”

The talk shifted to people. California people, southern people, Texans, Northern California versus Southern, Portland, and the black man noted:

“This is Northern California right here. The commuters, we’re a little community right here,” and he chuckled and slapped his palm against his right knee.

And the middle-aged white woman: “I was born and raised in San Francisco. Lived here my whole life.”

The talk continued about San Antonio with the young women telling about the school system, the parks, it’s a great place to raise kids and people there are really friendly, just genuinely friendly. “Southern Hospitality,” they said. The middle-aged white man took mental notes and almost missed his stop with the thrilling dialogue.

“So what are you ladies going up to the city for?” A concert. Their friend is having a concert, and yes, they are skipping class tomorrow to attend, and can they catch a cab from the 22nd Street station, and the black man said: “I don’t know. You know, I never go to the 22nd Street station because of all those stairs. You ever climbed those stairs? No? Well, I have a bike and I just don’t like climbing all those stairs!” He chuckled and slapped his hand against his right knee.

The young women put their four airhead-brains together to think of how to get a cab at the 22nd Street station and were rescued by an unseen voice from the second tier, “The number for Yellow Cab is 333-3333.” And they asked the area code for San Francisco and the black man told them “415” so they called a taxi to pick them up at the 22nd Street station.

At Bayshore the black man prepared to leave and bid farewell to his newfound friends and they said they enjoyed speaking with him and smiled and parted ways. The next stop was 22nd Street and the middle-aged white woman noted, “I never get off at 22nd Street. Too dark. That neighborhood is dangerous. I would never get off there and I was born and raised in San Francisco.” The young students mentioned the taxi and that they felt confident they could make it with a group of four.

When we arrived at the station they said goodbye and it was me and the woman who was born and raised in San Francisco sitting catty-corner to each other alone in the bike car of the northbound 9:01 Caltrain to 4th and King. She smiled at me and I smiled back and I yawned and she yawned and we smiled again and then I turned away and looked out the window at the approaching lights of the final station, the last stop.

We pulled in at 9:56 PM and I hitched my bike up onto my shoulder one more time and carefully maneuvered myself down the metal stairs with controlled leg muscles and lowered the bike to the ground, wheeled it out to the sidewalk and pushed away from the curb to feel the cold San Francisco night rush into my nostrils and suck the tears out of my eyes blinding me for a moment in the relative blackness of the deserted street beyond the Caltrain Station.

Tonight I smiled and remembered fondly my fifth grade teacher Linda Churchill while I listened to the third verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” spoken by Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery on the occasion of America’s first ever black president being sworn into office.  I hummed along the tune while the reverend recited the familiar words that I was asked to memorize and perform as an eleven year old. Tonight I will go to sleep with these words ringing in my ears:

“Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

For the past week I have been distracted. On Thursday and Friday I attended the US-Vietnam Conference on Higher Education Partnerships in Vietnam. The conference, jointly sponsored by the US Embassy and the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training, was held at the five-star Sheraton Hotel in the heart of Saigon.  Over 400 representatives from universities, non-profits and businesses in the US, Vietnam, and other countries enjoyed two days of exchanging business cards, nibbling hors d’ouvres, and debating how to best fix the education system of Vietnam. I had the privilege of meeting the US Ambassador to Vietnam, the founder of a revolutionary private university set to launch next year, and the heads of several multi-million dollar corporations doing business in Vietnam.

While listening to the intricacies of Vietnamese monetary policy with respect to donations from foreign individuals and corporations, my eyes fell to the desk and instead of the half-scribbled-upon notepad in front of me I saw only the pale green tips of rice stalks glistening in the early morning sunlight. Beyond the field of spring rice plants a stretch of rounded mountains cast a dark shadow over the bustle of early morning activity in the one-road town.

