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"Sài Gòn ơi! Sài Gòn ơi!"
(from the song Sài Gòn Đẹp Lắm)
I’ve traveled to Vietnam three times now, almost a decade passing in between each visit. In 2001, I was nine and experienced many “firsts”: I’d met my grandmother whom I’d never met before, saw my father cry, and discovered cây mắc cỡ, a plant whose leaves close at the slightest touch. The second time, I was in my first year of college, still finding myself. I vomited after drinking a mango daiquiri, in the very street of my mother’s childhood home. Now I’m twenty-seven, more reassured in who I’ve become but yearning to find more about my roots.
We landed in Saigon after a nineteen-hour plane ride: fourteen hours from New York to Seoul and five hours to Saigon. It’s a city of haphazard streets, packed with motorbikes and cars who consider traffic lights mere suggestions. The traffic kicks up the dust and dirt, and the motorbikes don’t slow, even at the sight of passerby crossing the street. Saigon, to me, is incongruous. Women in high heels drive motorbikes. This city was colonized by the French in the late eighteenth century and some buildings still follow Western architecture, though graffiti disfigures many of its facades. Businesses like H&M and Starbucks are common now, along with countless Korean and Japanese businesses packed into tight streets.
We stopped by Chợ Bến Thành, or Bến Thành market, to find the right fabric for our áo dài, traditional Vietnamese dresses to wear to my sister’s wedding later next year. The market is a maze, the aisles so narrow that you have to squeeze by–a task made more difficult by the vendors who aren’t afraid to get handsy, pulling you by the sleeve of your shirt to buy clothing, houseware, food . . . anything.
I’m sure we were ripped off, a fact that my mom didn’t acknowledge until today (as I’m writing this), when we visited another market, Chợ Tân Định, and bought more dresses, mine included, at a better price.
The food is, of course, delicious. I’ll write more in future blog posts 🙂
It’s funny: my idea–and I suppose my parents’ idea of Vietnam–is still quite backwards, without much reasoning! Or maybe I was still remembering Vietnam from when I was nine. I kept imagining no access to Wi-Fi and bathrooms in outside stalls. But, of course, technology moves faster than we expect, like a puppy morphing into a dog. People are just as buried in their technology as the people in the states.
I’m eternally grateful for the privilege to step back and take this trip with my parents, aunt, and uncle. Between writing my novel, my job as a book editor, and personal chaos that felt perpetually insurmountable these past months, I’ve felt removed from the act of living. But now, for about a month, I can truly focus on being present in every moment.
Vietnamese Song #0.5: Thành Phố Buồn
While food tends to act as a gateway to my childhood, music also summons the past into the present. I remember listening to Savage Garden’s “Truly, Madly, Deeply” as it played from our radio in the kitchen. I’d wondered how the singer planned to stand on a mountain (of all places!). During long car rides to Virginia, where my older cousins still reside, my siblings and I fell asleep to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” And Nsync’s “Bye Bye Bye” will always bring me back to the moment I made a complete fool of myself as I mimicked the choreography from the music video.
In old family videos, if I concentrate, I can hear my parents’ music playing in the background. A ballad or a saxophone here and there. This is the sound of nhạc tình yêu, or love songs filled with yearning. The genre is popular here with the overseas community since it recalls life in pre-war Vietnam.
I told my parents that I would try and translate the song, “Thành Phố Buồn,” but I committed an immediate faux pas when I chose the version by Đàm Vĩnh Hưng. Sympathetic toward the Communist government, he’s so despised here in the states that the Vietnamese community in California protested one of his concerts. They view him as a symbol of the government that drove them away years ago. An activist even pepper-sprayed him in 2010!
Instead, my mom referred me to Trường Vũ, whom she claims is one of the best singers still alive. As a child, I’ve seen him multiple times on “Paris by Night” (I thought of him as the weird-looking man. I’m sorry; I was just a kid). According to her, he sings sincerely and masterfully while Dam Vinh Huong sings “dở ẹt!”