Five days ago I spent the evening sitting in a folding chair on a dusty island in the middle of a small pond overlooking the main road in town. The full moon rose slowly over the mountains and lit the faces of my new friends smiling and teasing each other as we sipped warm coffee laden with sweetened condensed milk.
Five days ago I spent the day speaking with a woman who makes decorative coasters, bowls, and plates out of bamboo cut into thin strips and curled into tight coils before being sanded, stained, and dried in the sun. She smiled to reveal two missing teeth on the right side of her mouth as she told me about her family and how the two dollars per day she makes from the handicraft workshop gives her the extra money she needs to ensure that her children stay in school and her livestock are adequately cared for. On the way back to the project office I spoke with one of my new friends about his reasons for choosing to work for a small community development organization in the middle of nowhere, and his answer articulated the feeling I have not been able to shake from my mind and my soul.

Tonight I arrived in Bangkok: tired, hungry and overwhelmed by the immense disparity of what I have seen this week. As the cab sped down the superhighway between Bangkok’s International Airport and the city center, the image of pale green rice stalks etched in my brain bled into the dark shadows of forty-story buildings. I thought of the one-lane half-paved road from Lac Tanh town to Vietnam’s own “superhighway.”

Driving under an overpass I noticed a stand of ramshackle shanties with corrugated iron roofs and tarps for walls. An old man with no shoes limped along the side of the highway in the darkness. I turned my head 45 degrees and saw a skyscraper with rows of blue-tinted oval windows lining the highest stories and wondered briefly what Vietnam is doing to itself. Doi moi. The WTO. KFC. Saigon South.

For a brief moment I thought of my new friends at the handicraft factory and office in Lac Tanh town and wanted to flee back to the countryside with a warning of the impending difficulty that economic development will undoubtedly bring to the poorest regions of Vietnam. A moment later I had to laugh at myself for thinking that 1) I could actually shelter an entire community from the massive hands of globalization and 2) It was my place to do so.

What would my new friends in Lac Tanh think of these paved six-lane overpasses and semi-truck-sized billboard advertisements?

For a moment my mind flashed into the future and imagined that I was an old woman returning to Vietnam for a workshop, conference, or something of the like, my taxi speeding down a superhighway bound for Ho Chi Minh City. Newly built skyscrapers tower on the horizon and an old hunched-over woman with betel nut juice seeping from the corner of her mouth limps barefoot toward her corrugated-iron house under an overpass. The lights of the city cast a warm orange glow into the sky and mix with the vision of pale-green rice stalks still etched in my mind.

It has been raining a lot in Long Xuyen this week. The rainy season in southern Vietnam is typically from June or July through October. Rain in December is usually only a palm’s worth of accumulated dabbles in the afternoon from time to time. Since I arrived in Long Xuyen on Christmas Day it has rained every evening as well as many early mornings. I awoke at four this morning to the pounding of heavy droplets on the roof me and the pounding didn’t subside until nearly seven.

The weather is certainly atypical and everyone is talking about the peculiarity of this week. For me the peculiar feeling extends beyond to the weather as each time I return to this place I used to call home I expect to feel a sense of sentimental attachment, a torrent of memories, and an overwhelming nostalgia. But this time I feel…

I remember reading a word on my friend’s blog a few years ago: “vô cảm.” It was the last line of a poem he had written about his feelings when visiting a particularly Romantic place and when we discussed the poem he explained that this word (not in my dictionary) was actually combination of two particles: “vô” and “cảm.”

The Vietnamese language contains many of these pasted-together words and he told me that “vô” means “without” and of course that cảm was the first syllable of the word “cảm thấy” which means “to feel” and “cảm giác” which means “sensation.”

“Vô cảm,” then, means that someone is without feeling, without sensation. I sat for a moment thinking about this and he went on to say that upon reading this last line of his poem, many friends and family members had posted comments asking “What’s wrong?” They assumed that “vô cảm” meant that he was sad.

But “vô cảm” is not that at all, quite the opposite, he continued. It means just what it says, without feeling, and nothing more. There was no negative connotation implied with this word. He was simply a poet digging deeply into the recesses of his mind for the perfect words to describe his emotions and finding that in fact there were no emotions to describe.

It has been nearly one year since I waved goodbye to my students and friends with tears in my eyes. Many things in Long Xuyen have changed. Several friends have gotten married. Several former students have received scholarships to study abroad. Several former colleagues have been promoted in the university…I am vô cảm.