I worked through the song with my mom’s help. The song’s set in a northern city called Đà Lạt. Đà Lạt back then felt like a Western city (thành phố tây phương), where people wore jackets and shoes mimicking Paris life and fashion–something that my mother envied. She had hoped to live there one day.
She told me about her visit to the city after high school. She stayed somewhere at a high altitude, so high that fog was suspended in the air. And she’d wake to the cold, refreshing air with a cup of coffee. A willow tree stood outside her friend’s house, red flowers in bloom.
With a landscape that inspires romance, it makes sense for writers to find refuge in Đà Lạt. Hence this song that I’m going to translate.
In general, this narrator is missing his lover. He’s drawing up their memories together in Đà Lạt, imploring her, from wherever she is, to do the same. The reason for their separation? Read on, but based on history only: the song was released in 1970, in the midst of the Vietnam War, during a time when carefree moments were punctuated with despair and casualty. Perhaps that’s what the songwriter was thinking about. In a way, I imagine it’s not just the woman the narrator missed, but the happier memories in general.
The words in bold are meant to signal words that go together in phrases. To translate the verses, I first looked up the typical definition or consulted my mom. It was difficult since I wanted to translate the song word-for-word, but as you’ll see below, the straight-forward translation doesn’t always make sense, so I needed to think about the artist’s intention.
Vietnamese: Thành phố nào nhớ không em?
Direct translation: City which remember/miss don’t you (younger woman, his lover)
Artistic translation: Which city do you remember, Love?
I thought the singer was personifying the city, that the city was doing the “remembering,” remembering his lover, who he refers to as em. The Vietnamese language emphasizes pronouns and age differences. Usually, em is someone younger than yourself. Here, it’s the pronoun for his lover.
My mom tells me that he’s asking his lover if he remembers their city.
Nhớ in Vietnamese also means to miss (someone).
Nơi chúng mình tìm phút êm đềm
Place we seek minutes tranquil/serene
The place where we found tranquil times
The tense switch isn’t obvious, but here the narrator refers to their time in the past. êm đềm was a new word for me, because I’ve heard of êm, which means comfortable or soft, but đềm apparently acts as an adverb that softens êm even more. So: tranquil, serene, fond.
Thành phố nào vừa đi đã mỏi
City which is enough to walk until tired
The city where we walked and walked
Okay, so: My mom laughed at how literal I was with the translation. “He’s just saying the city is small. Small enough to walk and be just a bit tired, not completely tired.” The city has hills, requiring steep climbs, which is how he remembers their walks. So, it’s not the distance this couple walked that the narrator remembers; it’s the route that they had taken. It’s a beautiful memory, a further indication of how action affects memory, how the smallest of gestures linger in our mind afterward.
Đường quanh co quyện gốc thông già
Road winding/zig-zagging tangled roots of old pine trees
The winding road with tangled roots of old pine trees
Here the author continues to describe the scenery. When I first translated this line, I thought: “Pine?” The Vietnam I’m most familiar with has coconut trees and palm trees, but pine seems so . . . Northeastern! However, Đà Lạt is in the north and is known for its pine trees. The soil can handle it better, as well as other vegetables like cabbage, carrot, and cauliflower (did I mean to use alliteration, you’ll never know).
When I looked up gốc, the word origin came up, which made me think of roots. Here I imagined the kind of roots that live above ground, all tangled up so that you’d need to step over it. My mother made a face at this: if the songwriter wanted to use roots, why didn’t he use rể?
We’ll agree to disagree here.
Chiều đan tay nghe nắng chan hòa
Afternoon knit hand hear sunny pour dissolve (?)
In the afternoon, we held hands, letting the light pour into us, bringing us a feeling of peace.
I know. You’re thinking: That’s too many words, Loan!
I was confused as hell translating this since I took it literally. My mom’s eyes lit up at this verse. To describe holding hands, I’ve heard mostly nắm tay, but dan tay, or knitting hands, feels rather specific, more artfully done.
Hòa bình is the word for peace; hòa alone isn’t often used alone, according to my mom. I figured the songwriter omitted the second word because the sound isn’t as pleasant as the word alone.
So, nghe means hear. I adore the songwriter’s synesthesiac take here. The narrator doesn’t just feel the light. He hears it. Isn’t that more powerful? It’s not about feeling light, which seems fleeting, but an emotion deep inside him: peace.
Instead of understanding this line word-for-word, I think I felt it more.
Nắng hôn nhẹ làm hồng môi em
Sunny kiss lightly makes pink lips yours
The sun kisses your lips, turning it pink
I imagine they’re close now, so close that the narrator sees his lover clearly.
Mắt em buồn trong sương chiều..
Eyes yours sad inside dew afternoon
Now, in the foggy/dewy afternoon, your sad eyes . .
Anh thấy đẹp hơn ..
I see, beautiful more
. . . Makes you more beautiful
My mom thought sương meant fog, but I would think the artist meant dew, which feels more romantic, right? Then again, it depends! In some horror movies, fog = serial killer stalking me, get away, please. In other usages, especially Pride and Prejudice, fog = a hunk emerges. Plus, THAT MUSIC YO!
[cue instrumental]
Một sáng nào nhớ không em?
One morning which remember don’t you?
Which morning do you remember?
Ngày Chúa Nhật ngày của riêng mình
Sunday day of private/especially us
Sundays which were ours alone
I had to wonder again what drew them apart, what took them away from their Sundays.
Thành phố buồn nằm nghe khói tỏa
City sad laying hearing smoke spread
In the sad city where we would lay and listen to the spreading smoke
Perhaps the singer compares the fog to smoke or refers to both of them in one. My mom thought he was describing the mornings where people would cook for themselves, the smoke of their rising fires.
Again, I really appreciate his use of nghe (hearing a sensation instead of feeling it).
Người lưa thưa chìm dưới sương mù
People thin/sparse sink deeply fog
Thin spread of people lost inside the fog
What a beautiful image. Imagine, people wandering into thick fog, sinking into the fog. GAH.
Quỳ bên nhau trong góc giáo đường
Kneel beside each other inside
We kneel beside each other inside the corner church
I’m the last person to talk about anything related to religion. But the act of kneeling calls to mind marriage, a partnership, a Hallmark movie in which a young blonde is crowned princess besides her prince . . .
In a way, I’m imagining this is their unofficial version of marrying one another, showing their love before their god.
Tiếng kinh cầu đệp mộng yêu đương
The sound prayers beautiful dream/wish love path
The beautiful sound of prayers of dreams and love
Can you see it in your head?
Chúa thương tình, sẽ cho mình mãi mãi gần nhau
God loves, will let us forever and forever near each other
God willing, He’ll let us be near each other forever and ever
Love the reverence here.
*
Since Vietnamese classes at the Center have started up again–and we’re required to speak and write entirely in Vietnamese–I’m trying my best to read and write Vietnamese every day in some form. I’m aiming to start a segment called “Lost in Translation.”
Translating even a portion of this took a bit out of me. I haven’t been able to tackle the second part of the song, which takes us on another emotional journey.
Stay tuned for the second part in the near future!
dispatch three
Vietnamese Folk Poem #1
Yeah, I take Vietnamese classes on Wednesday nights.
But . . . aren’t you Vietnamese?
*
At first, I thought learning Vietnamese in a class setting would only further embarrass me. It’s gonna be full of non-Vietnamese people and they’re going to look down on me. They’ll think, “Why is she in this class?” I always felt self-conscious speaking in my mother tongue. Even worse: I couldn’t read it! Me, a reader and writer who couldn’t read or write in Vietnamese?! The shame!!! Just as shameful as using three exclamation points in one sentence.
I was glad to discover that my classmates were like me: Vietnamese-American adults who spoke the language as children, then lost it along the way. After taking level one and level two, which will, sadly, conclude in two weeks, I’ve steadily grown confident. And that’s something I want to celebrate.