Many things are still the same, such as the woman who sells vegetables at the market, the guy who fixes bike tires on Võ Thị Sáu street, the little coffee shop across from the university with 3,000 VND iced coffee…I am vô cảm.

The closest I came to feeling any pressure from the chisels of memory chipping away at the icy shell of my heart occurred on a bike ride. My favorite bike ride (see former posts) is a narrow dirt track that runs behind the university’s new campus. It is flanked by rice paddies along the left side with occasional tufts of coconut trees shading the low wooden houses, and on the right side a deep canal carries silt from the fields to the Hậu River.

My mind often wanders on this ride as my eyes accordingly wander across the landscape and a few days ago while riding along the dirt track I thought to myself, “When they pave this road, maybe that will be my signal.” Signal for what, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe that it is time for me to leave Long Xuyen. I think that must have been it.

Not more than two minutes later I rounded a bend to see a large blue backhoe digging away at my sacred dirt path. I lowered my head to avoid stares as I dragged my bike past the machine and when I passed I noticed that my dirt track was the width of a typical country road and had been recently flattened by a steam roller. I pushed a gulp of tears down my throat to my stomach, a painful swallow.

But other than that, my visit to this, my home for two years, has been pleasant, productive, but decisively…vô cảm.

One of the things I learned about when living in rural Vietnam was a little about the theory and practice of asset-based community development. My friend Jenna was one of the first to introduce this concept to me, as she had been privileged to participate in several field visits with the Department of Integrated Rural Development of An Giang University. I learned more when I taught at the Resource Center for Community Development during my second year in Long Xuyen. Since returning from Vietnam I have been doing a lot of my own research about the field and practices of community development and have tried to integrate it into some of my programs and trainings.

Asset Based Community Development is a method and a framework for community building. In their book Asset Building and Community Development, Gary Paul Green and Anna Haines define community development as “a planned effort to build assets that increase the capacity of residents to improve their quality of life.”(xi) This may sound simple but if you look at a lot of community development projects you see that it is not actually common practice. Often the mentality is “This community has a problem,” (such as soaring rates of drug addiction). “Let’s assess their needs and see what kinds of services we need o bring in or how to get people out.” With ABCD on the other hand, the Practitioner” (social worker, politician, local parent, etc.) seeks to assess the assets, talents, skills, and dreams of the individuals, organizations, and institutions in the community and make connections that will change society in a way that increases everyone’s satisfaction and ability. Sounds pretty cool, right? OK, I think it sounds cool.

Back in May I found an interesting article entitled, “Reflections on the Catalytic Role of an Outsider in ABCD,” by Terry Bergdall. Having done work in Africa and Asia, Dr. Bergdall has much to say about the affect that foreigners and foreign development organizations have had on developing countries. How can an outsider be useful in the process of ABCD? Isn’t it based on the idea of the community looking within to find strengths and solutions? Yes, of course. But as the title of the article suggests, outsiders also have a role to play: the part of a facilitator, not with total objectivity, but with the ability to ask questions that the insiders might never think to ask. Questions that perhaps help people to define their own goals and strengths in ways they wouldn’t normally articulate out loud.

So what? I could talk about the subject of community building for hours. Last Sunday I did just that with one of my best friends from college over a cup of coffee in a quaint West Village brunch establishment. She was hungover and I was already accepting the reality that I do not in fact live in New York, despite the fact that it feels more like home than SF in many ways. Despite this we had one of the most personally inspiring conversations I have had in a long time which basically consisted of her drawing out of me the above information and more and the fact that this is the kind of work I want to devote my life to…

Wait, what? Did I know that already? Maybe in some form. But as we walked out of the cozy restaurant onto the cold drizzly streets of New York thoughts and images of my future began flying through my head with much clearer definition than before and I started thinking about what I could do in the next day, the next year, and the next ten years to feed this passion.