I appreciate the camaraderie inside the classroom—we easily trade American jokes mixed with some typical Vietnamese craziness—but most of all, I love the cultural aspects that inevitably come from our lessons. Our teacher is young and more modern, and I’m learning how some commonly used words may seem outdated to younger Vietnamese people. One example is the word for hospital, which is bệnh viện. When I told my teacher that I’ve only used nhà thương, he kind of chuckled, saying that gave away my parents’ ages (mine are older than most of my peers’ parents). Other times, the vocabulary varies based on region, and your word choice will out you immediately.
The class remains especially enlightening because it’s giving me a taste of what my parents had learned as children. In Vietnamese schools and homes, children are taught ca dao, or folk poems. These pieces teach life lessons, and some sound as rigid as one would expect, while others are quite lovely. A common subject centers on the child’s duty to his or her parents, a notion that’s entirely absent in the American school system, where students are mostly taught to obey teachers.
But for Vietnamese people, the real teaching starts at home. I want to share one ca dao just to give you a taste of my language!
Vietnamese
Cá không ăn muối cá ươn
Con cãi cha mẹ trăm đường con hư
English (translated roughly word-for-word and disregarding syntax)
Fish that don’t eat salt goes rotten,
You (child) argue with us (parents) in a hundred ways you are bad.
Essentially, the poem says children who don’t listen to their parents or take their lessons to heart will turn out unruly. As someone who’s still navigating the language, I can’t quite confirm whether the author was trying to be playful . . . BUT I noticed the use of đường, which means sugar: muối and đường, salt and sugar. At the same time, đường also means road or path.
Next up: I’m attempting to translate a song I’ve been listening to non-stop: “Thành Phố Buồn.” Even my mom says this might be hard to translate correctly! Challenge accepted.
Farewell to the Admiral
When I read tragic news, I imagine the deceased’s family and friends might read the articles and find the summary so trite and generic. But I understand that news is about boiling things down so that strangers can stay informed, then move on with the rest of their lives. I just never thought that the news would be about someone I once knew.
Let me define “knew,” because that word is nuanced, and I would never want to exaggerate a connection when there are family, colleagues, and close friends mourning someone they interacted with every day. I knew Ms. Yamamoto in the sense that I was in her classroom for nearly a year, hearing her calm, hey-life’s-going-to-work-out voice most days of the week. I knew her as the teacher who possessed both fine qualities of John Keating (Robin Williams) in Dead Poets Society, and Bill Anderson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower; she was the storm that lit my passion for literature and the calm that quieted my frenetic worries as a high school junior. Later, I knew her a bit more through her poetry and blog posts, which, when written by a true writer like Ms. Yamamoto, makes you feel as if your souls are connecting for an instant.
Her death makes me feel a type of regret that I’ve tried to avoid—that’s why I’m always chasing my dreams, not taking my aging parents for granted, and treasuring small wonders. It’s too late to ever connect with her again, and now I only have my memories of Ms. Yamamoto.
But they’re great and precious and I want to write about them because I think it’s a fitting way for me to grieve.
In AP Language and Composition, an environment where it was typical to measure myself against peers and feel pressured to chase perfection, Ms. Yamamoto eased my mind. I never felt like the outcast, despite feeling different from my amazing classmates—future lawyers, doctors, dentists, and scientists. The divisions that separated us—real or imagined— disappeared. I was much more of a listener, but I felt included in inside jokes like “I like to eat blood in the morning” and sentences that included the word “bosom,” which always had us breaking out in laughter. Ms. Yamamoto would indulge us, sometimes exasperated, sometimes confused.
Ms. Yamamoto assigned us the usual homework and we read Ethan Frome, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, The Old Man and the Sea (we were, after all, an AP class). But there was one assignment I adored: Occasional Papers, something she might have picked up from her own time as a student or from a fellow teacher. Occasional Papers were sparked by occasions or inspirations or things important to you. You. That was Ms. Yamamoto’s focus. She saw each of us as individuals. I’m not saying that other teachers didn’t acknowledge this—but perhaps she stood out the most because in a time when I was losing my Me-ness, she had offered me a way to find myself again.
In one essay, I wrote about always losing my Cheshire Public Library card. Another one was about music, I think. With each paper, I began to see my classmates and their passions.