I talked to another friend tonight who told me that after our brief visit several weeks ago a sense of calm came over him. The calm, he said, came from the sense that he had a clearer vision of what makes him passionate in life (in this case understanding humanity through the lens of Arabic and Islamic literature and thought) The realization was not directly related to my visit, but again something that he had known about himself for some time without really defining or accepting it. Accepting it and thinking about how to feed that passion, both now and into the future, was somehow liberating for him. The catalyst strikes again.

What was the point of this? Well, this is one of the ways that I can improve my knowledge and experience of community and relationship building in the simplest way: trying to be the catalyst in personal and professional relationships, analyzing how it happens and honing my ability to understand how to identify and draw out the strengths and passions of many different kinds of people.

I’m going to stop now because my right hand is injured and my left hand is getting really tired of doing all the typing on its own. Sigh.

The crisp air draws my breath out of my lungs as I jump down from the van and the frosted grass sinks slightly under the weight of my feet. The gravestones stretch out before me, a mish-mash of squared, rounded and beveled edges popping out of the ground in an orderly pattern.

I am holding a small oak twig with a few browned and dried leaves hanging from its fingers. A slight breeze sneaks through the buttons in my jacket and kisses my stomach causing a brief shiver to pass from my lower back up through my neck. I shrug my shoulders back and begin making my way across the grass, following my memory back to May, to the sun breaking through the shallow rain clouds and my high heels puncturing the soft earth. The tears pressed against the backs of my eyes and my lungs tensed with the shortness of breath that only comes with life moments you know you will never forget.

I weave a path through the aged stones noticing the smoothness of each of them. Some are rough with the recent cut of the gravestone artisans, while others are worn with decades, some nearly a century, of rain, snow, sleet, and family tears. I approach the spot, and turn to my father who is also holding twigs from the oak tree in front of his childhood home.

My chest is tense again with the expectation of the emotions that may explode upon this moment. But as we approach the small stone laid flat upon the ground; as I look to the trees lining the low wrought iron fence of the cemetery; as the flaming tentacles of the setting sun shadowed by the bluish gray passing clouds fan out on the horizon, I feel an unexpected calm. A nothingness. A numbness; no loss of breath.

It has been six months since I stood on this spot and let a few scant tears drip from my eyes and fall to the earth on top of this freshly dug dirt. Six months since I tossed a few pieces of broken pottery that had been worn by the waves of the Gulf of Thailand, into the small square hole. The borders of the grave are still visible, despite the attempt to resod the hole that was dug for my grandmother’s ashes earlier this year.

I can still see her, the last time, sitting in her pale yellow armchair, the lamplight thrown across her face casting shadows on her right side while her left remains ensconced in the shadows of the blinds on the window. My father is talking and my brother is looking at him listening and I am not listening because I am only looking at her, looking at her face and her eyes as she drifts in and out of consciousness and her head rolls from side to side as she mutters inaudibly to someone who is not in the room. She opens her eyes and speaks with no sound to my father, looking with sudden animation at his eyes and he smiles at her, his eyes heavier than hers because he knows that this is the last time, the last time they will share this room, the last time they will share this gaze, the last time they will exchange words, or a lack of words.

We lay the oak branches on the ground in a neat pile and I stick the end of mine into the soft ground with a chuckle. I can tell by his tone of voice that my father doesn’t find it funny but he forgives me in my attempt to wash the moment with humor. I pull the twig out of the ground and lay it with the others. I say no prayers. I remember her sitting in that yellow chair in her old house while I played on the golden shaggy carpet with a set of blocks and miscellaneous plastic toys left from generations of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

As we walk away I look up to my left to see the sun’s fiery tentacles spreading across the sky, becoming brighter as the sun falls on the horizon and the edges of the blue clouds become more defined with the contrast.

“It’s good to remember sometimes.”

I don’t look at my father’s face but instead continue to stare into the falling sun, the colors becoming more vibrant, spreading from gold to pink and a deep purple that is cut into tiny puzzle pieces by the leafless branches of the trees. We walk through the cold, out of the low wrought-iron gates and I can say nothing, can feel nothing but the mesmerizing glare of the sun’s fingers creeping across the skyline, dripping into the darkness.