Ms. Yamamoto might not have known this—or maybe she had; high school students can be really shitty secret-keepers—but a classmate named her Admiral, after someone from some war, and that became her nickname. So we, by association, became her Soldiers.
(Or Souljas—because we were teenagers and utterly ridiculous.)
She took pride in us. That was undeniable. Ms. Yamamoto had an office—or the English Department did—where each student was able to hang a poster listing their college acceptances. And that made us proud of ourselves. The next year, I think we tried to keep the class together, gathering occasionally in the office. And I think after college, most of us met up for hibachi. It was nice, but it wasn’t the same; we all seemed to know that shine was gone, couldn’t be replicated again. But in a way, doesn’t that show the value of our time together? How perfect it was? How perfect Ms. Yamamoto was to bring us all together?
Ms. Yamamoto and I became Facebook friends when I started college. I can’t remember who Friended whom. Maybe I did in a rare moment of bravery. She read some of my blog posts and said she loved my voice and when I wrote about our class, she wrote, “You guys were a really special class.” Wow, she got a nose ring? (Or was it always there?) In turn, I followed her blog. Based on some posts, she was writing to work through some things–like all of us. I should have messaged her more often. Liked more of her posts. Emailed her for coffee (Cheshire is not so inaccessible from Manhattan).
I still have her copy of The Elements of Style. I even named a teacher in my YA novel after her. She’s this no-bullshit art teacher and mentor–a woman small in stature but fiery and compassionate in her voice and manner. I couldn’t wait to publish the novel, then return one day to the fun house-shaped halls of Cheshire High School, place it in her hands, and say, “Don’t be freaked out, I know we haven’t been in touch much, but you inspired someone in this book.”
As news outlets report on Ms. Yamamoto’s passing, I worry that my vision of her will chip away. So, as her still adoring student, I’ll remember her here.
My mind is cluttered with the humiliation from awkward conversations with my crush, looming tests, and other responsibilities. But Ms. Yamamoto tells us that someone has an Occasional Paper. Her voice calms me immediately. We set down our pens and pencils and shift our uncomfortable metal chairs to face the front. The person with an Occasional Paper chooses to stand or remain sitting. Smooths out a wrinkled notebook page or unfolds a computer printout. I look at Ms. Yamamoto who waits patiently. Silence nets the room. I breathe at my classmate’s inhale, and before long, a singular voice takes up my mind, redefining a language I thought I knew so well—until now.
Thank you so, so much, Ms. Yamamoto.
dispatch two
back to nonfiction
In one of my groups, a nonfiction writer who was testing out a chapter of a novella lamented that fiction was more difficult to write than nonfiction*. His admission stunned me because I thought the exact opposite. He argued fiction writers had more groundwork ahead of them; he struggled the most with creating situations and characters. True, I said. But the act of purposefully summoning a memory that you’ve spent your whole life running away from or writing about people close to you terrifies me. Nonfiction writers possess the fortitude to admit their flaws, excavate truths hidden in their bodies. This isn’t easy, especially for an introvert like me.
I’m not new to nonfiction writing, but I’m still an acquaintance. I guess this website, where I publish most of my stupid thoughts, counts as nonfiction. In college, I took a creative nonfiction class—the class that launched my serious commitment to writing. We had to write a political essay and a personal essay. It was such a wonderful experience seeing my inner thoughts—mine, not another character’s—crowd the pages. One of my pieces eventually won an English Department award; I felt honored and my parents were there to hear a reading. Since the piece was about my mother’s late younger sister, I was moved when she cried and told me she was proud of me.
But as rewarding as the piece made me feel, I think revealing myself in this medium led to an invisible wound. I wanted to collect my words and thoughts before they could be put under further scrutiny. I shied away from nonfiction until a few months ago honestly. I tackled a nonfiction piece about fan fiction writing that’s been sitting in my files for ages, and I’m pleased to say that it’ll be up on Submittable in September. As the subject might suggest, it’s not exactly a “serious” creative nonfiction piece, but it’s a piece where my voice dominates the pages. And it’s honest. I’ve been lying way too much with fiction!
My next piece-in-progress deals with a childhood incident that’s bled into my writing and into my life as a young woman. The latter was a recent revelation. The writing process for this piece is similar to being in a car that’s alternatively stalling and jerking. I’m resisting my instinct to “pull away” in my writing—like if I touch it, I’ll get burned. Knowing this, I’m still clawing my way to the finish line, not for the purpose of publication or likes or follows, but for myself.
I’m writing this post at the point where I’m starting to think I should just store this piece. Then again, there’s a fifty percent chance of me abandoning it . . .
I’m quite jealous and awed by a nonfiction author my imprint had just published. Michael Arceneaux, now the New York Times bestselling author of I Can’t Date Jesus, makes a living writing things that are true, but this book of essays is all about him, his sexuality, his family. I saw him at a Strand event, where, despite being nervous before speaking to an audience (about 100 people!), he seemed incredibly at ease with the fact that his life is laid bare in this book. The aftermath of catharsis, I suppose.
What nonfiction reading material would you recommend to a short story writer experimenting with the genre?
*my initial thought: well, yeah, you’re writing a novella.
dispatch one
(click to make interactive)
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Fleeting thoughts: Words, words, words
I found a spare dictionary at work last week and gleefully took it home, and now it’s displayed at the very top of my bookshelf. If I have to pick an odd hobby for when I’m old and curmudgeon, and when all I have left in life are inanimate objects, I would choose to collect dictionaries. They are totems, keepers of humankind’s kaleidoscopic logic and emotions changed by time.
When I was seven or eight years old, I copied the entire A section of Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary’s Tenth Edition. This edition is beautiful: deep red cover, silky pages with shimmering gold edges, always cool to the touch. According to the inscription inside, my father gave the dictionary to my mother as a gift. August 23, 1992. I’m tickled by the idea that this was considered a gift. Dad didn’t give her jewelry or flowers, but a dictionary . . . I sat at my parents’ desk in their bedroom, secluded from my sister and my brother who took up more space than me. This was back when my family of five lived in a two-bedroom apartment. The desk lamp cast shadows against the walls, letting out just enough light to hit the pages and illuminate new words.
I still discover words by reading. It’s always a solid experience. When someone mentions an unfamiliar word, I’m almost never able to catch it. Or I would feel awkward stopping that person mid-sentence and asking, “Sorry, what does that mean?”
But I’d forgotten the second part to committing these words to memory: repetition, the muscle memory of scrawling each letter, the right side of my palm sliding across a page in a notebook. I’m noticing how easily words slip away from me, so I’m compelled to return to the dictionary, to this childhood method of capturing words. I’m also revisiting the aid of visuals. I used to draw pictures to accompany words and their definitions. On computer paper folded into eight sections—each reserved for a word—I once sketched an image for eviscerate: entrails hanging out of an open stomach wound. (I love that word and its sound—a hiss in the middle, a bite at the end.)
The words I love are usually multisyllabic—and not often heard from people’s mouths, unless those people are pompous. I would love to include such words into my writing, but as much as I want to, that’s not my writing style. When I try, it’s a hundred-dollar-word surrounded by dollar-words, and that’s no good. I’ve learned to love my plainness.
Here are some of my favorite words. What’s yours?
Compunction
Defenestration
Lackadaisical
Vacillate
Teeming
Susurrous
Bludgeon
Seeping
Knoll
Ethereal
Sonder *a made-up word that’s been adopted by logophiles*
Derelict
Quell
ASIDE
As I was writing this post, I needed help from the WordPress tech support. Mahangu chatted with me and before I signed off, I was compelled to ask him for his favorite word. Obviously surprised, he took a minute to think.
“I guess one of my favourite words would be mercy. It’s a tiny word, but is a central part of what makes anyone a good person, right?”
Mahangu is a genius, obviously.
Fleeting Thoughts is a space where I can release my imperfect, unfiltered words that often occur when my body is still but my mind is racing.
Other Fleeting Thoughts
